I insisted a long time, but she was inflexible. And I went back to the ante-room in a very uncertain state of mind. Oh! that ante-room, so sad and dark, always the same! These girls sprawling and crushed upon the benches, this market for human meat to tempt _bourgeois_ voracity, this flux of filth and this reflux of poverty that bring you back there, mournful waifs, wreckage from the sea, eternally tossed hither and thither. "What a queer type I am!" thought I. "I desire things ... things ... things ... when I think them unrealizable, and, so soon as they promise realization, so soon as they present themselves to me in clearer outline, I no longer want them." There was something of this, certainly, in my refusal; but there was also a childish desire to humiliate Mme. Paulhat-Durand a little, and to take a sort of vengeance upon her by catching the contemptuous and haughty creature in the very act of catering to lust. I regretted this old man, who now exercised over me all the seductions of the unknown, all the charms of an inaccessible ideal. And I found pleasure in picturing him to my fancy,--a spruce old man, with soft hands, a pretty smile, a pink and shaven face, and gay, and generous, and good-natured, not so much a maniac as M. Rabour, allowing himself to be led by me, like a little dog. "Come here. Come, come here." And he came, caressing, frisking about, with a kind and submissive look. "Now sit up." And he sat up, in such a funny way, with his forepaws beating the air. "Oh! the good bow-wow!" I gave him sugar; I stroked his silky skin. He no longer disgusted me. And again I reflected: "How stupid I am, all the same! A good doggy, a fine garden, a fine house, money, tranquillity, an assured future,--to think that I have refused all these, and without knowing why. And never to know what I want, and never to will what I desire! At bottom I am afraid of man,--worse than that, I have a disgust for man,--when he is far away. When he is near me, I am capable of anything. I have no power of resistance save against things that are not to happen and men whom I shall never know. I really believe that I shall never be happy." The ante-room was oppressive to me. This obscurity, this dim light, these sprawling creatures, made my ideas more and more lugubrious. Something heavy and irremediable hovered over me. Without waiting for the bureau to close, I went away, with heavy heart and choking throat. On the stairs I met M. Louis. Clinging to the banister, he was ascending the steps, slowly and painfully. We looked at each other for a second. He did not say anything, and I too found no word; but our looks said all. Ah! he, as well as I, was not happy. I listened to him a moment, as he went up the steps; then I plunged down the stairway. Poor little wretch!