For a long, long time these confused lamentations continued. Claude listened to them in silence, his head resting on his hand. He too had suffered, and he knew what consolation it gives to tell one's sorrow. He pitied the poor youth who sat there sobbing as if his heart would break, and the clear-sighted analyst within him could not help observing the difference between the poet's grief and that which he himself had so often felt under similar circumstances. He never remembered having suffered this torture, even when hard hit, without probing his wounds, whilst René was the picture of a young and sincere creature who has no idea of studying his tears in a mirror. These strange reflections upon the diversity of men's souls did not prevent him from sympathising most deeply with his friend, and there was a note of true feeling in his voice when he at last took advantage of a break in René's lament to speak. 'It is as our dear Heine said--Love is the hidden disease of the heart. You are now at the period of inception. Will you take the advice of a veteran sufferer? Pack up your traps and put miles upon miles between you and this Suzanne. A pretty name and a well-chosen one! A Suzanne who makes money out of the elders! At your age you will be quickly cured. I am quite cured myself. Not that I know how and when it happened--in fact, it amazes me! But for the past three days I have been rid of my love for Colette. Meanwhile, I'm not going to leave you alone; come and dine with me. We shall drink hard and be merry, and so avenge ourselves upon our troubles.' After his fit of passion had spent itself René had fallen into that state of mental coma which succeeds great outbursts of grief. He suffered himself to be led, like one in a trance, along the Rue du Bac, then along the Rue de Sèvres and the boulevard as far as the Restaurant Lavenue at the corner of the Gare Montparnasse, long frequented by many well-known painters and sculptors of our day. Claude led the way to a _cabinet particulier_, in which he pointed out to René Colette's name, scratched on one of the mirrors amidst scores of others. Rubbing his hands, he exclaimed: 'We must treat our past with ridicule,' and ordered a very elaborate meal with two bottles of the oldest Corton. During the whole of the dinner he did not cease to propound his theories on women, whilst his companion hardly ate, but sat lost in mental contemplation of the divine face in which he had so fully believed. Was it possible that he was not dreaming, and that Suzanne was really one of those of whom Claude was speaking in terms of such contempt?