“How can I tell?” cried La Pérouse, in a kind of despair. “They keep everything from me, I tell you.” He had taken the photograph, and after having looked at it a moment, he put it back in the letter-case, which he slipped into his pocket. “When his mother comes to Paris, she only sees Madame de La Pérouse; if I question her, she always answers: ‘You had better ask her yourself.’ She says that, but at heart she would hate me to see her. She has always been jealous. She has always tried to take away everything I care for.... Little Boris is being educated in Poland--at Warsaw, I believe. But he often travels with his mother.” Then, in great excitement: “Oh, would you have thought it possible to love someone one has never seen?... Well, this child is what I care for most in the world.... And he doesn’t know!” His words were broken by great sobs. He rose from his chair and threw himself--fell almost--into my arms. I would have done anything to give him some comfort--but what could I do? I got up, for I felt his poor shrunken form slipping to the ground and I thought he was going to fall on his knees. I held him up, embraced him, rocked him like a child. He mastered himself. Madame de La Pérouse was calling in the next room. “She’s coming.... You don’t want to see her, do you?... Besides, she’s stone deaf. Go quickly.” And as he saw me out on to the landing: “Don’t be too long without coming again.” (There was entreaty in his voice.) “Good-bye; good-bye.” _Nov. 9th._--There is a kind of tragedy, it seems to me, which has hitherto almost entirely eluded literature. The novel has dealt with the contrariness of fate, good or evil fortune, social relationships, the conflicts of passions and of characters--but not with the very essence of man’s being. And yet, the whole effect of Christianity was to transfer the drama on to the moral plane. But properly speaking there are no Christian novels. There are novels whose purpose is edification; but that has nothing to do with what I mean. Moral tragedy--the tragedy, for instance, which gives such terrific meaning to the Gospel text: “If the salt have lost his flavour wherewith shall it be salted?”--that is the tragedy with which I am concerned. _Nov. 10th._--Olivier’s examination is coming on shortly. Pauline wants him to try for the _École Normale_ afterwards. His career is all mapped out.... If only he had no parents, no connections! I would have made him my secretary. But the thought of me never occurs to him; he has not even noticed my interest in him, and I should embarrass him if I showed it. It is because I don’t want to embarrass him that I affect a kind of indifference in his presence, a kind of detachment. It is only when he does not see me that I dare look my full at him. Sometimes I follow him in the street without his knowing it. Yesterday I was walking behind him in this way, when he turned suddenly round before I had time to hide.