And what had yonder dome given him in return? Nothing, absolutely nothing. Even on the day of his admission, when the speeches were over and the double-edged compliments at an end, he had felt the sensation of emptiness and deluded hope. He had said to himself as he drove home to change his green coat, ‘Have I really got in? Why, it can’t be like this.’ Since then, by dint of constant lying to himself and echoing, with his colleagues, that it was delightful, delicious, he had ended by believing so. But now the veil had fallen away, and he saw the truth; and he would have liked to proclaim with a thousand tongues to the youth of France, ‘The Académie is a snare and a delusion. Go your way and do your work. Sacrifice nothing to the Académie, for it has nothing to offer you, neither gift, nor glory, nor the best thing of all, self-contentment. It is neither a retreat nor a refuge; it is a hollow idol, a religion that offers no consolations. The great troubles of life come upon you there as elsewhere; under that dome men have killed themselves, men have gone mad there! Those who in their agony have turned to the Académie, and weary of loving, or weary of cursing, have stretched forth their arms to her, have clasped but a shadow.’ The old schoolmaster was speaking aloud, bareheaded, grasping the parapet with both hands as in old days he used to hold the edge of his desk at lessons. The river rolled on below, tinged with hues of night, between its rows of winking lamps. An uncanny thing is the speechless life of light, moving, and looking, and never saying what it means. On the quay the song of a drunken man died quavering away in the distance, ‘When Cupid... in the morn... awakes.’ The accent showed that the merry singer was an Auvergnat making his way back to his coal-barge. It reminded him of Teyssèdre, the polisher, and his glass of good wine. He saw him wiping his mouth on his shirt-sleeve. ‘It’s the only real good in life.’ Even a humble natural joy like that he had never known; he must needs envy even Teyssèdre. Absolutely alone, with no refuge, no breast on which to weep, he realised that ‘that woman’ was right, and ‘the trunk had better be packed for good and all, Léonard.’ In the morning some policemen found on a bench on the Pont des Arts a wide-brimmed hat, one of those hats which preserve something of the expression of their owner. Inside was a large gold watch and a visiting card--‘Léonard Astier-Réhu, Permanent Secretary of the Académie Française.’ Right across the line of print had been written in pencil the words, ‘I die here of my own will.’ Of his own will indeed it was! Even better than the little phrase in the large, firm handwriting did the expression of his features--the set teeth, the projection of the lower jaw--declare his fixed determination to die, when after a morning’s search the dredgers found the body caught in the wide meshes of an iron net surrounding some baths for women, quite close to the bridge.