I reached Mme. de Saunois’ at last in a state of extreme nervous tension, such as a tired and horrified army must feel within a conquered city. I craved, to benumb me, the excitement of music and brilliant lights, the flash of jewels, the beauty of women and their glistening lips, the suggestiveness in those attitudes by which the present fashions submit our women’s bodies to our curious gaze. I longed for all this intoxication of the eyes, this brilliancy that should dispel that darker picture from my mind. Let all those things greet me and I should be relieved of a great weight! Already I discounted this relief as I was taking off my overcoat in the vestibule, and entered, ready for my intoxication. Yes, everything I sought was there. It was hot: it was the atmosphere of unalloyed pleasure: there were flowers and numerous lamps and that special offering of flesh that women’s dress sets out like baskets of rich fruit. People were talking, laughing, moving about, enjoying each moment. Is not a salon a guarded place without an opening on the outside world, with no doors leading to the past or present, where one forgets, where one goes in order to forget? It is the price one pays for tastes of happiness. Mme. de H--, who was watching for me, glided toward me and took me in her wake, making off with me like a vessel that puts out to sea with sealed orders. Yes, everything was there to offer me distraction, and yet, that night, I gained nothing of the sort. I was cold, and could not warm myself. In the midst of so many colours my eyes saw nothing but the shadows on all the faces under those lights. On that of Mme. de H--, nearer at hand, in spite of the rouge, the powder, the smile, the forced joy, I saw distinctly, the definite pallor of death: not that death which suddenly suspends our motion and hurries us into the unknown, but that death of emptiness that is covered with gilded superficiality, with emptiness of false compliments and lying declarations and hypocritical enthusiasms, emptiness of petty hates, of affections limited by desires and desire that finds only limit in caresses, emptiness of wit, of artifice and passion, emptiness even of our restlessness and pride; that death and emptiness, in a word, of everything that is not the print of solitude and immortality. And just as death was there everywhere about me in that salon, many-sided and invisible, life had fled for refuge yonder in that room where Raymonde waited for me to return. She was not resting; she was only waiting for me, I told myself. When I should enter, she would lift her arms from the bed, and in her open palms would be security and peace and love. Around her head would shine that halo which I had already seen there. But I should have to hurry; she would not wait for me long--