Two joyful tidings already, and it was not yet midday. It was only at this hour that his scanty correspondence was brought him, for the precious mornings could not be troubled by the intrusion of the external problematical world. Even amid a quite feverish contentment, he did not regret the instructions he had given once for all; Sixtine's letter came at a moment when he could think at leisure and without remorse. His pleasure was manifested by a vivacity of movement altogether juvenile; a semblance of adolescence surged from his precocious maturity. Though he generally was incapable of giving a clear account of his impressions, he felt himself rejuvenated, and this astonished him. He walked about with lively quick movements. Rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs was almost gay. A reddish brown made the sun-bathed Luxembourg, through which he strolled, resplendent. It was full of pretty children and flashing ribbons. Towards the Odéon he ceased to be aware of the things around him--a beaming cloud enveloped him. In the afternoon, having breakfasted, though he could not have stated how or where, he found himself on the Pont-Neuf, and collected his thoughts. Presence of mind returned to him and, dissipating with a last breath his cloud, he began consciously to revel in his happiness. The moment was brief: leaning on his elbows, looking at the unchanging water, he felt the premonitory thrill he so well knew; the frozen aura of spleen whistled in his ears and, bounding the horizon like a wall, the black Idea reared itself before him. An infinite distress overwhelmed him and, far from wishing the burden removed, he bent his shoulders, letting himself be crushed even to suicide. He closed his eyes with suffering, he trembled with cold, and a flicker of reason deep within him warned him of the absurdity of such a sudden and causeless grief. Yet he persisted, now lying under the avalanche of gloom, immobile, experiencing the garrot of solitary death, the slow excoriation of moral agony. This lasted an hour, during which he suffered weeks of real and profound pains, the cruelest pains ever invented by unjust human imagination, hopeless pains, infernal pains. He ached when he resumed his normal state and unsteadily went on his way.