Suddenly he heard someone open the door. Some indefinable feeling made him not turn around at once. He felt a hand on his shoulder. Then he turned and saw Olivier smiling at him. He was not surprised, and said:
“Ah, here you are at last!”
The illusion vanished.
Christophe got up suddenly, knocking over chair and table. His hair stood on end. He stood still for a moment, livid, with his teeth chattering.
At the end of that moment—(in vain did he shut his eyes to it and tell himself: “I know nothing”)—he knew everything: he was sure of what he was going to hear.
He could not stay in his room. He went down into the street and walked about for an hour. When he returned the porter met him in the hall of the hotel and gave him a letter. The letter. He was quite sure it would be there. His hand trembled as he took it. He opened it, saw that Olivier was dead, and fainted.
The letter was from Manousse. It said that in concealing the disaster from him the day before, and hurrying him off, they had only been obeying Olivier’s wishes, who had desired to insure his friend’s escape—that it was useless for Christophe to stay, as it would mean the end of him also—that it was his duty to seek safety for the sake of his friend’s memory, and for his other friends, and for the sake of his own fame, etc., etc. … Amélie had added three lines in her big, scrawling handwriting, to say that she would take every care of the poor little gentleman. …
When Christophe came back to himself he was furiously angry. He wanted to kill Manousse. He ran to the station. The hall of the hotel was empty, the streets were deserted: in the darkness the few belated passersby did not notice his wildly staring eyes or his furious breathing. His mind had fastened as firmly as a bulldog with its fangs on to the one fixed idea: “Kill Manousse! Kill! …” He wanted to return to Paris. The night express had gone an hour before. He had to wait until the next morning. He could not wait. He took the first train that went in the direction of Paris, a train which stopped at every station. When he was left alone in the carriage Christophe cried over and over again:
“It is not true! It is not true!”
At the second station across the French frontier the train stopped altogether: it did not go any farther. Shaking with fury, Christophe got out and asked for another train, battering the sleepy officials with questions, and only knocking up against indifference. Whatever he did he would arrive too late. Too late for Olivier. He could not even manage to catch Manousse. He would be arrested first. What was he to do? Which way to turn? To go on? To go back? What was the use? What was the use? … He thought of giving himself up to a gendarme who went past him. He was held back by an obscure instinct for life which bade him return to Switzerland. There was no train in either direction for a few hours. Christophe sat down in the waiting-room, could not keep still, left the station, and blindly followed the road on through the night. He found himself in the middle of a bare countryside—fields, broken here and there with clumps of pines, the vanguard of a forest. He plunged into it. He had hardly gone more than a few steps when he flung himself down on the ground and cried:
“Olivier!”
He lay across the path and sobbed.
A long time afterwards a train whistling in the distance roused him and made him get up. He tried to go back to the station, but took the wrong road. He walked on all through the night. What did it matter to him where he went? He went on walking to keep from thinking, walking, walking, until he could not think, walking on in the hope that he might fall dead. Ah! if only he might die! …
At dawn he found himself in a French village a long way from the frontier. All night he had been walking away from it. He went into an inn, ate a huge meal, set out once more, and walked on and on. During the day he sank down in the middle of a field and lay there asleep until the evening. When he woke up it was to face another night. His fury had abated. He was left only with frightful grief that choked him. He dragged himself to a farmhouse, and asked for a piece of bread and a truss of straw for a bed. The farmer stared hard at him, cut him a slice of bread, led him into the stable, and locked it. Christophe lay in the straw near the thickly-smelling cows, and devoured his bread. Tears were streaming down his face. Neither his hunger nor his sorrow could be appeased. During the night sleep once more delivered him from his agony for a few hours. He woke up next day on the sound of the door opening. He lay
