Then suddenly ashamed of my cowardice, I seized my bunch of keys, I chose the one I wanted, I thrust it in the lock, I turned it twice, and pushing the door with all my force, I sent the door clattering against the inner wall.
The crash rang out like a pistol shot, and, amazingly, from top to bottom of my house, a formidable uproar broke out in answer to this explosive sound. It was so sudden, so terrible, so deafening, that I recoiled some steps and although I still felt it to be useless, I drew my revolver from its holster.
I went on waiting, oh, some little time. I could distinguish, now, an extraordinary tap-tapping on the steps of my staircase, on the floors, on the carpets, a tap-tapping, not of shoes, of slippers worn by human beings, but of crutches, wooden crutches, and iron crutches that rang out like cymbals. And then all at once I saw, on the threshold of my door, an armchair, my big reading-chair, come swaggering out. It set off through the garden. Others followed it, the chairs out of my drawing room, then the low couches dragging themselves along like crocodiles on their short legs, then all my chairs, leaping like goats, and the little stools trotting along like hares.
Imagine the tumult of my mind! I slipped into a grove of trees, where I stayed, crouched, watching the whole time this march past of my furniture, for they were all taking their departure, one after the other, quickly or slowly, according to their shapes and weight. My piano, my large grand, passed galloping like a runaway horse, with a murmur of music in its depths; the smallest objects gliding over the gravel like ants, brushes, glass dishes, goblets, where the moonlight hung glowworm lamps. The hangings slithered past in whorls, like octopuses. I saw my writing-table appear, a rare piece of the last century, which contained all the letters I have received, the whole story of my heart, an old story which caused me so much suffering. And it held photographs too.
Suddenly, I was no longer afraid, I flung myself on it and seized it as one seizes a thief, as one seizes a flying woman; but it pursued its irresistible course, and in spite of my efforts, in spite of my anger, I could not even retard its progress. As I was making a desperate resistance to this terrible force I fell on the ground, struggling with it. Thereupon it tumbled me over, and dragged me over the gravel, and the pieces of furniture that were following it were already beginning to walk over me, trampling over my legs and bruising them; then, when I had loosed my hold of it, the others passed over my body like a cavalry charge over a dismounted soldier.
Mad with fear at last, I managed to drag myself out of the main avenue and to hide myself again among the trees, to watch the disappearance of the meanest, smallest, most overlooked by me, most insignificant objects that had belonged to me.
Then far away, in my house, now as full of echoing sounds as empty houses are, I heard the dreadful sound of shutting doors. They clashed shut from top to bottom of the building, until the hall door that I myself, in my mad folly, had opened for their flight, had finally shut itself, last of all.
I fled too, running towards the town, and I did not recover my self-control until I was in the streets, and meeting belated wayfarers. I went and rang at the door of a hotel where I was known. I had beaten my clothes with my hands to remove the dust, and I explained that I had lost my bunch of keys which contained also the key of the kitchen garden, where my servants were sleeping in a house isolated behind the enclosing wall that preserved my fruit and my vegetables from marauding visitors.
I buried myself up to my eyes in the bed they gave me. But I could not sleep, and I waited for daybreak, listening to the beating of my heart. I had given orders that my people were to be warned at dawn, and my man knocked on my door at seven o’clock in the morning.
His face seemed convulsed with emotion.
“A terrible thing happened last night, sir,” he said.
“What’s that?”
“The whole furniture of the house has been stolen, sir, everything, everything, down to the very smallest articles.”
This news pleased me. Why? Who knows? I had myself absolutely in hand, absolutely determined to dissimulate, to say nothing to anyone about what I had seen, to hide it: bury it in my conscience like a frightful secret. I answered:
“They must be the same people who stole my keys. We must warn the police at once. I will get up and be with you in a few moments.”
The investigations lasted five months. They discovered nothing, they did not find the smallest of my possessions, not the faintest trace of the thieves. Lord! if I had told what I knew. If I had told … they would have shut me up, me, not the robbers, but the man who had been able to see such a thing.
Oh, I know enough to hold my tongue. But I did not refurnish my house. It was quite useless. The
