I went to Paris, to a hotel, and I consulted doctors on my nervous state, which had been giving me much uneasiness since that deplorable night.
They ordered me to travel. I followed their advice.
II
I began by travelling in Italy. The sun did me good. For six months, I wandered from Genoa to Venice, Venice to Florence, Florence to Rome, Rome to Naples. Then I went over Sicily, a country alike notable for its climate and its monuments, relics of the Greek and Norman occupation. I turned to Africa, I peacefully crossed the huge calm yellow desert over which camels, gazelles and vagabond Arabs wander, and almost nothing haunts the light, crystalline air, neither by night nor day.
I returned to France by Marseilles, and despite the gaiety of the province, the dimmer light of the sky saddened me. Once more I felt, on returning to the Continent, the curious fancy of a sick man who believed himself cured and whom a dull pain warns that the flame of his malady is not quite extinguished.
Then I came back to Paris. A month later, I was bored with it. It was autumn, and before winter came on, I wanted to make an expedition across Normandy, with which I had no acquaintance.
I began at Rouen, of course, and for eight days I wandered ecstatically, enthusiastically, through this medieval city, in this amazing mirror of extraordinary Gothic monuments.
Then about four o’clock one afternoon, as I was tempting some unreal street, in which a stream, black as the ink they call “Robec Water,” flows, my attention, wholly fixed on the bizarre and antiquated character of the houses, was suddenly distracted by a glimpse of a line of secondhand dealers’ shops which succeeded each other from door to door.
How well they had chosen, these obscene traffickers in rubbish, their pitch in this fantastic alley, perched above the evil watercourse, beneath the roofs bristling with tiles and slates on which still creaked the weathercocks of bygone days!
In the depths of those dark stairs, all higgledy-piggledy could be seen carved presses, Rouen, Neders, Moustiers pottery, painted statues, or some in oak, Christs, Virgins, saints, church ornaments, chasubles, copes, even chalices, and even painted shrines from which the Almighty has been dismantled. Curious, are they not? these caverns in these tall houses, in these huge towns, filled from cellar to attic with every kind of article whose existence seemed ended, but which outlived their natural owners, their century, their period, their fashion, to be bought by new generations as curiosities.
My weakness for trinkets reawakened in this city of antiquaries. I went from stall to stall, crossing in two strides the bridges made of four rotten planks thrown across the nauseous Robec Water.
Heavens! What a shock! One of my most handsome wardrobes met my eyes at the end of a vault crowded with articles, looking like the entrance to the catacombs of a cemetery for old furniture. I drew nearer, trembling in every limb, trembling so much that I dared not touch it. I put out my hand, I hesitated. It was really it, after all: a unique Louis XIII wardrobe, easily recognisable by anyone who had ever seen it. Suddenly casting my eyes a little further, into the deeper shadows of the shop, I caught sight of three of my armchairs, covered with petit point tapestry; then, still further back, my two Henri II tables, so rare that people came to Paris to look at them.
Think! Think of my state of mind!
But I went on, incapable, tortured with emotion. But I went forward, for I am a brave man, as a knight of the Dark Ages thrust his way into a nest of sorcery. Step by step, I found everything which had belonged to me, my chandeliers, my books, my pictures, my hangings, my armours, everything except the desk full of my letters, which I could see nowhere.
I went on, climbing down dim galleries, climbing up to higher floors, I was alone. I shouted; no one answered. I was alone; there was no one in this vast house, tortuous as a maze.
Night fell, and I had to sit down in the shadows of my own chairs, for I would not go away. From time to time I called: “Hallo! Hallo! Is anyone there?”
I must have been there for certainly more than an hour when I heard steps, light footsteps, and slow, I don’t know where. I was on the point of fleeing, but taking heart, I called once more and saw a light in an adjoining room.
“Who is there?” said a voice.
I replied: “A customer.”
The answer came:
“It is very late to come into shops like this.”
“I have been waiting for more than an hour,” I returned.
“You could come back tomorrow!”
“Tomorrow, I shall have left Rouen.”
I did not dare go forward, and he did not come. All the time, I was watching the reflection of his light illuminating a tapestry on which two angels hovered above the bodies on a battlefield. It, too, belonged to me. I said:
“Well! Are you coming?”
He answered:
“I am waiting for you.”
I rose and went towards him.
In the middle of a large room stood a tiny man, tiny and very fat, the fatness of a freak, a hideous freak.
He had an extraordinary beard of straggling hair, thin-grown and yellowish, and not a hair on his head. Not a hair! As he held his candle at arm’s length to see me the better, his skull looked to me like a little moon in this vast room cluttered with old furniture. His face was wrinkled and swollen, his eyes scarcely visible.
I bargained for three chairs, which were mine, and paid for them on the spot an enormous sum, giving only the number of my room at the hotel. They were to be delivered before nine o’clock
