ered and turned cold at the
thought that a time would come when he would be always alone. Was it the
beginning of old age that made him shiver in this way? He seemed to
see it stretching before him, like a shadowy region in which he already
began to feel all his energy melting away. And then the regret of having
neither wife nor child filled him with rebelliousness, and wrung his
heart with intolerable anguish.

Ah, why had he not lived! There were times when he cursed science,
accusing it of having taken from him the best part of his manhood.
He had let himself be devoured by work; work had consumed his brain,
consumed his heart, consumed his flesh. All this solitary, passionate
labor had produced only books, blackened paper, that would be scattered
to the winds, whose cold leaves chilled his hands as he turned them
over. And no living woman's breast to lean upon, no child's warm locks
to kiss! He had lived the cold, solitary life of a selfish scientist,
and he would die in cold solitude. Was he indeed going to die thus?
Would he never taste the happiness enjoyed by even the common porters,
by the carters who cracked their whips, passing by under his windows?
But he must hasten, if he would; soon, no doubt, it would be too late.
All his unemployed youth, all his pent-up desires, surged tumultuously
through his veins. He swore that he would yet love, that he would live
a new life, that he would drain the cup of every passion that he had not
yet tasted, before he should be an old man. He would knock at the doors,
he would stop the passers-by, he would scour the fields and town.

On the following day, when he had taken his shower bath and left his
room, all his fever was calmed, the burning pictures had faded away,
and he fell back into his natural timidity. Then, on the next night, the
fear of solitude drove sleep away as before, his blood kindled again,
and the same despair, the same rebelliousness, the same longing not to
die without having known family joys returned. He suffered a great deal
in this crisis.

During these feverish nights, with eyes wide open in the darkness, he
dreamed always, over and over again the same dream. A girl would come
along the road, a girl of twenty, marvelously beautiful; and she would
enter and kneel down before him in an attitude of submissive adoration,
and he would marry her. She was one of those pilgrims of love such as
we find in ancient story, who have followed a star to come and