non-surreptitious
cigarettes. He possessed a certain brilliancy of mind and a keen
wit that amused his companions, whose superior he was in gifts
of imagination.

His last vacation was passed in tolerable content. His father,
thinking him looking pale, sent him on a visit to relatives living
in a village near Chartres. Jean, the tedious farm dinner ended,
would go and sit under a tree and bury himself in a novel.
Occasionally he would ride to the city in the miller's cart.
Often he would be drenched all the way by the rain that fell
drearily at nightfall. Then he would enjoy the fun of drying
himself before the huge fireplace of some inn on the outskirts
of the town, beside the savoury roast on the turning spit. He
even had a day's shooting with an old flint-lock fowling-piece
under the auspices of his cousin the miller. In short, he could
boast on his return of having had a country holiday.

IX

At eighteen he took his bachelor's degree. The evening after the
examination Monsieur Servien uncorked a bottle with a special
seal, which he had hoarded for years in anticipation of this
domestic solemnity, and the contents of which had turned from
red to pink as they slowly fined.

"A young man who carries his diploma in his pocket can enter
every door," Monsieur Servien observed, as he imbibed the wine
with fitting respect; it had been good stuff once, but was past
its prime.

Jean polished off the family repast rapidly and hurried away to
the theatre. His only ideas as yet of what a play was like were
derived from the posters he had seen. He selected for tonight
one of the big theatres where a tragedy was on the bill. He took
his ticket for the pit with a vague idea it would be the talisman
admitting him to a new wonder-world of passion and emotion. Every
trifle is disconcerting to a troubled spirit, and on his entrance
he was surprised and sobered to see how few spectators there were
in the stalls and boxes. But at the first scraping of the violins
as the orchestra tuned up, he glued his eyes to the curtain,
which rose at last.

Then, then he saw, in a Roman palace, leaning on the back of a
chair of antique shape, a woman who wore over her robe of white
woollen the saffron-hued _palla_. Amid the trampling of feet, the
rustle of dresses and the shifting of stools, she was reciting
a long soliloquy, accompanied by slow, deliberate gestures. He
felt, as he gazed, a strange, unknown pleasure, that grew more