He thus got into the habit of going to the beer houses, where the
continual elbowing of the drinkers brings you in contact with a familiar
and silent public, where the heavy clouds of tobacco smoke lull
disquietude, while the heavy beer dulls the mind and calms the heart. He
almost lived there. He was scarcely up before he went there to find
people to distract his glances and his thoughts, and soon, as he felt too
lazy to move, he took his meals there.

After every meal, during more than an hour, he sipped three or four small
glasses of brandy, which stupefied him by degrees, and then his head
drooped on his chest, he shut his eyes, and went to sleep. Then, awaking,
he raised himself on the red velvet seat, straightened his waistcoat,
pulled down his cuffs, and took up the newspapers again, though he had
already seen them in the morning, and read them all through again, from
beginning to end. Between four and five o'clock he went for a walk on the
boulevards, to get a little fresh air, as he used to say, and then came
back to the seat which had been reserved for him, and asked for his
absinthe. He would talk to the regular customers whose acquaintance he
had made. They discussed the news of the day and political events, and
that carried him on till dinner time; and he spent the evening as he had
the afternoon, until it was time to close. That was a terrible moment for
him when he was obliged to go out into the dark, into his empty room full
of dreadful recollections, of horrible thoughts, and of mental agony. He
no longer saw any of his old friends, none of his relatives, nobody who
might remind him of his past life. But as his apartments were a hell to
him, he took a room in a large hotel, a good room on the ground floor, so
as to see the passers-by. He was no longer alone in that great building.
He felt people swarming round him, he heard voices in the adjoining
rooms, and when his former sufferings tormented him too much at the sight
of his bed, which was turned down, and of his solitary fireplace, he went
out into the wide passages and walked up and down them like a sentinel,
before all the closed doors, and looked sadly at the shoes standing in
couples outside them, women's little boots by the side of men's thick
ones, and he thought that, no doubt, all these people were happy, and
were sleeping in their warm beds. Five years passed thus; five miserable
years. But one day, when he was taking his usual walk between t