hat happens while we sleep? Is there, unknown to us, a secret and
irresistible ferment of ideas while our senses are closed to the
impressions of the outside world? Certain it is that on awakening I am apt
to find myself in a state of mind very different from that in which I went
to sleep. I had not been awake ten minutes before the image of Pierre
Fauchery came up before me, and at the same time the thought that I had
taken a base advantage of the kindness of his reception of me became quite
unbearable. I felt a passionate longing to see him again, to ask his
pardon for my deception. I wished to tell him who I was, with what purpose
I had gone to him and that I regretted it. But there was no need of a
confession. It would be enough to destroy the pages I had written the
night before. With this idea I arose. Before tearing them up, I reread
them. And then--any writer will understand me--and then they seemed to me
so brilliant that I did not tear them up. Fauchery is so intelligent, so
generous, was the thought that crossed my mind. What is there in this
interview, after all, to offend him? Nothing, absolutely nothing. Even if
I should go to him again this very morning, tell him my story and that
upon the success of my little inquiry my whole future as a journalist
might depend? When he found that I had had five years of poverty and hard
work without accomplishing anything, and that I had had to go onto a paper
in order to earn the very bread I ate, he would pardon me, he would pity
me and he would say, "Publish your interview." Yes, but what if he should
forbid my publishing it? But no, he would not do that.

I passed the morning in considering my latest plan. A certain shyness made
it very painful to me. But it might at the same time conciliate my
delicate scruples, my "amour-propre" as an ambitious chronicler, and the
interests of my pocket-book. I knew that Pascal had the name of being very
generous with an interview article if it pleased him. And besides, had he
not promised me a reward if I succeeded with Fauchery? In short, I had
decided to try my experiment, when, after a hasty breakfast, I saw, on
stepping into the carriage I had had the night before, a victoria with
coat-of-arms drive rapidly past and was stunned at recognizing Fauchery
himself, apparently lost in a gloomy revery that was in singular contrast
to his high spirits of the night before. A small trunk on the coachman's
seat was a sufficient indication