ther, who darts out to meet me, turns pale,
embraces me, looks me over from head to foot, steps back a little, looks
at me once more, and hugs me again. Meanwhile the servant has stripped
the buffet. "You must be hungry, M. Eugene?" I should think I was
hungry! I devour everything they give me. I toss off great glasses of
wine; to tell the truth, I do not know what I am eating and what I am
drinking!

At length I go to my rooms to rest, I find my lodging just as I left
it. I run through it, radiant, then I sit down on the divan and I
rest there, ecstatic, beatific, feasting my eyes with the view of my
knickknacks and my books. I undress, however; I splash about in a great
tub, rejoicing that for the first time in many months I am going to get
into a clean bed with white feet and toenails trimmed. I spring onto
the mattress, which rebounds. I dive my head into the feather pillow, my
eyes close; I soar on full wings into the land of dreams.

I seem to see Francis, who is lighting his enormous wooden pipe, and
Sister Angele, who is contemplating me with her little moue; then Reine
advances toward me, I awake with a start, I behave like an idiot, I
sink back again up to my ears, but the pains in my bowels, calmed for
a moment, awake, now that the nerves become less tense, and I rub my
stomach gently, thinking that the horrors of dysentery are at last over!
I am at home. I have my rooms to myself, and I say to myself that
one must have lived in the promiscuosity of hospitals and camps to
appreciate the value of a basin of water, to appreciate the solitude
where modesty may rest at ease.

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Sac-Au-Dos, by Joris Karl Huysmans

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