home to the lodging-house in which each had a separate
room. Marcel's, which also served him as a studio, being the larger, was
chosen as the banquetting hall, and the two friends set about the
preparations for their feast there.

But to the little table at which they were seated, beside a fireplace in
which the damp logs burned away without flame or heat, came a melancholy
guest, the phantom of the vanished past.

They remained for an hour at least, silent, and thoughtful, but no doubt
preoccupied by the same idea and striving to hide it. It was Marcel who
first broke silence.

"Come," said he to Rodolphe, "this is not what we promised ourselves."

"What do you mean?" asked Rodolphe.

"Oh!" replied Marcel. "Do not try to pretend with me now. You are
thinking of that which should be forgotten and I too, by Jove, I do not
deny it."

"Well?"

"Well, it must be for the last time. To the devil with recollections
that make wine taste sour and render us miserable when everybody else
are amusing themselves," exclaimed Marcel, alluding to the joyful shouts
coming from the rooms adjoining theirs. "Come, let us think of something
else, and let this be the last time."

"That is what we always say and yet--," said Rodolphe, falling anew into
the reverie.

"And yet we are continually going back to it," resumed Marcel. "That is
because instead of frankly seeking to forget, we make the most trivial
things a pretext to recall remembrances, which is due above all to the
fact that we persist in living amidst the same surroundings in which the
beings who have so long been our torment lived. We are less the slaves
of passion than of habit. It is this captivity that must be escaped
from, or we shall wear ourselves out in a ridiculous and shameful
slavery. Well, the past is past, we must break the ties that still bind
us to it. The hour has come to go forward without looking backward; we
have had our share of youth, carelessness, and paradox. All these are
very fine--a very pretty novel could be written on them; but this comedy
of amourous follies, this loss of time, of days wasted with the
prodigality of people who believe they have an eternity to spend--all
this must have an end. It is no longer possible for us to continue to
live much longer on the outskirts of society--on the outskirts of life
almost--under the penalty of justifying the contempt felt for us, and of
despising ourselves. For, after all, is it a life we lead? And