nt out again, and in the street
was assailed by an immense ennui. After an interminable tour of the
quays he finally tumbled into a beer hall. He fell on a bench and opened
a newspaper.

What was he thinking as he sat, not reading but just looking at the
police news? Nothing, not even of her. From having revolved the same
matter over and over again and again his mind had reached a deadlock and
refused to function. Durtal merely found himself very tired, very
drowsy, as one in a warm bath after a night of travel.

"I must go home pretty soon," he said when he could collect himself a
little, "for Pere Rateau certainly has not cleaned house in the thorough
fashion which I commanded, and of course I don't want the furniture to
be covered with dust. Six o'clock. Suppose I dine, after a fashion, in
some not too unreliable place."

He remembered a nearby restaurant where he had eaten before without a
great deal of dread. He chewed his way laboriously through an extremely
dead fish, then through a piece of meat, flabby and cold; then he found
a very few lentils, stiff with insecticide, beneath a great deal of
sauce; finally he savoured some ancient prunes, whose juice smelt of
mould and was at the same time aquatic and sepulchral.

Back in his apartment, he lighted fires in his bedroom and in his study,
then he inspected everything. He was not mistaken. The concierge had
upset the place with the same brutality, the same haste, as customarily.
However, he must have tried to wash the windows, because the glass was
streaked with finger marks.

Durtal effaced the imprints with a damp cloth, smoothed out the folds in
the carpet, drew the curtains, and put the bookcases in order after
dusting them with a napkin. Everywhere he found grains of tobacco,
trodden cigarette ashes, pencil sharpenings, pen points eaten with rust.
He also found cocoons of cat fur and crumpled bits of rough draft
manuscript which had been whirled into all corners by the furious
sweeping.

He finally could not help asking himself why he had so long tolerated
the fuzzy filth which obscured and incrusted his household. While he
dusted, his indignation against Rateau increased mightily. "Look at
that," he said, perceiving his wax candles grown as yellow as tallow
ones. He changed them. "That's better." He arranged his desk into
studied disarray. Notebooks, and books with paper-cutters in them for
book-marks, he laid in careful disorder. "Symbol of work," he