m of open carriages
filled with familiar faces. Monpavon, passing near him, surprised his
restless, timid glance, imploring recognition and at the same time
seeking to avoid it. The idea that he might some day be reduced to that
degree of humiliation caused him to shudder with disgust. "Nonsense! As
if it were possible!" And, drawing himself up, inflating his
breastplate, he walked on, with a firmer and more determined stride than
before.

Monsieur de Monpavon is walking to his death. He goes thither by the
long line of the boulevards, all aflame in the direction of the
Madeleine, treading once more the springy asphalt like any loiterer, his
nose in the air, his hands behind his back. He has plenty of time, there
is nothing to hurry him,--the hour for the rendezvous is within his
control. At every step he smiles, wafts a patronizing little greeting
with the ends of his fingers, or performs the great flourish of the hat
of a moment ago. Everything charms him, fascinates him, from the
rumbling of the watering-carts to the rattle of the blinds at the doors
of cafes which overflow to the middle of the sidewalk. The approach of
death gives him the acute faculties of a convalescent, sensitive to all
the beauties, all the hidden poesy of a lovely hour in summer in the
heart of Parisian life,--of a lovely hour which will be his last, and
which he would like to prolong until night. That is the reason,
doubtless, why he passes the sumptuous establishment where he usually
takes his bath; nor does he pause at the Chinese Baths. He is too well
known hereabout. All Paris would know what had happened the same
evening. There would be a lot of ill-bred gossip in clubs and salons,
much spiteful comment on his death; and the old fop, the man of
breeding, wishes to spare himself that shame, to plunge and be swallowed
up in the uncertainty and anonymity of suicide, like the soldiers who,
on the day after a great battle, are reported neither as living, wounded
or dead, but simply as missing. That is why he had been careful to keep
nothing upon him that might lead to his identification or furnish any
precise information for the police reports, and why he seeks the
distant, out-of-the-way quarters of the vast city, where the ghastly but
comforting confusion of the common grave will protect him. Already the
aspect of the boulevards has changed greatly. The crowd has become
compact, more active and engrossed, the houses smaller and covered with