Pere Lachaise cemetery
yesterday. I looked at all the graves, standing in a row like dominoes,
and I thought to myself: 'I shall soon be there,' and then I returned
home, quite determined to pretend to be ill, and so escape, but I could
not.

"Oh! You don't know what it is. Ask a smoker who is poisoning himself
with nicotine whether he can give up his delicious and deadly habit. He
will tell you that he has tried a hundred times without success, and he
will, perhaps, add: 'So much the worse, but I had rather die than go
without tobacco.' That is just the case with me. When once one is in the
clutches of such a passion or such a vice, one must give oneself up to
it entirely."

He got up and gave me his hand. I felt seized with a tumult of rage, and
with hatred for this woman, this careless, charming, terrible woman; and
as he was buttoning up his coat to go out I said to him, brutally
perhaps:

"But, in God's name, why don't you let her have a lover, rather than
kill yourself like that?"

He shrugged his shoulders without replying, and went off.

For six months I did not see him. Every morning I expected a letter of
invitation to his funeral, but I would not go to his house from a
complicated feeling of contempt for him and for that woman; of anger, of
indignation, of a thousand sensations.

One lovely spring morning I was walking in the Champs Elysees. It was
one of those warm days which makes our eyes bright and stir up in us a
tumultuous feeling of happiness from the mere sense of existence.
Someone tapped me on the shoulder, and turning round I saw my old
friend, looking well, stout and rosy.

He gave me both hands, beaming with pleasure, and exclaimed:

"Here you are, you erratic individual!"

I looked at him, utterly thunderstruck.

"Well, on my word--yes. By Jove! I congratulate you; you have indeed
changed in the last six months!"

He flushed scarlet, and said, with an embarrassed laugh:

"One can but do one's best."

I looked at him so obstinately that he evidently felt uncomfortable, so
I went on:

"So--now--you are--completely cured?"

He stammered, hastily:

"Yes, perfectly, thank you." Then changing his tone, "How lucky that I
should have come across you, old fellow. I hope we shall often meet
now."

But I would not give up my idea; I wanted to know how matters really
stood, so I asked:

"Don't you remember what you told me six months ago? I
suppose--I--eh--suppose you resist now?"