XIII 
  
WIDOWS 
  
  
VAUVENARGUES says that in public gardens 
there are alleys chiefly haunted by disap-
pointed ambition, unfortunate inventors, abor-
tive glories, broken hearts; by all those stormy 
and imprisoned souls in which still groan the 
last sighs of a tempest, and who recoil from 
the insolent gaze of the joyful and the idle: 
these shadowy retreats are the meeting-places 
of life’s cripples. 
It is above all to these places that the poet 
and the philosopher love to direct their eager 
guesses, which find there an assured pasture. 
For is there is a place which they disdain to 
visit, as I insinuated in the last story, it is 
above all the gaiety of the rich. That turbu-
lence of emptiness has nothing to attract 
them. On the contrary, they feel themselves 
irresistibly drawn towards all that is weak, ru-
ined, saddened, orphaned. 
An experienced eye never deceives itself. In 
those set or languid features; in those eyes, 
either hollow or dull or shining with the dying