ing shadows, behind his torn curtain? In sooth 
I did not dare, and, though the reason for my 
timidity will make you laugh, I will avow it: I 
feared to humiliate him. At the end I brought 
my courage to the sticking point; I resolved, as 
I passed, to lay some money on one of the 
boards, hoping that he would divine my inten-
tion, when a great eddy of people, caused by I 
know not what disturbance, bore me far away 
from him. 
And, on my homeward round, obsessed by 
this sight, I sought to analyse my sudden sad-
ness; and I said to myself: I have just seen 
the image of the old man of letters who has 
survived the generation which he so brilliantly 
amused; of the old poet, without friends, with-
out family, without children, degraded by his 
misery and by public ingratitude, into whose 
booth the forgetful world will no longer come.