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ATTRACTION AND EXTINCTION
During the last months of spring and the first months of
summer in 1833, the rare passersby in the Marais, the petty shopkeepers,
the loungers on thresholds, noticed an old man neatly clad in
black, who emerged every day at the same hour, towards nightfall,
from the Rue de l'Homme Arme, on the side of the Rue Sainte-Croix-de-la-Bretonnerie,
passed in front of the Blancs Manteaux, gained the Rue Culture-Sainte-Catherine,
and, on arriving at the Rue de l'Echarpe, turned to the left,
and entered the Rue Saint-Louis.
There he walked at a slow pace, with his head strained forward,
seeing nothing, hearing nothing, his eye immovably fixed on a
point which seemed to be a star to him, which never varied, and
which was no other than the corner of the Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire.
The nearer he approached the corner of the street the more his
eye lighted up; a sort of joy illuminated his pupils like an inward
aurora, he had a fascinated and much affected air, his lips indulged
in obscure movements, as though he were talking to some one whom
he did not see, he smiled vaguely and advanced as slowly as possible.
One would have said that, while desirous of reaching his destination,
he feared the moment when he should be close at hand.
When only a few houses remained between him and that street
which appeared to attract him his pace slackened, to such a degree
that, at times, one might have thought that he was no longer advancing
at all. The vacillation of his head and the fixity of his eyeballs
suggested the thought of the magnetic needle seeking the pole.
Whatever time he spent on arriving, he was obliged to arrive at
last; he reached the Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire; then he halted,
he trembled, he thrust his head with a sort of melancholy timidity
round the corner of the last house, and gazed into that street,
and there was in that tragic look something which resembled the
dazzling light of the impossible, and the reflection from a paradise
that was closed to him.
Then a tear, which had slowly gathered in the corner of his
lids, and had become large enough to fall, trickled down his cheek,
and sometimes stopped at his mouth. The old man tasted its bitter
flavor.
Thus he remained for several minutes as though made of stone,
then he returned by the same road and with the same step, and,
in proportion as he retreated, his glance died out.
Little by little, this old man ceased to go as far as the
corner of the Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire; he halted half way in
the Rue Saint-Louis; sometimes a little further off, sometimes
a little nearer.
One day he stopped at the corner of the Rue Culture-Sainte-Catherine
and looked at the Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire from a distance.
Then he shook his head slowly from right to left, as though refusing
himself something, and retraced his steps.
Soon he no longer came as far as the Rue Saint-Louis. He got
as far as the Rue Pavee, shook his head and turned back; then
he went no further than the Rue des Trois-Pavillons; then he did
not overstep the Blancs-Manteaux. One would have said that he
was a pendulum which was no longer wound up, and whose oscillations
were growing shorter before ceasing altogether.
Every day he emerged from his house at the same hour, he undertook
the same trip, but he no longer completed it, and, perhaps without
himself being aware of the fact, he constantly shortened it. His
whole countenance expressed this single idea:
What is the use?-- His eye was dim; no more radiance.
His tears were also exhausted; they no longer collected in
the corner of his eye-lid; that thoughtful eye was dry.
The old man's head was still craned forward; his chin moved
at times; the folds in his gaunt neck were painful to behold.
Sometimes, when the weather was bad, he had an umbrella under
his arm, but he never opened it.
The good women of the quarter said:
"He is an innocent." The children followed him and
laughed.
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