Even if I were about to live my normal life out, like any other hearty
human, marry and beget children, I doubt whether I should attempt to
shake my wife's faith in my heroical qualities.
This was but a fragment of one among countless talks. Some were lighter
in tone, others darker, the mood of man being much like a child's
balloon which rises or falls as the strata of air are more rarefied or
more dense. Perhaps during the time of strain, the atmosphere was more
often rarefied, and our conversation had the day's depressing incidents
for its topics. We rarely spoke of the dead man. He was scarcely a
subject for panegyric, and it was useless to dwell on the memory of
his degradation. I think we only once talked of him deeply and at
any length, and that was on the day of the funeral. His brother, a
manufacturer at Clermont-Ferrand, and a widowed aunt, apparently his
only two surviving relatives, arrived in Algiers just in time to attend
the ceremony. They had seen the report of the murder in the newspapers
and had started forthwith.
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