But in
his mental and bodily exhaustion this passion got cleared, distilled,
refined into a sentiment of melancholy despair at having, perhaps, to
die before he had taught this beautiful girl to love him.
That night, General D'Hubert stretched out on his back with his hands
over his eyes, or lying on his breast with his face buried in a
cushion, made the full pilgrimage of emotions. Nauseating disgust at
the absurdity of the situation, doubt of his own fitness to conduct his
existence, and mistrust of his best sentiments (for what the devil did
he want to go to Fouche for?)--he knew them all in turn. "I am an
idiot, neither more nor less," he thought--"A sensitive idiot. Because
I overheard two men talking in a cafe. . . . I am an idiot afraid of
lies--whereas in life it is only truth that matters."
Several times he got up and, walking in his socks in order not to be
heard by anybody downstairs, drank all the water he could find in the
dark. And he tasted the torments of jealousy, too. She would marry
somebody else.
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