Forestier shrugged his shoulders with low-spirited impatience. “You see very well I have not,” he replied, and again lowered his head.
Duroy went on: “Hang it all, it is ever so much nicer here than in Paris. We are still in the middle of winter there. It snows, it freezes, it rains, and it is dark enough for the lamps to be lit at three in the afternoon.”
“Anything new at the paper?” asked Forestier.
“Nothing. They have taken on young Lacrin, who has left the Voltaire , to do your work, but he is not up to it. It is time that you came back.”
The invalid muttered: “I—I shall do all my work six feet under the sod now.”
This fixed idea recurred like a knell apropos of everything, continually cropping up in every idea, every sentence. There was a long silence, a deep and painful silence. The glow of the sunset was slowly fading, and the mountains were growing black against the red sky, which was getting duller. A colored shadow, a commencement of night, which yet retained the glow of an expiring furnace, stole into the room and seemed to tinge the furniture, the walls, the hangings, with mingled tints of sable and crimson. The chimney-glass, reflecting the horizon, seemed like a patch of blood. Madame Forestier did not stir, but remained standing with her back to the room, her face to the window pane.
Forestier began to speak in a broken, breathless voice, heartrending to listen to. “How many more sunsets shall I see? Eight, ten, fifteen, or twenty, perhaps thirty—no more. You have time before you; for me it is all over. And it will go on all the same, after I am gone, as if I was still here.” He was silent for a few moments, and then continued: “All that I see reminds me that in a few days I shall see it no more. It is horrible. I shall see nothing—nothing of all that exists; not the smallest things one makes use of—the plates, the glasses, the beds in which one rests so