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responsible for his doings is another question.
The fear that haunted his restless brain day and
night was already visible in his eyes, I for one
considered him already then as a doomed man.
I knew that the subtle poison of his own Boule
de Suif had already begun its work of destruction
in this magnificent brain. Did he know it
himself? I often thought he did. The MS. of his
‘Sur l’Eau’ was lying on the table between us, he
had just read me a few chapters, the best thing
he had ever written I thought. He was still
producing with feverish haste one masterpiece
after another, slashing his excited brain with
champagne, ether and drugs of all sorts. Women
after women in endless succession hastened the
destruction, women recruited from all quarters,
from Faubourg St. Germain to the Boulevards,
actresses, ballet-dancers, midinettes, grisettes,
common prostitutes—‘le taureau triste’ his
friends used to call him. He was exceedingly
proud of his successes, always hinting about
mysterious ladies of the highest society admitted
to his flat in Rue Clauzel by his faithful valet
François—the first symptom of his approaching
folie de grandeur. He often used to rush up the
steps of Avenue de Villiers to sit down in a corner
of my room looking at me in silence with that
morbid fixity of his eyes I knew so well. Often
he used to stand for minutes staring at himself
in the mirror over the mantelpiece as if he was
looking at a stranger. One day he told me that
while he was sitting at his writing-table hard
at work on his new novel he had been greatly
surprised to see a stranger enter his study
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