We used to go in the evening to the Town Hall to read the despatches posted there; they were as uniform and monotonous as rain.

Then a friend and I would go to the cafe, keeping step, our arms similarly swinging, exchanging some words, idle, and vaguely divided into two men.

Or we went into it in a body, which isolated me.

The saloon of the cafe enclosed the same odors as Fontan's; and while I stayed there, sunk in the soft seat, my boots grating on the tiled floor, my eye on the white marble, it was like a strip of a long dream of the past, a scanty memory that clothed me.

There I used to write to Marie, and there I read again the letters I received from her, in which she said, "Nothing has changed since you were away." One Sunday, when I was beached on a seat in the square and weeping with yawns under the empty sky, I saw a young woman go by.