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one day, Durtal reproached him for
concealing his productions, he replied with a certain melancholy, "No, I
caught myself in time to choke down a base instinct, the desire of
resaying what has been said. I could have plagiarized Flaubert as well
as, if not better than, the poll parrots who are doing it, but I decided not
to. I would rather phrase abstruse medicaments of rare application;
perhaps it is not very necessary, but at least it isn't cheap."
What surprised Durtal was his friend's prodigious erudition. Des
Hermies had the run of the most out-of-the-way book shops, he was an
authority on antique customs and, at the same time, on the latest
scientific discoveries. He hobnobbed with all the freaks in Paris, and
from them he became deeply learned in the most diverse and hostile
sciences. He, so cold and correct, was almost never to be found save in
the company of astrologers, cabbalists, demonologists, alchemists,
theologians, or inventors.
Weary of the advances and the facile intimacies of artists, Durtal had
been attracted by this man's fastidious reserve. It was perfectly natural
that Durtal, surfeited with skin-deep friendships, should feel drawn to

Des Hermies, but it was difficult to imagine why Des Hermies, with his
taste for strange associations, should take a liking to Durtal, who was
the soberest, steadiest, most normal of men. Perhaps Des Hermies felt
the need of talking with a sane human being now and then as a relief.
And, too, the literary discussions which he loved were out of the
question with these addlepates who monologued indefatigably on the
subject of their monomania and their ego.
At odds, like Durtal, with his confrères, Des Hermies could expect
nothing from the physicians, whom he avoided, nor from the specialists
with whom he consorted.
As a matter of fact there had been a juncture of two beings whose
situation was almost identical. At first restrained and on the defensive,
they had come finally to tu-toi each other and establish a relation which
had been a great advantage to Durtal. His family were dead, the friends
of his youth married and scattered, and since his withdrawal from the
world of letters he had been reduced to complete solitude. Des Hermies
kept him from going stale and then, finding that Durtal had not lost all
interest in mankind, promised to introduce him to a really lovable old
character. Of this man Des Hermies spoke much, and one day he said,
"You really ought to know him. He likes the books of yours which I
have lent him, and he wants to meet you. You think I am interested
only in obscure and twisted natures. Well, you will find Carhaix really
unique. He is the one Catholic with intelligence and without
sanctimoniousness; the one poor man with envy and hatred for none."
CHAPTER III
Durtal was in a situation familiar to all bachelors who have the
concierge do their cleaning. Only these know how a tiny lamp can
fairly drink up oil, and how the contents of a bottle of cognac can
become paler and weaker without ever diminishing. They know, too,
how a once comfortable bed can become forbidding, and how
scrupulously a concierge can respect its least fold or crease. They learn
to be resigned and to wash out a glass when they are thirsty and make
their own fire when they are cold.

Durtal's concierge was an old man with drooping moustache and a
powerful breath of "three-six." Indolent and placid, he opposed an
unbudgeable inertia to Durtal's frantic and profanely expressed demand
that the sweeping be done at the same hour every morning.
Threats, prayers, insults, the withholding of gratuities, were without
effect. Père Rateau took off his cap, scratched his head, promised, in
the tone of a man much moved, to mend his ways, and next day came
later than ever.
"What a nuisance!" thought Durtal today, as he heard a key turning in
the lock, then he looked at his watch and observed that once again the
concierge was arriving after three o'clock in the afternoon.
There was nothing for it but to submit with a sigh to the ensuing
hullabaloo. Rateau, somnolent and pacific in his lodge, became a
demon when he got a broom in his hand. In this sedentary being, who
could drowse all morning in the stale basement atmosphere heavy with
the cumulative aroma of many meat-stews, a martial ardour, a warlike
ferocity, then asserted themselves, and like a red revolutionary he
assaulted the bed, charged the chairs, manhandled the picture frames,
knocked the tables over, rattled the water pitcher, and whirled Durtal's
brogues about by the laces as when a pillaging conqueror hauls a
ravished victim along by the hair. So he stormed the apartment like a
barricade and