Monsieur Monde Vanishes Read Online Free PDF

years earlier, when he was eighteen? And to be feeling almost the same man, to such an extent that he never gave a thought to his wife or to his children, or to everything that had happened in between?
    He remembered that first temptation very clearly. It had been a winter’s evening, too. He was living on Rue Ballu—he had never lived anywhere else; but he’d had a room on the second floor then, over his father’s study, the room that was now Alain’s. The house was still lit by gas.
    It must have been eleven at night. He had dined alone with his mother. She was an extremely gentle woman, with delicate features, a smooth skin, a melancholy smile. That evening she was paler than usual, with eyes reddened by tears, and around them the huge house seemed deserted. The servants trod noiselessly, and spoke in low voices, as people do in a house of mourning.
    His father had not come home. That often happened. But why, at about five o’clock, had he sent the coachman to collect his suitcase and his fur-lined coat?
    He had always had mistresses. For some time lately there had been one, a little actress whose picture was on all the walls of Paris, who seemed more dangerous than the rest.
    He was an invariably good-humored man, always impeccably groomed; the barber called to shave him every morning, and afterward he would go off to fence at his club, and in the afternoons he was to be seen at the races, in a gray top hat and morning coat.
    Had he gone for ever?
    Norbert would have liked to comfort his mother.
    â€œGo to bed,” she told him with a somewhat mournful smile. “It’s all right.”
    That evening he had stayed for a long while with his face pressed against the windowpane in his bedroom. He had turned off the gas. He was looking out. A fine drizzle was falling. Rue Ballu was deserted, and there were only two lights to be seen: a gas lamp fifty yards from the house, and the glowing rectangle of a blind in front of a window, a sort of luminous screen behind which a shadow passed from time to time.
    Over by Rue Clichy life was flowing by; and Norbert Monde, his burning forehead pressed against the pane, felt a shiver run through him. Behind him there reigned a calm so deep, so absolute, that it frightened him. This house that was his home, these rooms that he knew so well, these things that he had always seen about him, seemed to be alive, with a menacing and terribly still life. The air itself was coming to life, becoming a threat.
    It was a dark world, peopled with ghosts, that enclosed him, seeking to hold him back at all costs, to prevent him from going elsewhere, from discovering another life.
    Then a woman passed by. He could see only her black silhouette, with an umbrella. She was walking fast, holding up her skirt with one hand, over the wet gleaming sidewalk, she was about to turn the corner of the street, she had turned it, and he felt a longing to run, to get out of the house; it seemed to him that he could still do it, that one great effort would be enough, that once outside he would be saved.
    He would rush forward, would plunge head foremost into that stream of life that was flowing all around the petrified house.
    He gave a start because the door was opening noiselessly in the darkness. He was terrified, and he opened his mouth to scream, but a gentle voice said softly: “Are you asleep?”
    That day, the choice had still been open to him. He had missed his opportunity.
    He was to miss another, later, during his first marriage.
    It was with a strange sense of pleasure mingled with dread that he thought about it, now that he had at last achieved what had been ordained from the beginning.
    He had been thirty-two; in appearance, much like today, as stout or even stouter. At school his companions had nicknamed him Podge; and yet there was nothing flabby about him.
    It was a Sunday. A winter Sunday once again, but as far as he could remember it was at the beginning of