The Nice Old Man and the Pretty Girl Read Online Free Page A

there had been nothing more than an affection of the utmost purity. Then, seeing that nothing could shake her conviction, he began to believe that she had long known it and had spied upon him. How could he tell when? He puzzled his brains for a long while to find out. He blushed especially for what the woman knew,because the rest did not exist, but with that damned woman everything ended by existing, given those very vague allusions of hers, with the help of which it was possible to remember the whole adventure. The result was that he could no longer endure the woman and allowed her near him only when he needed her. It is true that he needed her also to gossip with, so that even this hatred, which might have been really vital, was ineffectual. It confined itself to his whispering to the doctor: “She is as ugly as sin.”
    In the course of his struggle with this woman he remembered the girl, but without regretting her. All he regretted was his health, or rather what he regarded as his own youth. Youth had fled with the girl’s last visit, and regret for this persisted in his regret for her. Now, in all seriousness, he would find a job for the girl … if he recovered his health. Then he would return to his important and profitable work and not to sin. It was sin that injured health.
    Summer passed. He was allowed to go for a drive on one of the last calm days. The doctor went with him. The result was far from unfavourable, for he enjoyed the change and his condition was no worse, but it was impossible to repeat the experiment in the bad weather that followed.
    Thus his empty life went on. There was no change, except in the medicines. Each medicine was good for a time. Then the doses had to be increased to produce the same effect till it had to be replacedby another drug. After a month or two, it is true, they began all over again.
    However, a certain equilibrium was established in his system. If he was going to his death, the progress was imperceptible. It was no longer a question of the pain, heroic in its violence, on the night when death had uplifted its arm to give him the decisive blow. Far from it. Perhaps, as he was then, he was no longer worth striking. He thought he was getting better every day. He even believed that his appetite had returned. He took time to swallow his tasteless broths and really thought he was eating. There were still some tins of stimulating food in the house. The old man took one in his trembling hands: he read the name of the famous maker and put it down again. He meant to keep it for the day when he should be even better. For that day were also kept some bottles of champagne. It had been found that the wine was useless for his malady.
    The most important part of the day was that which he spent by a window during the warmest hours. That window was a chink through which he looked out on life as it went on its way in the streets, even now that he had been exiled from it. If the woman of sin, as he called her, was at hand, he criticized to her the luxury that still appeared in the poor streets of Trieste or pitied in rather emphatic tones the poverty that went by in a stream. Opposite his house was a baker’s and there was often a queue of people drawn up at hisdoor, waiting for their crust of bread. The old man expressed pity for these people waiting so anxiously for a badly cooked loaf that filled him with disgust, but here his pity was pure hypocrisy. He envied those who moved freely about the streets. It was childish of him. On the whole he was comfortable in the shelter of his well-warmed room, but he would have liked to look even beyond that road. The passers-by who awakened his curiosity, because they were dressed either too well or too badly, turned round the corner and were lost to him.
    One night when he could not sleep he began to walk about the room and, in his desire to move and to find some distraction, he went to the window. The queue by the baker’s door was already there, so