I was to see my old friend, Simon Radevin, of whom I had lost sight for fifteen years. At
one time he was my most intimate friend, the friend who knows one's thoughts, with
whom one passes long, quiet, happy evenings, to whom one tells one's secret love affairs,
and who seems to draw out those rare, ingenious, delicate thoughts born of that sympathy
that gives a sense of repose.
For years we had scarcely been separated; we had lived, travelled, thought and dreamed
together; had liked the same things, had admired the same books, understood the same
authors, trembled with the same sensations, and very often laughed at the same
individuals, whom we understood completely by merely exchanging a glance.
Then he married. He married, quite suddenly, a little girl from the provinces, who had
come to Paris in search of a husband. How in the world could that little thin, insipidly fair
girl, with her weak hands, her light, vacant eyes, and her clear, silly voice, who was
exactly like a hundred thousand marriageable dolls, have picked up that intelligent, clever
young fellow? Can any one understand these things? No doubt he had hoped for
happiness, simple, quiet and long-enduring happiness, in the arms of a good, tender and
faithful woman; he had seen all that in the transparent looks of that schoolgirl with light
hair.
He had not dreamed of the fact that an active, living and vibrating man grows weary of
everything as soon as he understands the stupid reality, unless, indeed, he becomes so
brutalized that he understands nothing whatever.
What would he be like when I met him again? Still lively, witty, light- hearted and
enthusiastic, or in a state of mental torpor induced by provincial life? A man may change
greatly in the course of fifteen years!
The train stopped at a small station, and as I got out of the carriage, a stout, a very stout
man with red cheeks and a big stomach rushed up to me with open arms, exclaiming:
"George!" I embraced him, but I had not recognized him, and then I said, in
astonishment: "By Jove! You have not grown thin!" And he replied with a laugh:
"What did you expect? Good living, a good table and good nights! Eating and sleeping,
that is my existence!"
I looked at him closely, trying to discover in that broad face the features I held so dear.
His eyes alone had not changed, but I no longer saw the same expression in them, and I
said to myself: "If the expression be the reflection of the mind, the thoughts in that head
are not what they used to be formerly; those thoughts which I knew so well."
