get the flavor of it with the tip of his tongue. Then he threw his head
back and poured it into his mouth, drop by drop, and turned the strong
liquor over on his palate, his gums and the mucous membrane of his
cheeks, and then he swallowed it slowly, and felt it going down his
throat, and into his stomach.

After every meal he thus during more than an hour, sipped three or four
small glasses of brandy, which stupefied him by degrees, and then his
head dropped onto his chest, he shut his eyes and went to sleep: then,
having drunk it, he raised himself on the seat covered with red velvet,
pulled his trousers up, and his waistcoat down, so as to cover the linen
which appeared between the two, drew down his shirt sleeves and took up
the newspapers again, which he had already read in the morning, and read
them all through again, from beginning to end, and between four and five
o'clock he went for a walk on the boulevards, to get a little fresh air,
as he used to say, and then came back to the seat which had been
reserved for him, and asked for his absinthe. He used to talk to the
regular customers, whose acquaintance he had made. They discussed the
news of the day, and political events, and that carried him on till
dinner-time, and he spent the evening like he had the afternoon, until
it was time to close. That was a terrible moment for him, when he was
obliged to go out into the dark, into the empty room full of dreadful
recollections, of horrible thoughts and of mental agony. He no longer
saw any of his old friends, none of his relations, nobody who might
remind him of his past life. But as his apartments were a hell to him,
he took a room in a large hotel, a good room on the ground floor, so as
to see the passers-by. He was no longer alone in that great building, he
felt people swarming round him, he heard voices in the adjoining rooms,
and when his former sufferings tormented him too much at the sight of
his bed which was turned back, and of his solitary fire-place, he went