blushing angrily. There were rows of cafe concerts: outside the doors were
displayed grotesque pictures of the comedians. The crowd grew thicker and
thicker. Christophe was struck by the number of vicious faces, prowling
rascals, vile beggars, painted women sickeningly scented. He was frozen by
it all. Weariness, weakness, and the horrible feeling of nausea, which more
and more came over him, turned him sick and giddy. He set his teeth and
walked on more quickly. The fog grew denser as he approached the Seine.
The whirl of carriages became bewildering. A horse slipped and fell on its
side: the driver flogged it to make it get up: the wretched beast, held
down by its harness, struggled and fell down again, and lay still as though
it were dead. The sight of it--common enough--was the last drop that
made the wretchedness that filled the soul of Christophe flow over. The
miserable struggles of the poor beast, surrounded by indifferent and
careless faces, made him feel bitterly his own insignificance among these
thousands of men and women--the feeling of revulsion, which for the last
hour had been choking him, his disgust with all these human beasts, with
the unclean atmosphere, with the morally repugnant people, burst forth in
him with such violence that he could not breathe. He burst into tears. The
passers-by looked in amazement at the tall young man whose face was twisted
with grief. He strode along with the tears running down his cheeks, and
made no attempt to dry them. People stopped to look at him for a moment:
and if he had been able to read the soul of the mob, which seemed to him
to be so hostile, perhaps in some of them he might have seen--mingled, no
doubt, with a little of the ironic feeling of the Parisians for any sorrow
so simple and ridiculous as to show itself--pity and brotherhood. But he
saw nothing: his tears blinded him.

He found himself in a square, near a large fountain. He bathed his hands
and dipped his face in it. A little news-vendor watched him curiously and
passed comment on him, waggishly though not maliciously: and he picked up