As soon as he got out, Pierre made his way to the Rue de Paris, the high-street of Havre, brightly lighted up, lively and noisy.

The rather sharp air of the seacoast kissed his face, and he walked slowly, his stick under his arm and his hands behind his back.

He was ill at ease, oppressed, out of heart, as one is after hearing unpleasant tidings.
He was not distressed by any definite thought, and he would have been puzzled to account, on the spur of the moment, for this dejection of spirit and heaviness of limb.

He was hurt somewhere, without knowing where; somewhere within him there was a pin-point of pain--one of those almost imperceptible wounds which we cannot lay a finger on, but which incommode us, tire us, depress us, irritate us--a slight and occult pang, as it were a small seed of distress.
When he reached the square in front of the theatre, he was attracted by the lights in the Cafe Tortoni, and slowly bent his steps to the dazzling facade; but just as he was going in he reflected that he would meet friends there and acquaintances--people he would be obliged to talk to; and fierce repugnance surged up in him for this commonplace good-fellowship over coffee cups and liqueur glasses.

So, retracing his steps, he went back to the high-street leading to the harbour.
"Where shall I go ?" he asked himself, trying to think of a spot he liked which would agree with his frame of mind.