Why does he come backwards and forwards between Algiers and Marseilles?
What has Saupiquet to do with his quest?
What revelation was he about to make on the payment of his fifteen sous?
It is all so grotesque, so out of relation with ordinary life.

I feel inclined to go up to the retired Colonels and elderly maiden ladies, who seem to form the majority of my fellow-guests, and pinch them and ask them whether they are real, or, like Papadopoulos and Saupiquet, the gentler creatures of a nightmare.
Well, I have written to the Lieutenant-Colonel of the 3rd Regiment of Chasseurs at Tlemcen, which is away down by the Morocco frontier.

I have also written to Lola Brandt.

I seem to miss her as much as any of the friends I have left behind me in England.

I cannot help the absurd fancy that her rich vitality helps me along.