He turned over in his mind the life he had been leading for the last three months.

It had grown wearisomely familiar--the morning walks into the country, the evenings spent in gambling for petty stakes with the reputed Baron Perotti and the latter's pock-marked mistress.

He thought of the affection lavished upon himself by his hostess, a woman ardent but no longer young.

He thought of how he had passed his time over the writings of Voltaire and over the composition of an audacious rejoinder which until that moment had seemed to him by no means inadequate.

Yet now, in the dulcet atmosphere of a morning in late summer, all these things appeared stupid and repulsive.
Muttering a curse without really knowing upon whose head he wished it to alight, gripping the hilt of his sword, darting angry glances in all directions as if invisible scornful eyes were watching him in the surrounding solitude, he turned on his heel and retraced his steps back to the town, determined to make arrangements that very hour for immediate departure.