Chapter 30: The Man and the Pretty Beast

“E parvemi mirabil vanitate
Fermar in cose il cor, ch’ el tempo preme,
Che mentre più le stringe, son passate.”
Petrarque, Triumph of Time.

That evening, Hubert had had the courage to return to his home, to undress, to go to bed, to fall asleep, without admitting the intrusion, in his consciousness, of any thought. He was like a beaten dog filled with an irrational shame, and buried under the heavy covers, his eyes shut, he had attained sleep by a system of long and slow inhalings which, regulating the heart movement, calmed, then enfeebled the brain, like chloral.

In the morning, his adventure brought a smile to his face, and he even composed, in a tone of sad raillery, a series of little acrobatic verses, entitled: The Thread. Of fifteen stanzas, two amused him. He wrote them:

De quoi s’agit-il?
De presque rien. Ah!
Le plaisir tient a
Un fil.

C est un fil de tulle,
C’est un fil de soie:
S’en va, comme bulle,
La joie.
Then he attempted, while stirring the fire, which a moist wind was troubling, to recite to himself the sonnet of his friend, Calixte:

Les Désirs, s’ envolant sur le dos des Chimères,
Jouent avec la lumière et le crin des crinères...
But his stubborn memory gave him only these two lines. He recalled that Delphin was going to put it to music, was even going to do some instrumentation on the theme as a gloss. But Delphin, for want of a fitting medium between the brass instruments and the strings, did not yet compose: he was waiting.