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He opened it, and there fell out a ministerial note which he picked up with feverish haste. He ran his eye through it under the red flame of the lamp-post.

‘My lighthouse! My warrant!’ he exclaimed. And ‘Saved, ye gods above!’ he added mechanically, as if from old habit, and in a falsetto so sudden, so different from his own, that he looked all round, imagining there must be some third party at hand.

‘Come, keep calm, and … be a man!’ he went on, after a moment.

But at those words, Esprit Chaudval, originally Lepeinteur, styled Monanteuil, stopped. It was as if he had been turned to a pillar of salt. The word seemed to have paralysed him.

‘Eh?’ he continued after a silence. ‘What was that wish just now?—To be a Man?—And after all, why not?’

He folded his arms, plunged in reflection.

‘For nearly half a century now I have been representing, I have been playing, the passions of others without even experiencing them. For, at bottom, I myself have never experienced anything. I am the likeness of these “others”, but only in play, never in earnest! So I’m no more than a shadow? Passion—emotions—real acts—real—these are what constitute a Man properly so-called! Well, age forces me to return into Humanity, so I must needs obtain passions for myself, or some real emotion…since that’s the sine qua non of any claim to the title of Man. There’s honest logic for you: it’s crammed full of sound sense!—So we must choose to experience something which will best accord with the nature I have at last brought back to life. ’

He meditated awhile, and then went on in melancholy tones:

‘Love? Too late. —Fame? I’ve known it. —Ambition? Leave that trumpery stuff to the politicians!’

Suddenly a cry broke from him:

‘I’ve got it!’ he said. ‘Remorse! That is something to go with my dramatic temperament. ’

He looked at himself in the glass, assuming a face convulsed and contracted as if by some unearthly horror.

‘That’s it!’ he concluded. ‘Nero! Macbeth! Orestes! Hamlet! Herostratus! Ghosts—yes! I want to see true ghosts! My time’s come! Just like all those people who had the luck never to be able to take one step without ghosts beside them. ’

He struck his brow.

‘But how? I’m as innocent as an unborn lamb. ’

And, again pausing, he went on:

‘Ah! Don’t let that stand in the way! Where there’s a will there’s a way. I’ve ample right to become what I ought to be, and at any price. I’ve a right to my Humanity!—To experience remorse, you must have committed crimes? Well, a fig for crimes! What do they matter, so long as it’s … in a good cause?—Yes. … Very good!’ (And he falls into a dialogue. ) ‘When?—At once. No putting off till to-morrow!—What crimes?—One only! But a great one, an extravagant, atrocious crime! One to bring all the Furies forth from Hell!—Which shall it be?—The most startling, by heaven! Bravo! I’ve got it! A fire! Then I’ll just have time to start my fire—pack my trunks—come back, duly cowering behind the window of a cab—enjoy my triumph amid the horrified crowds—overhear the maledictions of the dying—and catch my westward train with remorse at my heels for the rest of my days! And then I shall be off to hide myself in my lighthouse! Up there in the light! Away out at sea! And consequently the police will never contrive to find me—my crime being disinterested! And I shall breathe my last there, alone. ’ Here Chaudval drew himself up, improvising a line of Corneille-like splendour:

‘Safe from suspicion by the crime’s huge gleam!

‘’Tis said. —And now,’ concluded the great artist, picking up a cobblestone, and looking round to assure himself that he was alone, ‘and now, you shall never reflect any other person!’

And he hurled the stone against the glass, which shivered into a thousand glittering fragments.

This first duty accomplished, Chaudval made off hurriedly—as if satisfied with this preliminary but energetic deed of daring. He hastened towards the boulevards. There, a few minutes later, a carriage stopped at his hail. He jumped into it, and disappeared.

A couple of hours later the leaping flames of an immense conflagration, bursting from great storehouses of petroleum, oils, and matches, were reflected from all the windows of the Temple quarter. Soon the detachments of firemen, rolling and pushing their apparatus, were rushing together from all directions, and the doleful blasts of their trumpets roused with a start all the inhabitants of this populous quarter. Countless hurrying footsteps were clattering on the pavements; the crowd was blocking the great square of the Château-d’Eau and the adjoining streets. In less than a quarter of an hour a body of troops was forming a cordon round the scene of the conflagration. By the blood-red glow of torches, policemen were controlling the floods of humanity in the neighbourhood.