I had full
consciousness of not being a philosopher, of not being a poet, and of
not being a wit. Well, Maupassant was none of these things. He was
just an observer, like me. Of course he was a good deal older than I,
and had observed a good deal more. But it seemed to me that he was not
my superior in knowledge of life. I knew all about life through him.
Dimly, the initial paragraph of my tale floated in my mind. I--not
exactly I myself, but rather that impersonal je familiar to me through
Maupassant--was to be sitting at that table, with a bock before me,
just as I had sat. Four or five short sentences would give the whole
scene. One of these I had quite definitely composed. You have already
heard it. `Down below, the sea rustled to and fro over the shingle.'
These words, which pleased me much, were to do double duty. They were
to recur. They were to be, by a fine stroke, the very last words of my
tale, their tranquillity striking a sharp ironic contrast with the
stress of what had just been narrated. I had, you see, advanced
further in the form of my tale than in the substance. But even the
form was as yet vague. What, exactly, was to happen after Mlle.
Ange'lique and M. Joumand (as I provisionally called him) had rushed
back past me into the casino? It was clear that I must hear the whole
inner history from the lips of one or the other of them.
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