IN UTTERING THESE WORDS, she sees him at last, M. Pujol. He is not nearing the barn, nor mounting the stage she has built for him. Nor is he naming the parts of his body, as he trembles beneath the photographer's brave hands. M. Pujol is sleeping: a patient etherized upon a table. The director is quaking slightly in his excitement. He presses the tip of his scalpel against the pale skin, then retreats; he presses again, and draws back his hand. Too quickly, it will all be over; and he would like the anticipation to last forever.
As for Adrien, the photographer, he is miles away from the hospital at Maréville. His little wagon of photographic equipment still rattles in his wake. He has traveled for many days, he has wandered into a market, and, stumbling over a mangy dog, he has found a stall selling figs—and though he tests the fruit between his fingers, he refuses to think of what he has forgotten to bring with him. Now he is standing in the center of Paris, on the boulevard des Capucines, ringing at the door of his brother. He presses against the bell and listens; he pushes it several times in quick succession, and strains to hear the sound of footsteps on the stair; he leans upon it with his entire weight, but cannot detect any movement, any sign of life, inside.
Madeleine, she is beating on an idiot: a decent, speechless, lumbering man who had once tucked pennies in her pockets. She lifts her hand, and lets it fall; she repeats the gesture helplessly, again and again.