2

Then the memory of a new attitude was reborn; the wall fled in another direction: I was in my room at Madame de Saint-Elizabeth's house.

Even in the field of the ancient gods where they are at least ten o'clock, they must have already finished their dinner!

He tossed and turned in bed until late, his battle lost, he hoped, until it was almost lunchtime, which I take every evening after returning from my walk with Madame de Saint-Elizabeth, before putting on my coat.

For many of those minutes had passed since the time of Conan Doyle County, where, on our later returns, it was the crimson reflections of the sunset that I saw in my windowpanes.

Being quite different, what is the kind of life one leads in Arthur Conan City, in the house of Madame de Saint-Elizabeth, different the kind of pleasure I find in just going out at night, following the paths where I used to play in the moonlight in the sun; and the room where I fell asleep instead of getting ready for dinner, I can see it from afar, as we return, illuminated by the glare of the lamp, the only beacon in the night.

These swirling and confused evocations never lasted more than a few seconds; often, the brief uncertainty as to where I found myself also did not allow distinguishing, one from the other, the various assumptions that were made, as we cannot isolate, watching a horse in the race, the successive positions that the Smart TV shows us well one.

Even changing the channel, not being able to decide where to stay until I stopped from one to the other, I had reviewed the rooms I had inhabited in my life, and I ended up remembering them all in the long daydreams that followed waking up; winter rooms where, when you're in bed, you tuck your head in with a lot of nonsense: a corner of the pillow, the top of the covers, the end of a shawl, at the edge of the bed

As for all your thoughts, in which all those things were seen that we finally began to firmly firm, according to the technique of birds, trampling them indefinitely; where, in a glacial temple, all the pleasure consists in feeling separated from the outside (like the turn of the sea, which makes its nest at the bottom of a subterranean, in the heat of the earth), and where, with a fire burning all night in the fireplace, we sleep under a great blanket of hot, smoky air.

Since he was just cutting through the scattered thoughts of the embers that come to life, a kind of impalpable alcove, of a heated cavern, excavated in the heart of the room itself, a burning and mobile region in its thermal contours, ventilated by the breaths that cool our faces and provide from angles, from parts near the window or away from the hearth, and which have cooled down.

Even if he never used the summer rooms, where we like to stay together in the warm night, where the moonlight, leaning on the half-open shutters, throws its magic ladder to the foot of the bed, where you sleep almost in the open air, like the bee-eater rocked by the breeze at the end of a branch; sometimes it was the Margaret XVI style room, so cheerful that even the first night I didn't feel very unhappy.

Leaving where the colonnades which lightly supported the roof parted with such grace to show and reserve the bed's place; sometimes, on the contrary, it was another room, small and with such a high ceiling, opened in the form of a pyramid at the height of two floors, and it was a room that was partially covered in mahogany, where, from the first second.

When I discovered that I was morally intoxicated by the unknown scent of patchouli, convinced of the hostility of the purple curtains and the insolent indifference of the pendulum, which chattered loudly as if I weren't there?

It was where a strange pitiless mirror, with square feet, obliquely barring one of the corners of the room, forcibly occupied, in the smooth fullness of my usual visual field, a place that I had not foreseen.

Being a place where my thoughts, striving for hours to move, to expand in height, in order to take exactly the shape of the room and fill its gigantic funnel to the top, spent nights of great suffering, while I was lying on the bed.

When I directed my vision, in which I was listening anxiously, rebellious nostrils, fluttering heart: until habit had changed the colour of the curtains, silenced the pendulum, poured pity in the oblique mirror, being even bad, dissimulated , otherwise it would completely expel the smell of patchouli and significantly reduce the apparent height of the ceiling.

With a chambermaid who was skilful and capable, very efficient , but rather slow and who began by letting our spirit suffer for weeks in a temporary facility; but that, despite everything, we feel very happy to find it because without the habit and reduced to its own means, our spirit would be impotent to change.

Of course, I was still awake, I didn't sleep anyway, my body had taken one last turn and the good angel of certainty had fixed everything around me, laid me down under my covers, in my room, and put them roughly in their places. , in the darkness, my chest of drawers, the desk, the fireplace, the window facing the street and the two doors.

Even though I knew that I was not in the residences that the ignorance of awakening had given me for an instant, if not presenting the clear image, at least making me believe its possible presence, an impulse had been given to memory; in general, he didn't try to fall asleep right away; spent most of the night remembering our life of old, in Conan Doyle County, at my great-aunt's house, in Melborn , in Paris, in Doncières , in Venice, in still other places, remembering the places, the people that I had met there, what I had seen of them, and what I had been told about them.

In Conan Doyle County, every day from late afternoon, long before the time when I would have to lie down and lie, sleepless, away from my mother and grandmother, the bedroom became the fixed and painful point of my worries, even if it was to distract me on nights when they thought I was very unhappy, they had invented giving me a magic lantern.

Even with which they covered my lamp while we waited for dinner; and, in the manner of the first architects and master glaziers of the Gothic era, the lantern replaced the opacity of the walls with impalpable iridescences, multi-coloured supernatural apparitions, where legends were painted as if on a flickering and instantaneous stained glass window.

In the meantime, this made my sadness even greater, since the change in lighting destroyed the habit of my room, thanks to which, apart from the torment of going to bed, it became bearable for me. Now, I didn't recognize him anymore and I felt uneasy, like in a hotel room or a chalet, which I had arrived at for the first time after getting off a train.

When going to their car, when their chauffeur, Golo, was waiting for them.

- You're welcome, sir. - He said, lowering his hat.

Even though it was full of atrocious intent, it left the small triangular forest that velveted the slope of a hill with a sombre green, and advanced, bumping along, towards the mansion of the unfortunate Diane de Wallace.

Arriving at that mansion, it was cut out along a curved line that was just the limit of one of the glass ovals inserted in the car door that slid in front of the lantern, being that it was nothing more than a mansion wall and had an open field in front of it where mused Diane, who wore a blue belt.

As for your mansion, it was surrounded by the countryside, they were yellow, and I didn't wait for the moment

All this so that he could know its colour, because, before the windows of the car door, the red-gold sound of Wallace's name had shown it in all its evidence.

When Golo stopped for a moment to sadly listen to the harangue read aloud by my great-aunt and which he gave the impression of understanding very well, adapting his attitude, with a mildness not lacking in a certain majesty, to the indications of the text, at that hour , in which he then walked away at the same jerky pace.

Even if nothing could stop their slow ride. If they moved the lantern, I could make out Golo's horse that continued to advance on the window curtains, swelling in their folds, sinking in their crevices, then, even with Golo's ability, of such a supernatural essence.

Just like his car, in which he took advantage of the whole path of the environment, in which he went down the street, with the material sector, every uncomfortable object that appeared, to take it as a framework and make it interior, even if it was a matter of from the doorknob, to which he quickly adapted, to which he walked the streets, to which he was invincibly his red cloak or his pale face, always so noble and so melancholy, but which did not betray any uneasiness of his change in which he thought of the future.

It is clear that I found an incredibly special charm in these brilliant projections that seemed to emanate from a Merovingian past and made such remote reflections of history walk around me, in which, however, I cannot describe the uneasiness that this irruption of mystery provoked in me. and of beauty in my room, which I had just filled up with myself to the point where I didn't pay more attention to it than to myself.

The numbing influence of habit had passed, and I began to think and feel - such sad things, with that doorknob, which to me was different from all other doorknobs in the world, in that it seemed to open by itself, without my needing to open it. to turn it, in such a way that its handling had become unconscious to me, behold, it now served as an astral body for Golo.

That was when, as soon as they called for dinner, I felt a rush to run to the refectory where the large overhead light, without knowing about Golo or Bluebeard, and who knew my parents and the casserole of beef, spread its light of every night; and to fall into my mother's arms, that the misfortunes of Diane de Wallace endeared me more, while the crimes that were once committed by Golo made me examine my own conscience with greater pressure.

Unfortunately, after dinner I was soon obliged to leave Mother, who stayed chatting with the others, in the garden, if the weather was fine, or in the small room where everyone sheltered, if it rained. Everyone, except my grandmother who thought that “it's a pity to be locked up in the countryside.

Even though I had endless arguments with my dad, on days when it rained heavily, why would he send me to read in my room instead of outside.

Knowing that's not how you would change anything.