Free The Bachelors by Henri de Montherlant Page A

had not taken the slightest trouble to find himself a job after hearing from Lebeau about his new financial situation. Nor did he do so after his visit to his uncle. He plunged once more into his preparations for the move, which gave a tangible meaning to the break with 'Arago' and the advent of a 'new life ', and in which he could make use of his abilities, dusting, packing, hammering, pasting, tying, and painting. Invariably bewildered by any intellectual task, he was all afire at the prospect of tidying up the Augean stable of this Arago house in which everything was systematically kept so that nothing would ever have to be bought. Anyone who wants to appreciate the lyrical frenzy that comes from moving house has only to watch M. de Coantré.
    Moreover, the idea had occurred to him that he might fall ill before having completed his preparations. He imagined the fatal day, 15 October, arriving with the house still in disorder, an extension being refused, and his belongings being thrown out into the street. Thus did his dire imagination work. By sorting everything out now — 'I want everything settled as if we were leaving in a fortnight' — he was setting his mind at rest.
    He threw out everything that was not worth keeping, all that was briefly listed in the inventory as not being worth detailed description. The rest was brushed or cleaned and packed in trunks or packing-cases on which he had painted large numbers. Then the description of each object was noted on a sheet of paper with its appropriate trunk or packing-case number, so that Mlle de Bauret would have no difficulty in finding anything she wanted. (It will be remembered that he was giving her everything.) He assumed that his niece, having no other home but her old cousin's château, would put it all in store until she got married. As soon as the decision to leave Arago had been made, he had written to inform her that everything in the house — except what was in his own room and Uncle Élie's — would be got ready for moving wherever she wanted it moved by a given date. Mlle de Bauret had not replied to this letter, but M. de Coantré was not surprised because he knew she was an up-to-date girl.
    A week after his visit to M. Octave, M. de Coantré was nailing down a packing-case when, glancing absent-mindedly through the window, he was struck by an extraordinary sight. A small boy of six or seven in a black school smock was roaming about the garden. A young living creature, in this backwater where none but the old were ever to be seen! M. de Coantré felt ill at ease. Not only because there was a stranger 'making himself at home' there, but chiefly because this stranger was a child. Léon was naturally friendly and easy-going. But children made him feel awkward; he never knew what to say to them, and his embarrassment sometimes amounted to acute physical discomfort.
    A few seconds later he discovered a new source of anxiety. The garden tap had been left on and the water was overflowing the tank. M. de Coantré, who would have sacrificed a million, as he was sacrificing his twenty thousand francs' worth of furniture, with a smiling detachment tinged with unawareness, worried himself to death over a few sous. Besides, even if this wasting of water did not mean an extra bill (of three or four centimes), it wounded his sense of order (itself, however, extremely ill-ordered).
    He went downstairs with the intention of turning the tap off, but stopped first in the kitchen to ask Mélanie who the little boy was. She said he was the daily woman's son, and he had asked her permission to play in the garden.
    So M. de Coantré went out into the garden. But, once there, instead of going to the tap he stayed near the kitchen and began pulling up weeds. To reach the tap meant passing the little boy. The little boy might speak to him, he might have to make conversation, and that terrified him.
    His apprehension was reinforced by a new circumstance: he had just noticed M. de