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in the sleeves or in the leg. He was standing in his underwear in the middle of the room when a woman came in, the shopkeeper’s wife, who had something to say to her husband but paid no attention to him.
    Whatever must they take him for? Surely for a man who was trying to hide; for a thief, a bankrupt, a murderer! He felt wretched. It was the change-over that was painful. Afterward, in less than an hour, he would be free.
    â€œNow here’s a jacket that might have been made for you. Unfortunately, I don’t know if I’ve got the trousers to go with it. No. But wait a minute … this gray pair …”
    Monsieur Monde submitted, for he dared not argue. It was all rather better quality than he’d have liked. Dressed like this, he looked like a respectable clerk, a careful accountant.
    â€œWould you like shoes and shirts too?”
    He bought some. A small fiber suitcase of an ugly brown, also secondhand, was finally provided.
    â€œAre you going to keep it on?”
    â€œIf you don’t mind I should even like to leave you my other clothes.…”
    He saw the Armenian glance at the tailor’s label, and reflected that he had made a mistake. He was not afraid of being followed. The thought had not occurred to him. And yet it vexed him to leave this sort of trace behind.
    When he emerged, his parcel was still in the first room. The shopkeeper handed it to him. Couldn’t he guess from the feel of it that it contained bank notes?
    It was ten o’clock. The time when … No, no. He didn’t want to think about what he usually did at such or such a time. The jacket was rather tight over the shoulders. The overcoat was made of thinner cloth than his own, and this gave him a feeling of lightness.
    Why did he go unhesitatingly to wait for a bus, at the corner of Boulevard Saint-Michel, that would take him to the Gare de Lyon? He had not thought about it beforehand; he had not said to himself that he would do this or that.
    Once again, he was following a preordained plan, for which he was not responsible. Nor had he made any decision the day before. It all came from much further back, from the beginning of things.
    Standing on the platform of the bus, he patted his pockets; he leaned forward to see his reflection in the window. He felt no surprise. But he was still waiting, as he had waited after his First Communion, for something he longed for, which was slow in coming.
    It felt odd to be following the crowd through the main hall of the station, carrying only a small suitcase like so many other travelers, then to take his place in the line at the ticket office and, when his turn came, to say meekly: “Marseilles.”
    He was not asked which class. He was handed a mauve third-class ticket, which he examined with curiosity.
    He kept on following the crowd. One merely had to drift along with it. He was pushed and jostled, suitcases were flung against his legs and a baby carriage shoved into his back, the loud-speaker shouted orders, train whistles blew, and he climbed like the rest into a third-class compartment where three soldiers already sat eating.
    What embarrassed him chiefly was his parcel, which he had not thought of putting away in his suitcase. It is true that the suitcase was already full, but he opened it and packed the contents closer so as to set his mind at rest.
    Was life beginning at last? He did not know. He was afraid to question himself. The smell in the compartment upset him, like the plaster and the stained forefinger of the barber’s assistant, and when the train started he went out into the corridor.
    A magnificent sight, magnificent and sordid, met his eyes: the soaring blocks of blackened houses between which the train was threading its way, with hundreds and thousands of windows open or closed, linen hanging out, aerials, a prodigious accumulation, in breadth and in height, of teeming lives, from which the train suddenly broke away after a glimpse