Raphael, who had never quite managed to rid himself of the bashfulness
of his early youth, felt a momentary confusion; then he shook off his
torpor, exerted his faculties, and asked himself the meaning of this
strange scene.
A sudden and rapid impulse quickened his brain; the past weeks
appeared before him in a clear and definite vision; the reasons for
the feelings he inspired in others stood out for him in relief, like
the veins of some corpse which a naturalist, by some cunningly
contrived injection, has colored so as to show their least
ramifications.
He discerned himself in this fleeting picture; he followed out his own
life in it, thought by thought, day after day. He saw himself, not
without astonishment, an absent gloomy figure in the midst of these
lively folk, always musing over his own fate, always absorbed by his
own sufferings, seemingly impatient of the most harmless chat. He saw
how he had shunned the ephemeral intimacies that travelers are so
ready to establish--no doubt because they feel sure of never meeting
each other again--and how he had taken little heed of those about him.
He saw himself like the rocks without, unmoved by the caresses or the
stormy surgings of the waves.
Then, by a gift of insight seldom accorded, he read the thoughts of
all those about him.
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