Happily—ah! a “happily” in this the final chapter of an unlucky man is, it’s true, something of an anomaly. But carry on reading and you will see that the adverb is simply a matter of style, not of life; it is a way of moving the story along, nothing more. What I am going to say will not alter what has already been said. I will say that Rufina’s domestic qualities were greatly to her credit. She was modest; she did not care for balls, or walks, or gazing out of windows. She kept to herself. She didn’t toil away at domestic chores, nor was this necessary, for my work provided her with everything, and all her dresses and hats came from “the French ladies,” as we used to call the seamstresses in those days. In between giving orders to the servants, Rufina would sit for hours and hours, letting her spirits yawn, killing time, that hundred-headed hydra that would never die. But, I repeat, despite all her shortcomings, she was a good housewife. As for me, I played the role of the frogs in Aesop’s Fables who wanted a king, the difference being that when Jupiter threw me down a lump of wood, I didn’t ask him for another king, knowing he’d send a snake that would come and swallow me up. “Long live the lump of wood!” I said to myself. I only mention these things to show the steadfast logic of my fate.

Time for another “happily,” I think, and this time it isn’t just a way of moving between two sentences. Happily, after a year and a half, a sign of hope appeared on the horizon, and, judging by the excitement the news aroused in me, it was a supreme and unique sign of hope. The thing I most desired was on its way. What thing? A child. My life changed in an instant. Everything smiled upon me as on the day of a wedding. I prepared a royal reception for the baby; I bought an expensive cradle finely carved from ebony and ivory; then, little by little, I bought all the other items for the layette; I set the seamstresses to work on the finest cambrics, the warmest flannels, a lovely little lace bonnet; I bought him a pram, and I waited and waited, ready to dance before him like David dancing before the Ark . . . Ah, woe is me! The Ark entered Jerusalem empty; the child was stillborn.