The chapter opens with the doctor, who lives near St. Sulpice in the 6th arrondissement. He brings Felix (both have returned to Paris from Vienna at this point) to the Café de la Mairie de VIe. The doctor is summoned to attend to a woman who has fainted in a nearby hotel. They go to the hotel and find Robin, laying on the floor of the room, unresponsive. Almost in the same instant as the doctor has managed to rouse her, he subsequently steals a one-hundred franc note from her bed (to Felix's astonishment).
Felix is immediately infatuated with Robin and pursues her. They spend time together in Paris - walking in gardens and museums. They marry and he takes her to Vienna to instill in her his ideas of grandeur and old society. Robin becomes pregnant and goes wandering - haunting the churches of Paris and beyond. Robin delivers a boy and feels nothing for the child. The chapter ends with her abandoning Felix and her son.
Chapter Notes:
Neurasthenia (p. 29): condition with symptoms of fatigue, anxiety, headache, impotence, neuralgia and depressed mood.
Pitt the younger (p. 30): was a British politician of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. He became the youngest Prime Minister in 1783.
the douanier Rousseau (p. 29): Henri Rousseau, painter (May 21, 1844 – September 2, 1910).
(Rousseau - “Le Rêve”, 1910)
dompteur: (p. 29)
(Painting: Juliette Gréco by Robert Humblot - Musée Carnavalet)
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