Moreover, the
accountant's madness was no longer doubted by anybody a few days later,
when the doorkeeper of his house related his final eccentricities, and a
commissary of police went to search his rooms. He had been mad, mad
enough to be placed in confinement.
To begin, nobody had ever seen a flat in such an extraordinary condition,
the kitchen a perfect stable, the drawing-room in a state of utter
abandonment with its Louis XIV. furniture gray with dust, and the
dining-room all topsy-turvy, the old oak tables and chairs being piled up
against the window as if to shut out every ray of light, though nobody
could tell why. The only properly kept room was that in which Reine had
formerly slept, which was as clean as a sanctuary, with its pitch-pine
furniture as bright as if it had been polished every day. But the
apartment in which Morange's madness became unmistakably manifest was his
own bedchamber, which he had turned into a museum of souvenirs, covering
its walls with photographs of his wife and daughter. Above a table there,
the wall facing the window quite disappeared from view, for a sort of
little chapel had been set up, decked with a multitude of portraits.
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