Every week, or almost, Julie would write to him on notepaper with a letterhead from Gerly’s or the Monico. She gave him news of Monsieur René, of Charlotte, of all his acquaintances. And he would answer her.
Boucard, meanwhile, talked to him every evening at the Cintra about Thérèse, who longed to see him again.
“You ought to go there once, at least.”
“What’s the use?”
“Just imagine, she believed that it was for her sake that you …”
Monsieur Monde looked him quite calmly in the eyes. “And so?”
“She was dreadfully disappointed.”
“Oh.”
And Boucard desisted, probably because like everyone else he was deeply impressed by this man who had laid all ghosts, who had lost all shadows, and who stared you in the eyes with cold serenity.
This is a New York Review Book
Published by The New York Review of Books
435 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014
www.nyrb.com
La Fuite de Monsieur Monde © 1952 by Georges Simenon Limited, a Chorion company; translation by Jean Stewart entitled Monsieur Monde Vanishes © 1967 by Georges Simenon Limited, a Chorion company
Introduction copyright © 2004 by Larry McMurtry
All rights reserved.
Cover image: Still from Playtime, directed by Jacques Tati, 1967; © Les Films de Mon Oncle
Cover design: Katy Homans
The Library of Congress has cataloged the earlier printing as follows:
Simenon, Georges, 1903–
[Fuite de Monsieur Monde. English]
Monsieur Monde vanishes / Georges Simenon ; translated by Jean Stewart ;
introduction by Larry McMurtry.
p. cm. — (New York Review Books classics)
ISBN 1-59017-096-2 (pbk. : alk. paper)
I. Stewart, Jean Margaret, 1903- II. Title. III. Series.
PQ2637.I53F813 2004
843'.912—dc22
2004010494
eISBN 978-1-59017-562-0
v1.0
For a complete list of books in the NYRB Classics series, visit www.nyrb.com or write to:
Catalog Requests, NYRB, 435 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014
Monsieur Monde Vanishes Page 14
