Read "The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard" by Anatole France online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
Maitre Mouche has so much delayed me by his visit that I gave up going to see Jeanne that day. Professional duties kept me very busy for the rest of the week. Although at the age when most men retire altogether from active life, I am still attached by a thousand ties to the society in which I have lived. I have to reside at meetings of academies, scientific congresses, assemblies of various learned bodies. I am overburdened with honorary functions; I have seven of these in one governmental department alone. The bureaux would be very glad to get rid of them. But habit is stronger than both of us together, and I continue to hobble up the stairs of various government buildings. Old clerks point me out to each other as I go by like a ghost wandering through the corridors. When one has become very old one finds it extremely difficult to disappear.
Nevertheless, it is time, as the old song says, "de prendre ma retraite et de songer a faire un fin" -- to retire on my pension and prepare myself to die a good death.