The places on the whitish woodwork and the pink wallpaper that had been touched oftenest had become smudgy-the edge of the door, the paint around the lock of the closet and the wall alongside the window where one pulls the curtain cords. Little by little, the ceiling had darkened like a stormy sky. Human contact wears things out with disheartening slowness. The moulding, which I could reach with my hands, was out of line and cracked, and the marble mantelpiece had lost its sharp edges.

The carpet was frayed from the door to the window-a path trodden by a host of feet from day to day. The room was worn with use, as if an infinite number of people had occupied it.

This particular room I had never seen before, but, oh, how familiar it all was-that bed of imitation mahogany, that frigid toilet table, that inevitable arrangement of the furniture, that emptiness within those four walls. I saw two chairs, one of which held my valise, two narrow-backed armchairs with smeary upholstery, a table with a piece of green felt set into the top, and an oriental carpet with an arabesque pattern that fairly leaped to the eye. I looked round the room and then at myself. I stopped in front of the glass, in the middle of the room in which I was going to live for a while. The landlady, Madame Lemercier, left me alone in my room, after a short speech impressing upon me all the material and moral advantages of the Lemercier boarding-house. Among his many friends and colleagues were Egon Kisch, Albert Einstein, and Romain Rolland. Buried in Paris, his funeral was attended by a half million mourners. His final work was a biography of Joseph Stalin, which appeared in 1936 after his death from pneumonia in Moscow. In addition to his writing, Barbusse took part in the World Committee Against War and Fascism and the International Youth Congress, as well as worked as an editor for Monde, Progrès Civique, and L’Humanité. Barbusse briefly returned to France, joining the French Communist Party in 1923, before moving back to Russia to work as a writer whose purpose was to support Bolshevism, illuminate the dangers of capitalism, and inspire revolutionary movements worldwide. In 1918, he moved to Moscow, where he joined the Bolshevik Party and married a Russian woman. His novel Under Fire (1916) was inspired by his experiences in the war, which scarred him and influenced his decision to become a pacifist. In 1914, at the age of 41, Barbusse enlisted in the French Army to serve in the First World War, for which he would earn the Croix de guerre. There, he published his first book of poems, Pleureuses (1895) and embarked on a career as a novelist and biographer. Born in Asnières-sur-Seine, he moved to Paris at 16. Henri Barbusse (1873-1935) was a novelist and member of the French Communist Party.

Henri barbusse the inferno