England

England is both a real destination and the imagined horizon of Professor Baryton’s late-life flight from the institute he has directed for more than thirty years. The country first enters the story through cheap Christmas travel advertisements, then through intensive study of its literature, and finally as the place Baryton names when he abruptly abandons his established life. His departure turns a cultural fascination into an escape whose course is only partially known to those left behind.

From advertisements to an imagined destination

When winter returns with Christmas, travel agencies advertise inexpensive return trips to England. Ferdinand notices the notices while walking the boulevards with Parapine on their way to the cinema, goes into an agency to ask about prices, and later lets Baryton hear a little about them at the dinner table. Baryton initially seems uninterested, and Ferdinand assumes he has forgotten. Only later does Baryton ask Ferdinand to bring him a travel folder. England has entered the conversation as a practical possibility, but the request quietly turns it into an option Baryton is considering for himself.

By then, the country has already become the subject of a sustained course of study. Baryton is intent on mastering English, and his appetite for improvement is so intense that even the word for “impossible” becomes a question for Ferdinand. Between readings, the two play Japanese billiards or bouchon in an isolation room above the concierge’s lodge, a barred space furnished for games and occasionally used to observe an excitable patient. Parapine regularly challenges Baryton for drinks and regularly loses. These routines place the study of England inside the enclosed daily life of the institute: travel begins in books and lessons, while the men remain physically among the institution’s bars and rooms.

English history and Baryton’s decline

The literary project changes as it proceeds. During their readings of English history and the Elizabethan poets, Baryton loses his former confidence and optimism. His once-sharp mind wanders into long, digressive passages, and he begins daydreaming for hours while physically present in the institute. The world around the two men seems to lose its former importance and color, taking on a dreamlike softness. Baryton also withdraws from the administrative work that had been his passionate concern for over thirty years, leaving its management to Parapine and trying, with diminishing success, to conceal his confusion from others.

Ferdinand feels remorse because he believes his guidance in the literary studies may have contributed to Baryton’s deterioration. He proposes a pause, suggesting that they use the time to renew their sources, but Baryton recognizes the evasion and refuses: he remains determined to discover spiritual England under Ferdinand’s direction. The course continues even as Ferdinand fears for him. Their shared attention to England is thus neither a simple education nor a straightforward preparation for travel. It becomes the setting in which Baryton’s old identity loosens, while Ferdinand is left feeling implicated in the change.

A return to Macaulay’s sixteen-volume History of England brings the crisis into focus. Baryton orders them to read it again, chapter by chapter, despite the alarming conditions under which they resume the work. They reach the account of the Pretender Monmouth landing on the shores of Kent: Monmouth’s enterprise seems to circle back upon itself, and he no longer knows what he is pretending, what he wants, or where he might flee when defeat approaches. Baryton reads and rereads the passage, recites it from memory, then closes the book and lies down beside the others. Confronted by Monmouth’s indecision and flight, he experiences a vertigo that marks his separation from their common world. England’s history offers him not a settled model of purposeful action but a mirror for uncertainty and the desire to get away.

Departure for England

Late one night, Baryton summons Ferdinand to his director’s office. Ferdinand expects to hear that he is being dismissed, but Baryton instead announces his own decision to leave. He describes himself as detached and exultant, says his past has ceased to exist, and insists that he is going away and escaping. The resolve is not presented as uncomplicated freedom: Baryton acknowledges that he is torn and bleeding, yet says he would not turn back even if he had left an eye behind in the mire. Ferdinand does not doubt his sincerity. He also fears that contradicting him could damage his reason, and makes only a final, oblique attempt to bring him back.

The departure has practical consequences for the people and institution Baryton leaves behind. He entrusts Aimée, his daughter, to an aunt in the provinces, a stranger to her, and leaves Ferdinand and Parapine to look after his interests and property as best they can. His repeated thought about Aimée’s difficult future troubles him, but does not change his decision. The institute is left like a ship without a captain: a metaphor that captures both the sudden vacancy in its leadership and the uncertainty of those charged with keeping its affairs in order.

When Ferdinand asks where he is going, Baryton answers, “To England, Ferdinand!” The next day Ferdinand and Parapine help him with his luggage. Baryton is startled by the passport and its pages of visas, having never seen one before, and would like to obtain several spares; his companions explain that this is impossible. Even at the last moment, departure is threaded through small practical uncertainties. He cannot settle whether to take hard or soft collars, or how many of each, and the question nearly brings them to train time.

Baryton takes only a small suitcase, intending to travel light and retain his mobility. At the station he hesitates before the elevated steps of the international train, regarding the carriage almost as a monument, and needs help to board. He buys a second-class ticket and observes that first class is no better. The train pulls out with a jolt and the crash of steel, cutting short the farewells after he has barely managed to say goodbye. The details make the escape at once decisive and awkward: a grand rejection of his past is enacted through a passport he has never used, a disputed choice of collars, and a small case.

Reports and the meaning of distance

News reaches the institute only after some time. Baryton sends a few postcards from England, wishing everyone good health and good luck, followed by brief, unremarkable lines from different places. One card, without a message, reports that he has gone to Norway; weeks later, a telegram from Copenhagen offers the reassuring words “Good crossing!” The sequence confirms that England is a starting point rather than the final limit of his journey. But the communications remain slight: they provide locations and signs of safe passage without explaining what Baryton has found or whether his flight has brought him peace.

In Vigny and the surrounding area, his absence provokes vicious gossip. To protect the institute’s future, Ferdinand and his colleagues decide to give patients and local associates as little information as possible about why Baryton left. Months pass in caution and silence, until they stop mentioning him among themselves; thinking about him has become a source of shame. England therefore persists in the narrative not through a description of the country, but through the effects of its distance: an absent director, sparse messages, a journey that continues beyond the expected destination, and a silence that conceals both the reasons for departure and its outcome. Baryton’s escape opens a route out of the institute, but the evidence does not establish where it leads him in the end.