I.

SILENCE, — silence! It is the hour of the deepest hush of night; the invisible intangible clouds of sleep brood over the brilliant city. Sleep! What is it? Forgetfulness? A sweet unconsciousness of dreamless rest? Aye! it must be so, if I remember rightly; but I cannot be quite sure, for it seems a century since I slept well. But what of that? Does any one sleep well nowadays, save children and hard-worked diggers of the soil? We whothink — oh, the entanglements and perplexities of this perpetual Thought! — we have no space or time wherein to slumber; between the small hours of midnight and morning we rest on our pillows for mere form’s sake, and doze and dream, — but we do notsleep.

Stay! let me consider. What am I doing here so late? why am I not at home? Why do I stand alone on this bridge, gazing down into the cold sparkling water of the Seine — water that, to my mind, resembles a glittering glass screen, through which I see faces peering up at me, white and aghast with a frozen wonder! How they stare, how they smile, all those drowned women and men! Some are beautiful; all are mournful. I am not sorry for them, no! but I am sure they must have died with half their griefs un-spoken, to look so wildly even in death. Is it my fancy, or do they want something of me? I feel impelled towards them — they draw me downwards by a deadly fascination, I must go on, or else —

With a violent effort I tear myself away, and, leaving the bridge, I wander slowly homeward.

The city sleeps, did I say? Oh no! Paris is not so clean of conscience or so pure of heart that its inhabitants should compose themselves to rest simply because it is midnight. There are hosts of people about and stirring; rich aristocrats for instance, whose names are blazoned on the lists of honour andla haute noblesse, can be met at every turn, stalking abroad like beasts in search of prey; there are the painted and bedizened outcasts who draw their silken skirts scornfully aside from any chance of contact with the soiled and ragged garments worn by the wretched and starving members of the same deplorable sisterhood; and every now and again the flashing of lamps in a passing carriage containing some redoubtable princess of thedemi-monde, assures the beholder of the fact that, however soundly virtue may slumber, vice is awake and rampant. But what am I that I should talk of vice or virtue? What business has a wreck cast on the shores of ruin to concern itself with the distant sailing of the gaudy ships bound for the same disastrous end!

How my brain reels! The hot pavements scorch my tired feet, and the round white moon looks at me from the sky like the foolish ghost of herself in a dream. Street after street I pass, scarcely conscious of sight or sense; I hardly know whither I am bound, and it is by mere mechanical instinct alone that I finally reach my destination.

Home at last! I recognize the dim and dirty alley, the tumbledown miserabl