He was scarcely aware of the length of his journey, covering nearly a third of Paris. He gazed up at the sky above, and down into the Seine waters as they rolled darkly along, while the long lines of gas-lamps before him seemed even to lengthen the dim, far-reaching perspective of the streets. The night gave him an idea of immensity--a symbol, it seemed to him then, of his own life. The mental formation peculiar to poets who are poets only predisposes them to attacks of what, for want of a more definite name, might be called the lyric state; this is something like the intoxication produced by hope or despair, according as the power of exaggerating present sensations to the highest degree is applied to joy or sorrow. What, after all, was this entry into Society, which for the moment seemed to this simple boy an entry upon a new life? Scarcely a glance stolen through a half-open door, and which, to be of any use at all, would have to be followed up by a course of petty strategy that only an ambitious man would have dreamt of. A man eager to make his way would have asked himself what impression he had created, what kind of people he had met, which of the women who had invited him were worth a single visit, and which of them deserved more assiduous attentions. Instead of all that, the poet felt himself surrounded by an atmosphere of happiness. The sweetness of the latter portion of the evening spread itself over the whole, and he entirely forgot the feelings of distress that had once or twice overwhelmed him. It was in this frame of mind that he reached home. As he pushed the heavy house door open, and crept on tip-toe to his room, it pleased him to compare the world he had left behind with the world to which he returned. Was it not this very contrast that lent his pleasure a tinge of romance? Being, however, at that age when the nervous system recruits itself with perfect regularity in spite of the most disordered state of the mind and feelings, his head had no sooner touched his pillow than he was fast asleep. If he dreamt of the splendour he had seen, of the applause that had filled the vast _salon_, of the sweet face of Madame Moraines set in a wealth of fair tresses, he was oblivious of it all when he awoke about ten o'clock next morning.