At last I left the café and walked and walked ahead, without knowing where I was going. After a long course and without the least intention of getting there, I found myself in the Avenue Bois-de-Boulogne, near the Arc de Triomphe. The sun was beginning to set. Above the hills of Saint Cloud which took on a violet tinge, the sky was a glorious purple, and little pink clouds were wandering upon the pallid blue expanse. The woods stood out as a solid mass, grown darker, a fine dust reddened by the reflection of a setting sun rose from the avenue black with carriages. And the dense mass of carriages, congested into interminable lines, were passing without end, carrying human birds of prey to nocturnal carnages. Reclining on their cushions, indolent and disdainful, with stupid countenances and flabby flesh, exhaling a putrid odor, they were all there, so nearly alike that I recognized Juliette in each one of them. The line of vehicles appeared to me more lugubrious than ever. As I looked at these horses, this diversity of colors, this crimson sun which made the glass panes of the carriages shine like breastplates, all this intense intermingling of colors--red, yellow, blue--all these plumes that swayed in the wind, I had the impression of looking at some enemy regiments, regiments of an army of conquest ready to fall upon vanquished foes, drunk foes, drunk with a desire for pillage. And quite seriously I was indignant over the fact that I did not hear the roar of cannons, did not hear the mitrailleuses spitting death and sweeping the avenue with fire. A laborer who was returning from work stopped at the end of the sidewalk. With tools on his shoulder and crooked back, he was watching the street. Not only did he have no hatred in his eyes but there was a sort of ecstasy in them. Anger seized me. I wanted to come up to him, grab him by the collar and cry out: