There were pale glimmers from the street in the half-shadow; and a quiet star or two high up in a dark sky; one seemed to be falling in a great half-circle--it was only an airplane keeping watch over the sleeping city. Clerambault followed its sweep with his eyes, and seemed, to fly with it, the distant hum of the human planet coming faintly to his ear, like a strange music of the spheres not foreseen by Ionian sages. He felt happy, for the burden was lifted from his body and soul, his whole being seemed to be relaxed, to float in air. Pictures of the past day with its agitations and fatigues, passed before his eyes, but did not disturb him. An old man hustled by a mob of young _bourgeois_ ... He could hear their loud voices, too loud--but now they had vanished like faces that you catch a glimpse of from a moving train. The train flies on and the vision disappears in the roaring tunnel.... There is the sombre sky again, and the mysterious star, still falling. Silent spaces around, the clear darkness, and the cool fresh air blowing on his soul; all infinity in one tiny drop of life, in a heart whose spark flickers to its end, but knows it is free, and that its vast home is near. Like a good steward of the treasure placed in his charge, Clerambault made up the account of his day. He looked back on his attempts, his efforts, his impulses, his mistakes; how little remained of his life, for nearly all that he had built up he had afterwards destroyed with his own hands. He had first stated, then denied, and had never ceased to wander in the forest of doubts and contradictions; often torn and bruised, with no guide but the stars half-seen through the branches. What meaning had there been in this long troubled course, now ending in darkness? One only, he had been free. Free!... What was this freedom, then, which intoxicated him so completely? This liberty of which he was the master and the slave--this imperious need to be free? He knew well enough that no more than others was he emancipated from the eternal bonds; but the orders that he obeyed differed from others; all are not alike. The word liberty is only one of the clear high commands of the invisible sovereign who rules the world ... whom we call necessity. She it is who excites those of the advance-guard to rebel, and causes them to break with the heavy past which the blind multitude drags along behind it; for she is the battle-field of the eternal present, where the past and the future must ever strive together, and on this field the ancient laws are conquered, that they may give place to new laws, which will be conquered in their turn.