I do not die, however. On the contrary, for a minute which is forty-eight years long, I review my whole life from early childhood to this day. My bones are dried up to the marrow, my blood ceases to circulate, and, consumed by fiery pangs of conscience, I fall to the ground with the cry, "Mercy! Mercy! I must cease to justify myself before the Eternal, and I must cease to accuse my neighbours." When consciousness returned I found myself on the Rue de Luxembourg, and as I looked through the trellis-gate I saw the garden blooming, while a choir of little mocking-birds greeted me from the bushes and trees. The next evening there was h knock at my door about six o'clock, and there stepped in the American painter whom, in my book _Inferno_, I have identified with Francis Schlatter. As we had parted from each other quite indifferently, without friendship or enmity, our meeting was quite cordial. I notice that the man is somewhat altered. He seems physically smaller than I remember him, and I cannot get him as before to smile at the vexations of life and at sorrows already endured, which are so easily borne when they are happily over. But he treats me with a surprising respect which contrasts strongly with his former cameraderie. Meanwhile this meeting rouses me from my lethargy, partly because I have some one to speak to who understands every word I say, partly because he forms a link with a period when the development of my life, belief, and growth was strongest. I feel as if the clock had been put back two years, and feel a wish to get free, to spend half a night on the Boulevard pavement in talk, with our glasses before us. We agree to have our lunch at Montmartre, and take that direction. The noise of the street somewhat interrupts the current of conversation, and I notice in myself an unusual difficulty in hearing and understanding his words. At the entrance to the Avenue de l'Opéra the crowd is great, and we are constantly separated by those who meet us. It happens that a man carrying some cotton wool stumbles against my companion so that he is covered over with white. With my head full of Swedenborgs symbols, I try to remember what this should signify, but can only think of the opening of the grave at St. Helena, when Napoleon's body looked as though it were covered with white down. In the Rue de la Chaussée d'Antin I am already so tired and nervous that we resolve to take a carriage. Since it is dinner-time the street is very full, and when we have driven for some minutes the carriage suddenly stands still. Simultaneously I receive such a blow in the back that I rise from my seat, and as I turn round there are three horses' heads opposite me,--an omnibus with a shouting driver on the top of it. This puts me out of humour, and I ask myself if it is intended for a warning.