I go down with an air of surprise and alarm, clothes in disorder, hair uncombed: people turn to look and laugh when they meet me, and take me for a young rake who has passed the night at the ale-house or elsewhere. I am drunk to all intent, although I have drunk nothing, and I have the aspect of a drunken man even to the uncertain gait, now slow, now fast. I go from street to street like a dog that has lost his master, looking in every direction, ill at ease, on the alert, turning at the slightest sound, gliding into the centre of every group, heedless of the rebuffs of the people I jostle against, and scrutinizing everything with a clear-sightedness that I do not possess at other times.--Then all of a sudden it is made clear to me that I am mistaken, that that surely is not the place, that I must go on farther, to the other end of the town, Heaven knows where.--And I rush off as if the devil were after me.--I touch the ground only with the tips of my toes and I don't weigh an ounce.--Really I must be a strange sight with my terrified, frantic manner, my waving arms and the inarticulate cries I utter.--When I think it over in cold blood, I laugh at myself with all my heart, which doesn't prevent me, I beg you to believe, from doing it all over again on the first occasion. If any one should ask me why I rush about so, I certainly should be much embarrassed to answer. I am in no hurry to arrive, as I am going nowhere. I am not afraid of being late, as I have no appointment.--No one is waiting for me--and I have no possible reason for hurrying so. Is it because an opportunity to love, an adventure, a woman, an idea, a fortune, or anything else is missing in my life, and I am seeking it unconsciously, impelled by a vague instinct? is my existence struggling to complete itself? is it a longing to get away from myself and my surroundings, the tiresomeness of my life and the wish for something different? It is one of these, or perhaps all of them together.--At all events, it is a very unpleasant experience, a feverish irritation ordinarily succeeded by the most complete collapse.