For at the touch of her hand my consciousness, my sense of being I, myself, which hitherto in my dream (as in all previous dreams up to then) had been only partial, intermittent, and vague, suddenly blazed into full, consistent, practical activity--just as it is in life, when one is well awake and much interested in what is going on--only with perceptions far keener and more alert. I knew perfectly who I was and what I was, and remembered all the events of the previous day. I was conscious that my real body, undressed and in bed, now lay fast asleep in a small room on the fourth floor of an _hotel garni_ in the Rue de la Michodiere. I knew this perfectly; and yet here was my body, too, just as substantial, with all my clothes on; my boots rather dusty, my shirt-collar damp with the heat, for it was hot. With my disengaged hand I felt in my trousers-pocket; there were my London latch-keys, my purse, my penknife; my handkerchief in the breastpocket of my coat, and in its tail-pockets my gloves and pipe-case, and the little water-color box I had bought that morning. I looked at my watch; it was going, and marked eleven. I pinched myself, I coughed, I did all one usually does under the pressure of some immense surprise, to assure myself that I was awake; and I _was_, and yet here I stood, actually hand in hand with a great lady to whom I had never been introduced (and who seemed much tickled at my confusion); and staring now at her, now at my old school. The prison had tumbled down like a house of cards, and loi! in its place was M. Saindou's _maison d'education_, just as it had been of old. I even recognized on the yellow wall the stamp of a hand in dry mud, made fifteen years ago by a day boy called Parisot, who had fallen down in the gutter close by, and thus left his mark on getting up again; and it had remained there for months, till it had been whitewashed away in the holidays. Here it was anew, after fifteen years. The swallows were flying and twittering. A yellow omnibus was drawn up to the gates of the school; the horses stamped and neighed, and bit each other, as French horses always did in those days. The driver swore at them perfunctorily. A crowd was looking on--le Pere et la Mere Francois, Madame Liard, the grocer's wife, and other people, whom I remembered at once with delight. Just in front of us a small boy and girl were looking on, like the rest, and I recognized the back and the cropped head and thin legs of Mimsey Seraskier. A barrel-organ was playing a pretty tune I knew quite well, and had forgotten. The school gates opened, and M. Saindou, proud and full of self-importance (as he always was), and half a dozen boys whose faces and names were quite familiar to me, in smart white trousers and shining boots, and silken white bands round their left arms, got into the omnibus, and were driven away in a glorified manner--as it seemed--to heaven in a golden chariot. It was beautiful to see and hear.