What was that? Something yellow, and spotted--something sinuous and lithe, with crawling, catlike motion. No, no! Yes, yes!! A leopard of the forest had issued from a side-street, a _cul de sac_, as the frivolous sons of Paris, the Queen of Vice, call it. It was moving with me, stopping when I stopped, galloping when I galloped, turning somersaults when I turned them. And then it spoke to me--spoke, yes, spoke, this thing of the desert--this wild phantasm of a brain distraught by over-indulgence in _marrons glacés_, the curse of _ma patrie_, and its speech was as the scent of scarlet poppies, plucked from the grave of a discarded mistress. "Thou shalt write," it said, "for it is thine to reform the world." I shuddered. The conversational "thou" is fearful at all times; but, ah, how true to nature, even the nature of a leopard of the forest. The beast continued--"But thou shalt write in English." "Spare me!" I ventured to interpose. "In English," it went on, inexorably--"in hysterical, sad, mad, bad English. And the tale shall be of France--France, where the ladies always leave the dinner-table before the men. Note this, and use it at page ninety of thy first volume. And thy French shall be worse than thy English, for thou shalt speak of a _frissonement_, and thy friends shall say, "_Nous blaguons le chose._" "Stop!" I cried, in despair, "stop, fiend!--this is too much!" I sprang at the monster, and seized it by the throat. Our eyes, peering into each other's, seemed to ravage out, as by fire, the secrets hidden in our hearts. My blood hurled itself through my veins. There was something clamorous and wild in it. Then I fell prone on the ground, and remembered that I had eaten one _marron_ for dinner. This explained everything, and I remembered no more till I came to myself, and found the divisional surgeon busily engaged upon me with a _pompe d'estomac_. CHAPTER III.