I cannot tell you my feelings. I cannot put them into words. It was as if I had seen Moloch face to face, seen the brazen monster in the Square of Carthage, seen the officiating priests and the little veiled children seized by the brazen arms and plunged in the burning stomach. I had seen that day Eloise Feliciani, the living child, and Amy Feraud, the cinder remnants of a child consumed; and God in His mercy had given me power to seize Eloise from the monster, scorched, indeed, but living. I found the Boulevard St. Michel almost deserted now, and took my way along it to the Seine. "What are you to do with her?" That is the question I would have asked myself had I been a man of the world. But I knew nothing of the world or the convenances. I was not in love with her. Had I met her for the first time that night it might have been different; but for me she was just the child of Lichtenberg, the little figure I had last seen standing at the door of the Hôtel de Mayence, holding in her arms the black cat with the amber eyes. What was I to do with her? I had already made up my mind. I would put her to live in the Pavilion of Saluce. I had not a real friend in the world except old Joubert, or a thing to love. I would be no longer lonely. What good times we would have! I leaned over the parapet of the Pont des Arts, looking at the river, all lilac in the dawn, thinking of the woods at Saluce, and watching myself in fancy wandering there with Eloise. Then I returned to the Place Vendôme. It was very late, or, rather, very early; and before our house a carriage was drawn up, and from it M. le Vicomte Armand de Chatellan was being assisted. He had only just returned from the Duc de Bassano's, and he was very tipsy. He was an object lesson to vulgar tipplers. Severe and stately, assisted by Beril on one side and the footman on the other, the grand old aristocrat marched towards the door he could not see. I watched the pro-consular silhouette vanish. One could almost hear the murmur of the togaed crowd and the "Consul Romanus" of the lictors. CHAPTER XX WHEN IT IS MAY The meeting with Eloise so disturbed my mind that I had quite forgotten one thing--Franzius. I had promised to see him after the ball--an impossible promise to fulfil considering the way the affair ended. When I awoke at six of this bright May morning, which was the herald of a new chapter of my life, Franzius and his old fiddle, one under the arm of the other, entered my mind directly the door of consciousness was opened by Joubert's knock at the door of my room. I had told him to waken me at six. So, though I had fallen asleep directly my head touched the pillow, I had slept only two hours when the summons came to get up. But I did not care. I was as fresh as a lark. Youth, good health, the absence of any earthly trouble, and the spirit of May, which peeped with the sun into the courtyard of the Hôtel de Chatellan, made life a thing worth waking up to.