(End of the Travel Notes).--There, in fact, ended the scribbled pages, Hubert having betaken himself to dream of his impressions instead of transcribing them. He did not wish to write them down too late, without some necessary preliminary moments, so as not to take the risk of confounding the chronology of the little things whose logical order is of prime importance. The remainder of the notebook was white. Yet when he perused them later, he perceived a sheet of loose paper where could be traced some intentions of poetry. This more narrowly fixed his thoughts upon Sixtine: it was truly with her that he was concerned in his prose, in his verses, in his life. CHAPTER VI DREAM FIGURE "O Créateur de l'universel monde, Ma pauvre âme est troublée grandement!" Heures _à l'usaige de Paris_, 1488. Sixtine was far from him, and yet he believed that he saw her nearby. All afternoon he preserved the illusion of walking in her company. She suddenly appeared in a dress of changing colors: the cloth, a light and pale green silk, had golden clasps. Her shoes made no sound; her smile, instead of speech, and diverse inflexions of her muscles, expressed her thoughts; nevertheless, but only once, he positively heard the sound of her voice. "So you would like me to tell you the history of the portrait chamber?" Preoccupied in establishing the fundamental sound of the recovered sequence which for an instant tyrannized him, Entragues listened to the question without immediately perceiving its sense. He was going to reply and agree, but Sixtine, under the parasol which she had opened, was reading and he dared not disturb her. The parasol, too, by its oddness, caused his mind to wander. It was of such limpid and transparent yellow that through it he beheld, barely shaded by a luminous shadow, the shoulders of Sixtine and her head bent upon the book. They walked along the quay, from the rue du Bac, where he had begun to feel her presence, to the Saint-Michel Square. The charming, shining Seine was iridescent with the play of oblique rays striking against its current; sparkling foam fell on the prows; the fringe of the bank was dotted with sails on which a keen wind played; the canvas crackled like flames; the lines of anchored boats here and there rumbled under the shock; the multicolored parapets retreated. Entragues bought no lexicon; he looked at the serried backs of books, without even reading the black or golden titles. In a deserted spot, along the wooden balustrade, and as the first gas light flickered in a _café_, he was accosted by a young man who passed as a poet, perhaps because of the rare beauty of his face. "How singular! You are alone, yet one would swear that an invisible person accompanied you." "I am now alone, my dear Sanglade."