He found himself in a very curious
mood. The sensibility of his nerves was so acute that the most trivial
impression conveyed to them by external means assumed the gravity of a
wound. While one fixed thought occupied and tormented his spirit, the
rest of his being was left exposed to the rude jostling of surrounding
circumstances. Groups of sensations rushed with lightning rapidity
across his mental field of vision, like the phantasmagoria of a magic
lantern, startling and alarming him. The banked-up clouds of evening,
the form of the Triton surrounded by the cadaverous lights, this sudden
descent of savage looking men and huge animals, these shouts and songs
and curses aggravated his condition, arousing a vague terror in his
heart, a foreboding of disaster.
A closed carriage drove out of the palace garden. He caught a glimpse of
a lady bowing to him, but he failed to recognise her. The palace rose up
before him, vast as some royal residence. The windows of the first floor
gleamed with violet reflections, a pale strip of sunset sky rested just
above it; a brougham was turning away from the door.
'If I could but see her!' he thought to himself, standing still for a
moment. He lingered, purposely to prolong his uncertainty and his hope.
Shut up in this immense edifice she seemed to him immeasurably far
away--lost to him.
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