destiny in the face than you can look at the sun, and yet destiny is
grey.

And night came, as every night will come, until the last one, which
will be too vast.

But all at once I jumped up and stood on my feet, reeling, my heart
throbbing like the fluttering of wings.

What was it? In the street a horn resounded, playing a hunting song.
Apparently some groom of a rich family, standing near the bar of a
tavern, with cheeks puffed out, mouth squeezed tight, and an air of
ferocity, astonishing and silencing his audience.

But the thing that so stirred me was not the mere blowing of a horn in
the city streets. I had been brought up in the country, and as a child
I used to hear that blast far in the distance, along the road to the
woods and the castle. The same air, the same thing exactly. How could
the two be so precisely alike?

And involuntarily my hand wavered to my heart.

Formerly--to-day--my life--my heart--myself! I thought of all this
suddenly, for no reason, as if I had gone mad.

. . . . .

My past--what had I ever made of myself? Nothing, and I was already on
the decline. Ah, because the refrain recalled the past, it seemed to
me as if it were all over with me, and I had not lived. And I had a