I took good note of the street and house and went away, but not home.--I
felt something in the nature of disenchantment. Everything which had
happened to me was so strange, so remarkable--and yet, how stupidly it
had been ended! I had been convinced that I should behold in that house
the room which was familiar to me--and in the middle of it my father,
the baron, in a dressing-gown and with a pipe.... And instead of that,
the master of the house was a carpenter, and one might visit him as much
as one pleased,--and order furniture of him if one wished!

But my father had gone to America! And what was left for me to do
now?... Tell my mother everything, or conceal forever the very memory of
that meeting? I was absolutely unable to reconcile myself to the thought
that such a senseless, such a commonplace ending should be tacked on to
such a supernatural, mysterious beginning!

I did not wish to return home, and walked straight ahead, following my
nose, out of the town.




XIV


I walked along with drooping head, without a thought, almost without
sensation, but wholly engrossed in myself.--A measured, dull and angry
roar drew me out of my torpor. I raised my head: it was the sea roaring
and booming fifty paces from me. Greatly agitated by the nocturnal
storm, the sea was a mass of white-caps to the very horizon, and steep