trees, walls, and lights went past him indefinitely; he wandered on,
dreaming.

He found himself, without knowing how he had got there, on a bridge
which he hardly knew. Half-way across it stood the colossal statue of a
woman. His mind was now at rest; he had formed a resolution. It was an
old idea, which he had now driven into his brain like a nail, which
pierced it through and through. He no longer examined it. He calculated
coldly the means of carrying out the thing he had determined to do. He
walked straight ahead at random, absorbed in thought, and as calm as a
mathematician.

On the Pont des Arts he became aware that a dog was following him. He
was a big, long-haired farm dog, with eyes of different colours, which
were full of gentleness, and an expression of infinite distress.
Chevalier spoke to him:

"You've no collar. You are not happy. Poor fellow, I can't do anything
for you."

By four o'clock in the morning he found himself in the Avenue de
l'Observatoire. On seeing the houses of the Boulevard Saint-Michel he
experienced a painful impression and abruptly turned back toward the
Observatory. The dog had vanished. Near the monument of the Lion of
Belfort, Chevalier stopped in front of a deep trench which cut the road
in two. Against the bank of excavated earth, under a tarpaulin supported
by four stakes, an old man was keeping vigil before a brazier. The
lappets of his rabbit-skin cap were down over his ears; his huge nose
was a flaming red. He raised his head; his eyes, which were watering,
seemed wholly white, without pupils, each set in a ring of fire and