I walked through the gate in the fortifications on to the outer Talus
(which was quite bare in those days), in the direction of the Mare
d'Auteuil. The place seemed very deserted and dull for a Thursday. It
was a sad and sober walk; my melancholy was not to be borne--my heart
was utterly broken, and my body so tired I could scarcely drag myself
along. Never before had I known in a dream what it was to be tired.

I gazed at the famous fortifications in all their brand-new pinkness,
the scaffoldings barely removed--some of them still lying in the dry
ditch between--and smiled to think how these little brick and granite
walls would avail to keep the Germans out of Paris thirty years later
(twenty years ago). I tried to throw a stone across the narrow part, and
found I could no longer throw stones; so I sat down and rested. How thin
my legs were! and how miserably clad--in old prison trousers, greasy,
stained, and frayed, and ignobly kneed--and what boots!

[Illustration: "I sat down and rested."]

Never had I been shabby in a dream before.

Why could not I, once for all, walk round to the other side and take a
header _a la hussarde_ off those lofty bulwarks, and kill myself for
good and all? Alas! I should only blur the dream, and perhaps even wake
in my miserable strait-waistcoat. And I wanted to see the _mare_ once
more, very badly.

This set me thinking. I would fill my pockets with stones, and throw
myself into the Mare d'Auteuil after I had taken a last good look at it,
and around. Perhaps the shock of emotion, in my present state of