ensued, and the wayfarers shrank even from the looks of these persons in authority.  I walked all about the spacious town.  Everywhere there were tall houses, everywhere streams of people coming and going, but no one spoke to me, or remarked me at all.  I was as lonely as if I had been in a wilderness.  I was indeed in a wilderness of men, who were as though they did not see me, passing without even a look of human fellowship, each absorbed in his own concerns.  I walked and walked till my limbs trembled under me, from one end to another of the great streets, up and down, and round and round.  But no one said, How are you?  Whence come you?  What are you doing?  At length in despair I turned again to the blank and miserable room, which had looked to me like a cell in a prison.  I had wilfully made no note of its situation, trying to avoid rather than to find it, but my steps were drawn thither against my will.  I found myself retracing my steps, mounting the long stairs, passing the same people, who streamed along with no recognition of me, as I desired nothing to do with them; and at last found myself within the same four blank walls as before.

Soon after I returned I became conscious of measured steps passing the door, and of an eye upon me.  I can say no more than this.  From what point it was that I was inspected I cannot tell; but that I was inspected, closely scrutinized by some one, and that not only externally, but by a cold observation that went through and through me, I knew and felt beyond any possibility of mistake.  This recurred from time to time, horribly, at uncertain moments, so that I never felt myself secure from it.  I knew when the watcher was coming by tremors and shiverings through all my being; and no sensation so unsupportable has it ever been mine to bear.  How much that is to say, no one can tell who has not gone through those regions of darkness, and learned what is in all their abysses.  I tried at first to hide, to fling myself on the floor, to cover my face, to burrow in a dark corner.  Useless attempts!  The eyes that looked in upon me had powers beyond my powers.  I felt sometimes conscious of the derisive smile with which my miserable subterfuges were regarded.  They were all in vain.

And what was still more strange was that I had not energy to think of attempting any escape.  My steps, though watched, were not restrained in any way, so far as I was aware.  The gates of the city stood open on all sides, free to those who went as well as to those who came; but I did not think of flight.  Of flight!  Whence should I go from myself?  Though that horrible inspection was from the eyes of some unseen being, it was in some mysterious way connected with my own thinking and reflections, so that the thought came ever more and more strongly upon me, that from myself I could never escape.  And that reflection took all energy, all impulse from me.  I might have gone away when I pleased, beyond reach of the authority which regulated everything,—­how one should walk, where one should live,—­but never from my own consciousness.  On the other side of the town lay a great plain, traversed by roads on every side.  There was no reason why I should not continue my journey there; but I did not.  I had no wish nor any power in me to go away.