Thus, despair came to me at the very moment when the longing of my soul was satisfied and I found myself among the unseen; but I cared for knowledge no longer, I sought only her.  I lost a portion of my time so.  I regret to have to confess it to M. le Maire.  Much that I might have learned will thus remain lost to my fellow-citizens and the world.  We are made so.  What we desire eludes us at the moment of grasping it—­or those affections which are the foundation of our lives preoccupy us, and blind the soul.  Instead of endeavouring to establish my faith and enlighten my judgment as to those mysteries which have been my life-long study, all higher purpose departed from me; and I did nothing but rush through the city, groping among those crowds, seeing nothing, thinking of nothing—­save of One.

From this also I awakened as out of a dream.  What roused me was the pealing of the Cathedral bells.  I was made to pause and stand still, and return to myself.  Then I perceived, but dimly, that the thing which had happened to me was that which I had desired all my life.  I leave this explanation of my failure [Footnote:  The reader will remember that the ringing of the Cathedral bells happened in fact very soon after the exodus of the citizens; so that the self-reproaches of M. Lecamus had less foundation than he thought.] in public duty to the charity of M. le Maire.

The bells of the Cathedral brought me back to myself—­to that which we call reality in our language; but of all that was around me when I regained consciousness, it now appeared to me that I only was a dream.  I was in the midst of a world where all was in movement.  What the current was which flowed around me I know not; if it was thought which becomes sensible among spirits, if it was action, I cannot tell.  But the energy, the force, the living that was in them, that could no one misunderstand.  I stood in the streets, lagging and feeble, scarcely able to wish, much less to think.  They pushed against me, put me aside, took no note of me.  In the unseen world described by a poet whom M. le Maire has probably heard of, the man who traverses Purgatory (to speak of no other place) is seen by all, and is a wonder to all he meets—­his shadow, his breath separate him from those around him.  But whether the unseen life has changed, or if it is I who am not worthy their attention, this I know that I stood in our city like a ghost, and no one took any heed of me.  When there came back upon me slowly my old desire to inquire, to understand, I was met with this difficulty at the first—­that no one heeded me.  I went through and through the streets, sometimes I paused to look round, to implore that which swept by me to make itself known.  But the stream went along like soft air, like the flowing of a river, setting me aside from time to time, as the air will displace a straw, or the water a stone, but no more.  There was neither languor nor lingering.  I was the only passive thing, the being without occupation.  Would you have paused in your labours to tell an idle traveller the meaning of our lives, before the day when you left Semur?  Nor would they:  I was driven hither and thither by the current of that life, but no one stepped forth out of the unseen to hear my questions or to answer me how this might be.