M. le Maire, it was the face of your father, Martin Dupin, whom I remember as well as I remember my own father.  He was the best man I ever knew.  It appeared to me for a moment, that face alone, looking at me with questioning eyes.

There seemed to be agitation and doubt for a time after this; some went out (so I understood) on embassies among you, but could get no hearing; some through the gates, some by the river.  And the bells were rung that you might hear and know; but neither could you understand the bells.  I wandered from one place to another, listening and watching—­till the unseen became to me as the seen, and I thought of the wonder no more.  Sometimes there came to me vaguely a desire to question them, to ask whence they came and what was the secret of their living, and why they were here?  But if I had asked who would have heard me? and desire had grown faint in my heart; all I wished for was that you should hear, that you should understand; with this wish Semur was full.  They thought but of this.  They went to the walls in bands, each in their order, and as they came all the others rushed to meet them, to ask, ‘What news?’ I following, now with one, now with another, breathless and footsore as they glided along.  It is terrible when flesh and blood live with those who are spirits.  I toiled after them.  I sat on the Cathedral steps, and slept and waked, and heard the voices still in my dream.  I prayed, but it was hard to pray.  Once following a crowd I entered your house, M. le Maire, and went up, though I scarcely could drag myself along.  There many were assembled as in council.  Your father was at the head of all.  He was the one, he only, who knew me.  Again he looked at me and I saw him, and in the light of his face an assembly such as I have seen in pictures.  One moment it glimmered before me and then it was gone.  There were the captains of all the bands waiting to speak, men and women.  I heard them repeating from one to another the same tale.  One voice was small and soft like a child’s; it spoke of you.  ‘We went to him,’ it said; and your father, M. le Maire, he too joined in, and said:  ’We went to him—­but he could not hear us.’  And some said it was enough—­that they had no commission from on high, that they were but permitted—­that it was their own will to do it—­and that the time had come to forbear.

Now, while I listened, my heart was grieved that they should fail.  This gave me a wound for myself who had trusted in them, and also for them.  But I, who am I, a poor man without credit among my neighbours, a dreamer, one whom many despise, that I should come to their aid?  Yet I could not listen and take no part.  I cried out:  ’Send me.  I will tell them in words they understand.’  The sound of my voice was like a roar in that atmosphere.  It sent a tremble into the air.  It seemed to rend me as it came forth from me, and made me giddy, so that I would have fallen had not there been a support