been on my guard.  Who could have anticipated or suspected this cheerful welcome, these entertaining literati, these innocent-looking frescoes?  Who could have foreseen so deadly a horror in such a guise?  Was I doomed?  Should I, too, be sucked in and absorbed, and perhaps C. after me, knowing nothing of my fate?  I had no voice; I could not warn him; all my force seemed to have been spent on the single shriek I had uttered as I turned my back on the wall.  I lay prone upon the floor, and knew that I had swooned.

And thus, on seeking me, C. would doubtless have found me, lying insensible among the rubbish, with the rooms restored to the condition in which we had seen them by day, my success in withdrawing myself having dissolved the spell and destroyed the enchantment.  But as it was, I awoke from my swoon only to find that I had been dreaming.

XXIV.  The Square in the Hand

The foregoing dream was almost immediately succeeded by another, in which I dreamt that I was concerned in a very prominent way in a political struggle in France for liberty and the people’s rights.  My part in this struggle was, indeed, the leading one, but my friend C. had been drawn into it at my instance, and was implicated in a secondary manner only.  The government sought our arrest, and, for a time, we evaded all attempts to take us, but at last we were surprised and driven under escort in a private carriage to a military station, where we were to be detained for examination.  With us was arrested a man popularly known as “Fou,” a poor weakling whom I much pitied.  When we arrived at the station which was our destination, “Fou” gave some trouble to the officials.  I think he fainted, but at all events his conveyance from the carriage to the caserne needed the conjoined efforts of our escort, and some commotion was caused by his appearance among the crowd assembled to see us.  Clearly the crowd was sympathetic with us and hostile to the military.  I particularly noticed one woman who pressed forward as “Fou” was being carried into the station, and who loudly called on all present to note his feeble condition and the barbarity of arresting a witless creature such as he.  At that moment C. laid his hand on my arm and whispered:  “Now is our time; the guards are all occupied with ‘Fou;’ we are left alone for a minute; let us jump out of the carriage and run!” As he said this he opened the carriage door on the side opposite to the caserne and alighted in the street.  I instantly followed, and the people favoring us, we pressed through them and fled at the top of our speed down the road.  As we ran I espied a pathway winding up a hillside away from the town, and cried, “Let us go up there; let us get away from the street!” C. answered, “No, no; they would see us there immediately at that height, the path is too conspicuous.  Our best safety