he became alarmed, he put his hands
on his ears that he might no longer hear, turned his back that he might
no longer see, and fled from the frightful vision with hasty strides.

But the vision was in himself.

When he re-entered the streets, the passers-by elbowing each other by
the light of the shop-fronts, produced upon him the effect of a constant
going and coming of spectres about him. There were strange noises in his
ears; extraordinary fancies disturbed his brain. He saw neither
houses, nor pavements, nor chariots, nor men and women, but a chaos of
indeterminate objects whose edges melted into each other. At the corner
of the Rue de la Barillerie, there was a grocer's shop whose porch was
garnished all about, according to immemorial custom, with hoops of tin
from which hung a circle of wooden candles, which came in contact with
each other in the wind, and rattled like castanets. He thought he heard
a cluster of skeletons at Montfaucon clashing together in the gloom.

"Oh!" he muttered, "the night breeze dashes them against each other,
and mingles the noise of their chains with the rattle of their bones!
Perhaps she is there among them!"

In his state of frenzy, he knew not whither he was going. After a few
strides he found himself on the Pont Saint-Michel. There was a light
in the window of a ground-floor room; he approached. Through a cracked
window he beheld a mean chamber which recalled some confused memory
to his mind. In that room, badly lighted by a meagre lamp, there was a
fresh, light-haired young man, with a merry face, who amid loud bursts
of laughter was embracing a very audaciously attired young girl; and
near the lamp sat an old crone spinning and singing in a quavering
voice. As the young man did not laugh constantly, fragments of the old
woman's ditty reached the priest; it was something unintelligible yet
frightful,--

"_Greve, aboie, Greve, grouille!
File, file, ma quenouille,
File sa corde au bourreau,
Qui siffle dans le pre au,
Greve, aboie, Greve, grouille_!

"_La belle corde de chanvre!
Semez d'Issy jusqu'a Vanvre
Du chanvre et non pas du bleu.
Le voleur n'a pas vole
La belle corde de chanvre_.

"_Greve, grouille, Greve, aboie!
Pour voir la fille de joie,
Prendre au gibet chassieux,
Les fenetres sont des yeux.
Greve, grouille, Greve, aboie!_"*

*