s
by the fluid circulating through our nerves, his whole frame seemed
gradually to experience a dissolving process. He felt the anguish of
these throes passing through him in waves, and the houses and the crowd
seemed to surge to and fro in a mist before his eyes. He tried to escape
the agitation wrought in his mind by the revulsions of his physical
nature, and went toward the shop of a dealer in antiquities, thinking to
give a treat to his senses, and to spend the interval till nightfall in
bargaining over curiosities.

He sought, one might say, to regain courage and to find a stimulant,
like a criminal who doubts his power to reach the scaffold. The
consciousness of approaching death gave him, for the time being, the
intrepidity of a duchess with a couple of lovers, so that he entered the
place with an abstracted look, while his lips displayed a set smile like
a drunkard's. Had not life, or rather had not death, intoxicated him?
Dizziness soon overcame him again. Things appeared to him in strange
colors, or as making slight movements; his irregular pulse was no
doubt the cause; the blood that sometimes rushed like a burning torrent
through his veins, and sometimes lay torpid and stagnant as tepid water.
He merely asked leave to see if the shop contained any curiosities which
he required.

A plump-faced young shopman with red hair, in an otter-skin cap, left
an old peasant woman in charge of the shop--a sort of feminine Caliban,
employed in cleaning a stove made marvelous by Bernard Palissy's work.
This youth remarked carelessly:

"Look round, _monsieur_! We have nothing very remarkable here
downstairs; but if I may trouble you to go up to the first floor, I will
show you some very fine mummies from Cairo, some inlaid pottery, and
some carved ebony--_genuine Renaissance_ work, just come in, and of
perfect beauty."

In the stranger's fearful position this cicerone's prattle and shopman's
empty talk seemed like the petty vexations by which narrow minds destroy
a man of genius. But as he must even go through with it, he appeared
to listen to his guide, answering him by gestures or monosyllables; but
imperceptibly he arrogated the privilege of saying nothing, and gave
himself up without hindrance to his closing meditations, which were
appalling. He had a poet's temperament, his mind had entered by chance
on a vast field; and he must see perforce the dry bones of twenty future
worlds.

At a first glance the place pre