oney upon you.

"Imagination was less yielding; I saw my name bandied about through
every city in Europe. 'One's name is oneself' says Eusebe Salverte.
After these excursions I returned to the room I had never quitted, like
a doppelganger in a German tale, and came to myself with a start.

"I used to see with indifference a banker's messenger going on his
errands through the streets of Paris, like a commercial Nemesis, wearing
his master's livery--a gray coat and a silver badge; but now I hated the
species in advance. One of them came one morning to ask me to meet some
eleven bills that I had scrawled my name upon. My signature was worth
three thousand francs! Taking me altogether, I myself was not worth
that amount. Sheriff's deputies rose up before me, turning their callous
faces upon my despair, as the hangman regards the criminal to whom he
says, 'It has just struck half-past three.' I was in the power of their
clerks; they could scribble my name, drag it through the mire, and jeer
at it. I was a defaulter. Has a debtor any right to himself? Could
not other men call me to account for my way of living? Why had I eaten
puddings _a la chipolata_? Why had I iced my wine? Why had I slept, or
walked, or thought, or amused myself when I had not paid them?

"At any moment, in the middle of a poem, during some train of thought,
or while I was gaily breakfasting in the pleasant company of my friends,
I might look to see a gentleman enter in a coat of chestnut-brown, with
a shabby hat in his hand. This gentleman's appearance would signify my
debt, the bill I had drawn; the spectre would compel me to leave the
table to speak to him, blight my spirits, despoil me of my cheerfulness,
of my mistress, of all I possessed, down to my very bedstead.

"Remorse itself is more easily endured. Remorse does not drive us into
the street nor into the prison of Sainte-Pelagie; it does not force
us into the detestable sink of vice. Remorse only brings us to the
scaffold, where the executioner invests us with a certain dignity; as we
pay the extreme penalty, everybody believes in our innocence; but people
will not credit a penniless prodigal with a single virtue.

"My debts had other incarnations. There is the kind that goes about on
two feet, in a green cloth coat, and blue spectacles, carrying umbrellas
of various hues; you come face to face with him at the corner of
some street, in the midst of your mirth. These have the detestable
prero