body,
undressed and in bed, now lay fast asleep in a small room on the
fourth floor of an _hotel garni_ in the Rue de la Michodiere. I knew
this perfectly; and yet here was my body too, just as substantial,
with all my clothes on; my boots rather dusty, my shirt collar damp
with the heat, for it was hot. With my disengaged hand I felt in my
trousers pocket; there were my London latch-key, my purse, my
penknife; my handkerchief in the breast pocket of my coat, and in its
tail pockets my gloves and pipe-case, and the little water-color box I
had bought that morning. I looked at my watch; it was going, and
marked eleven. I pinched myself, I coughed, I did all one usually does
under the pressure of some immense surprise, to assure myself that I
was awake; and I _was_, and yet here I stood, actually hand in hand
with a lady to whom I had never been introduced (and who seemed much
tickled at my confusion); and staring now at her, now at my old
school.

The prison had tumbled down like a house of cards, and lo! in its
place was M. Saindou's _maison d'education_, just as it had been of
old. I even recognized on the yellow wall the stamp of a hand in dry
mud, made fifteen years ago by a day boy called Parisot, who had
fallen down in the gutter close by, and thus left his mark on getting
up again; and it had remained there for months, till it had been
whitewashed away in the holidays. Here it was anew, after fifteen
years.

The swallows were flying and twittering. A yellow omnibus was drawn up
to the gates of the school; the horses stamped and neighed, and bit
each other, as French horses always did in those days. The driver
swore at them perfunctorily.

A crowd was looking on--le Pere et la Mere Francois, Madame Liard the
grocer's wife, and other people, whom I remembered at once with
delight. Just in front of us a small boy and girl were looking on,
like the rest, and I recognized the back and the cropped head and thin
legs of Mimsey Seraskier.

A barrel organ was playing a pretty tune I knew quite well, and had
forgotten.

The school gates opened, and M. Saindou, proud and full of
self-importance (as he always was), and half a dozen boys whose faces
and names were quite familiar to me, in smart white trousers and
shining boots, and silken white bands round their left arms, got into
the omnibus, and were driven away in a glorified manner--as it
seemed--to heaven in a golden chariot. It was beautiful to see and
hear.