ly that I killed one. Her tittle-tattle
accosts another subject. I feel the enormous difference there was
between what she asked me and what I answered.

The streets are clad in the mourning of closed shops. It is still the
same empty and hermetically sealed face of the day of holiday. My eyes
notice, near the sunken post, the old jam-pot, which has not moved.

I climb on to Chestnut Hill. No one is there, because it is Sunday.
In that white winding-sheet, that widespread pallor of Sunday, all my
former lot builds itself again, house by house.

I look outwards from the top of the hill. All is the same in the lines
and the tones. The spectacle of yesterday and that of to-day are as
identical as two picture postcards. I see my house--the roof, and
three-quarters of the front. I feel a pleasant thrill. I feel that I
love this corner of the earth, but especially my house.

What, is everything the same? Is there nothing new, nothing? Is the
only changed thing the man that I am, walking too slowly in clothes too
big, the man grown old and leaning on a stick?

The landscape is barren in the inextricable simplicity of the daylight.
I do not know why I was expecting revelations. In vain my gaze wanders
everywhere, to infinity.

But a darkening of storm fills and agitates the sky, and suddenly
clothes the morning with a look of evening. The crowd which I see
yonder along the avenue, under cover of the great twilight which goes
by with its invisible harmony, profoundly draws my attention.

All those shadows which are shelling themselves out along the road are
very tiny, they are separated from one another, they are of the same
stature. From a distance one sees how much one man resembles another.
And it is true that a man is like a man. The one is not of a different
species from the other. It is a certainty which I am bringing
forward--the only one; and the truth is simple, for what I believe I
see with my eyes.

The equality of all these human spots that appear in the somber gleams
of storm, why--it is a revelation! It is a beginning of distinct order
in Chaos. How comes it that I have never seen what is so visible, how
comes it that I never perceived that obvious thing--that a man and
another man are the same thing, everywhere and always? I rejoice that
I have seen it as if my destiny were to shed a little light on us and
on our road.

* * * * * *

The bells are s