My old

world of reality receded. Here, whether I liked it or no, was something

new and incomprehensible. I regretted having left the train so

impulsively. An adventure was upon me, and I loathed adventures as

foreign to my nature. Moreover, this was the beginning apparently of an

adventure somewhere deep within me, in a region I could not check or

measure, and a feeling of alarm mingled itself with my wonder—alarm

for the stability of what I had for forty years recognised as my

‘personality.’

“I went upstairs to bed, my mind teeming with

thoughts that were unusual to me, and of rather a haunting description.

By way of relief I kept thinking of that nice, prosaic noisy train and

all those wholesome, blustering passengers. I almost wished I were with

them again. But my dreams took me elsewhere. I dreamed of cats, and

soft-moving creatures, and the silence of life in a dim muffled world

beyond the senses.”

II

Vezin stayed on from day to day, indefinitely, much longer than he

had intended. He felt in a kind of dazed, somnolent condition. He did

nothing in particular, but the place fascinated him and he could not

decide to leave. Decisions were always very difficult for him and he

sometimes wondered how he had ever brought himself to the point of

leaving the train. It seemed as though some one else must have arranged

it for him, and once or twice his thoughts ran to the swarthy Frenchman

who had sat opposite. If only he could have understood that long

sentence ending so strangely with “a cause du sommeil et un cause

des chats.” He wondered what it all meant.

Meanwhile the hushed softness of the town held him

prisoner and he sought in his muddling, gentle way to find out where

the mystery lay, and what it was all about. But his limited French and

his constitutional hatred of active investigation made it hard for him

to buttonhole anybody and ask questions. He was content to observe, and

watch, and remain negative.

The weather held on calm and hazy, and this just

suited him. He wandered about the town till he knew every street and

alley. The people suffered him to come and go without let or hindrance,

though it became clearer to him every day that he was never free

himself from observation. The town watched him as a cat watches a

mouse. And he got no nearer to finding out what they were all so busy

with or where the main stream of their activities lay. This remained

hidden. The people were as soft and mysterious as cats.

But that he was continually under observation became

more evident from day to day.

For instance, when he strolled to the end of the

town and entered a little green public garden beneath the ramparts and

seated himself upon one of the empty benches in the sun, he was quite

alone—at first. Not another seat was occupied; the little park was

empty, the paths deserted. Yet, within ten minutes of his coming, there

must have been fully twenty persons scattered about him, some strolling

aimlessly along the gravel walks, staring at the flowers, and others

seated on the wooden benches enjoying the sun like himself. None of

them appeared to take any notice of him; yet he understood quite well

they had all come there to watch. They kept him under close

observation. In the street they had seemed busy enough, hurrying upon

various errands; yet these were suddenly all forgotten and they had

nothing to do but loll and laze in the sun, their duties unremembered.

Five minutes after he left, the garden was again deserted, the seats

vacant. But in the crowded street it was the same thing again; he was

never alone. He was ever in their thoughts.

By degrees, too, he began to see how it was he was

so cleverly watched, yet without the appearance of it.