less foundation than he thought.] in public duty to the charity of M. le
Maire.

The bells of the Cathedral brought me back to myself--to that which we
call reality in our language; but of all that was around me when I
regained consciousness, it now appeared to me that I only was a dream. I
was in the midst of a world where all was in movement. What the current
was which flowed around me I know not; if it was thought which becomes
sensible among spirits, if it was action, I cannot tell. But the energy,
the force, the living that was in them, that could no one misunderstand.
I stood in the streets, lagging and feeble, scarcely able to wish, much
less to think. They pushed against me, put me aside, took no note of me.
In the unseen world described by a poet whom M. le Maire has probably
heard of, the man who traverses Purgatory (to speak of no other place)
is seen by all, and is a wonder to all he meets--his shadow, his breath
separate him from those around him. But whether the unseen life has
changed, or if it is I who am not worthy their attention, this I know
that I stood in our city like a ghost, and no one took any heed of me.
When there came back upon me slowly my old desire to inquire, to
understand, I was met with this difficulty at the first--that no one
heeded me. I went through and through the streets, sometimes I paused to
look round, to implore that which swept by me to make itself known. But
the stream went along like soft air, like the flowing of a river,
setting me aside from time to time, as the air will displace a straw, or
the water a stone, but no more. There was neither languor nor lingering.
I was the only passive thing, the being without occupation. Would you
have paused in your labours to tell an idle traveller the meaning of our
lives, before the day when you left Semur? Nor would they: I was driven
hither and thither by the current of that life, but no one stepped forth
out of the unseen to hear my questions or to answer me how this might