The organ gallery gets
a strong white light from a row of long windows in the clerestory, which
have not even coloured glass. The pulpit being in the middle of the church, it followed that, when I
was turned toward it, whatever moved at the west end could not fail to
attract my eye. When the organist passed it was no wonder that I saw him:
I had simply miscalculated the interval between his first and his second
passing. He had come in that last time by the other side-door. As for the
look which had so upset me, there had been no such thing, and I was a
nervous fool. I looked about. This was a likely place to harbour supernatural horrors! That clear-cut, reasonable face of Monseigneur C----, his collected
manner and easy, graceful gestures, were they not just a little
discouraging to the notion of a gruesome mystery? I glanced above his
head, and almost laughed. That flyaway lady supporting one corner of the
pulpit canopy, which looked like a fringed damask table-cloth in a high
wind, at the first attempt of a basilisk to pose up there in the organ
loft, she would point her gold trumpet at him, and puff him out of
existence! I laughed to myself over this conceit, which, at the time, I
thought very amusing, and sat and chaffed myself and everything else,
from the old harpy outside the railing, who had made me pay ten centimes
for my chair, before she would let me in (she was more like a basilisk, I
told myself, than was my organist with the anaemic complexion): from that
grim old dame, to, yes, alas! Monseigneur C---- himself. For all
devoutness had fled. I had never yet done such a thing in my life, but
now I felt a desire to mock. As for the sermon, I could not hear a word of it for the jingle in my
ears of

 "The skirts of St. Paul has reached. Having preached us those six Lent lectures,
  More unctuous than ever he preached,"

keeping time to the most fantastic and irreverent thoughts. It was no use to sit there any longer: I must get out of doors and shake
myself free from this hateful mood. I knew the rudeness I was committing,
but still I rose and left the church. A spring sun was shining on the Rue St. Honoré, as I ran down the church
steps. On one corner stood a barrow full of yellow jonquils, pale violets
from the Riviera, dark Russian violets, and white Roman hyacinths in a
golden cloud of mimosa. The street was full of Sunday pleasure-seekers. I
swung my cane and laughed with the rest. Some one overtook and passed me. He never turned, but there was the same deadly malignity in his white
profile that there had been in his eyes. I watched him as long as I could
see him. His lithe back expressed the same menace; every step that
carried him away from me seemed to bear him on some errand connected with
my destruction. I was creeping along, my feet almost refusing to move. There began to
dawn in me a sense of responsibility for something long forgotten. It
began to seem as if I deserved that which he threatened: it reached a
long way back--a long, long way back. It had lain dormant all these
years: it was there, though, and presently it would rise and confront me. But I would try to escape; and I stumbled as best I could into the Rue de
Rivoli, across the Place de la Concorde and on to the Quai. I looked with
sick eyes upon the sun, shining through the white foam of the fountain,
pouring over the backs of the dusky bronze river-gods, on the far-away
Arc, a structure of amethyst mist, on the countless vistas of grey stems
and bare branches faintly green. Then I saw him again coming down one of
the chestnut alleys of the Cours la Reine. I left the river-side, plunged blindly across to the Champs Elysées and
turned toward the Arc. The setting sun was sending its rays along the
green sward of the Rond-point: in the full glow he sat on a bench,
children and young mothers all about him. He was nothing but a Sunday
lounger, like the others, like myself. I said the words almost aloud, and
all the while I gazed on the malignant hatred of his face. But he was not
looking at me. I crept past and dragged my leaden feet up the Avenue. I
knew that every time I met him brought him nearer to the accomplishment
of his purpose and my fate. And still I tried to save myself. The last rays of sunset were pouring through the great Arc. I passed
under it, and met him face to face. I had left him far down the Champs
Elysées, and yet he came in with a stream of people who were returning
from the Bois de Boulogne. He came so close that he brushed me. His
slender frame felt like iron inside its loose black covering. He showed
no signs of haste, nor of fatigue, nor of any human feeling. His whole
being expressed one thing: the will, and the power to work me evil. In anguish I watched him where he went down the broad crowded Avenue,
that was all flashing with wheels and the trappings of horses and the
helmets of the Garde Republicaine. He was soon lost to sight; then I turned and fled. Into the Bois, and far
out beyond it--I know not where I went, but after a long while as it
seemed to me, night had fallen, and I found myself sitting at a table
before a small café. I had wandered back into the Bois. It was hours now
since I had seen him. Physical fatigue and mental suffering had left me
no power to think or feel. I was tired, so tired! I longed to hide away
in my own den. I resolved to go home. But that was a long way off. I live in the Court of the Dragon, a narrow passage that leads from the
Rue de Rennes to the Rue du Dragon. It is an "impasse"; traversable only for foot passengers. Over the
entrance on the Rue de Rennes is a balcony, supported by an iron dragon. Within the court tall old houses rise on either side, and close the ends
that give on the two streets. Huge gates, swung back during the day into
the walls of the deep archways, close this court, after midnight, and one
must enter then by ringing at certain small doors on the side. The sunken
pavement collects unsavoury pools. Steep stairways pitch down to doors
that open on the court. The ground floors are occupied by shops of
second-hand dealers, and by iron workers. All day long the place rings
with the clink of hammers and the clang of metal bars. Unsavoury as it is below, there is cheerfulness, and comfort, and hard,
honest work above. Five flights up are the ateliers of architects and painters, and the
hiding-places of middle-aged students like myself who want to live alone. When I first came here to live I was young, and not alone. I had to walk a while before any conveyance appeared, but at last, when I
had almost reached the Arc de Triomphe again, an empty cab came along and
I took it. From the Arc to the Rue de Rennes is a drive of more than half an hour,
especially when one is conveyed by a tired cab horse that has been at the
mercy of Sunday fete-makers. There had been time before I passed under the Dragon's wings to meet my
enemy over and over again, but I never saw him once, and now refuge was
close at hand.