The Equinox (Volume I, Number II)

THE DREAM CIRCEAN haste, less speed!’ I said to myself. ‘I will walk deliberately down to the boulevard, turn east, and so I cannot possibly miss the Carrefour de l’Odéon’—out of which, as I knew of old, the Rue des Quatre Vents leads. Indeed, I remembered the carrefour from that night. I had passed through it. I remembered hesitating as to which turning to take. For, as you know, the carrefour is a triangle, one road leading from the apex, four (with two minor variations just off the carrefour) from the base. “ Following this plan, I came, sure enough, in three minutes or so into the Rue des Quatre Vents. It is not a long street, as you know, and I thought that I remembered perfectly that the house faced the tiny Rue St. Grégoire, which leads back to the Boulevard St. Germain. Indeed, it was down that obscure alley that Jean andI had gone in our fight. I remem- bered how I had expected to meet somebody on issuing into the boulevard; and then . . . I must have been very busy fighting: I could not remember anything at all of the fight between that issue and the place of Jean’s feint and flight. “Well, here I was: the house should have been in front of me—and it was not. I walked up and down the street; there was no house of the kind, no railings. No residential house. Yet I could not believe myself mistaken. I pinched myself; I was awake. Further, the pinching demonstrated the existence of a sword and dagger in my hands. I was bleeding, too; my left arm twice grazed. I took out my watch; four o'clock. Since I left the bridge—ah! when had I left the bridge? I could not tell—yes,I could. At moon-set. The moon was nine days old. “No; everything was real. I examined the sword and 123