pt to
feel like a walking flame. Yet at heart he was, I think, gentle, and
perhaps even a little timid. He had some impediment in his nose that gave
him a great deal of trouble, and it could have been removed had he not
shrunk from the slight operation; and once when he was left in a
mouse-infested flat with some live traps, he collected his captives into a
large birdcage, and to avoid the necessity of their drowning, fed them
there for weeks. Being a self-educated, un-scholarly, though learned man,
he was bound to express the fundamental antithesis in the most crude form,
and being arrogant, to prevent as far as possible that alternation between
the two natures which is, it may be, necessary to sanity. When the nature
turns to its spiritual opposite alone there can be no alternation, but
what nature is pure enough for that.

I see Paris in the Eighteen-nineties as a number of events separated from
one another, and without cause or consequence, without lot or part in the
logical structure of my life; I can often as little find their dates as I
can those of events in my early childhood. William Sharp, who came to see
me there, may have come in 1895, or on some visit four or five years
later, but certainly I was in an hotel in the Boulevard Raspail. When he
stood up to go he said, "What is that?" pointing to a geometrical form
painted upon a little piece of cardboard that lay upon my window sill. And
then before I could answer, looked out of the window saying, "There is a
funeral passing." I said, "That is curious, as the Death symbol is painted
upon the card." I did not look, but I am sure there was no funeral. A few
days later he came back and said, "I have been very ill; you must never
allow me to see that symbol again." He did not seem anxious to be
questioned, but years later he said, "I will now tell you what happened in
Paris. I had two rooms at my hotel, a front sitting-room and a bedroom
leading out of it. As I passed the threshold of the sitting-room, I saw a
woman standing at the bureau writing, and presently she went into my
bedroom. I thought somebody had got into the wrong room by mistake, but
when I went to the bureau I saw the sheet of paper she had seemed to write
upon, and there was no writing upon it. I went into my bed-room and I
found nobody, but as there was a door from the bedroom on to the stairs I
went down the stairs to see if she had gone that way. When I got out into
the street I saw her just tu