the drowned." He foresaw the whole thing. A
boat would put off to the rescue. If the rowers did not smash his skull
in with their oars as he came to the surface, he would be taken to the
shed and revived. If he were dead, a crowd would collect, newspaper men
would come; his body would be recognised; and the Press would publish
the news of the suicide of Raphael de Valentin. No! He would wait till
nightfall, and then in a decent, private manner bequeath an
unrecognizable corpse to a world that had disregarded his genius.

With the air of a wealthy man of leisure sauntering about the streets to
kill time, the young marquis strolled down the Quai Voltaire, and
followed the line of shops, looking listlessly at every window. But as
he thought of the fate awaiting him at nightfall, men and houses swam in
a mist before his eyes. To recover himself he entered a curiosity shop.
"If you care to go through our galleries," said the red-haired shop-boy,
"you will find something worth looking at."

Raphael climbed up a dark staircase lined with mummies, Indian idols,
stuffed crocodiles, and goggle-eyed monsters. They all seemed to grin at
him as he passed. Haunted by these strange shapes belonging to the
borderland between life and death, he walked in a kind of dream through
a series of long, dimly lighted galleries, in which was piled, in mad
confusion, the work of every age and every clime. Here was a lovely
statue by Michael Angelo, from which dangled the scalp of a Red Indian.
There, cold and impassive, was the lord of the ancient world, the
Emperor Augustus, with a modern air-pump sticking in his eye. The walls
were hung with priceless pictures, which were half-hidden by grimacing
skeletons, rude wooden idols with horrible features, tall suits of
gleaming armour, and figures of Egyptian deities, with the bodies of men
and heads of animals. The place was a kitchen of all the arts and
religions and interests of mankind.

This extraordinary confusion was rendered still more bizarre by the dim
cross-lights that played upon everything. Raphael's eyes grew weary with
gazing, and his mind was oppressed by the spectacle of the ruined
splendours of thousands of years of human life. A fever born of hunger
and exhaustion possessed him. The pictures appeared to light up, the
statues seemed to move. Everything danced and swayed around him. Then a
horrible Chinese monster advanced upon him with menacing eyes from the
other side of the room