his
ear, clenched my fist right under his nose, and stumbled on, hardened
by a blind rage that I could not control.

He called a policeman, and I desired nothing better than to have one
between my hands just for one moment. I slackened my pace intentionally
in order to give him an opportunity of overtaking me; but he did not
come. Was there now any reason whatever that absolutely every one of
one's most earnest and most persevering efforts should fail? Why, too,
had I written 1848? In what way did that infernal date concern me? Here
I was going about starving, so that my entrails wriggle together in me
like worms, and it was, as far as I knew, not decreed in the book of
fate that anything in the shape of food would turn up later on in the
day.

I was becoming mentally and physically more and more prostrate; I was
letting myself down each day to less and less honest actions, so that I
lied on each day without blushing, cheated poor people out of their
rent, struggled with the meanest thoughts of making away with other
men's blankets--all without remorse or prick of conscience.

Foul places began to gather in my inner being, black spores which
spread more and more. And up in Heaven God Almighty sat and kept a
watchful eye on me, and took heed that _my_ destruction proceeded in
accordance with all the rules of art, uniformly and gradually, without
a break in the measure.

But in the abysses of hell the angriest devils bristled with range
because it lasted such a long time until I committed a mortal sin, an
unpardonable offence for which God in His justice must cast me--down....

I quickened my pace, hurried faster and faster, turned suddenly to the
left and found myself, excited and angry, in a light ornate doorway. I
did not pause, not for one second, but the whole peculiar ornamentation
of the entrance struck on my perception in a flash; every detail of the
decoration and the tiling of the floor stood clear on my mental vision
as I sprang up the stairs. I rang violently on the second floor. Why
should I stop exactly on the second floor? And why just seize hold of
this bell which was some little way from the stairs?

A young lady in a grey gown with black trimming came out and opened the
door. She looked for a moment in astonishment at me, then shook her
head and said:

"No, we have not got anything today," and she made a feint to close the
door.

What induced me to thrust myself in this creature's way? She took