looked about him. No one was there but the two gentlemen
opposite, who were mechanically lanching their last kicks into the empty
space, and rubbing their eyes with their arms. He succeeded in awakening
them, and asked them about the visitation he had had; but the gentlemen
declared they had seen nothing.

Meiser sadly returned to his own thoughts; he noticed that the visions
appeared terribly real. This idea prevented his going to sleep again.

"If this goes on much longer," thought he, "the Colonel's ghost will
break my nose with a blow of his fist, or give me a pair of black eyes!"

A little later, it occurred to him that he had breakfasted very hastily
that morning, and he reflected that the nightmare had perhaps been
brought about by such dieting.

He got off at the next five-minute stopping-place and called for soup.
Some very hot vermicelli was brought him, and he blew into his bowl like
a dolphin into the Bosphorus.

A man passed before him, without jostling him, without saying anything
to him, without even seeing him. And nevertheless, the bowl dropped from
the hands of the rich Nicholas Meiser, the vermicelli poured over his
waistcoat and shirt-bosom, where it formed an elegant fretwork
suggestive of the architecture of the _porte Saint Martin_. Some
yellowish threads, detached from the mass, hung in stalactites from the
buttons of his coat. The vermicelli stopped on the outside, but the soup
penetrated much further. It was rather warm for pleasure; an egg left in
it ten minutes would have been boiled hard. Fatal soup, which not only
distributed itself among the pockets, but into the most secret
sinuosities of the man himself! The starting bell rang, the waiter
collected his two sous, and Meiser got into the cars, preceded by a
plaster of vermicelli, and followed by a little thread of soup which was
running down the calves of his legs.

And all of this, because he had seen, or thought he had seen, the
terrible figure of Colonel Fougas eating sandwiches.

Oh! how long the trip seemed! What a terrible time it appeared to be
before he could be at home, between his wife Catharine and his servant
Berbel, with all the doors safely closed! His two companions laughed
till the buttons flew; people laughed in the compartment to the right of
him, and in the compartment to the left of him. As fast as he picked off
the vermicelli, little spots of soup saucily congealed and seemed
quietly laughing. How hard it comes