rtain direction. Blondel was a lamp by which I could find my way in
the dark paths of the world. With Blondel, my Good Genius would walk
beside me, or occasionally get up on the crupper, but never leave me or
desert me. In the high excitement of my mind, I felt no sense of bodily
fatigue, but walked on, drenched to the skin, alternately shivering with
cold or burning with all the intensity of fever. In this state was it
that I entered the little inn of Ovoco soon after daybreak, and stood
dripping in the bar, a sad spectacle of exhaustion and excitement My
first question was, "Has Blondel been here?" and before they could
reply, I went on with all the rapidity of delirium to assure them that
deception of me would be fruitless; that Fate and I understood each
other thoroughly, travelled together on the best of terms, never
disagreed about anything, but, by a mutual system of give and take, hit
it off like brothers. I talked for an hour in this strain; and then my
poor faculties, long struggling and sore pushed, gave way completely,
and I fell into brain fever.

I chanced upon kind and good-hearted folk, who nursed me with care and
watched me with interest; but my illness was a severe one, and it
was only in the sixth week that I could be about again, a poor, weak,
emaciated creature, with failing limbs and shattered nerves. There is an
indescribable sense of weariness in the mind after fever, just as if
the brain had been enormously over-taxed and exerted, and that in
the pursuit of all the wild and fleeting fancies of delirium it had
travelled over miles and miles of space. To the depressing influence of
this sensation is added the difficulty of disentangling the capricious
illusions of the sick-bed from the actual facts of life; and in this
maze of confusion my first days of convalescence were passed.
Blondel was my great puzzle. Was he a reality, or a mere creature of
imagination? Had I really ridden him as a horse, or only as an idea?
Was he a quadruped with mane and tail, or an allegory invented to typify
destiny? I cannot say what hours of painful brain labor this inquiry
cost me, and what intense research into myself. Strange enough, too,
though I came out of the investigation convinced of his existence, I
arrived at the conclusion that he was a "horse and something more." Not
that I am able to explain myself more fully on that head, though, if
I were writing this portion of my memoirs in German, I suspect I could