s could not hold any more.

Consequently, we had for some time bidden farewell to our studies in
morals, and now they were limited to two impressions: _zig-zags_ through
the darkness outside, and a gleam of light outside the public-houses. As
to the inhibition of brandies, whiskies and gins, that was done
mechanically, and our stomachs scarcely noticed it.

But what strange beings we had elbowed with during our long stoppages!
What a number of faces to be remembered, what clothes, what attitudes,
what talk and what rags!

At first we tried to note them exactly in our memory, but there were so
many of them, and our brain got mixed so quickly, that at present we had
no very clear recollection of anything or anybody. Even objects that
were immediately before us appeared to us in a vague, dusky
phantasmagoria and got confounded with precious objects in an
inextricable manner. The world became a sort of kaleidoscope to us, seen
in a dream through the penumbra of an aquarium.

Suddenly we were aroused from this state of somnolence, awakened as if
by a blow in the chest, and imperiously forced to fix our attention on
what we saw, for amidst this whirl of strange sights, one stranger than
all attracted our eyes and seemed to say to us: "Look at me."

It was at the open door of a public-house. A ray of light streamed into
the street through the half-open door, and that brutal ray fell right
onto the specter that had just risen up there, dumb and motionless.

For it was indeed a specter, pitiful and terrible, and, above all, most
real, as it stood out boldly against the dark background of the street,
which it made darker still behind it!

Young, yes; the woman was certainly young; there could be no doubt about
that, when one looked at her smooth skin, her smiling mouth which showed
her white teeth, and firm bust which could be plainly noted under her
thin dress.

But then, how explain her perfectly white hair, not gray or growing
gray, but absolutely white, as white as any octogenarian's?

And then her eyes, her eyes beneath her smooth brow, were surely the
eyes of an old woman? Certainly they were, and of a woman one could not
tell how old, for it must have taken years of trouble and sorrow, of
tears and of sleepless nights, and a whole long existence, thus to dull,
to wear out and to roughen those vitreous pupils.

Vitreous? Not exactly that. For roughened glass still retains a dull and
milky brightness, a recollecti