Page:Eekhoud - The New Carthage.djvu/389

Rh And blushing at this morbid seizure, which he attributed to an hyperesthesia caused by his illness, to the heady effect of the air after a long claustration, he finally resolved to turn his back upon these hallucinating objects, and make his way toward the river.

Two or three times, however, he looked back at the factory, turned in his path for a moment as if he had forgotten something, or as though some dearly beloved person had called him back to repeat their farewell.

Gradually the spell ceased to operate. The normal and reassuring appearance of the other buildings in the light and warmth of this first fine day soothed him. Not a single cloud darkened the azured opal of the sky. Imperceptible wavelets skimming the surface of the sun-drenched river reminded him of the little shiver of comfort rippling the flank of a horse that is being stroked by its master.

Laurent could no longer distinguish the rigging or the cordage of distant ships, so that their white sails, whiter than the sheets of his numbered bed in the hospital, or the covers of stretchers, seemed to float unshackled in space, and suggested the wings of angels sent to meet the souls who were shortly expected above!

When he reached the embankment, the same place from which he had watched the disappearance of the ship that bore away the Tilbaks, Paridael lovingly and jealously embraced the panorama of his native city. His look travelled over the outlines and the contour of monuments, it completed a delineation as exact and minute as that of a diagram, while his enthusiasm livened the tints, multiplied and chromatized the nuances of this familiar architecture. He inhaled with