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166 then all the rest of my chairs, bounding and leaping like goats, and the little footstools, which trotted off like rabbits.

Oh, what an experience! I slipped into a clump of bushes, where I crouched down and remained watching this migration of my goods and chattels, for they all cleared out, every one of them, one after the other, moving at a slow or rapid pace according to their size and weight. My piano, my grand piano à queue, went by galloping like a runaway horse, with a faint murmur of music proceeding from its depths, and the smaller objects—brushes, glasses, cups—glided over the sand like ants, and the moon touched them with phosphorescent lights so that they shone like glowworms. The stuffs of silk and woolen crawled, spread themselves out in sheets after the fashion of monsters of the sea, octopi and devil-fish. I beheld my desk approaching, a rare bibelot of the last century, containing all the letters that I ever received, all my heart history—an old history that has been cause to me of so much suffering! And in it, too, were photographs.

Suddenly I ceased to be afraid. I rushed upon the desk and seized it, as we seize a robber, as we seize a woman who is trying to escape us, but it pursued its way with irresistible momentum, and despite my efforts, and despite my wrath, I could not even so much as retard its progress. As I was pulling backward like a madman in resistance to this appalling force, I fell to the ground in my conflict with it; then it rolled me over and over, dragged me upon the sandy path, and the pieces of furniture that were following in its train were already begininngbeginning [sic] to tread upon me, trampling on my legs and bruising them; then, when I