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Rh had let go my hold of it, the others passed over my body, just as a charge of cavalry passes over a trooper who has lost his saddle.

Maddened with affright, at last I succeeded in dragging myself out of the main alley and concealing myself again among the trees, from thence to watch the flight of the most unconsidered, the smallest, the most trifling objects, those the very existence of which I had been unaware of, which had been mine.

Then in the distance, in my dwelling, that now had the resonancy of other empty houses, I heard a direful sound of closing doors. Downward and from top to bottom of the house they kept slamming, until the door of the vestibule, that I myself, idiot that I was; had opened for this flitting, had swung closed, the last of all.

I immediately fled, running toward the city, and only when in its streets, where I met belated wayfarers, did I regain my self-command. I went to a hotel where I was known and rang the bell. I had beaten my clothing with my hands in order to remove from it the traces of dust, and I told them that I had lost my bunch of keys, among which was that of the garden where my servants were sleeping in an isolated house, behind the inclosing wall that served to protect my fruits and vegetables from the visit of the spoiler.

I buried myself up to the eyes in the bed which they gave me, but I could not sleep and passed the time until daybreak listening to the thumping of my heart. I had given orders that my household should be apprised of my presence there at earliest dawn, and at seven o'clock in the morning my valet-de-chambre