the trees these tatters and strips, once a purple kingly mantle: but men go on, pitilessly trampling down the rustling leaves.
Now I am in a strange humour—a sort of Pantheistic mood. My Ego is multiplying, growing into countless gods, and penetrating the whole world, wherein there is no room for aught save Me. And, therefore, prodigious amazement takes hold of me, when I think how all these crowds of people can tread upon my golden autumnal leaves, or glance at me, because I have a noticeable face and a hat à la diable m'enporte. Can I think that they live? There is no life but mine only.
No, they have not life.
And there,—an immense way off, on the farther shore of the Ocean of Infinity,—there he stands, he, the only foe worthy of me: and he waits that I should go onward to meet him!
And I—I stand in fear. For a week I have not been at Obojanski's, where he goes pretty nearly every night.
When the thought comes to me of the splendid sorrel mount I had, and of Janusz whose lips were so sweet, I have a mind to burst out crying. But I shall not go back there, unless … Oh, if I could help going back!
