a sabre wound on his wrist—or perhaps his forehead, for my memory is not clear—got in some student riot that he had mistaken for the beginning of war. It may have been some talk of his that made me write the poem that begins;
The dews drop slowly and dreams gather; unknown spears
Suddenly hurtle before my dream awakened eyes,
And then the clash of fallen horsemen and the cries
Of unknown perishing armies beat about my ears.
War was to bring, or be brought by, anarchy, but that would be a passing stage, he declared, for his dreams were all Napoleonic. He certainly foresaw some great rôle that he could play, had made himself an acknowledged master of the war-game, and for a time taught it to French officers for his living. He was to die of melancholia, and was perhaps already mad at certain moments or upon certain topics, for though he did not make upon me that impression in those early days, being generous, gay, and affable, I have seen none that lacked philosophy and trod Hodos Camelionis come to good there; and he lacked it but for a vague affirmation, that he would have his friends affirm also, each for himself. "There is no part of me that is not of the gods." Once when he had told me that he met his Teachers in some great crowd, and only knew that they were phantoms by a shock that was like an electric shock to his heart, I asked him how he knew that he was not deceived or hallucinated. He said "I had been visited by one of them the other night, and I followed him out, and followed him down that little lane to the right. Presently I fell over the milkboy, and the milkboy got in a rage because he said that not only I but the man in front had fallen over him." He, like all that I have known, who have given themselves up to images, and to the murmuring of images, thought that when he had proved that an image could act independently of his mind, he had proved also that neither it, nor what it had murmured, had originated there. Yet had I need of proof to the contrary, I had it while under his roof. I was eager for news of the Spanish-American war, and went to the Rue Mozart before breakfast to buy a New York Herald. As I went out past the young Normandy servant who was laying breakfast, I was telling myself some school-boy romance and had just reached a place where I carried my arm in a sling after some romantic escape. I bought my paper and returned,
