CHAPTER III 



Saturday, October 1 8. 

 At a little before six I went over the way to the station. 



The stars were shining. Orion was high in the southern 

 heaven, and bright-eyed Sirius hunting at his heel. The 

 Twins were almost in the zenith, and the moon within her 

 own breadth of Mars. 



I was just in time to see my lost one pulled out of the 

 luggage-van ; and, after surmounting several impossibilities, 

 I set off in a citadine for the Lyons railway-station. 



Dawn was grizzling the beard of night (by the way, 

 night is classically an old woman ; but what of that, 

 since some old women have beards ?) as I mounted my 

 vehicle : and as my jaded and superannuated cart-horse 

 stumbled along the Boulevard, broad streaks of light 

 rose horizontally, as if Phoebus was drawing up his Venetian 

 blinds. 



At last he put his head out of his window ; and the first 

 of his beams fell on the brazen mountebank who cuts his 

 continual caper and blows his own trumpet on the column 

 of the Bastille. 



Having deposited my luggage at the foot of a wood 

 column, and having taken advice of the railway authorities 

 as to the train to go by, I found I had just three hours and 

 three-quarters to get my breakfast in. It was during the 

 long blank interval which succeeded my meal that I be- 



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