“‘I do not say so.’
“Chéron, Chéron, would it cost you any great effort to...’
“We sat down together on a bench over which an elm cast its shade. I took her hand, and carried it to my lips ... of a sudden, I no longer felt, no longer saw anything, and I found myself lying in bed at home. I rubbed my eyes, smarting with the morning light, and I saw my valet who, standing before me with a stupid look, was saying to me:
“It is nine o’clock, sir. You told me to wake you at nine o’clock, sir. I have come to tell you, sir, that it is nine o’clock?”
VI
Hippolyte Dufresne was warmly congratulated by his friends on his finishing the reading of his story.
Nicole Langelier, applying to him the words of Critias to Triephon, said: