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BACCHUS, THE CONSOLER.
Suddenly, in the midst of black despair, youth and chance led me to commit an act that decided my fate.
I had written my mistress that I wished never to see her again; I kept my word, but I passed the nights under her window, seated on a bench before her door.

I could see the lights in her room, I could hear the sound of her piano, at times I saw something that looked like a shadow through the partially drawn curtains.
One night as I was seated on the bench, plunged in frightful melancholy, I saw a belated workman staggering along the street.

He muttered a few words in a dazed manner and then began to sing.

So much was he under the influence of liquor that he walked at times on one side of the gutter and then on the other.