As I was crossing the hall she called to me: "Come, Octave!" she said, "let us go; here I am." I laughed, and passed out without replying.

After walking a short distance I sat down on a stone projecting from a wall.

I do not know what my thoughts were; I sat as if stupefied by the unfaithfulness of one of whom I had never been jealous, whom I had never had cause to suspect.

What I had seen left no room for doubt; I was felled as if by a stroke from a club.

The only thing I remember doing as I sat there, was looking mechanically up at the sky, and, seeing a star shoot across the heavens, I saluted that fugitive gleam, in which poets see a worn-out world, and gravely took off my hat to it.
I returned to my home very quietly, experiencing nothing, as if deprived of all sensation and reflection.