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downstairs, and the other to stand besidehim once again as we had done at the station buffet, and look into the mirror. I knew that the first was wisdom and the other somehow evil, and yet it had to be done, it had to be experienced once again. He must have guessed my intent, for we turned with one accord and stared, and here, in the small quiet room, the likeness was more uncanny and more horrible than it had been in the crowded buffet, with all the noise and smoke and sound of people, or in the bistro, where I had not thought about it. This wretched room with the patterned wallpaper and the creaking floor was like a tomb shutting out the world: we were here together and there was no escape. He thrust the tooth-glass of cognac into my trembling hand and himself drank from the flask, and then he said, his voice unsteady as my own – or was it I who spoke and he who listened? – ‘Shall I put on your clothes and you wear mine?’
    I remember that one of us laughed as I hit the floor.

3

    S omeone was knocking on the door. The sound went on and on, breaking through a dream to consciousness, until finally I roused myself from heaven knows what depths of darkness and shouted
‘Entrez!’
, staring about me at the unfamiliar room, which gradually became known to me, and real. A man came in, wearing a faded, old-fashioned chauffeur’s uniform, with buttoned coat, breeches and leggings, and holding his cap in his hands. His build was short and square, his eyes deep brown, and he looked at me from the doorway with compassion.
    ‘Monsieur le Comte is awake at last?’ he said.
    I considered him a moment, frowning, and then I glanced once more about the room and saw one valise open on the chair, another on the floor, and the clothes of my late companion thrown over the end of the bed on which I lay. I was wearing a striped pyjama coat I did not recognize. On the washstand were the tooth-glass and the flask of cognac. There was no sign of my own clothes, and I could not remember taking them off or putting them away. All I remembered was standing in front of the mirror with my companion by my side.
    ‘Who are you?’ I said to the chauffeur. ‘What do you want?’
    He sighed, flashed a sympathetic eye at the disorder of the room, and said, ‘Monsieur le Comte would like to sleep a little longer?’
    ‘Monsieur le Comte isn’t here,’ I said. ‘He must have gone out. What’s the time?’
    The events of the night before became clearer in my mind and I remembered how my companion had gone to the telephone, while we sat in the bistro, and had given orders for acar to come and fetch him the next day. This must be the chauffeur who had now arrived, and mistook me for his master. The man looked at his watch and told me it was five o’clock.
    ‘What do you mean – five o’clock?’ I said. I glanced at the window. It was broad daylight, and I could hear the sound of traffic outside.
    ‘It is five o’clock in the evening,’ said the chauffeur. ‘Monsieur le Comte has slept very soundly all the day. I have been waiting here since eleven o’clock this morning.’
    His words held no reproach: they were merely a statement of fact. I put my hand to my head, which ached abominably. I could feel a swelling on the side of it which was agony to touch, but my head was not aching for this reason only. I thought of the drinks of the night before, and that last tooth-glass of cognac. Perhaps it was not the last? I did not remember.
    ‘I fell,’ I told the chauffeur, ‘and I think I must have been drugged as well.’
    ‘Very possibly,’ he said. ‘These things will happen.’
    His voice had the soothing quality of an old nurse speaking to a child. I swung my legs out of bed and gazed down at the unfamiliar pyjama trousers. They fitted, yet they were not mine, and I had no recollection of putting them on. I put out my hand and touched the vest and pants at the end of the bed, a different type and texture from my own, and I