Chapter 1

I was asleep and dreaming--dreaming dreadful, horrible, soul-shattering dreams--dreams that flung me head-first out of bed, and then flung me back into bed off the uncarpeted floor of my chamber. But I did not wake--why should I?--it was unnecessary--I wanted to dream--I had to dream and therefore I dreamt. I was walking home from a cheap restaurant in one of the poorer quarters of Paris. "Poorer quarters" is a nice vague term. There are many poorer quarters in a large city. This was one of them. Let that suffice to the critical pedants who clamour for accuracy and local colour. Accuracy! pah! Shall the soaring soul of a three-volumer be restrained by the debasing fetters of a grovelling exactitude? Never! I will tell you what. If I choose, I who speak to you, _moi qui vous parle_, the Seine shall run red with the blood of murdered priests, and there shall be a tide in it where no tide ever was before, close to Paris itself, the home of the _Marrons Glacés_, and into the river I shall plunge a corpse with upturned face and glassy, staring, haunting, dreadful eyes, and the tide shall turn, the tide that never was on earth, or sky, or sea, it shall turn in my second volume for one night only, and carry the corpse of my victim back, back, back under bridges innumerable, back into the heart of Paris. Dreadful, isn't it? _Allons, mon ami. Qu'est-ce-qu'il-y-a. Je ne sais quoi. Mon Dieu!_ There's idiomatic French for you, all sprinkled out of a cayenne pepper-pot to make the local colour hot and strong. Bah! let us return to our muttons!