As he spoke, he had bent over to train a branch of rhododendron, and he continued:—
“Hold, I know now. He very often passes along the boulevard, and goes in the direction of the Glacière, Rue Croulebarbe. The meadow of the Lark. Go there. It is not hard to meet him.”
When M. Mabeuf straightened himself up, there was no longer anyone there; the girl had disappeared.
He was decidedly terrified.
“Really,” he thought, “if my garden had not been watered, I should think that she was a spirit.”
An hour later, when he was in bed, it came back to him, and as he fell asleep, at that confused moment when thought, like that fabulous bird which changes itself into a fish in order to cross the sea, little by little assumes the form of a dream in order to traverse slumber, he said to himself in a bewildered way:—
“In sooth, that greatly resembles what Rubaudière narrates of the goblins.