For a long time I continued to wait, not knowing what to do, with a mind perfectly clear though full of trepidation. By now I was standing listening to the noise increase at times to an ear-shattering pitch. At other times, too, this mysterious upheaval sounded like a growl of impatience or even of anger. Suddenly ashamed of being such a coward, I got hold of my bunch of keys, chose the one I needed, rammed it into the lock, turned it twice, then flung the door open with such force I sent it crashing against the interior wall.

It sounded like gunshot as the noise echoed from top to bottom of my entire house, from which came now a thunderous reverberation. It was so sudden and so deafening that I recoiled a few paces in horror. Although I knew it was still useless, this time I did take my revolver out of its holster.

Again, I waited for … I don’t know how long … a little while I suppose. What I could now hear was the extraordinary sound of steps coming down the stairway and on to the parquet and the carpets – the sound not of shoes or of human footwear but the clatter of wooden and iron crutches clashing like cymbals, or so it seemed. Suddenly, what should I see waddling over the threshold of my own room but the big armchair in which I used to sit to read. It came out into the garden. Others from the drawing room followed it and were followed in turn by low settees crawling crocodile-like along on their squat little legs. All my other chairs leapt out like goats, with footstools lolloping alongside.

You can imagine what I felt like! I slid behind some shrubbery and remained crouching there watching the procession continue to pass by, for they were all leaving, one after the other, quickly or slowly, according to size and weight. My piano, my full-size grand piano galloped wildly past me with a musical murmur in its flank; the smallest objects such as hairbrushes and crystal chandelier droplets crawled like ants on the ground accompanied by glass goblets on which the moonlight cast little glow-worms of phosphorescence; curtains, hangings, tapestries spread like pools and stretched out octopus-like tentacles of fabric as they swam past. My desk hove into view, a rare eighteenth-century piece now containing some photographs and all the letters tracing the sad history of my painful love-life.