As I turned a corner to face the railway station, wading miserably through one ankle-deep puddle after another, I heard the echo of a stately carriage in a nearby street ahead of me. It turned the corner and was suddenly careening toward me. In my rush to remove myself from its path, my left ankle twisted on a protruding paving stone and, thrown off balance, I landed face-first in the slush with the two horses bearing down on me. Intending to dive toward the gutter, I was getting back to my feet when a wheel collided with my right shoulder, throwing me askance once more and spinning me around, so that I landed—this time on my back—in yet another puddle. Needless to say, the carriage continued on its way, turning left into Rue des Colonies, the driver in all likelihood oblivious to the fact that he had just now bowled over, and very nearly finished off, the greatest lyric poet of the age.

Lying on my back in the filth, icy water seeping through my coat, I was convinced my life was finally nearing its pitiable conclusion. It occurred to me that I ought to have jumped in the other direction, under the horses rather than away from them. As I lay there in that puddle, on those slick paving stones, in that strange city, on that icy evening, all my hopes extinguished, I found the prospect of my imminent demise unexpectedly consoling. In the cold and the damp, I began to shiver with a violence that would not be brought into abeyance. Presently the pain of my injuries began to recede, the wild beating of my heart slowed and my breathing became less frantic. I realized I would not be dying there and then. My accursed existence would continue, at least for now. At the dawning of this thought, I began to scream, abusing that tenacity of life that seems to override every wiser instinct. And once I had begun, I continued, wholeheartedly cursing, stringing beads of curses together to make garlands of curses, which I hurled at Victor Hugo and Madame Hugo, at her sons and her guests. I cursed the Grand Miroir and Brussels and Belgium and the Belgians. I cursed the King of Belgium and for good measure I cursed the Emperor of France. I cursed men and women, mankind and womankind too. I cursed poetry and literature and art and love, and when I had finished cursing all those things I cursed life and God Himself. And it was while I was cursing God that I noticed, standing above me, the silhouette of a man’s body, wearing a round hat and a cape. A gaunt whiskered face leaned down to study me closer. “Are you in pain, monsieur?”

“I hardly know,” I said, “but it seems I cannot raise myself.”