I returned to my own, second-class cabin, shared with an insurance agent and two youths. I took my seat and pretended to doze. In fact, I was undergoing that surge of memories that occurs upon the occupation of a new body, as every stimulus triggers a series of memories latent within it, which bubble to the surface of the mind from unsuspected depths. The sensation is overwhelming, staggering even, and best borne in stillness and solitude. Around dinnertime, a steward appeared to turn out the beds. I removed my valise and retreated to the water closet at the end of the carriage, as if I was doing nothing more than changing into a dinner suit. There, I discarded my velvet jacket and turban, shaved my mustache, and, in darkness, alighted from the train at the next stop. The following morning, at the post office in Junction City, Kansas, I dictated a telegram to Mathilde in Paris:

AM RETURNING SOON AS HIPPOLYTE
BALTHAZAR STOP LUCIEN RETURNING
SEPARATELY WITH NEW EDMONDE STOP
DO NOT TRUST ANY NEW ARRIVAL STOP

The consequence of this unforeseen detour was that it took me several more weeks to arrive in Paris than I had hoped. By that time, it was early June, and the city was now a heaving, dazzling city of two million souls. There was no finer place to be in the world than Paris in the summer of 1900. The streets teemed with people and were crisscrossed in every direction by telegraph wires, while the ground underfoot was riddled with quarries, Métro tunnels, and gas and sewage pipes. One could no longer saunter down the middle of the streets, for they were now cluttered with omnibuses, streetcars, carriages, rattletraps, velocipedes, deluxe coach-and-pairs, and, for well-heeled adventurists, horseless carriages.

The speed of existence had quickened: where life was once lived at walking or trotting pace, people now took underground trains to get from place to place. The arcades of yesteryear had been supplanted by giant department stores employing thousands of cashiers. The city’s markets received produce transported on trains from across the country. If one wished to communicate with someone on the other side of town, it was no longer necessary to wait all day or overnight for a reply: a network of pneumatic pipes could deliver blue-papered messages almost instantly. In wealthy homes there were telephones and, in the best houses, one could even listen in on performances at the Opéra on a theatrophone.