At Cologne, where I had stood, reverential, in the noble forest of
pillars in the Cathedral, then afterwards, in my simplicity, allowed
someone to foist a whole case of Eau de Cologne upon me, I shortened my
stay, in my haste to see Paris. But, having by mistake taken a train
which would necessitate my waiting several hours at Liege, I decided
rather to continue my journey to Brussels and see that city too. The run
through Belgium seemed to me heavenly, as for a time I happened to be
quite alone in my compartment and I walked up and down, intoxicated with
the joy of travelling.
Brussels was the first large French town I saw; it was a foretaste of
Paris, and delighted me.
Never having been out in the world on my own account before, I was still
as inexperienced and awkward as a child. It was not enough that I had
got into the wrong train; I discovered, to my shame, that I had mislaid
the key of my box, which made me think anxiously of the customs
officials in Paris, and I was also so stupid as to ask the boots in the
Brussels hotel for "a little room," so that they gave me a miserable
little sleeping-place under the roof.
But at night, after I had rambled about the streets of Brussels, as I
sat on a bench somewhere on a broad boulevard, an overwhelming,
terrifying, transporting sense of my solitariness came over me.
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