which it regarded me after it was out.  There it lay in the gutter just under my nose, and the airs it gave itself would have been ridiculous had they not been disgusting.  Such a winking and blinking were never before seen.  This behavior on the part of my eye in the gutter was not only irritating on account of its manifest insolence and shameful ingratitude, but was also exceedingly inconvenient on account of the sympathy which always exists between two eyes of the same head, however far apart.  I was forced, in a manner, to wink and to blink, whether I would or not, in exact concert with the scoundrelly thing that lay just under my nose.  I was presently relieved, however, by the dropping out of the other eye.  In falling it took the same direction (possibly a concerted plot) as its fellow.  Both rolled out of the gutter together, and in truth I was very glad to get rid of them.

The bar was now four inches and a half deep in my neck, and there was only a little bit of skin to cut through.  My sensations were those of entire happiness, for I felt that in a few minutes, at farthest, I should be relieved from my disagreeable situation.  And in this expectation I was not at all deceived.  At twenty-five minutes past five in the afternoon, precisely, the huge minute-hand had proceeded sufficiently far on its terrible revolution to sever the small remainder of my neck.  I was not sorry to see the head which had occasioned me so much embarrassment at length make a final separation from my body.  It first rolled down the side of the steeple, then lodge, for a few seconds, in the gutter, and then made its way, with a plunge, into the middle of the street.

I will candidly confess that my feelings were now of the most singular —­ nay, of the most mysterious, the most perplexing and incomprehensible character.  My senses were here and there at one and the same moment.  With my head I imagined, at one time, that I, the head, was the real Signora Psyche Zenobia —­ at another I felt convinced that myself, the body, was the proper identity.  To clear my ideas on this topic I felt in my pocket for my snuff-box, but, upon getting it, and endeavoring to apply a pinch of its grateful contents in the ordinary manner, I became immediately aware of my peculiar deficiency, and threw the box at once down to my head.  It took a pinch with great satisfaction, and smiled me an acknowledgement in return.  Shortly afterward it made me a speech, which I could hear but indistinctly without ears.  I gathered enough, however, to know that it was astonished at my wishing to remain alive under such circumstances.  In the concluding sentences it quoted the noble words of Ariosto—­

Il pover hommy che non sera corty

And have a combat tenty erry morty; thus comparing me to the hero who, in the heat of the combat, not perceiving that he was dead, continued to contest the battle with inextinguishable valor.  There was nothing now to prevent my getting down from my elevation, and I did so.  What it was that Pompey saw so very peculiar in my appearance I have never yet been able to find out.  The fellow opened his mouth from ear to ear, and shut his two eyes as if he were endeavoring to crack nuts between the lids.  Finally, throwing off his overcoat, he made one spring for the staircase and disappeared.  I hurled after the scoundrel these vehement words of Demosthenes-