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and read them over. He considered them to be the centre of his true life, but there was no one on earth with whom he could share them. As he had once written:
    Still and inert my mental powers lie
    Without the quick’ning spark of Sympathy.
    He believed that he might obtain that from Charles Lamb and his friends. But he could never have crossed the room. There was a gulf too deep; it was the gulf of self-abnegation.
             
    W ILLIAM GUIDED CHARLES down the narrow street, avoiding the pump and making sure that he did not fall against the damp and sooty brick wall of the bakery on the corner. It was called “Stride. Our Baker.” Every weekday morning—what he called a “school morning”—Charles would pick up a penny loaf and eat it on his way to Leadenhall Street. Now he passed it without recognition. Only by instinct did he climb the steps from the cobbled pavement to his own door. William stood behind him as he fumbled for his keys, but then the door was opened by a young woman. William walked quickly down Laystall Street, for some reason fearful of being seen by her.
    But Mary Lamb had not noticed him at all, intent only on helping her brother once more across the threshold of their little house.
             
    H OW DO YOU know it?”
    “How do I know your address, Mr. Lamb? I escorted you home the other evening. There is no reason why you should remember.” He managed to suggest that it was his own insignificance, rather than Charles’s drunkenness, that had caused this lapse of memory.
    “From the Salutation?”
    William nodded.
    Charles had grace enough to blush; but his voice was composed. He had a strange relationship with his drunken self; he considered him to be an unhappy and unfortunate acquaintance to whom he had become accustomed. He would neither defend him nor apologise for him. He would simply recognise his existence. “Well, I am obliged to you.
    Could you call this evening?”
    They shook hands. Charles stepped out of the bookshop, looking left and right before he walked out of the dark passage into High Holborn. He joined the throng of carriages and pedestrians, all moving eastward into the City. It was for him a motley parade, part funeral procession and part pantomime, evincing to him the fullness and variety of life in all its aspects—before the City swallowed it up. The sound of footsteps on the cobbles mingled with the rumble of the carriage wheels and the echo of horse hooves to make what Charles considered to be a uniquely city sound. It was the music of movement itself. There were caps and bonnets and hats bobbing in the distance; there were purple frock-coats and green jackets, striped topcoats and checked surtouts, umbrellas and great woollen parti-coloured shawls, all around him. Charles himself always dressed in black and, being surprisingly angular, he resembled a young and awkward clergyman. A flying pie man knew him by sight, and sold him a veal pastie.
    He was part of the crowd. There were times when this brought him comfort, when he considered himself to be part of the texture of life. There were occasions when it merely reinforced his sense of failure. More often than not, however, it spurred his ambition. He envisaged the days when, from his comfortable library or writing-room, he would be able to hear the crowd passing by.
    He knew the road so well that he scarcely noticed it. He was borne along past Snow Hill and Newgate, along Cheapside, and up Cornhill, until he found himself in Leadenhall Street. It was as if he had been fired from a cannon into the pillared portico of the East India House. It was an old mansion house, from the days of Queen Anne, built of brick and stone and powerfully reinforced by a great cupola that cast a shadow on an already dark and dusty Leadenhall Street. Charles squeezed the arm of the door-keeper as he passed him, and whispered, “Vermiculated rustication.” They had been debating, the previous Saturday, the name of the