He got up as well as he could, and looked about him.

No one was there but the two gentlemen opposite, who were mechanically lanching their last kicks into the empty space, and rubbing their eyes with their arms.

He succeeded in awakening them, and asked them about the visitation he had had; but the gentlemen declared they had seen nothing.
Meiser sadly returned to his own thoughts; he noticed that the visions appeared terribly real.

This idea prevented his going to sleep again.
"If this goes on much longer," thought he, "the Colonel's ghost will break my nose with a blow of his fist, or give me a pair of black eyes!" A little later, it occurred to him that he had breakfasted very hastily that morning, and he reflected that the nightmare had perhaps been brought about by such dieting.
He got off at the next five-minute stopping-place and called for soup.
Some very hot vermicelli was brought him, and he blew into his bowl like a dolphin into the Bosphorus.
A man passed before him, without jostling him, without saying anything to him, without even seeing him.

And nevertheless, the bowl dropped from the hands of the rich Nicholas Meiser, the vermicelli poured over his waistcoat and shirt-bosom, where it formed an elegant fretwork suggestive of the architecture of the _porte Saint Martin_.