MAY 8. What a lovely day! I have spent all the morning lying on the
grass in front of my house, under the enormous plantain tree which
covers and shades and shelters the whole of it. I like this part of the
country; I am fond of living here because I am attached to it by deep
roots, the profound and delicate roots which attach a man to the soil
on which his ancestors were born and died, to their traditions, their
usages, their food, the local expressions, the peculiar language of the
peasants, the smell of the soil, the hamlets, and to the atmosphere
itself.
I love the house in which I grew up. From my windows I can see the
Seine, which flows by the side of my garden, on the other side of the
road, almost through my grounds, the great and wide Seine, which goes
to Rouen and Havre, and which is covered with boats passing to and fro.
On the left, down yonder, lies Rouen, populous Rouen with its blue
roofs massing under pointed, Gothic towers. Innumerable are they,
delicate or broad, dominated by the spire of the cathedral, full of
bells which sound through the blue air on fine mornings, sending their
sweet and distant iron clang to me, their metallic sounds, now stronger
and now weaker, according as the wind is strong or light.
What a delicious morning it was! About eleven o'clock, a long line of
boats drawn by a steam-tug, as big a fly, and which scarcely puffed
while emitting its thick smoke, passed my gate.
After two English schooners, whose red flags fluttered toward the sky,
there came a magnificent Brazilian three-master; it was perfectly white
and wonderfully clean and shining. I saluted it, I hardly know why,
except that the sight of the vessel gave me great pleasure.
May 12. I have had a slight feverish attack for the last few days, and
I feel ill, or rather I feel low-spirited.
Whence come those mysterious influences which change our happiness into
discouragement, and our self-confidence into diffidence? One might
almost say that the air, the invisible air, is full of unknowable
Forces, whose mysterious presence we have to endure. I wake up in the
best of spirits, with an inclination to sing in my heart. Why? I go
down by the side of the water, and suddenly, after walking a short
distance, I return home wretched, as if some misfortune were awaiting
me there. Why? Is it a cold shiver which, passing over my skin, has
upset my nerves and given me a fit of low spirits? Is it the form of
the clouds, or the tints of the sky, or the colors of the surrounding
objects which are so change-able, which have troubled my thoughts as
they passed before my eyes? Who can tell? Everything that surrounds us,
everything that we see without looking at it, everything that we touch
without knowing it, everything that we handle without feeling it,
everything that we meet without clearly distinguishing it, has a rapid,
surprising, and inexplicable effect upon us and upon our organs, and
through them on our ideas and on our being itself.
How profound that mystery of the Invisible is! We cannot fathom it with
our miserable senses: our eyes are unable to perceive what is either
too small or too great, too near to or too far from us; we can see
neither the inhabitants of a star nor of a drop of water; our ears
deceive us, for they transmit to us the vibrations of the air in
sonorous notes. Our senses are fairies who work the miracle of changing
that movement into noise, and by that metamorphosis give birth to
music, which makes the mute agitation of nature a harmony. So with our
sense of smell, which is weaker than that of a dog, and so with our
sense of taste, which can scarcely distinguish the age of a wine!
Oh! If we only had other organs which could work other miracles in our
favor, what a number of fresh things we might discover around us!
May 16. I am ill, decidedly! I was so well last month! I am feverish,
horribly feverish, or rather I am in a state of feverish enervation,
which makes my mind suffer as much as my body. I have without ceasing
the horrible sensation of some danger threatening me, the apprehension
of some coming misfortune or of approaching death, a presentiment which
is no doubt, an attack of some illness still unnamed, which germinates
in the flesh and in the blood.
May 18. I have just come from consulting my medical man, for I can no
longer get any sleep. He found that my pulse was high, my eyes dilated,
my nerves highly strung, but no alarming symptoms. I must have a course
of shower baths and of bromide of potassium.
May 25. No change! My state is really very peculiar. As the evening
comes on, an incomprehensible feeling of disquietude seizes me, just as
if night concealed some terrible menace toward me. I dine quickly, and
then try to read, but I do not understand the words, and can scarcely
distinguish the letters. Then I walk up and down my drawing-room,
oppressed by a feeling of confused and irresistible fear, a fear of
sleep and a fear of my bed.
About ten o'clock I go up to my room. As soon as I have entered I lock
and bolt the door. I am frightened--of what? Up till the present time I
have been frightened of nothing. I open my cupboards, and look under my
bed; I listen--I listen--to what? How strange it is that a simple
feeling of discomfort, of impeded or heightened circulation, perhaps
the irritation of a nervous center, a slight congestion, a small
disturbance in the imperfect and delicate functions of our living
machinery, can turn the most light-hearted of men into a melancholy
one, and make a coward of the bravest? Then, I go to bed, and I wait
for sleep as a man might wait for the executioner. I wait for its
coming with dread, and my heart beats and my legs tremble, while my
whole body shivers beneath the warmth of the bedclothes, until the
moment when I suddenly fall asleep, as a man throws himself into a pool
of stagnant water in order to drown. I do not feel this perfidious
sleep coming over me as I used to, but a sleep which is close to me and
watching me, which is going to seize me by the head, to close my eyes
and annihilate me.
I sleep--a long time--two or three hours perhaps--then a dream--no--a
nightmare lays hold on me. I feel that I am in bed and asleep--I feel
it and I know it--and I feel also that somebody is coming close to me,
is looking at me, touching me, is getting on to my bed, is kneeling on
my chest, is taking my neck between his hands and squeezing
it--squeezing it with all his might in order to strangle me.
I struggle, bound by that terrible powerlessness which paralyzes us in
our dreams; I try to cry out--but I cannot; I want to move--I cannot; I
try, with the most violent efforts and out of breath, to turn over and
throw off this being which is crushing and suffocating me--I cannot!
And then suddenly I wake up, shaken and bathed in perspiration; I light
a candle and find that I am alone, and after that crisis, which occurs
every night, I at length fall asleep and slumber tranquilly till
morning.
June 2. My state has grown worse. What is the matter with me? The
bromide does me no good, and the shower-baths have no effect whatever.
Sometimes, in order to tire myself out, though I am fatigued enough
already, I go for a walk in the forest of Roumare. I used to think at
first that the fresh light and soft air, impregnated with the odor of
herbs and leaves, would instill new life into my veins and impart fresh
energy to my heart. One day I turned into a broad ride in the wood, and
then I diverged toward La Bouille, through a narrow path, between two
rows of exceedingly tall trees, which placed a thick, green, almost
black roof between the sky and me.
A sudden shiver ran through me, not a cold shiver, but a shiver of
agony, and so I hastened my steps, uneasy at being alone in the wood,
frightened stupidly and without reason, at the profound solitude.
Suddenly it seemed as if I were being followed, that somebody was
walking at my heels, close, quite close to me, near enough to touch me.
I turned round suddenly, but I was alone. I saw nothing behind me
except the straight, broad ride, empty and bordered by high trees,
horribly empty; on the other side also it extended until it was lost in
the distance, and looked just the same--terrible.
I closed my eyes. Why? And then I began to turn round on one heel very
quickly, just like a top. I nearly fell down, and opened my eyes; the
trees were dancing round me and the earth heaved; I was obliged to sit
down. Then, ah! I no longer remembered how I had come! What a strange
idea! What a strange, strange idea! I did not the least know. I started
off to the right, and got back into the avenue which had led me into
the middle of the forest.
June 3. I have had a terrible night. I shall go away for a few weeks,
for no doubt a journey will set me up again.
July 2. I have come back, quite cured, and have had a most delightful
trip into the bargain. I have been to Mont Saint-Michel, which I had
not seen before.
What a sight, when one arrives as I did, at Avranches toward the end of
the day! The town stands on a hill, and I was taken into the public
garden at the extremity of the town. I uttered a cry of astonishment.
An extraordinarily large bay lay extended before me, as far as my eyes
could reach, between two hills which were lost to sight in the mist;
and in the middle of this immense yellow bay, under a clear, golden
sky, a peculiar hill rose up, somber and pointed in the midst of the
sand. The sun had just disappeared, and under the still flaming sky
stood out the outline of that fantastic rock which bears on its summit
a picturesque monument.
At daybreak I went to it. The tide was low, as it had been the night
before, and I saw that wonderful abbey rise up before me as I
approached it. After several hours' walking, I reached the enormous
mass of rock which supports the little town, dominated by the great
church. Having climbed the steep and narrow street, I entered the most
wonderful Gothic building that has ever been erected to God on earth,
large as a town, and full of low rooms which seem buried beneath
vaulted roofs, and of lofty galleries supported by delicate columns.
I entered this gigantic granite jewel, which is as light in its effect
as a bit of lace and is covered with towers, with slender belfries to
which spiral staircases ascend. The flying buttresses raise strange
heads that bristle with chimeras, with devils, with fantastic ani-mals,
with monstrous flowers, are joined together by finely carved arches, to
the blue sky by day, and to the black sky by night.
When I had reached the summit. I said to the monk who accompanied me:
"Father, how happy you must be here!" And he replied: "It is very
windy, Monsieur"; and so we began to talk while watching the rising
tide, which ran over the sand and covered it with a steel cuirass.
And then the monk told me stories, all the old stories belonging to the
place--legends, nothing but legends.
One of them struck me forcibly. The country people, those belonging to
the Mornet, declare that at night one can hear talking going on in the
sand, and also that two goats bleat, one with a strong, the other with
a weak voice. Incredulous people declare that it is nothing but the
screaming of the sea birds, which occasionally resembles bleatings, and
occasionally human lamentations; but belated fishermen swear that they
have met an old shepherd, whose cloak covered head they can never see,
wandering on the sand, between two tides, round the little town placed
so far out of the world. They declare he is guiding and walking before
a he-goat with a man's face and a she-goat with a woman's face, both
with white hair, who talk incessantly, quarreling in a strange
language, and then suddenly cease talking in order to bleat with all
their might.
"Do you believe it?" I asked the monk. "I scarcely know," he replied;
and I continued: "If there are other beings besides ourselves on this
earth, how comes it that we have not known it for so long a time, or
why have you not seen them? How is it that I have not seen them?"
He replied: "Do we see the hundred-thousandth part of what exists? Look
here; there is the wind, which is the strongest force in nature. It
knocks down men, and blows down buildings, uproots trees, raises the
sea into mountains of water, destroys cliffs and casts great ships on
to the breakers; it kills, it whistles, it sighs, it roars. But have
you ever seen it, and can you see it? Yet it exists for all that."
I was silent before this simple reasoning. That man was a philosopher,
or perhaps a fool; I could not say which exactly, so I held my tongue.
What he had said had often been in my own thoughts.
July 3. I have slept badly; certainly there is some feverish influence
here, for my coachman is suffering in the same way as I am. When I went
back home yesterday, I noticed his singular paleness, and I asked him:
"What is the matter with you, Jean?"
"The matter is that I never get any rest, and my nights devour my days.
Since your departure, Monsieur, there has been a spell over me."
However, the other servants are all well, but I am very frightened of
having another attack, myself.
July 4. I am decidedly taken again; for my old nightmares have
returned. Last night I felt somebody leaning on me who was sucking my
life from between my lips with his mouth. Yes, he was sucking it out of
my neck like a leech would have done. Then he got up, satiated, and I
woke up, so beaten, crushed, and annihilated that I could not move. If
this continues for a few days, I shall certainly go away again.
July 5. Have I lost my reason? What has happened? What I saw last night
is so strange that my head wanders when I think of it!
As I do now every evening, I had locked my door; then, being thirsty, I
drank half a glass of water, and I accidentally noticed that the
water-bottle was full up to the cut-glass stopper.
Then I went to bed and fell into one of my terrible sleeps, from which
I was aroused in about two hours by a still more terrible shock.
Picture to yourself a sleeping man who is being murdered, who wakes up
with a knife in his chest, a gurgling in his throat, is covered with
blood, can no longer breathe, is going to die and does not understand
anything at all about it--there you have it.
Having recovered my senses, I was thirsty again, so I lighted a candle
and went to the table on which my water-bottle was. I lifted it up and
tilted it over my glass, but nothing came out. It was empty! It was
completely empty! At first I could not understand it at all; then
suddenly I was seized by such a terrible feeling that I had to sit
down, or rather fall into a chair! Then I sprang up with a bound to
look about me; then I sat down again, overcome by astonishment and
fear, in front of the transparent crystal bottle! I looked at it with
fixed eyes, trying to solve the puzzle, and my hands trembled! Some
body had drunk the water, but who? I? I without any doubt. It could
surely only be I? In that case I was a somnambulist--was living,
without knowing it, that double, mysterious life which makes us doubt
whether there are not two beings in us--whether a strange, unknowable,
and invisible being does not, during our moments of mental and physical
torpor, animate the inert body, forcing it to a more willing obedience
than it yields to ourselves.
Oh! Who will understand my horrible agony? Who will understand the
emotion of a man sound in mind, wide-awake, full of sense, who looks in
horror at the disappearance of a little water while he was asleep,
through the glass of a water-bottle! And I remained sitting until it
was daylight, without venturing to go to bed again.
July 6. I am going mad. Again all the contents of my water-bottle have
been drunk during the night; or rather I have drunk it!
But is it I? Is it I? Who could it be? Who? Oh! God! Am I going mad?
Who will save me?
July 10. I have just been through some surprising ordeals. Undoubtedly
I must be mad! And yet!
On July 6, before going to bed, I put some wine, milk, water, bread,
and strawberries on my table. Somebody drank--I drank--all the water
and a little of the milk, but neither the wine, nor the bread, nor the
strawberries were touched.
On the seventh of July I renewed the same experiment, with the same
results, and on July 8 I left out the water and the milk and nothing
was touched.
Lastly, on July 9 I put only water and milk on my table, taking care to
wrap up the bottles in white muslin and to tie down the stoppers. Then
I rubbed my lips, my beard, and my hands with pencil lead, and went to
bed.
Deep slumber seized me, soon followed by a terrible awakening. I had
not moved, and my sheets were not marked. I rushed to the table. The
muslin round the bottles remained intact; I undid the string, trembling
with fear. All the water had been drunk, and so had the milk! Ah! Great
God! I must start for Paris immediately.
July 12. Paris. I must have lost my head during the last few days! I
must be the plaything of my enervated imagination, unless I am really a
somnambulist, or I have been brought under the power of one of those
influences--hypnotic suggestion, for example--which are known to exist,
but have hitherto been inexplicable. In any case, my mental state
bordered on madness, and twenty-four hours of Paris sufficed to restore
me to my equilibrium.
Yesterday after doing some business and paying some visits, which
instilled fresh and invigorating mental air into me, I wound up my
evening at the Theatre Francais. A drama by Alexander Dumas the Younger
was being acted, and his brilliant and powerful play completed my cure.
Certainly solitude is dangerous for active minds. We need men who can
think and can talk, around us. When we are alone for a long time, we
people space with phantoms.
I returned along the boulevards to my hotel in excellent spirits. Amid
the jostling of the crowd I thought, not without irony, of my terrors
and surmises of the previous week, because I believed, yes, I believed,
that an invisible being lived beneath my roof. How weak our mind is;
how quickly it is terrified and unbalanced as soon as we are confronted
with a small, incomprehensible fact. Instead of dismissing the problem
with: "We do not understand because we cannot find the cause," we
immediately imagine terrible mysteries and supernatural powers.
July 14. Fete of the Republic. I walked through the streets, and the
crackers and flags amused me like a child. Still, it is very foolish to
make merry on a set date, by Government decree. People are like a flock
of sheep, now steadily patient, now in ferocious revolt. Say to it:
"Amuse yourself," and it amuses itself. Say to it: "Go and fight with
your neighbor," and it goes and fights. Say to it: "Vote for the
Emperor," and it votes for the Emperor; then say to it: "Vote for the
Republic," and it votes for the Republic.
Those who direct it are stupid, too; but instead of obeying men they
obey principles, a course which can only be foolish, ineffective, and
false, for the very reason that principles are ideas which are
considered as certain and unchangeable, whereas in this world one is
certain of nothing, since light is an illusion and noise is deception.
July 16. I saw some things yesterday that troubled me very much. I was
dining at my cousin's, Madame Sable, whose husband is colonel of the
Seventy-sixth Chasseurs at Limoges. There were two young women there,
one of whom had married a medical man, Dr. Parent, who devotes himself
a great deal to nervous diseases and to the extraordinary
manifestations which just now experiments in hypnotism and suggestion
are producing.
He related to us at some length the enormous results obtained by
English scientists and the doctors of the medical school at Nancy, and
the facts which he adduced appeared to me so strange, that I declared
that I was altogether incredulous.
"We are," he declared, "on the point of discovering one of the most
important secrets of nature, I mean to say, one of its most important
secrets on this earth, for assuredly there are some up in the stars,
yonder, of a different kind of importance. Ever since man has thought,
since he has been able to express and write down his thoughts, he has
felt himself close to a mystery which is impenetrable to his coarse and
imperfect senses, and he endeavors to supplement the feeble penetration
of his organs by the efforts of his intellect. As long as that
intellect remained in its elementary stage, this intercourse with
invisible spirits assumed forms which were commonplace though
terrifying. Thence sprang the popular belief in the supernatural, the
legends of wandering spirits, of fairies, of gnomes, of ghosts, I might
even say the conception of God, for our ideas of the Workman-Creator,
from whatever religion they may have come down to us, are certainly the
most mediocre, the stupidest, and the most unacceptable inventions that
ever sprang from the frightened brain of any human creature. Nothing is
truer than what Voltaire says: 'If God made man in His own image, man
has certainly paid Him back again.'
"But for rather more than a century, men seem to have had a
presentiment of something new. Mesmer and some others have put us on an
unexpected track, and within the last two or three years especially, we
have arrived at results really surprising."
My cousin, who is also very incredulous, smiled, and Dr. Parent said to
her: "Would you like me to try and send you to sleep, Madame?"
"Yes, certainly."
She sat down in an easy-chair, and he began to look at her fixedly, as
if to fascinate her. I suddenly felt myself somewhat discomposed; my
heart beat rapidly and I had a choking feeling in my throat. I saw that
Madame Sable's eyes were growing heavy, her mouth twitched, and her
bosom heaved, and at the end of ten minutes she was asleep.
"Go behind her," the doctor said to me; so I took a seat behind her. He
put a visiting-card into her hands, and said to her: "This is a
looking-glass; what do you see in it?"