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.
Irresistible sleep seized me, which was 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 12th._ 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 that I have been brought under the power of one
of those influences which have been proved to exist, but which have
hitherto been inexplicable, which are called suggestions. 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 _Théâtre Français_. A play by Alexandre Dumas the
Younger was being acted, and his active and powerful mind completed my
cure. Certainly solitude is dangerous for active minds. We require 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 head is,
and how quickly it is terrified and goes astray, as soon as we are
struck by a small, incomprehensible fact.
Instead of concluding with these simple words: “I do not understand
because the cause escapes me,” we immediately imagine terrible
mysteries and supernatural powers.
_July 14th._ Fête of the Republic. I walked through the streets, and
the crackers and flags amused me like a child. Still it is very foolish
to be merry on a fixed date, by a Government decree. The populace is
an imbecile flock of sheep, now steadily patient, and 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, and then say to
it: “Vote for the Republic,” and it votes for the Republic.
Those who direct it are also stupid; but instead of obeying men they
obey principles, which can only be stupid, sterile, and false, for the
very reason that they are principles, that is to say, ideas which are
considered as certain and unchangeable, in this world where one is
certain of nothing, since light is an illusion and noise is an illusion.
_July 16th._ I saw some things yesterday that troubled me very much.
I was dining at my cousin’s Madame Sablé, whose husband is colonel of
the 76th 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 the extraordinary manifestations to which
at this moment experiments in hypnotism and suggestion give rise.
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 there are certainly some which are of a
different kind of importance up in the stars, yonder. 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
want of power of his organs by the efforts of his intellect. As long as
that intellect still 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, ghosts, I might
even say the legend of God, for our conceptions 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 creatures. Nothing
is truer than what Voltaire says: ‘God made man in His own image, but
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 especially within the last two or three years, we
have arrived at really surprising results.”
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, so
as to fascinate her. I suddenly felt myself somewhat uncomfortable,
with a beating heart and a choking feeling in my throat. I saw that
Madame Sablé’s eyes were growing heavy, her mouth twitched and her
bosom heaved, and at the end of ten minutes she was asleep.
“Stand behind her,” the doctor said to me, and 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?” And she replied: “I see my
cousin.” “What is he doing?” “He is twisting his moustache.” “And now?”
“He is taking a photograph out of his pocket.” “Whose photograph is
it?” “His own.”
That was true, and that photograph had been given me that same evening
at the hotel.
“What is his attitude in this portrait?” “He is standing up with his
hat in his hand.”
So she saw on that card, on that piece of white pasteboard, as if she
had seen it in a looking-glass.
The young women were frightened, and exclaimed: “That is quite enough!
Quite, quite enough!”
But the doctor said to her authoritatively: “You will get up at eight
o’clock to-morrow morning; then you will go and call on your cousin
at his hotel and ask him to lend you five thousand francs which your
husband demands of you, and which he will ask for when he sets out on
his coming journey.”
Then he woke her up.
On returning to my hotel, I thought over this curious _séance_ and I
was assailed by doubts, not as to my cousin’s absolute and undoubted
good faith, for I had known her as well as if she had been my own
sister ever since she was a child, but as to a possible trick on the
doctor’s part. Had not he, perhaps, kept a glass hidden in his hand,
which he showed to the young woman in her sleep, at the same time as
he did the card? Professional conjurers do things which are just as
singular.
So I went home and to bed, and this morning, at about half past eight,
I was awakened by my footman, who said to me: “Madame Sablé has asked
to see you immediately, Monsieur,” so I dressed hastily and went to her.
She sat down in some agitation, with her eyes on the floor, and without
raising her veil she said to me: “My dear cousin, I am going to ask a
great favor of you.” “What is it, cousin?” “I do not like to tell you,
and yet I must. I am in absolute want of five thousand francs.” “What,
you?” “Yes, I, or rather my husband, who has asked me to procure them
for him.”
I was so stupefied that I stammered out my answers. I asked myself
whether she had not really been making fun of me with Doctor Parent,
if it were not merely a very well-acted farce which had been got
up beforehand. On looking at her attentively, however, my doubts
disappeared. She was trembling with grief, so painful was this step to
her, and I was sure that her throat was full of sobs.
I knew that she was very rich and so I continued: “What! Has not your
husband five thousand francs at his disposal! Come, think. Are you sure
that he commissioned you to ask me for them?”
She hesitated for a few seconds, as if she were making a great effort
to search her memory, and then she replied: “Yes ... yes, I am quite
sure of it.” “He has written to you?”
She hesitated again and reflected, and I guessed the torture of her
thoughts. She did not know. She only knew that she was to borrow five
thousand francs of me for her husband. So she told a lie. “Yes, he has
written to me.” “When, pray? You did not mention it to me yesterday.”
“I received his letter this morning.” “Can you show it me?” “No; no
... no ... it contained private matters ... things too personal to
ourselves.... I burnt it.” “So your husband runs into debt?”
She hesitated again, and then murmured: “I do not know.” Thereupon I
said bluntly: “I have not five thousand francs at my disposal at this
moment, my dear cousin.”
She uttered a kind of cry as if she were in pain and said: “Oh! oh! I
beseech you, I beseech you to get them for me....”
She got excited and clasped her hands as if she were praying to me! I
heard her voice change its tone; she wept and stammered, harassed and
dominated by the irresistible order that she had received.
“Oh! oh! I beg you to ... if you knew what I am suffering.... I want
them to-day.”
I had pity on her: “You shall have them by and by, I swear to you.”
“Oh! thank you! thank you! How kind you are!”
I continued: “Do you remember what took place at your house last
night?” “Yes.” “Do you remember that Doctor Parent sent you to sleep?”
“Yes.” “Oh! Very well then; he ordered you to come to me this morning
to borrow five thousand francs, and at this moment you are obeying that
suggestion.”
She considered for a few moments, and then replied: “But as it is my
husband who wants them....”
For a whole hour I tried to convince her, but could not succeed, and
when she had gone I went to the doctor. He was just going out, and he
listened to me with a smile, and said: “Do you believe now?” “Yes, I
cannot help it.” “Let us go to your cousin’s.”
She was already dozing on a couch, overcome with fatigue. The doctor
felt her pulse, looked at her for some time with one hand raised toward
her eyes which she closed by degrees under the irresistible power of
this influence, and when she was asleep, he said:
“Your husband does not require the five thousand francs any longer! You
must, therefore, forget that you asked your cousin to lend them to you,
and, if he speaks to you about it, you will not understand him.”
Then he woke her up, and I took out a pocketbook and said: “Here is
what you asked me for this morning, my dear cousin.” But she was so
surprised that I did not venture to persist; nevertheless, I tried to
recall the circumstance to her, but she denied it vigorously, thought
that I was making fun of her, and in the end very nearly lost her
temper.
* * * * *
There! I have just come back, and I have not been able to eat my lunch,
for this experiment has altogether upset me.
_July 19th._ Many people to whom I have told the adventure have laughed
at me. I no longer know what to think. The wise man says: Perhaps?
_July 21st._ I dined at Bougival, and then I spent the evening at a
boatmen’s ball. Decidedly everything depends on place and surroundings.
It would be the height of folly to believe in the supernatural on the
_île de la Grenouillière_[1] ... but on the top of Mont Saint-Michel?
... and in India? We are terribly under the influence of our
surroundings. I shall return home next week.
[1] Frog Island.
_July 30th._ I came back to my own house yesterday. Everything is going
on well.
_August 2d._ Nothing fresh; it is splendid weather, and I spend my days
in watching the Seine flow past.
_August 4th._ Quarrels among my servants. They declare that the glasses
are broken in the cupboards at night. The footman accuses the cook, who
accuses the needlewoman, who accuses the other two. Who is the culprit?
A clever person, to be able to tell.
_August 6th._ This time I am not mad. I have seen ... I have seen ... I
have seen!... I can doubt no longer ... I have seen it!...
I was walking at two o’clock among my rose trees, in the full sunlight
... in the walk bordered by autumn roses which are beginning to fall.
As I stopped to look at a _Géant de Bataille_, which had three splendid
blooms, I distinctly saw the stalks of one of the roses bend, close to
me, as if an invisible hand had bent it, and then break, as if that
hand had picked it! Then the flower raised itself, following the curve
a hand would have described in carrying it toward the mouth, and it
remained suspended in the transparent air, all alone and motionless, a
terrible red spot, three yards from my eyes. In desperation I rushed
at it to take it! I found nothing; it had disappeared. Then I was
seized with furious rage against myself, for it is not allowable for a
reasonable and serious man to have such hallucinations.
But what is an hallucination? I turned round to look for the stalk,
and I found it immediately under the bush, freshly broken, between two
other roses which remained on the branch, and I returned home then,
with a much disturbed mind; for I am certain now, as certain as I am
of the alternation of day and night, that there exists close to me
an invisible being that lives on milk and on water, which can touch
objects, take them and change their places; which is, consequently,
endowed with a material nature, although it is impossible to our
senses, and which lives as I do, under my roof....
_August 7th._ I slept tranquilly. He drank the water out of my
decanter, but did not disturb my sleep.
I ask myself whether I am mad. As I was walking just now in the sun
by the riverside, doubts as to my own sanity arose in me; not vague
doubts such as I have had hitherto, but precise and absolute doubts.
I have seen mad people, and I have known some who have been quite
intelligent, lucid, even clear-sighted in every concern of life, except
on one point. They spoke clearly, readily, profoundly, on everything,
when suddenly their thoughts struck upon the breakers of their madness
and broke to pieces there, and were dispersed and foundered in that
furious and terrible sea, full of bounding waves, fogs and squalls,
which is called _madness_.
I certainly should think that I was mad, absolutely mad, if I were
not conscious, did not perfectly know my state, if I did fathom it
by analyzing it with the most complete lucidity. I should, in fact,
be a reasonable man who was laboring under an hallucination. Some
unknown disturbance must have been excited in my brain, one of those
disturbances which physiologists of the present day try to note and fix
precisely, and that disturbance must have caused a profound gulf in my
mind and in the order and logic of my ideas. Similar phenomena occur
in the dreams which lead us through the most unlikely phantasmagoria,
without causing us any surprise, because our verifying apparatus and
our sense of control have gone to sleep, while our imaginative faculty
wakes and works. Is it not possible that one of the imperceptible keys
of the cerebral finger-board has been paralyzed in me? Some men lose
the recollection of proper names, or of verbs, or of numbers, or merely
of dates, in consequence of the accident. The localization of all the
particles of thought have been proved nowadays; what then would there
be surprising in the fact that my faculty controlling the uncertain
reality of my hallucinations should be destroyed for the time being!
I thought of all this as I walked by the side of the water. The sun
was shining brightly on the river and made earth delightful, while it
filled my looks with love for life, for the swallows, whose agility is
always delightful in my eyes, for the plants by the riverside, whose
rustling is a pleasure to my ears.
By degrees, however, an inexplicable feeling of discomfort seized me.
It seemed to me as if some unknown force were numbing and stopping me,
were preventing me from going farther and were calling me back. I felt
that painful wish to return which oppresses you when you have left a
beloved invalid at home, and when you are seized by a presentiment that
he is worse.
I, therefore, returned in spite of myself, feeling certain that I
should find some bad news awaiting me, a letter or a telegram. There
was nothing, however, and I was more surprised and uneasy than if I had
had another fantastic vision.
_August 8th._ I spent a terrible evening yesterday. He does not show
himself any more, but I feel that he is near me, watching me, looking
at me, penetrating me, dominating me, and more redoubtable when he
hides himself thus than if he were to manifest his constant and
invisible presence by supernatural phenomena. However, I slept.
_August 9th._ Nothing; but I am afraid.
_August 10th._ Nothing; what will happen tomorrow?
_August 11th._ Still nothing; I cannot stop at home with this fear
hanging over me and these thoughts in my mind; I shall go away.
_August 12th._ Ten o’clock at night. All day long I have been trying to
get away, and have not been able. I wished to accomplish this simple
and easy act of liberty--go out--get into my carriage in order to go to
Rouen--and I have not been able to do it. What is the reason?
_August 13th._ When one is attacked by certain maladies, all the
springs of our physical being appear to be broken, all our energies
destroyed, all our muscles relaxed, our bones to have become as soft as
our flesh, and our blood as liquid as water. I am experiencing that in
my moral being in a strange and distressing manner. I have no longer
any strength, any courage, any self-control, nor even any power to set
my own will in motion. I have no power left to _will_ anything, but
someone does it for me and I obey.
_August 14th._ I am lost! Somebody possesses my soul and governs it!
Somebody orders all my acts, all my movements, all my thoughts. I am
no longer anything in myself, nothing except an enslaved and terrified
spectator of all the things which I do. I wish to go out; I cannot. He
does not wish to, and so I remain, trembling and distracted, in the
armchair in which he keeps me sitting. I merely wish to get up and
to rouse myself, so as to think that I am still master of myself: I
cannot! I am riveted to my chair, and my chair adheres to the ground in
such a manner that no force could move us.
Then suddenly, I must, I must go to the bottom of my garden to pick
some strawberries and eat them, and I go there. I pick the strawberries
and I eat them! Oh! my God! my God! Is there a God? If there be one,
deliver me! save me! succor me! Pardon! Pity! Mercy! Save me! Oh! what
sufferings! what torture! what horror!
_August 15th._ Certainly this is the way in which my poor cousin was
possessed and swayed, when she came to borrow five thousand francs of
me. She was under the power of a strange will which had entered into
her, like another soul, like another parasitic and ruling soul. Is the
world coming to an end?
But who is he, this invisible being that rules me? This unknowable
being, this rover of a supernatural race?
Invisible beings exist, then! How is it then that since the beginning
of the world they have never manifested themselves in such a manner
precisely as they do to me? I have never read anything which resembles
what goes on in my house. Oh! If I could only leave it, if I could
only go away and flee, so as never to return, I should be saved; but I
cannot.
_August 16th._ I managed to escape to-day for two hours, like a
prisoner who finds the door of his dungeon accidentally open. I
suddenly felt that I was free and that he was far away, and so I gave
orders to put the horses in as quickly as possible, and I drove to
Rouen. Oh! How delightful to be able to say to a man who obeyed you:
“Go to Rouen!”
I made him pull up before the library, and I begged them to lend me
Dr. Herrmann Herestauss’s treatise on the unknown inhabitants of the
ancient and modern world.
Then, as I was getting into my carriage, I intended to say: “To the
railway station!” but instead of this I shouted--I did not say, but I
shouted--in such a loud voice that all the passers-by turned round:
“Home!” and I fell back onto the cushion of my carriage, overcome by
mental agony. He had found me out and regained possession of me.
_August 17th._ Oh! What a night! what a night! And yet it seems to
me that I ought to rejoice. I read until one o’clock in the morning!
Herestauss, Doctor of Philosophy and Theogony, wrote the history and
the manifestation of all those invisible beings which hover around man,
or of whom he dreams. He describes their origin, their domains, their
power; but none of them resembles the one which haunts me. One might
say that man, ever since he has thought, has had a foreboding of, and
feared a new being, stronger than himself, his successor in this world,
and that, feeling him near, and not being able to foretell the nature
of that master, he has, in his terror, created the whole race of hidden
beings, of vague phantoms born of fear.
Having, therefore, read until one o’clock in the morning, I went and
sat down at the open window, in order to cool my forehead and my
thoughts, in the calm night air. It was very pleasant and warm! How I
should have enjoyed such a night formerly!
There was no moon, but the stars darted out their rays in the dark
heavens. Who inhabits those worlds? What forms, what living beings,
what animals are there yonder? What do those who are thinkers in those
distant worlds know more than we do? What can they do more than we
can? What do they see which we do not know? Will not one of them, some
day or other, traversing space, appear on our earth to conquer it, just
as the Norsemen formerly crossed the sea in order to subjugate nations
more feeble than themselves?
We are so weak, so unarmed, so ignorant, so small, we who live on this
particle of mud which turns round in a drop of water.
I fell asleep, dreaming this in the cool night air, and then, having
slept for about three quarters of an hour, I opened my eyes without
moving, awakened by I know not what confused and strange sensation.
At first I saw nothing, and then suddenly it appeared to me as if a
page of a book which had remained open on my table, turned over of
its own accord. Not a breath of air had come in at my window, and I
was surprised and waited. In about four minutes, I saw, I saw, yes
I saw with my own eyes another page lift itself up and fall down on
the others, as if a finger had turned it over. My armchair was empty,
appeared empty, but I knew that he was there, he, and sitting in my
place, and that he was reading. With a furious bound, the bound of an
enraged wild beast that wishes to disembowel its tamer, I crossed my
room to seize him, to strangle him, to kill him!... But before I could
reach it, my chair fell over as if somebody had run away from me ...
my table rocked, my lamp fell and went out, and my window closed as
if some thief had been surprised and had fled out into the night,
shutting it behind him.
So he had run away: he had been afraid; he, afraid of me!
So ... so ... to-morrow ... or later ... some day or other ... I should
be able to hold him in my clutches and crush him against the ground! Do
not dogs occasionally bite and strangle their masters?
_August 18th._ I have been thinking the whole day long. Oh! yes, I will
obey him, follow his impulses, fulfill all his wishes, show myself
humble, submissive, a coward. He is the stronger; but an hour will
come....
_August 19th._ I know, ... I know ... I know all! I have just read the
following in the _Revue de Monde Scientifique_: “A curious piece of
news comes to us from Rio de Janeiro. Madness, an epidemic of madness,
which may be compared to that contagious madness which attacked the
people of Europe in the Middle Ages, is at this moment raging in the
Province of San-Paulo. The frightened inhabitants are leaving their
houses, deserting their villages, abandoning their land, saying that
they are pursued, possessed, governed like human cattle by invisible,
though tangible beings, a species of vampire, which feed on their life
while they are asleep, and who, besides, drink water and milk without
appearing to touch any other nourishment.