University of Virginia Library

2. II.

WHEN he awoke it was night. All was quiet. In the neighboring chamber the deep respiration of the slumbering patients could be heard, and farther away, a madman that had been locked up in a dark cell talked loudly with himself in a monotonous tone, his voice pitched to a strange key. In the upper story where the female department was, a contralto voice was singing an obscene song. He held his breath and listened. He felt weary; it seemed to him all his limbs were broken, and he had such an agonizing pain at the back of his neck.

"Where am I? What has happened to me?" he thought.

Suddenly his mind became clear. He recalled distinctly every thing that had happened to him during the last year of his life. All, even to the minutest detail, came back to him. He knew that he was ill at that very moment, and he understood the nature of his disease. A procession of fantastic ideas, of insane words and actions defiled through his mind. He recalled every thing, and a horrible chill shook him from head to foot.

"Well, it is finished at last," he murmured. "God be praised!"

And he fell asleep again.

The open window, guarded with iron bars, opened into a narrow and tortuous way that extended between the great buildings and a stone wall. This path was unused. It was invaded by a wilderness of wild bushes, among which an enormous thicket of lilacs stood in bloom at this moment. Behind the bushes, just in front of the window, rose a high, dark wall, over which the trees of the garden stretched their branches, lit up by the pale moonbeams.

To the right, a wing of the asylum could be seen, quite white in the shade, with its grated windows behind which shone a light. To the left could be perceived the dim walls of the dead house silvered with soft radiance. The moonbeams passing through the bars of the window shone dazzlingly upon the large stone flags of the floor, and bathed in a sparkling haze a part of the bed and the livid face and closed eyelids of the patient.

At this hour nothing in his appearance betrayed the madman. He was sleeping the profound and tranquil sleep of a martyr, without a dream, without the least movement, almost without breath.

He woke at moments with a perfectly sane and lucid mind. Then in the morning, when he re-opened his eyes, he was mad.