and I went with him to fetch her. It was raining in torrents, and

I brought the unfortunate girl home with me, for the right leg
was broken in three places, and the bones had come out through

the flesh. She did not complain, and merely said, with admirable
resignation: 'I am punished, well punished!'

"I sent for assistance and for the workgirl's friends and told
them a made-up story of a runawaycarriage which had knocked her

down and lamed her, outside my door. They believed me, and the
gendarmes for a whole month tried in vain to find the author of

this accident.
"That is all! Now I say that this woman was a heroine, and had

the fiber of those who accomplish the grandest deeds in history.
"That was her only love affair, and she died a virgin. She was a

martyr, a noble soul, a sublimely devoted woman! And if I did not
absolutely admire her, I should not have told you this story,

which I would never tell anyone during her life: you understand
why."

The doctor ceased; mamma cried and papa said some words which I
did not catch; then they left the room, and I remained on my

knees in the armchair and sobbed, while I heard a strange noise
of heavy footsteps and something knocking against the side of the

staircase.
They were carrying away Clochette's body.

WHO KNOWS?
My God! My God! I am going to write down at last what has

happened to me. But how can I? How dare I? The thing is so
bizarre, so inexplicable, so incomprehensible, so silly!

If I were not perfectly sure of what I have seen, sure that there
was not in my reasoning any defect, any error in my declarations,

any lacuna in the inflexible sequence of my observations, I
should believe myself to be the dupe of a simple hallucination,

the sport of a singularvision. After all, who knows?
Yesterday I was in a private asylum, but I went there

voluntarily, out of prudence and fear. Only one single human
being knows my history, and that is the doctor of the said

asylum. I am going to write to him. I really do not know why? To
disembarrass myself? Yea, I feel as though weighed down by an

intolerable nightmare.
Let me explain.

I have always been a recluse, a dreamer, a kind of isolated
philosopher, easy-going, content with but little, harboring

ill-feeling against no man, and without even a grudge against
heaven. I have constantly lived alone; consequently, a kind of

torture takes hold of me when I find myself in the presence of
others. How is this to be explained? I do not know. I am not

averse to going out into the world, to conversation, to dining
with friends, but when they are near me for any length of time,

even the most intimate of them, they bore me, fatigue me,
enervate me, and I experience an overwhelming, torturing desire

to see them get up and go, to take themselves away, and to leave
me by myself.

That desire is more than a craving; it is an irresistible
necessity. And if the presence of people with whom I find myself

were to be continued; if I were compelled, not only to listen,
but also to follow, for any length of time, their conversation, a

serious accident would assuredly take place. What kind of
accident? Ah! who knows? Perhaps a slight paralytic stroke?

Probably!
I like solitude so much that I cannot even endure the vicinage of

other beings sleeping under the same roof. I cannot live in
Paris, because there I suffer the most acute agony. I lead a

moral life, and am thereforetortured in body and in nerves by
that immense crowd which swarms and lives even when it sleeps.

Ah! the sleeping of others is more painful still than their
conversation. And I can never find repose when I know and feel

that on the other side of a wall several existences are
undergoing these regular eclipses of reason.

Why am I thus? Who knows? The cause of it is very simple perhaps.
I get tired very soon of everything that does not emanate from

me. And there are many people in similar case.
We are, on earth, two distinct races. Those who have need of

others, whom others amuse, engage soothe, whom solitude harasses,
pains, stupefies, like the movement of a terrible glacier or the

traversing of the desert; and those, on the contrary, whom others
weary, tire, bore, silentlytorture, whom isolation calms and

bathes in the repose of independency, and plunges into the humors
of their own thoughts. In fine, there is here a normal, physical

phenomenon. Some are constituted to live a life outside of
themselves, others, to live a life within themselves. As for me,

my exterior associations are abruptly and painfully short-lived,
and, as they reach their limits, I experience in my whole body

and in my whole intelligence an intolerableuneasiness.
As a result of this, I became attached, or rather had become much

attached, to inanimate objects, which have for me the importance
of beings, and my house has or had become a world in which I

lived an active and solitary life, surrounded by all manner of
things, furniture, familiar knickknacks, as sympathetic in my

eyes as the visages of human beings. I had filled my mansion with
them; little by little, I had adorned it with them, and I felt an

inward content and satisfaction, was more happy than if I had
been in the arms of a beloved girl, whose wonted caresses had

become a soothing and delightful necessity.
I had had this house constructed in the center of a beautiful

garden, which hid it from the public high-ways, and which was
near the entrance to a city where I could find, on occasion, the

resources of society, for which, at moments, I had a longing. All
my domestics slept in a separate building, which was situated at

some considerable distance from my house, at the far end of the
kitchen garden, which in turn was surrounded by a high wall. The

obscure envelopment of night, in the silence of my concealed
habitation, buried under the leaves of great trees, was so

reposeful and so delicious, that before retiring to my couch I
lingered every evening for several hours in order to enjoy the

solitude a little longer.
One day "Signad" had been played at one of the city theaters. It

was the first time that I had listened to that beautiful,
musical, and fairy-like drama, and I had derived from it the

liveliest pleasures.
I returned home on foot with a light step, my head full of

sonorous phrases, and my mind haunted by delightfulvisions. It
was night, the dead of night, and so dark that I could hardly

distinguish the broad highway, and consequently I stumbled into
the ditch more than once. From the custom-house, at the barriers,

to my house, was about a mile, perhaps a little more--a leisurely
walk of about twenty minutes. It was one o'clock in the morning,

one o'clock or maybe half-past one; the sky had by this time
cleared somewhat and the crescent appeared, the gloomycrescent

of the last quarter of the moon. The crescent of the first
quarter is that which rises about five or six o'clock in the

evening and is clear, gay, and fretted with silver; but the one
which rises after midnight is reddish, sad, and desolating--it is

the true Sabbath crescent. Every prowler by night has made the same
observation. The first, though slender as a thread, throws a faint,

joyous light which rejoices the heart and lines the ground with
distinct shadows; the last sheds hardly a dying glimmer, and is so

wan that it occasions hardly any shadows.
In the distance, I perceived the somber mass of my garden, and, I

know not why, was seized with a feeling of uneasiness at the idea
of going inside. I slackened my pace, and walked very softly, the

thick cluster of trees having the appearance of a tomb in which
my house was buried.

I opened my outer gate and entered the long avenue of sycamores
which ran in the direction of the house, arranged vault-wise like

a high tunnel, traversing opaque masses, and winding round the
turf lawns, on which baskets of flowers, in the pale darkness,

could be indistinctly discerned.
While approaching the house, I was seized by a strange feeling. I

could hear nothing, I stood still. Through the trees there was
not even a breath of air stirring. "What is the matter with me?"