Thus, everything is uncertain and capable of being estimated in different ways.
Everything is false, everything is possible, everything is doubtful.
Let us formulate that certainty by making use of the old dictum: “What is true on one side of the Pyrenees is false on the other.”
And let us say: “What is true within the field of our organism is false outside it.”
Two and two do not necessarily make four outside our atmosphere.
What is true on earth is false beyond, whence I conclude that such imperfectly perceived mysteries as electricity, hypnotic sleep, thought transference, suggestion, all the magnetic phenomena, remain hidden from us only because nature has not furnished us with the organ or organs necessary for their understanding.
After having convinced myself that everything revealed to me by my senses exists, as I perceive it, only for me, and would be totally different for another being otherwise constituted, after having concluded that a humanity differently made would have, concerning the world, concerning life, concerning everything, ideas absolutely opposed to ours, because agreement of beliefs results only from the similarity of human organs, and divergences of opinion only from the slight differences in the functioning of our nervous systems, I made a superhuman effort of thought to infer the impenetrable that surrounds me.
Have I gone mad?
I told myself: I am enclosed in things unknown. I thought of a man without ears inferring sound, as we infer so many hidden mysteries, a man establishing the existence of acoustical phenomena of which he could determine neither the nature nor the source. And I became afraid of everything around me, afraid of the air, afraid of the night. From the moment we can know almost nothing, and from the moment all is limitless, what remains? The void—is it not so? What is there in that apparent void?
And that confused terror of the supernatural that has haunted mankind since the birth of the world is legitimate, since the supernatural is nothing but that which remains veiled from us!
Then I understood dread. It seemed to me that I was on the verge of discovering a secret of the universe.
I tried to sharpen my organs, to excite them, to make them momentarily perceive the invisible.
I told myself: Everything is a being. The cry that passes through the air is a being comparable to an animal, since it is born, moves, transforms itself and dies. Thus the fearful mind that believes in non-corporeal beings is not wrong. What are they?
How many men have a presentiment of them, shudder at their approach, tremble at their barely perceptible contact! We feel them near us, all about us, but we cannot distinguish them, for we haven’t the eye that could see them, or rather the unknown organ that could detect them.
Then, more than anyone else, I felt them, these supernatural passersby. Beings or mysteries? I do not know. I could not say what they were, but I could always distinguish their presence. And I have seen—seen—an invisible being, as much as one can see such a thing.
I passed entire nights sitting motionless at my table, my head in my hands, thinking of them. Often I believed than an intangible, or rather an imperceptible body, was hovering over my hair. It did not touch me, not being of fleshy essence, but of an essence that was imponderable, unknowable.
Then, one night, I heard my floor creak behind me. It creaked in a strange way. I shuddered. I turned. I saw nothing. And I thought no more of it.
But the next night, at the same hour, I heard the same sound. I was so frightened that I stood up, sure, sure, sure that I was not alone in my room. Nothing, however, was to be seen. The air was limpid, transparent everywhere. My two lamps made every corner bright.
The sound did not begin again, and I gradually became calmer; still, I remained uneasy, and often turned to look.
The next night I shut myself in my room early, wondering how I might succeed in seeing the Invisible that was visiting me.
And I saw It. I almost died of terror.
I had lit all the candles on my mantel and in my chandelier. The room was lighted as though for a party. My two lamps were burning on my table.
Opposite me, my bed, an old oak four-poster. To the right, my fireplace. To the left, my door, which I had locked. Behind me, a very large closet with mirrored doors. I looked at myself in the mirrors for a moment. My eyes were strange, the pupils very dilated.
Then I sat at my table as usual.
The sound had occurred, the preceding nights, at nine twenty-two. I waited. When the exact moment arrived, I was conscious of an indescribable sensation, as though a fluid, an irresistible fluid, had penetrated every part of my body, drowning my soul in a dread that was excruciating and rapturous. And the floor creaked, just behind me.
I jumped up, turning so fast that I almost fell. All was as clear as daylight, and I did not see myself in the mirror! It was empty, bright, full of light. I was not in it, and yet I was just opposite it. I stared, terrified. I dared not go near it, sensing full well that it was between us, it, the Invisible, and that it was concealing me from the glass.
Oh! How terrified I was! And then I began to see myself, as in a fog, in the depths of the mirror, as though through water; and it seemed to me that this water was sliding from left to right, slowly, making my image more precise from second to second. It was like the end of an eclipse. What was hiding me had no outlines, but a sort of opaque transparency, gradually becoming clearer.
And finally I was able to see myself perfectly, as I do every day when I look at myself.
So, I have seen it!
And I have never seen it again.
But I
