She hesitated again, reflecting. I guessed at the tortured striving of her mind. She didn’t know. She knew nothing except that she had to borrow five thousand francs from me for her husband. Then she plucked up courage to lie.
“Yes, he has written to me.”
“But when? You didn’t speak to me about it yesterday.”
“I got his letter this morning.”
“Can you let me see it?”
“No … no … no … it is very intimate … too personal. … I’ve … I’ve burned it.”
“Your husband must be in debt, then.”
Again she hesitated, then answered:
“I don’t know.”
I told her abruptly:
“The fact is I can’t lay my hands on five thousand francs at the moment, my dear.”
A kind of agonised wail broke from her.
“Oh, I implore you, I implore you, get it for me.”
She grew dreadfully excited, clasping her hands as if she were praying to me. The tone of her voice changed as I listened: she wept, stammering, torn with grief, goaded by the irresistible command that had been laid on her.
“Oh, I implore you to get it. … If you knew how unhappy I am! … I must have it today.”
I took pity on her.
“You shall have it at once, I promise you.”
“Thank thank you,” she cried. “How kind you are!”
“Do you remember,” I went on, “what happened at your house yesterday evening?”
“Yes.”
“Do you remember that Dr. Parent put you to sleep?”
“Yes.”
“Very well, he ordered you to come this morning and borrow five thousand francs from me, and you are now obeying the suggestion.”
She considered this for a moment and answered:
“Because my husband wants it.”
I spent an hour trying to convince her, but I did not succeed in doing so.
When she left, I ran to the doctor’s house. He was just going out, and he listened to me with a smile. Then he said:
“Now do you believe?”
“I must.”
“Let’s go and call on your cousin.”
She was already asleep on a day bed, overwhelmed with weariness. The doctor felt her pulse, and looked at her for some time, one hand lifted towards her eyes that slowly closed under the irresistible compulsion of his magnetic force.
When she was asleep:
“Your husband has no further need for five thousand francs. You will forget that you begged your cousin to lend it to you, and if he speaks to you about it, you will not understand.”
Then he woke her up. I drew a notecase from my pocket.
“Here is what you asked me for this morning, my dear.”
She was so dumbfounded that I dared not press the matter. I did, however, try to rouse her memory, but she denied it fiercely, thought I was making fun of her and at last was ready to be angry with me.
Back at the hotel. The experience has disturbed me so profoundly that I could not bring myself to take lunch.
July 19. I have told several people about this adventure and been laughed at for my pains. I don’t know what to think now. The wise man says: Perhaps?
July 21. I dined at Bougival, then I spent the evening at the rowing-club dance. There’s no doubt that everything is a question of places and persons. To believe in the supernatural in the island of Grenouillère would be the height of folly … but at the top of Mont-Saint-Michel? … in the Indies? We are terrified under the influence of our surroundings. I am going home next week.
July 30. I have been home since yesterday. All is well.
August 2. Nothing fresh. The weather has been glorious. I spend my days watching the Seine run past.
August 4. The servants are quarrelling among themselves. They declare that someone breaks the glasses in the cupboard at night. My man blames the cook, who blames the housemaid, who blames the other two. Who is the culprit? It would take a mighty clever man to find out.
August 6. This time, I am not mad. I’ve seen something … I’ve seen something. … I’ve seen something. … I have no more doubts. … I’ve seen it. … I’m still cold to my fingertips. … My nerves are still racked with terror. … I’ve seen it.
At two o’clock, in broad daylight, I was walking in my rose-garden … between the autumn roses that are just coming out.
As I paused to look at a Géant des Batailles, which bore three superb flowers, I saw, I distinctly saw, right under my eye, the stem of one of these roses bend as if an invisible hand had twisted it, then break as if the hand had plucked it. Then the flower rose, describing in the air the curve that an arm would have made carrying it towards a mouth, and it hung suspended in the clear air, quite alone, motionless, a terrifying scarlet splash three paces from my eyes.
I lost my head and flung myself on it, grasping at it. My fingers closed on nothing: it had disappeared. Then I was filled with a savage rage against myself; a rational serious-minded man simply does not have such hallucinations.
But was it really an hallucination? I turned round to look for the flower and my eyes fell on it immediately: it had just been broken off and was lying between the two roses that still remained on the branch.
Then I went back to the house, my senses reeling: now I was sure as sure as I am that day follows night, that there lived at my side an invisible being who fed on milk and water, who could touch things, take them, move them from one place to another, endowed therefore with a material nature, imperceptible to our senses though it was, and living beside me, under my roof. …
August 7. I slept quietly. He has drunk the water from my carafe, but he did not disturb my sleep.
I wonder if I am mad. Sometimes as I walk in the blazing sunshine along the riverbank, I am filled with doubts of my sanity, not the vague doubts I have been feeling, but precise and uncompromising doubts. I have
