I should certainly have thought myself mad, absolutely mad, if I were not conscious, if I were not perfectly aware of my state of mind, if I did not get to the bottom of it and analyse it with such complete clearness. I must be, in fact, no worse than a sane man troubled with hallucinations. There must be some unknown disturbance in my brain, one of those disturbances that modern physiologists are trying to observe and elucidate; and this disturbance has opened a deep gulf in my mind, in the orderly and logical working of my thoughts. Similar phenomena take place in a dream that drags us through the most unreal phantasmagoria without sowing the least surprise in our minds because the mechanism of judgment, the controlling censor, is asleep, while the imaginative faculty wakes and works. Can one of the invisible strings that control my mental keyboard have become muted?
Sometimes, after an accident, a man loses his power to remember proper names or verbs or figures or only dates. The localisation of all the different faculties of the mind is now proved. Is there anything surprising, therefore, in the idea that my power of examining the unreality of certain hallucinations has ceased to function in my brain just now?
I thought of all this as I walked by the side of the water. The sunlight flung a mantle of light across the river, clothing the earth with beauty, filling my thoughts with love of life, of the swallows whose swift flight is a joy to my eyes, of the riverside grasses whose shuddering whisper contents my ears.
Little by little, however, I fell prey to an inexplicable uneasiness. I felt as though some force, an occult force, were paralysing my movements, halting me, hindering me from going on any further, calling me back. I was oppressed by just such an unhappy impulse to turn back as one feels when a beloved person has been left at home ill and one is possessed by a foreboding that the illness has taken a turn for the worse.
So, in spite of myself, I turned back, sure that I should find bad news waiting in my house, a letter or a telegram. There was nothing; and I was left more surprised and uneasy than if I had had yet another fantastic vision.
August 8. Yesterday I spent a frightful night. He did not manifest himself again, but I felt him near me, spying on me, watching me, taking possession of me, dominating me and more to be feared when he hid himself in this way than if he gave notice of his constant invisible presence by supernatural phenomena.
However, I slept.
August 9. Nothing, but I am afraid.
August 10. Nothing; what will happen tomorrow?
August 11. Still nothing: I can’t remain in my home any longer, with this fear and these thoughts in my mind: I shall go away.
August 12. Ten o’clock in the evening. I have been wanting to go away all day. I can’t. I have been wanting to carry out the easy simple act that will set me free—go out—get into my carriage to go to Rouen—I can’t. Why?
August 13. Under the affliction of certain maladies, all the resources of one’s physical being seem crushed, all one’s energy exhausted, one’s muscles relaxed, one’s bones grown as soft as flesh and one’s flesh turned to water. In a strange and wretched fashion I suffer all these pains in my spiritual being. I have no strength, no courage, no control over myself, no power even to summon up my will. I can will nothing; but someone wills for me—and I obey.
August 14. I am lost. Someone has taken possession of my soul and is master of it; someone orders all my acts, all my movements, all my thoughts. I am no longer anything, I am only a spectator, enslaved, and terrified by all the things I do. I wish to go out. I cannot. He does not wish it; and I remain, dazed, trembling, in the armchair where he keeps me seated. I desire no more than to get up, to raise myself, so that I can think I am master of myself again. I can’t do it. I am riveted to my seat; and my seat is fast to the ground, in such fashion that no force could lift us.
Then, all at once, I must, must, must go to the bottom of my garden and pick strawberries and eat them. Oh, my God! my God! my God! Is there a God? If there is one, deliver me, save me, help me! Pardon me! Pity me! Have mercy on me! How I suffer! How I am tortured! How terrible this is!
August 15. Well, think how my poor cousin was possessed and overmastered when she came to borrow five thousand francs from me. She submitted to an alien will that had entered into her, as if it were another soul, a parasitic tyrannical soul. Is the world coming to an end?
But what is this being, this invisible being who is ruling me? This unknowable creature, this wanderer from a supernatural race.
So Unseen Ones exist? Then why is it that since the world began they have never manifested themselves in so unmistakable a fashion as they are now manifesting themselves to me? I have never read of anything like the things that are happening under my roof. If I could only leave it, if I could go away, fly far away and return no more,
