Well, I pretended to write to deceive him, because he was spying on me too; and, all at once, I felt, I was certain, that he was reading over my shoulder, that he was there, his breath on my ear.
I stood up, my hand outstretched, and turned round, so quickly that I almost fell. What do you think? … the room was as light as day, and I could not see myself in my looking-glass! It was empty, transparent, deep, filled with light! I was not reflected in it … and I was standing in front of it. I could see the wide limpid expanse of glass from top to bottom. And I stared at it with a distraught gaze: I daren’t move another step, I daren’t make another movement; nevertheless I felt that he was there, whose immaterial body had swallowed up my reflection, but that he would elude me still.
How frightened I was! A moment later my reflection began to appear in the depths of the looking-glass, in a sort of mist, as if I were looking at it through water; this water seemed to flow from left to right, slowly, so that moment by moment my reflection emerged more distinctly. It was like the passing of an eclipse. The thing that was concealing me appeared to possess no sharply defined outlines, but a kind of transparent opacity that gradually cleared.
At last I could see myself from head to foot, just as I saw myself every day when I looked in the glass.
I had seen him! The horror of it is still on me, making me shudder.
August 20. How can I kill him? Since I can’t touch him? Poison? But he would see me put it in the water; and besides, would our poisons affect an immaterial body? No … no, they certainly would not. … Then how? … how?
August 21. I have sent for a locksmith from Rouen, and ordered him to fit my room with iron shutters, such as they have in certain hotels in Paris, to keep out robbers. He is to make me, also, a similar sort of door. Everyone thinks me a coward, but much I care for that!
September 10. Rouen, Hôtel Continental. It is done … it is done … but is he dead? My brain reels with what I have seen.
Yesterday the locksmith put up my iron shutters and my iron door, and I left everything open until midnight, although it began to get cold.
All at once I felt his presence, and I was filled with joy, a mad joy. I rose slowly to my feet, and walked about the room for a long time, so that he should suspect nothing; then I took off my boots and carelessly drew on my slippers; then I closed my iron shutters, and, sauntering back towards the door, I double-locked it too. Then I walked back to the window and secured it with a padlock, putting the key in my pocket.
Suddenly I realised that he was prowling anxiously round me, he was afraid now, and commanding me to open them for him. I almost yielded: I did not yield, but, leaning on the door, I set it ajar, just wide enough for me to slip out backwards; and as I am very tall my head touched the lintel. I was sure that he could not have got out and I shut him in, alone, all alone. Thank God! I had him! Then I ran downstairs; in the drawing room which is under my room, I took both my lamps and emptied the oil all over the carpet and the furniture, everything; then I set it on fire and I fled after having double-locked the main door.
And I went and hid myself at the bottom of my garden, in a grove of laurels. How long it took, how long! Everything was dark, silent, still, not a breath of air, not a star, mountains of unseen clouds that lay so heavily, so heavily, on my spirit.
I kept my gaze fixed on my house, and waited. How long it took! I was beginning to think that the fire had died out of itself, or that he, He, had put it out, when one of the lower windows fell in under the fierce breath of the fire and a flame, a great red and yellow flame, a long, curling, caressing flame, leaped up the white wall and pressed its kiss on the roof itself. A flood of light poured over trees, branches, leaves, and with that a shudder, a shudder of fear, ran through them. The birds woke; a dog howled: I thought the dawn was at hand. In a moment two more windows burst into flame and I saw that the lower half of my house was now one frightful furnace. But a cry, a frightful piercing agonised cry, a woman’s cry, stabbed the night, and two skylights opened. I had forgotten my servants. I saw their distraught faces and their wildly waving arms. …
Then, frantic with horror, I began to run towards the village, shouting: “Help! help! fire! fire!” I met people already on their way to the house and I turned back with them to look at it.
By now the house was no more than a horrible and magnificent funeral pyre, a monstrous pyre lighting up the whole earth, a pyre that was consuming men, and consuming Him, Him, my prisoner, the new Being, the new Master, the Horla!
The whole roof fell in with a sudden crash, and a volcano of flames leaped to the sky. Through all the
