resistance increased; I turned my back, so to speak, upon my recollections, and said to myself, with growing firmness, that all sensations of the body must have their origin in the body.  Some derangement of the system easily explainable, no doubt, if one but held the clue—­must have produced the impression which otherwise it would be impossible to explain.  As I turned this over and over in my mind, carefully avoiding all temptations to excitement—­which is the only wise course in the case of a strong impression on the nerves—­I gradually became able to believe that this was the cause.  It is one of the penalties, I said to myself, which one has to pay for an organisation more finely tempered than that of the crowd.

This long struggle with myself made the night less tedious, though, perhaps, more terrible; and when at length I was overpowered by sleep, the short interval of unconsciousness restored me like a cordial.  I woke in the early morning, feeling almost able to smile at the terrors of the night.  When one can assure oneself that the day has really begun, even while it is yet dark, there is a change of sensation, an increase of strength and courage.  One by one the dark hours went on.  I heard them pealing from the Cathedral clock—­four, five, six, seven—­all dark, dark.  I had got up and dressed before the last, but found no one else awake when I went out—­no one stirring in the house,—­no one moving in the street.  The Cathedral doors were shut fast, a thing I have never seen before since I remember.  Get up early who will, Pere Laserques the sacristan is always up still earlier.  He is a good old man, and I have often heard him say God’s house should be open first of all houses, in case there might be any miserable ones about who had found no shelter in the dwellings of men.  But the darkness had cheated even Pere Laserques.  To see those great doors closed which stood always open gave me a shiver, I cannot well tell why.  Had they been open, there was an inclination in my mind to have gone in, though I cannot tell why; for I am not in the habit of attending mass, save on Sunday to set an example.  There were no shops open, not a sound about.  I went out upon the ramparts to the Mont St. Lambert, where the band plays on Sundays.  In all the trees there was not so much as the twitter of a bird.  I could hear the river flowing swiftly below the wall, but I could not see it, except as something dark, a ravine of gloom below, and beyond the walls I did not venture to look.  Why should I look?  There was nothing, nothing, as I knew.  But fancy is so uncontrollable, and one’s nerves so little to be trusted, that it was a wise precaution to refrain.  The gloom itself was oppressive enough; the air seemed to creep with apprehensions, and from time to time my heart fluttered with a sick movement, as if it would escape from my control.  But everything was still, still as the dead who had been so often in recent days called out of their graves by one or another.  ’Enough to bring the dead out of their graves.’  What strange words to make use of!  It was rather now as if the world had become a grave in which we, though living, were held fast.