* * * * *

There!  I have just come back, and I have not been able to eat any lunch, for this experiment has altogether upset me.

July 19th. Many people to whom I have told the adventure have laughed at me.  I no longer know what to think.  The wise man says:  Perhaps?

July 21st. I dined at Bougival, and then I spent the evening at a boatmen’s ball.  Decidedly everything depends on place and surroundings.  It would be the height of folly to believe in the supernatural on the ile de la Grenouilliere[1] ... but on the top of Mont Saint-Michel? ... and in India?  We are terribly under the influence of our surroundings.  I shall return home next week.

  [1] Frog-island.

July 30th. I came back to my own house yesterday.  Everything is going on well.

August 2d. Nothing fresh; it is splendid weather, and I spend my days in watching the Seine flow past.

August 4th. Quarrels among my servants.  They declare that the glasses are broken in the cupboards at night.  The footman accuses the cook, who accuses the needlewoman, who accuses the other two.  Who is the culprit?  A clever person, to be able to tell.

August 6th. This time I am not mad.  I have seen ...  I have seen ...  I have seen!...  I can doubt no longer ...  I have seen it!...

I was walking at two o’clock among my rose trees, in the full sunlight ... in the walk bordered by autumn roses which are beginning to fall.  As I stopped to look at a Geant de Bataille, which had three splendid blooms, I distinctly saw the stalk of one of the roses bend, close to me, as if an invisible hand had bent it, and then break, as if that hand had picked it!  Then the flower raised itself, following the curve which a hand would have described in carrying it toward a mouth, and it remained suspended in the transparent air, all alone and motionless, a terrible red spot, three yards from my eyes.  In desperation I rushed at it to take it!  I found nothing; it had disappeared.  Then I was seized with furious rage against myself, for it is not allowable for a reasonable and serious man to have such hallucinations.

But was it a hallucination?  I turned round to look for the stalk, and I found it immediately under the bush, freshly broken, between two other roses which remained on the branch, and I returned home then, with a much disturbed mind; for I am certain now, as certain as I am of the alternation of day and night, that there exists close to me an invisible being that lives on milk and on water, which can touch objects, take them and change their places; which is, consequently, endowed with a material nature, although it is imperceptible to our senses, and which lives as I do, under my roof....

August 7th.  I slept tranquilly.  He drank the water out of my decanter, but did not disturb my sleep.