minutes.  It was one o’clock in the morning, one o’clock or maybe half-past one; the sky had by this time cleared somewhat and the crescent appeared, the gloomy crescent of the last quarter of the moon.  The crescent of the first quarter is, that which rises about five or six o’clock in the evening; is clear, gay and fretted with silver; but the one which rises after midnight is reddish, sad and desolating; it is the true Sabbath crescent.  Every prowler by night has made the same observation.  The first, though as slender as a thread, throws a faint joyous light which rejoices the heart and lines the ground with distinct shadows; the last, sheds hardly a dying glimmer, and is so wan that it occasions hardly any shadows.

In the distance, I perceived the somber mass of my garden, and I know not why I was seized with a feeling of uneasiness at the idea of going inside.  I slowed my pace, and walked very softly, the thick cluster of trees having the appearance of a tomb in which my house was buried.

I opened my outer gate, and I entered the long avenue of sycamores, which ran in the direction of the house, arranged vault-wise like a high tunnel, traversing opaque masses, and winding round the turf lawns, on which baskets of flowers, in the pale darkness, could be indistinctly discerned.

In approaching the house, I was seized by a strange feeling, I could hear nothing, I stood still.  In the trees there was not even a breath of air.  “What is the matter with me then?” I said to myself.  For ten years I had entered and re-entered in the same way, without ever experiencing the least inquietude.  I never had any fear at nights.  The sight of a man, a marauder, or a thief, would have thrown me into a fit of anger, and I would have rushed at him without any hesitation.  Moreover, I was armed, I had my revolver.  But I did not touch it, for I was anxious to resist that feeling of dread with which I was permeated.

What was it?  Was it a presentiment?  That mysterious presentiment which takes hold of the senses of men who have witnessed something which, to them, is inexplicable?  Perhaps?  Who knows?

In proportion as I advanced, I felt my skin quiver more and more, and when I was close to the wall, near the outhouses of my vast residence, I felt that it would be necessary for me to wait a few minutes before opening the door and going inside.  I sat down, then, on a bench, under the windows of my drawing room.  I rested there, a little fearful, with my head leaning against the wall, my eyes wide open under the shade of the foliage.  For the first few minutes, I did not observe anything unusual around me; I had a humming noise in my ears, but that happened often to me.  Sometimes it seemed to me that I heard trains passing, that I heard clocks striking, that I heard a multitude on the march.