ely empty! At first I could not understand it at all, and then
suddenly I was seized by such a terrible feeling that I had to sit down,
or rather I fell into a chair! Then I sprang up with a bound to look
about me, and then I sat down again, overcome by astonishment and fear,
in front of the transparent crystal bottle! I looked at it with fixed
eyes, trying to conjecture, and my hands trembled! Somebody had drunk
the water, but who? I? I without any doubt. It could surely only be I?
In that case I was a somnambulist, I lived, without knowing it, that
double mysterious life which makes us doubt whether there are not two
beings in us, or whether a strange, unknowable and invisible being does
not at such moments, when our soul is in a state of torpor, animate our
captive body which obeys this other being, as it does us ourselves, and
more than it does ourselves.

Oh! Who will understand my horrible agony? Who will understand the
emotion of a man who is sound in mind, wide awake, full of sound sense,
and who looks in horror at the remains of a little water that has
disappeared while he was asleep, through the glass of a water bottle?
And I remained there until it was daylight, without venturing to go to
bed again.

_July 6th._ I am going mad. Again all the contents of my water bottle
have been drunk during the night--or rather, I have drunk it!

But is it I? Is it I? Who could it be? Who? Oh! God! Am I going mad? Who
will save me?

_July 10th._ I have just been through some surprising ordeals. Decidedly
I am mad! And yet!--

On July 6th, before going to bed, I put some wine, milk, water, bread
and strawberries on my table. Somebody drank--I drank--all the water and
a little of the milk, but neither the wine, bread nor the strawberries
were touched.

On the seventh of July I renewed the same experiment, with the same
results, and on July 8th, I left out the water and the milk and nothing
was touched.

Lastly, on July 9th I put only water and milk on my table, taking care
to wrap up the bottles in white muslin and to tie down the stoppers.
Then I rubbed my lips, my beard and my hands with pencil lead, and went
to bed.

Irresistible sleep seized me, which was soon followed by a terrible
awakening. I had not moved, and my sheets were not marked. I rushed to
the table. The muslin round the bottles remained intact; I undid the
string, trembling with fear. All the water had been drunk, and so had
the milk! Ah! Great God