and so I remain, trembling and distracted in the armchair
in which he keeps me sitting. I merely wish to get up and to rouse
myself, so as to think that I am still master of myself: I cannot! I am
riveted to my chair, and my chair adheres to the floor in such a manner
that no force of mine can move us.

Then suddenly, I must, I MUST go to the foot of my garden to pick some
strawberries and eat them--and I go there. I pick the strawberries and
I eat them! Oh! my God! my God! Is there a God? If there be one,
deliver me! save me! succor me! Pardon! Pity! Mercy! Save me! Oh! what
sufferings! what torture! what horror!

August 15. Certainly this is the way in which my poor cousin was
possessed and swayed, when she came to borrow five thousand francs of
me. She was under the power of a strange will which had entered into
her, like another soul, a parasitic and ruling soul. Is the world
coming to an end?

But who is he, this invisible being that rules me, this unknowable
being, this rover of a supernatural race?

Invisible beings exist, then! how is it, then, that since the beginning
of the world they have never manifested themselves in such a manner as
they do to me? I have never read anything that resembles what goes on
in my house. Oh! If I could only leave it, if I could only go away and
flee, and never return, I should be saved; but I cannot.

August 16. I managed to escape to-day for two hours, like a prisoner
who finds the door of his dungeon accidentally open. I suddenly felt
that I was free and that He was far away, and so I gave orders to put
the horses in as quickly as possible, and I drove to Rouen. Oh! how
delightful to be able to say to my coachman: "Go to Rouen!"

I made him pull up before the library, and I begged them to lend me Dr.
Herrmann Herestauss's treatise on the unknown inhabitants of the
ancient and modern world.

Then, as I was getting into my carriage, I intended to say: "To the
railway station!" but instead of this I shouted--I did not speak; but I
shouted--in such a loud voice that all the passers-by turned round:
"Home!" and I fell back on to the cushion of my carriage, overcome by
mental agony. He had found me out and regained possession of me.

August 17. Oh! What a night! what a night! And yet it seems to me that
I ought to rejoice. I read until one o'clock in the morning!
Herestauss, Doctor of Philosophy and Theogony, wrote the history and
the manifestation of all those invisible be