it behind him.

So He had run away; He had been afraid; He, afraid of me!

So to-morrow, or later--some day or other, I should be able to hold him
in my clutches and crush him against the ground! Do not dogs
occasionally bite and strangle their masters?

August 18. I have been thinking the whole day long. Oh! yes, I will
obey Him, follow His impulses, fulfill all His wishes, show myself
humble, submissive, a coward. He is the stronger; but an hour will come.

August 19. I know, I know, I know all! I have just read the following
in the "Revue du Monde Scientifique": "A curious piece of news comes to
us from Rio de Janeiro. Madness, an epidemic of madness, which may be
compared to that contagious madness which attacked the people of Europe
in the Middle Ages, is at this moment raging in the Province of
San-Paulo. The frightened inhabitants are leaving their houses,
deserting their villages, abandoning their land, saying that they are
pursued, possessed, governed like human cattle by invisible, though
tangible beings, by a species of vampire, which feeds on their life
while they are asleep, and which, besides, drinks water and milk
without appearing to touch any other nourishment.

"Professor Don Pedro Henriques, accompanied by several medical savants,
has gone to the Province of San-Paulo, in order to study the origin and
the manifestations of this surprising madness on the spot, and to
propose such measures to the Emperor as may appear to him to be most
fitted to restore the mad population to reason."

Ah! Ah! I remember now that fine Brazilian three-master which passed in
front of my windows as it was going up the Seine, on the eighth of last
May! I thought it looked so pretty, so white and bright! That Being was
on board of her, coming from there, where its race sprang from. And it
saw me! It saw my house, which was also white, and He sprang from the
ship on to the land. Oh! Good heavens!

Now I know, I can divine. The reign of man is over, and he has come. He
whom disquieted priests exorcised, whom sorcerers evoked on dark
nights, without seeing him appear, He to whom the imaginations of the
transient masters of the world lent all the monstrous or graceful forms
of gnomes, spirits, genii, fairies, and familiar spirits. After the
coarse conceptions of primitive fear, men more enlightened gave him a
truer form. Mesmer divined him, and ten years ago physicians accurately
discovered the nature of his power, even