hick 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.

Very soon, those humming noises became more distinct, more concentrated,
more determinable, I was deceiving myself. It was not the ordinary
tingling of my arteries which transmitted to my ears these rumbling
sounds, but it was a very distinct, though very confused, noise which
came, without any doubt whatever, from the interior of my house. I
distinguished through the walls this continued noise, I should rather say
agitation than noise, an indistinct moving about of a pile of things, as
if people were tossing about, displacing, and carrying away
surreptitiously