I said.

My companion insisted that I should take another draught from the
glass, and felt my pulse.

"My dear sir," he said, "your manner indicates that you are a man of
culture, which I am aware was by no means the matter of course in your
day it now is. No doubt, then, you have yourself made the observation
that nothing in this world can be truly said to be more wonderful than
anything else. The causes of all phenomena are equally adequate, and
the results equally matters of course. That you should be startled by
what I shall tell you is to be expected; but I am confident that you
will not permit it to affect your equanimity unduly. Your appearance is
that of a young man of barely thirty, and your bodily condition seems
not greatly different from that of one just roused from a somewhat too
long and profound sleep, and yet this is the tenth day of September in
the year 2000, and you have slept exactly one hundred and thirteen
years, three months, and eleven days."

Feeling partially dazed, I drank a cup of some sort of broth at my
companion's suggestion, and, immediately afterward becoming very
drowsy, went off into a deep sleep.

When I awoke it was broad daylight in the room, which had been lighted
artificially when I was awake before. My mysterious host was sitting
near. He was not looking at me when I opened my eyes, and I had a good
opportunity to study him and meditate upon my extraordinary situation,
before he observed that I was awake. My giddiness was all gone, and my
mind perfectly clear. The story that I had been asleep one hundred and
thirteen years, which, in my former weak and bewildered condition, I
had accepted without question, recurred to me now only to be rejected
as a preposterous attempt at an imposture, the motive of which it was
impossible remotely to surmise.

Something extraordinary had certainly happened to account for my waking
up in this strange house with this unknown companion, but my fancy was
utterly impotent to suggest more than the wildest guess as to what that
something might have been. Could it be that I was the victim of some
sort of conspiracy? It looked so, certainly; and yet, if human
lineaments ever gave true evidence, it was certain that this man by my
side, with a face so refined and ingenuous, was no party to any scheme
of crime or outrage. Then it occurred to me to question if I might not
be the butt of some elaborate practical joke on the part of friends who
had som