his phenomenon, which overturns their systems
and upsets all theories; it is in fact a thunderbolt working within the
being, and, like all electric accidents, capricious and whimsical in its
course. This explanation will become a mere commonplace in the day
when scientific men are brought to recognize the immense part which
electricity plays in human thought.

Madame Birotteau now passed through several of the shocks, in some sort
electrical, which are produced by terrible explosions of the will forced
out, or held under, by some mysterious mechanism. Thus during a
period of time, very short if judged by a watch, but immeasurable when
calculated by the rapidity of her impressions, the poor woman had the
supernatural power of emitting more ideas and bringing to the surface
more recollections than, under any ordinary use of her faculties, she
could put forth in the course of a whole day. The poignant tale of her
monologue may be abridged into a few absurd sentences, as contradictory
and bare of meaning as the monologue itself.

"There is no reason why Birotteau should leave my bed! He has eaten so
much veal that he may be ill. But if he were ill he would have waked
me. For nineteen years that we have slept together in this bed, in this
house, it has never happened that he left his place without telling
me,--poor sheep! He never slept away except to pass the night in the
guard-room. Did he come to bed to-night? Why, of course; goodness! how
stupid I am."

She cast her eyes upon the bed and saw her husband's night-cap, which
still retained the almost conical shape of his head.

"Can he be dead? Has he killed himself? Why?" she went on. "For the
last two years, since they made him deputy-mayor, he is
_all-I-don't-know-how_. To put him into public life! On the word of an
honest woman, isn't it pitiable? His business is doing well, for he gave
me a shawl. But perhaps it isn't doing well? Bah! I should know of
it. Does one ever know what a man has got in his head; or a woman
either?--there is no harm in that. Didn't we sell five thousand francs'
worth to-day? Besides, a deputy mayor couldn't kill himself; he knows
the laws too well. Where is he then?"

She could neither turn her neck, nor stretch out her hand to pull
the bell, which would have put in motion a cook, three clerks, and a
shop-boy. A prey to the nightmare, which still lasted though her
mind was wide awake, she forgot her daughter peacefully asleep in an
adjoi