The name of Romainville recurred incessantly to his mind, with the two verses of a song which he had heard in the past.
He thought that Romainville was a little grove near Paris, where young lovers go to pluck lilacs in the month of April.
He wavered outwardly as well as inwardly.
He walked like a little child who is permitted to toddle alone.
At intervals, as he combated his lassitude, he made an effort to recover the mastery of his mind.
He tried to put to himself, for the last time, and definitely, the problem over which he had, in a manner, fallen prostrate with fatigue: Ought he to denounce himself?
Ought he to hold his peace?
He could not manage to see anything distinctly.
The vague aspects of all the courses of reasoning which had been sketched out by his meditations quivered and vanished, one after the other, into smoke.
He only felt that, to whatever course of action he made up his mind, something in him must die, and that of necessity, and without his being able to escape the fact; that he was entering a sepulchre on the right hand as much as on the left; that he was passing through a death agony,—the agony of his happiness, or the agony of his virtue.
Alas! all his resolution had again taken possession of him.
He was no further advanced than at the beginning.
Thus did this unhappy soul struggle in its anguish.
Eighteen hundred years before this unfortunate man, the mysterious Being in whom are summed up all the sanctities and all the sufferings of humanity had also long thrust aside with his hand, while the olive-trees quivered in the wild wind of the infinite, the terrible cup which appeared to Him dripping with darkness and overflowing with shadows in the depths all studded with stars.
CHAPTER IV—FORMS ASSUMED BY SUFFERING DURING SLEEP
Three o’clock in the morning had just struck, and he had been walking thus for five hours, almost uninterruptedly, when he at length allowed himself to drop into his chair.
There he fell asleep and had a dream.
This dream, like the majority of dreams, bore no relation to the situation, except by its painful and heart-rending character, but it made an impression on him.
This nightmare struck him so forcibly that he wrote it down later on.
It is one of the papers in his own handwriting which he has bequeathed to us.
We think that we have here reproduced the thing in strict accordance with the text.
Of whatever nature this dream may be, the history of this night would be incomplete if we were to omit it: it is the gloomy adventure of an ailing soul.
Here it is.
On the envelope we find this line inscribed,
“The Dream I had that Night.”
“I was in a plain; a vast, gloomy plain, where there was no grass.
It did not seem to me to be daylight nor yet night.
“I was walking with my brother, the brother of my childish years, the brother of whom, I must say, I never think, and whom I now hardly remember.
“We were conversing and we met some passers-by.
We were talking of a neighbor of ours in former days, who had always worked with her window open from the time when she came to live on the street.
As we talked we felt cold because of that open window.
“There were no trees in the plain.
We saw a man passing close to us.
He was entirely nude, of the hue of ashes, and mounted on a horse which was earth color.
The man had no hair; we could see his skull and the veins on it.
In his hand he held a switch which was as supple as a vine-shoot and as heavy as iron.
This horseman passed and said nothing to us.
“My brother said to me,
‘Let us take to the hollow road.’
“There existed a hollow way wherein one saw neither a single shrub nor a spear of moss.
Everything was dirt-colored, even the sky.
After proceeding a few paces, I received no reply when I spoke: I perceived that my brother was no longer with me.
“I entered a village which I espied.
I reflected that it must be Romainville. (Why Romainville?)5
“The first street that I entered was deserted.
I entered a second street.
Behind the angle formed by the two streets, a man was standing erect against the wall.
I said to this man:—
“‘What country is this?
Where am I?’