hake off all this; you should think of
something else; you should not let a fixed idea take possession of you,
especially when you belong to a family like ours. You know it; have
sense, and take care of yourself."

He grew paler than before, looking fixedly at her still, as if he were
sounding her, to know what there was of her in him. And he contented
himself with answering:

"You are right, mother. I thank you."

When he was again alone, he dropped into his seat before the table, and
tried once more to read his book. But he could not succeed, any more
than before, in fixing his attention sufficiently to understand the
words, whose letters mingled confusedly together before his eyes. And
his mother's words buzzed in his ears; a vague terror, which had some
time before sprung up within him, grew and took shape, haunting him now
as an immediate and clearly defined danger. He who two months before
had boasted triumphantly of not belonging to the family, was he about
to receive the most terrible of contradictions? Ah, this egotistic joy,
this intense joy of not belonging to it, was it to give place to
the terrible anguish of being struck in his turn? Was he to have the
humiliation of seeing the taint revive in him? Was he to be dragged
down to the horror of feeling himself in the clutches of the monster
of heredity? The sublime idea, the lofty certitude which he had of
abolishing suffering, of strengthening man's will, of making a new and a
higher humanity, a healthy humanity, was assuredly only the beginning of
the monomania of vanity. And in his bitter complaint of being watched,
in his desire to watch the enemies who, he thought, were obstinately
bent on his destruction, were easily to be recognized the symptoms of
the monomania of suspicion. So then all the diseases of the race were
to end in this terrible case--madness within a brief space, then general
paralysis, and a dreadful death.

From this day forth Pascal was as if possessed. The state of nervous
exhaustion into which overwork and anxiety had thrown him left him an
unresisting prey to this haunting fear of madness and death. All the
morbid sensations which he felt, his excessive fatigue on rising, the
buzzing in his ears, the flashes of light before his eyes, even
his attacks of indigestion and his paroxysms of tears, were so many
infallible symptoms of the near insanity with which he believed himself
threatened. He had completely lost, in his own case, th