f the transparent crystal bottle! I looked at it with
fixed eyes, trying to solve the puzzle, and my hands trembled! Some
body had drunk the water, but who? I? I without any doubt. It could
surely only be I? In that case I was a somnambulist--was living,
without knowing it, that double, mysterious life which makes us doubt
whether there are not two beings in us--whether a strange, unknowable,
and invisible being does not, during our moments of mental and physical
torpor, animate the inert body, forcing it to a more willing obedience
than it yields to ourselves.

Oh! Who will understand my horrible agony? Who will understand the
emotion of a man sound in mind, wide-awake, full of sense, who looks in
horror at the disappearance of a little water while he was asleep,
through the glass of a water-bottle! And I remained sitting until it
was daylight, without venturing to go to bed again.

July 6. I am going mad. Again all the contents of my water-bottle have
been drunk during the night; or rather I have drunk it!

But is it I? Is it I? Who could it be? Who? Oh! God! Am I going mad?
Who will save me?

July 10. I have just been through some surprising ordeals. Undoubtedly
I must be mad! And yet!

On July 6, before going to bed, I put some wine, milk, water, bread,
and strawberries on my table. Somebody drank--I drank--all the water
and a little of the milk, but neither the wine, nor the bread, nor the
strawberries were touched.

On the seventh of July I renewed the same experiment, with the same
results, and on July 8 I left out the water and the milk and nothing
was touched.

Lastly, on July 9 I put only water and milk on my table, taking care to
wrap up the bottles in white muslin and to tie down the stoppers. Then
I rubbed my lips, my beard, and my hands with pencil lead, and went to
bed.

Deep slumber seized me, soon followed by a terrible awakening. I had
not moved, and my sheets were not marked. I rushed to the table. The
muslin round the bottles remained intact; I undid the string, trembling
with fear. All the water had been drunk, and so had the milk! Ah! Great
God! I must start for Paris immediately.

July 12. Paris. I must have lost my head during the last few days! I
must be the plaything of my enervated imagination, unless I am really a
somnambulist, or I have been brought under the power of one of those
influences--hypnotic suggestion, for example--which are known to exist,
but have hitherto been inexp