ings which hover around man,
or of whom he dreams. He describes their origin, their domains, their
power; but none of them resembles the one which haunts me. One might
say that man, ever since he has thought, has had a foreboding and a
fear of a new being, stronger than himself, his successor in this
world, and that, feeling him near, and not being able to foretell the
nature of the unseen one, he has, in his terror, created the whole race
of hidden beings, vague phantoms born of fear.

Having, therefore, read until one o'clock in the morning, I went and
sat down at the open window, in order to cool my forehead and my
thoughts in the calm night air. It was very pleasant and warm! How I
should have enjoyed such a night formerly!

There was no moon, but the stars darted out their rays in the dark
heavens. Who inhabits those worlds? What forms, what living beings,
what animals are there yonder? Do those who are thinkers in those
distant worlds know more than we do? What can they do more than we?
What do they see which we do not? Will not one of them, some day or
other, traversing space, appear on our earth to conquer it, just as
formerly the Norsemen crossed the sea in order to subjugate nations
feebler than themselves?

We are so weak, so powerless, so ignorant, so small--we who live on
this particle of mud which revolves in liquid air.

I fell asleep, dreaming thus in the cool night air, and then, having
slept for about three quarters of an hour, I opened my eyes without
moving, awakened by an indescribably confused and strange sensation. At
first I saw nothing, and then suddenly it appeared to me as if a page
of the book, which had remained open on my table, turned over of its
own accord. Not a breath of air had come in at my window, and I was
surprised and waited. In about four minutes, I saw, I saw--yes I saw
with my own eyes--another page lift itself up and fall down on the
others, as if a finger had turned it over. My armchair was empty,
appeared empty, but I knew that He was there, He, and sitting in my
place, and that He was reading. With a furious bound, the bound of an
enraged wild beast that wishes to disembowel its tamer, I crossed my
room to seize him, to strangle him, to kill him! But before I could
reach it, my chair fell over as if somebody had run away from me. My
table rocked, my lamp fell and went out, and my window closed as if
some thief had been surprised and had fled out into the night, shutting