ed very softly, the thick cluster
of trees having the appearance of a tomb in which my house was buried.

I opened my outer gate and entered the long avenue of sycamores which
ran in the direction of the house, arranged vault-wise like a high
tunnel, traversing opaque masses, and winding round the turf lawns, on
which baskets of flowers, in the pale darkness, could be indistinctly
discerned.

While approaching the house, I was seized by a strange feeling. I could
hear nothing, I stood still. Through the trees there was not even a
breath of air stirring. "What is the matter with me?" I said to myself.
For ten years I had entered and re-entered in the same way, without
ever experiencing the least inquietude. I never had any fear at nights.
The sight of a man, a marauder, or a thief would have thrown me into a
fit of anger, and I would have rushed at him without any hesitation.
Moreover, I was armed--I had my revolver. But I did not touch it, for I
was anxious to resist that feeling of dread with which I was seized.

What was it? Was it a presentiment--that mysterious presentiment which
takes hold of the senses of men who have witnessed something which, to
them, is inexplicable? Perhaps? Who knows?

In proportion as I advanced, I felt my skin quiver more and more, and
when I was close to the wall, near the outhouses of my large residence,
I felt that it would be necessary for me to wait a few minutes before
opening the door and going inside. I sat down, then, on a bench, under
the windows of my drawing-room. I rested there, a little disturbed,
with my head leaning against the wall, my eyes wide open, under the
shade of the foliage. For the first few minutes, I did not observe
anything unusual around me; I had a humming noise in my ears, but that
has happened often to me. Sometimes it seemed to me that I heard trains
passing, that I heard clocks striking, that I heard a multitude on the
march.

Very soon, those humming noises became more distinct, more
concentrated, more determinable, I was deceiving myself. It was not the
ordinary tingling of my arteries which transmitted to my ears these
rumbling sounds, but it was a very distinct, though confused, noise
which came, without any doubt whatever, from the interior of my house.
Through the walls I distinguished this continued noise,--I should
rather say agitation than noise,--an indistinct moving about of a pile
of things, as if people were tossing about, displacing, and