ich are so change-able, which have troubled my thoughts as
they passed before my eyes? Who can tell? Everything that surrounds us,
everything that we see without looking at it, everything that we touch
without knowing it, everything that we handle without feeling it,
everything that we meet without clearly distinguishing it, has a rapid,
surprising, and inexplicable effect upon us and upon our organs, and
through them on our ideas and on our being itself.

How profound that mystery of the Invisible is! We cannot fathom it with
our miserable senses: our eyes are unable to perceive what is either
too small or too great, too near to or too far from us; we can see
neither the inhabitants of a star nor of a drop of water; our ears
deceive us, for they transmit to us the vibrations of the air in
sonorous notes. Our senses are fairies who work the miracle of changing
that movement into noise, and by that metamorphosis give birth to
music, which makes the mute agitation of nature a harmony. So with our
sense of smell, which is weaker than that of a dog, and so with our
sense of taste, which can scarcely distinguish the age of a wine!

Oh! If we only had other organs which could work other miracles in our
favor, what a number of fresh things we might discover around us!

May 16. I am ill, decidedly! I was so well last month! I am feverish,
horribly feverish, or rather I am in a state of feverish enervation,
which makes my mind suffer as much as my body. I have without ceasing
the horrible sensation of some danger threatening me, the apprehension
of some coming misfortune or of approaching death, a presentiment which
is no doubt, an attack of some illness still unnamed, which germinates
in the flesh and in the blood.

May 18. I have just come from consulting my medical man, for I can no
longer get any sleep. He found that my pulse was high, my eyes dilated,
my nerves highly strung, but no alarming symptoms. I must have a course
of shower baths and of bromide of potassium.

May 25. No change! My state is really very peculiar. As the evening
comes on, an incomprehensible feeling of disquietude seizes me, just as
if night concealed some terrible menace toward me. I dine quickly, and
then try to read, but I do not understand the words, and can scarcely
distinguish the letters. Then I walk up and down my drawing-room,
oppressed by a feeling of confused and irresistible fear, a fear of
sleep and a fear of my bed.

About ten o'clo