h
her. Just as he touched her, the dark _Amorphophalli_ leaped up from
all sides and thrust their leaves into his abdomen which rose and fell
like a sea. He had broken all the plants, experiencing a limitless
disgust in seeing these warm, firm stems stirring in his hands.
Suddenly the detested plants had disappeared and two arms sought to
enlace him. A terrible anguish made his heart beat furiously, for the
eyes, the horrible eyes of the woman, had become a clear, cold and
terrible blue. He made a superhuman effort to free himself from her
embrace, but she held him with an irresistible movement. He beheld the
wild _Nidularium_ which yawned, bleeding, in steel plates.

With his body he touched the hideous wound of this plant. He felt
himself dying, awoke with a start, suffocating, frozen, mad with fear
and sighing: "Ah! thank God, it was but a dream!"

Chapter 9

These nightmares attacked him repeatedly. He was afraid to fall
asleep. For hours he remained stretched on his bed, now a prey to
feverish and agitated wakefulness, now in the grip of oppressive
dreams in which he tumbled down flights of stairs and felt himself
sinking, powerless, into abysmal depths.

His nervous attacks, which had abated for several days, became acute,
more violent and obstinate than ever, unearthing new tortures.

The bed covers tormented him. He stifled under the sheets, his body
smarted and tingled as though stung by swarms of insects. These
symptoms were augmented by a dull pain in his jaws and a throbbing in
his temples which seemed to be gripped in a vise.

His alarm increased; but unfortunately the means of subduing the
inexorable malady were not at hand. He had unsuccessfully sought to
install a hydropathic apparatus in his dressing room. But the
impossibility of forcing water to the height on which his house was
perched, and the difficulty of procuring water even in the village
where the fountains functioned sparingly and only at certain hours of
the day, caused him to renounce the project. Since he could not have
floods of water playing on him from the nozzle of a hose, (the only
efficacious means of overcoming his insomnia and calming his nerves
through its action on his spinal column) he was reduced to brief
sprays or to mere cold baths, followed by energetic massages applied
by his servant with the aid of a horse-hair glove.

But these measures failed to stem the march of his nervous disorder.
At best they aff