s,--have you ever seen it, and can you see it? It exists for all
that, however."

I was silent before this simple reasoning. That man was a philosopher,
or perhaps a fool; I could not say which exactly, so I held my tongue.
What he had said, had often been in my own thoughts.

_July 3._ I have slept badly; certainly there is some feverish influence
here, for my coachman is suffering in the same way as I am. When I went
back home yesterday, I noticed his singular paleness, and I asked him:
"What is the matter with you, Jean?" "The matter is that I never get any
rest, and my nights devour my days. Since your departure, Monsieur,
there has been a spell over me."

However, the other servants are all well, but I am very frightened of
having another attack, myself.

_July 4._ I am decidedly taken again; for my old nightmares have
returned. Last night I felt somebody leaning on me who was sucking my
life from between my lips with his mouth. Yes, he was sucking it out of
my neck, like a leech would have done. Then he got up, satiated, and I
woke up, so beaten, crushed and annihilated that I could not move. If
this continues for a few days, I shall certainly go away again.

_July 5._ Have I lost my reason? What has happened, what I saw last
night is so strange, that my head wanders when I think of it!

As I do now every evening, I had locked my door, and then, being
thirsty, I drank half a glass of water, and I accidentally noticed that
the water-bottle was full up to the cut-glass stopper.

Then I went to bed and fell into one of my terrible sleeps, from which I
was aroused in about two hours by a still more terrible shock.

Picture to yourself a sleeping man who is being murdered and who wakes
up with a knife in his chest, and who is rattling in his throat, covered
with blood, and who can no longer breathe and is going to die and does
not understand anything at all about it--there it is.

Having recovered my senses, I was thirsty again, so I lit a candle and
went to the table on which my water-bottle was. I lifted it up and
tilted it over my glass, but nothing came out. It was empty! It was
completely empty! At first I could not understand it at all, and then
suddenly I was seized by such a terrible feeling that I had to sit down,
or rather I fell into a chair! Then I sprang up with a bound to look
about me, and then I sat down again, overcome by astonishment and fear,
in front of the transparent crystal bottle! I loo