ked at it with fixed
eyes, trying to conjecture, and my hands trembled! Somebody had drunk
the water, but who? I? I without any doubt. It could surely only be I?
In that case I was a somnambulist. I lived, without knowing it, that
double mysterious life which makes us doubt whether there are not two
beings in us, or whether a strange, unknowable and invisible being does
not at such moments, when our soul is in a state of torpor, animate our
captive body which obeys this other being, as it does us ourselves, and
more than it does ourselves.

Oh! Who will understand my horrible agony? Who will understand the
emotion of a man who is sound in mind, wide awake, full of sound sense,
and who looks in horror at the remains of a little water that has
disappeared while he was asleep, through the glass of a water-bottle!
And I remained there until it was daylight, without venturing to go to
bed again.

_July 6._ I am going mad. Again all the contents of my water-bottle have
been drunk during the night;--or rather, I have drunk it!

But is it I? Is it I? Who could it be? Who? Oh! God! Am I going mad? Who
will save me?

_July 10._ I have just been through some surprising ordeals. Decidedly I
am mad! And yet!...

On July 6, before going to bed, I put some wine, milk, water, bread and
strawberries on my table. Somebody drank--I drank--all the water and a
little of the milk, but neither the wine, bread nor the strawberries
were touched.

On the seventh of July I renewed the same experiment, with the same
results, and on July 8, I left out the water and the milk and nothing
was touched.

Lastly, on July 9 I put only water and milk on my table, taking care to
wrap up the bottles in white muslin and to tie down the stoppers. Then I
rubbed my lips, my beard and my hands with pencil lead, and went to bed.

Irresistible sleep seized me, which was soon followed by a terrible
awakening. I had not moved, and my sheets were not marked. I rushed to
the table. The muslin round the bottles remained intact; I undid the
string, trembling with fear. All the water had been drunk, and so had
the milk! Ah! Great God!...

I must start for Paris immediately.

_July 12._ Paris. I must have lost my head during the last few days! I
must be the plaything of my enervated imagination, unless I am really a
somnambulist, or that I have been brought under the power of one of
those influences which have been proved to exist, but which have
hitherto bee