ay's work he
would go to bed at one o'clock in the morning and would go to sleep
immediately. But very soon he awoke with a start, suffocating, covered
with perspiration, in a state of extreme anxiety, his mind agitated by
hallucinations of which he could not rid himself all at once. If he did
not wake suddenly, he dreamed frightful dreams, always of Madame
Dammauville or Caffie. Was it not curious that Caffie, who until then had
been completely effaced from his memory, was resuscitated by Madame
Dammauville in the night, ghost of the darkness that the daylight
dissipated?

Believing that one of the causes of these dreams was the excitement of
the brain, occasioned by excessive work at the hour when he should not
exercise it, but on the contrary should allow it to rest, he decided to
change a plan which produced so little success. Instead of intellectual
work he would engage in physical exercise, which, by exhausting his
muscular functions, would procure him the sleep of the laboring class;
and as he could not roll a wheelbarrow nor chop wood, every evening after
dinner he walked seven or eight miles rapidly.

Physical work succeeded no better than intellectual; he endured the
fatigue of butchers and wood-choppers, but he did not obtain their sleep.
Decidedly, bodily fatigue was worth no more than that of the brain. It
was worth even less. At his table, plunged in his books, or in his
laboratory over his microscope, he absorbed himself in his work, and, by
the force of a will that had been long exercised and submissive to
obedience, he was able to keep his thoughts on the subject in hand,
without distraction as without dreams. Time passed. But when walking in
the streets of Paris, in the deserted roads on the outskirts, by the
Seine or Marne, his mind wandered where it would; it was the mistress,
and it always dwelt on Madame Dammauville, Caffie, and Florentin. It
seemed as if the heat of walking started his brain. When he returned in
this state, after many hours of cerebral excitability, how could he find
the tranquil and refreshing sleep, complete and profound, of the laboring
classes who work only with their muscles?

Never having been ill, he had never examined nor treated himself:
medicine was good for others but useless for him. With a machine
organized like his he need fear only accidents, and until now he had been
spared them; a true son of peasants, he victoriously resisted Paris life
as the destroyer of the