most in his mind with
exasperating persistency. It was the words of Macbeth:

"Macbeth does murder sleep, the innocent sleep;
Sleep, that knits up the ravell'd sleeve of care,
The death of each day's life, sore labor's bath,
Balm of hurt minds."

He also had lost it, "the innocent sleep, sore labor's bath, balm
of hurt minds." He had never been a great sleeper; at least he had
accustomed himself to the habit, hard at first, of passing only a few
hours in bed. But he employed these few hours well, sleeping as the
weary sleep, hands clenched, without dreaming, waking, or moving; and
the thought that occupied his mind in the evening was with him on waking
in the morning, not having been put to flight by others, any more than
by dreams.

After Caffie's death this tranquil and refreshing sleep continued the
same; but suddenly, after Madame Dammauville's death, it became broken.

At first it did not bother him. He did not sleep, so much the better! He
would work more. But one can no more work all the time than one can live
without eating. Saniel knew better than any one that the life of every
organ is composed of alternate periods of repose and activity, and
he did not suppose that he would be able to work indefinitely without
sleep. He only hoped that after some days of twenty hours of work daily,
overcome by fatigue, he would have, in spite of everything, four hours
of solid sleep, that Shakespeare called "sore labor's bath."

He had not had these four hours, and the law that every state of
prolonged excitement brings exhaustion that should be refreshed by a
functional rest, was proved false in his case. After a hard day'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