eyes towards the Schoolmaster who was extended
still on the ground. Disquieted for a moment, he listened, and hearing
the robber breathe freely he thought that he was still meditating some
trick against him.

Chance saved the Schoolmaster from a congestion of the brain which else
must have proved mortal. His fall had caused a salutary and abundant
bleeding at the nose. He then fell into kind of a feverish torpor--half
sleep, half delirium, and then had this wild, this fearful dream!

CHAPTER VIII.

THE DREAM.

This was the Schoolmaster's dream:

He was again in Rodolph's house in the Allee des Veuves. The saloon in
which the miscreant had received his appalling punishment had not
undergone any alteration. Rodolph himself was sitting at the table on
which were the Schoolmaster's papers and the little _Saint-Esprit_ of
_lapis_ which he had given to the Chouette. Rodolph's countenance was
grave and sad. On his right the negro David was standing motionless and
silent; on his left was the Chourineur, who looked on with a bewildered
mien. In his dream the Schoolmaster was no longer blind, but saw through
a medium of clear blood, which filled the cavities of his eyeballs. All
and everything seemed to him tinted with red. As birds of prey hover on
motionless wing above the head of the victim which they fascinate before
they devour, so a monstrous screech-owl (_chouette_), having for its
head the hideous visage of the one-eyed hag, soared over the
Schoolmaster, keeping fixed on him her round, glaring, and green eye.
This fixed stare was upon his breast like a heavy weight. The
Schoolmaster discerned a vast lake of blood separating him from the
table at which Rodolph was seated. Then this inflexible judge, as well
as the Chourineur and the negro, grew and grew, expanding into colossal
proportions, until they touched the ceiling; and then it also became
higher in proportion. The lake of blood was calm, and as unruffled as a
red mirror; the Schoolmaster saw his hideous countenance reflected
therein. Then that was suddenly effaced by the tumult of the swelling
waves. From their troubled surface there arose a vapour resembling the
foul exhalation of a marsh, a livid-coloured mist of that violet hue
peculiar to the lips of the dead. In proportion as this miasma
rises--rises, the faces of Rodolph, the Chourineur, and the negro
continue to expand and expand in an extraordinary manner, and always
remain above this fearful c