e blanket and lighted the candle. Shaking
with feverish chill he bent down to examine the bed: there was nothing.
He shook the blanket and suddenly a mouse jumped out on the sheet.
He tried to catch it, but the mouse ran to and fro in zigzags without
leaving the bed, slipped between his fingers, ran over his hand and
suddenly darted under the pillow. He threw down the pillow, but in one
instant felt something leap on his chest and dart over his body and down
his back under his shirt. He trembled nervously and woke up.

The room was dark. He was lying on the bed and wrapped up in the blanket
as before. The wind was howling under the window. "How disgusting," he
thought with annoyance.

He got up and sat on the edge of the bedstead with his back to the
window. "It's better not to sleep at all," he decided. There was a cold
damp draught from the window, however; without getting up he drew the
blanket over him and wrapped himself in it. He was not thinking of
anything and did not want to think. But one image rose after another,
incoherent scraps of thought without beginning or end passed through his
mind. He sank into drowsiness. Perhaps the cold, or the dampness, or
the dark, or the wind that howled under the window and tossed the trees
roused a sort of persistent craving for the fantastic. He kept dwelling
on images of flowers, he fancied a charming flower garden, a bright,
warm, almost hot day, a holiday--Trinity day. A fine, sumptuous country
cottage in the English taste overgrown with fragrant flowers, with
flower beds going round the house; the porch, wreathed in climbers, was
surrounded with beds of roses. A light, cool staircase, carpeted with
rich rugs, was decorated with rare plants in china pots. He noticed
particularly in the windows nosegays of tender, white, heavily fragrant
narcissus bending over their bright, green, thick long stalks. He was
reluctant to move away from them, but he went up the stairs and came
into a large, high drawing-room and again everywhere--at the windows,
the doors on to the balcony, and on the balcony itself--were flowers.
The floors were strewn with freshly-cut fragrant hay, the windows
were open, a fresh, cool, light air came into the room. The birds were
chirruping under the window, and in the middle of the room, on a table
covered with a white satin shroud, stood a coffin. The coffin was
covered with white silk and edged with a thick white frill; wreaths of
flowers surrounded it