The dreaded night comes on. The sky is covered with clouds; the air is close; we expect a thunderstorm. I do not venture to lie down to sleep, and write letters for two hours. At last, overcome with weariness, I undress myself and creep into bed. The lamp is extinguished; a terrible stillness reigns in the house. I feel that someone is watching me in the darkness, touches me and feels for my heart in order to suck my blood. Without waiting any longer, I spring out of bed, fling open the window and jump into the courtyard--but I have forgotten the rose-bushes, whose sharp thorns pierce me through my night-shirt. Scratched and streaming with blood, I grope about the courtyard. Gravel-stones, thistles, and nettles lacerate my feet; unknown objects trip me up. At last I reach the kitchen, which adjoins the doctor's sitting-room. I knock. No answer. Suddenly I discover that it is raining all the time. O misery of miseries! What have I done to deserve these tortures? It is hell. Miserere! Miserere!
I knock repeatedly. It is strange that no one is at hand when I am attacked. Always this solitude! Does it not point to a plot against me in which all are implicated?
At last I hear the doctor's voice, "Who is there?"
I begin my report by giving an account of the attack in the Rue de la Clef, which I ascribe to enemies, who persecute me by means of electricity.
"Stop, unhappy man! Your mind is affected!"
"The devil it is! Test my intelligence; read what I write daily and what is printed----"
"Stop! not a word to anyone! These stories of electricity are frequent in asylum reports."
"All the better! I care so little for your asylum reports that in order to clear the matter up, I am willing to be examined to-morrow in the asylum at Lund."
"Then you are lost! Not a word more now! Lie down and sleep."
I refuse to do so, and insist on his hearing me; he refuses to listen.
When I am alone, I ask myself, "Is it possible that my friend, an honourable man, who has always kept aloof from dirty transactions, at the close of a blameless career should succumb to temptation? But who has tempted him?" I have no answer to this question, but many surmises. "Every man has his price," says the proverb, but a large sum must have been necessary to bribe this strong character. But one does not pay very highly for an ordinary piece of revenge. Therefore he must have a strong interest in the matter himself. Stop! I have it! I have made gold; the doctor has half-accomplished it also, although, when asked, he denies having repeated the experiments regarding which I had corresponded with him. He denies it, and yet as I stepped across the pavement of the courtyard last evening I found proofs that he had been experimenting. Therefore he is lying. Moreover, in conversation the same evening, he enlarged on the sad consequences which the possible manufacture of gold would entail upon mankind. Universal bankruptcy, universal confusion, anarchy, ruin. "One would have to kill the discoverer of the process," he concluded.