‘My room is like my soul.... Heavy curtains, very ancient, cling round the deep bed; long fantastic insects dance and crawl on the ceiling. When my clock strikes the hour it makes an appalling noise; every swing of the pendulum vibrates, and is strangely prolonged.... Furniture, pictures, flowers, even the books, all smell of hell and poison; and the horror, which loves me, envelops this prison like a pall....’ (_La Chambre_). ‘The library made me think of very old forests; thirteen iron lamps, oblong and spectral, poured their sepulchral light day and night on the faded books full of shadow and secrets. I always shuddered when I entered. I felt myself in the midst of fogs and death-rattles, drawn on by the arms of thirteen pale armchairs, and scanned by the eyes of thirteen great portraits....’ (_La Bibliothèque_). ‘In the swamp full of malice, which clogs and penetrates his stockings, he hears himself faintly called by several voices making but one. He finds a corpse as sentinel, which rolls its dull eyeballs, and moves its corruption with an automatic spring. I show to his dismayed eyes fires in the deserted houses, and in the forsaken parks beds full of green rose.... And the old cross on the calvary hails him from afar, and curses him, crossing its stern arms as it stretches out and brandishes them....’ (_La Peur_). I will not weary by multiplying examples, and will only quote the titles of a few more poems: _The Living Grave_; _Troppmann’s Soliloquy_ (a well-known eight-fold murderer); _The Crazy Hangman_; _The Monster_; _The Madman_; _The Headache_ (_La Céphalalgie_); _The Disease_; _The Frenzied Woman_; _Dead Eyes_; _The Abyss_; _Tears_; _Anguish_; _The Slow Death-struggle_; _The Interment_; _The Coffin_; _The Death-knell_; _Corruption_; _The Song of the Guillotined_, etc.