They drink. But the cheerfulness is at an end, the Olympic mood is quenched, for the night is coming on and the terrible chromatic successions of notes echo like innumerable waves which rise and fall, and hurl human derelicts aloft in the air in order to swallow them the next moment. * * * * * While the descendants of the gods make vain attempts to assume a tone becoming their high birth, night has come, and the restaurant is closed. The party must break up and go, each to his lonely bed. As we pass the Cathedral veiled in the shadows of the night, a white light suddenly flashes on the façade, on which are depicted saints and sinners kneeling before the throne of the Lamb. "What is that?" we ask, for there is no thunderstorm. We are startled, and remain standing, only to find that it is a photographer working in his shop by the magnesium light. We are annoyed at our nervousness, and for my part I involuntary think of the theatrical lightning when Don Juan is carried off. As I enter my room I feel a kind of alarm, chilly and feverish, at the same moment. When I have taken off my overcoat, I hear the wardrobe door open of itself. "Is any one there?" No answer. My courage sinks, and for a moment I feel inclined to go out again and spend the night in the dark and dirty streets. But weariness and despair hamper me, and I prefer to die in a comfortable bed. While I undress I look forward to a bad night, and once happily in bed I take up a book to distract my thoughts. Then my toothbrush falls from the washing-stand on to the ground without any visible cause. Immediately afterwards the cover of my jug rises and falls again with a clash before my eyes. Nothing has occurred to shake the room, the night being perfectly still. The universe has no secrets veiled from giants and geniuses, and yet reason is helpless before a jug cover which defies the law of gravitation. Fear of the unknown makes a man who thought he had solved the riddle of the Sphinx tremble! I was nervous, terribly nervous; I would not, however, quit the battlefield, but continued to read. Then there fell a spark, or a small will-o'-the-wisp, like a snowflake from the ceiling, and was quenched on my book. Yet, reader, I did not go mad! Sleep, sacred sleep, assumes the form of an ambush in which murderers lurk. I dare not sleep any more, and yet have no power to keep myself awake. This is really hell! As I feel the torpor of sleep stealing over me, a galvanic shock like a thunderbolt strikes me, without, however, killing me. Hurl thy shafts, proud Gaul, against heaven! Heaven in its turn never stops hurling. * * * * *