The day sank into night. There was a rapid coming and going above us. At night this slackened and ceased. Then Karl, who had come back from Grey-l’Abbaye, relieved Johann of his post. Almost immediately afterwards, Lerne had me plunged into a bath, and forced a bitter liquid down my throat. I recognized sulphate of magnesia. No doubt they were going to cut me up. These were forerunners of an operation. No one is ignorant of that now, in this age of appendicitis. It would be on the next day. What were they going to try on my body before killing it! I was alone with Karl! I was hungry! Not far from me a murmur arose from the wretched poultry-yard. There was a faint sound of stirred straw; timid cackling, strange barks. The beasts began to moan. Night! Lerne came in. I was in a state of wild agitation. He felt my pulse. “Are you happy?” he asked me. “Brute!” I replied. “Very well, I shall administer a sedative.” He offered it to me, and I drank it. It stank of chloral. Once more I am alone with Karl. Songs of toads, light of stars, dawning of the moon, uprising of its red disc. Mystic assumption of the luminary from star to star. All the beauty of night.... Then a forgotten prayer--the petition of a little child--went up from my distress towards the paradise which yesterday seemed a myth, and now was a certainty. How had I ever doubted its existence? And the moon wandered in the firmament like an aureole in search of a brow. It was long since my eyelids had closed on tears. I fell into drowsy delirium. The buzzing in my ears became a hubbub. (There are certain noises almost imperceptible, which seem like the thunder of cataclysms far away.) They were heaping up straw. That poultry-yard is exasperating. The bull was bellowing. I even had an illusion that it was bellowing louder and louder. Did they bring it in every evening, along with the cows, into the stall of that strange farm? Good Lord, what a row! It was while my mind was wandering in that way, under the influence of the drug, that, condemned to death, or destined for madness, I fell into a heavy and artificial sleep, which lasted till the morning. * * * * * Some one touched me on the shoulder. Lerne, in a white overall was standing near the bed. The murder idea had sprung up again instantaneously and clearly in me. “What o’clock is it? Am I to die, or is your business over?” “Patience, nephew. Nothing has begun yet.” “What are you going to do with me? Are you going to inoculate me with plague, tuberculosis, cholera? Tell me, uncle.” “No!” “What then?” “Come, come, no nonsense,” he said. He withdrew, and revealed an operating table, which, lying on narrow supports like an open bier, had the appearance of a rack. All the sets of instruments and the crowd of bottles shone in the light of the rising sun. Antiseptic dressings lay on a little table in a woolly cloud.