He had gone to sleep apparently in his usual health, but when he woke up in the morning he had lost his control of words. He could not bring them into the simplest order. He could not command a single one to his use. He could not say who he was, nor where he wanted to go, although he knew these facts perfectly. The moment he tried to speak, there swooped down between him and his meaning, a darkening throng of words. All the words in the world were there, Greek, Sanscrit, Provençal, Italian, Old-French, tearing furiously through his mind. But not the simple words in his own language to say that he was Professor Paul Meyer of the École des Chartes, who wanted to buy a ticket to Paris. He stood there, helpless, facing the staring chambermaids, cut off from them, from every one by this wild, invisible storm. They thought him an idiot, escaped from his friends, and ran away from him. As he told me about it, he looked sick and gray, and the sweat stood out on his forehead. It had lasted for three days. For three days and three nights he had felt himself drowning in words, words that flooded up about him so that he was fighting for air. Never for an instant was he able to take his attention from their crazy flight through his mind, and never able to stop one long enough to use it. He suffered, suffered more than he had thought any human being could and retain consciousness, had after the first day fallen into a high fever, so that they feared for his life. Hour after hour he had lain on his bed, helpless, trying with all his strength to fight away those words long enough to remember what he wished to say. And then, on the morning of the fourth day, click! Something snapped into place inside his mind, and there he was, very worn, very weak, but perfectly himself again, Professor Paul Meyer of the École des Chartes. He had reached home safely, though strengthless and exhausted, and the next morning had wakened again to that horror. It had lasted an hour then, but it had come twice since--once as he was lecturing before his class! He never knew when it might be upon him. As he opened his mouth to speak at any moment, he could not be sure that words would not burst from his command again. Even as he told me this, he glanced at my baby daughter, whom I had brought out to show him. For an instant his face whitened in so terrible a glare of panic that I screamed and clutched his arm. It was over. He was drawing a long breath and wiping his shaking lips with his handkerchief. “For an instant as I looked at her I could not think of the word ‘baby,’” he said pitifully. “It was there, waiting to come on me again.” It seemed to me that he was not fit to go about the streets alone, and when he started to go away I asked him if he would not like to have me take him home. He hung his proud old head and said nothing. I went to get my hat and as no one happened to be at home with whom to leave the baby, I took her on my arm.