Something spurred me on. I wanted to earn a little money. I could then send some to my old aunt who had brought me up. She always waited for me in the low-ceilinged room, where her sewing-machine, afternoons, whirred, monotonous and tiresome as a clock, and where, evenings, there was a lamp beside her which somehow seemed to look like herself. Notes--the notes from which I was to draw up the report that would show my ability and definitely decide whether I would get a position in Monsieur Berton's bank--Monsieur Berton, who could do everything for me, who had but to say a word, the god of my material life. I started to light the lamp. I scratched a match. It did not catch fire, the phosphorous end breaking off. I threw it away and waited a moment, feeling a little tired. Then I heard a song hummed quite close to my ear. . . . . . Some one seemed to be leaning on my shoulder, singing for me, only for me, in confidence. Ah, an hallucination! Surely my brain was sick--my punishment for having thought too hard. I stood up, and my hand clutched the edge of the table. I was oppressed by a feeling of the supernatural. I sniffed the air, my eyelids blinking, alert and suspicious. The singing kept on. I could not get rid of it. My head was beginning to go round. The singing came from the room next to mine. Why was it so pure, so strangely near? Why did it touch me so? I looked at the wall between the two rooms, and stifled a cry of surprise. High up, near the ceiling, above the door, always kept locked, there was a light. The song fell from that star. There was a crack in the partition at that spot, through which the light of the next room entered the night of mine. I climbed up on the bed, and my face was on a level with the crack. Rotten woodwork, two loose bricks. The plaster gave way and an opening appeared as large as my hand, but invisible from below, because of the moulding. I looked. I beheld. The next room presented itself to my sight freely. It spread out before me, this room which was not mine. The voice that had been singing had gone, and in going had left the door open, and it almost seemed as though the door were still swinging on its hinges. There was nothing in the room but a lighted candle, which trembled on the mantelpiece. At that distance the table looked like an island, the bluish and reddish pieces of furniture, in their vague outline, like the organs of a body almost alive. I looked at the wardrobe. Bright, confused lines going straight up, its feet in darkness. The ceiling, the reflection of the ceiling in the glass, and the pale window like a human face against the sky. I returned to my room--as if I had really left it--stunned at first, my thoughts in a whirl, almost forgetting who I was. I sat down on my bed, thinking things over quickly and trembling a little, oppressed by what was to come.