"Scuse me, yer honour, but since that doctor waccinated me and nearly killed me by it, tough as I be, I come to call all tomfoolery by the same name. I've been in theatres, yer honour, and played in pieces, and I've known the willain in the play get up a shindy like this. I knows they're on'y got up to 'arrow up the feelin's o' tender females; but I'm afeared as 'ow this Voltaire 'ev got somethin' in his head, a-concoctin' like." "Nonsense, Simon," I said. "You are thinking about some terrible piece you've acted in, and your imagination is carrying away your judgment." "I hope as 'ow 'tis, sur; but I don't think so. If you chop me up, sur, you'll not find sixpenno'th of imagination in my carcase, but I calcalate I'm purty 'eavy wi' judgment. Never mind, sur; Simon Slowden is in the 'ouse, if you should want help, sur." I did not feel much inclined to talk after this, and so, dismissing Simon, I began to think of how matters stood. Certainly everything was strange. Everything, too, had been done in a hurry. It seemed to me I had lived a long life in twenty-four hours. I had fallen in love, I had made an enemy, and I had matched myself against men who possessed a knowledge of some of the secret forces of life, without ever calculating my own strength. And yet I seemed to be beating the air. Were not my thoughts concerning Voltaire's schemes about Miss Forrest all fancy? Was not I the victim of some Quixotic ideas? Was not the creation of Cervantes' brain about as sensible as I? Surely I, a man of thirty, ought to know better? And yet some things were terribly real. My love for Gertrude Forrest was real; my walk and talk with her that day were real. Ay, and the hateful glitter of Voltaire's eyes was real too; his talk with Kaffar behind the shrubs the night before was real. The biological or hypnotic power that I had felt that very night was real, and, above all, a feeling of dread that had gripped my being was real. I could not explain it, and I could not throw it off, but ever since I had awoke out of my mesmeric sleep, or whatever the reader may be pleased to call it, I felt numbed; weights seemed to hang on my limbs, and my whole being was in a kind of torpor.