Conscience -- Volume 4

; and although since his choice of medicine he read but little besides books of science, at that time he was obliged to study the plays of his author. From this study there lingered in

urder sleep, th

s up the ravell'

h day's life, so

f hurt

hard at first, of passing only a few hours in bed. But he employed these few hours well, sleeping as the weary sleep, hands clenched, without dreaming, waking, or m

ng sleep continued the same; but suddenly, afte

any one that the life of every organ is composed of alternate periods of repose and activity, and he did not suppose that he would be able to work indefinitely without sleep. He only hop

would go to sleep immediately. But very soon he awoke with a start, suffocating, covered with perspiration, in a state of extreme anxiety, his mind agitated by hallucinations of which he could not rid himself all at once. If he did not wake suddenly, he drea

allow it to rest, he decided to change a plan which produced so little success. Instead of intellectual work he would engage in physical exercise, which, by exhausting his muscular

, and, by the force of a will that had been long exercised and submissive to obedience, he was able to keep his thoughts on the subject in hand, without distraction as without dreams. Time passed. But when walking in the streets of Paris, in the deserted roads on the outskirts, by the Seine or Marne, his mind wandered where it would; it was

cidents, and until now he had been spared them; a true son of peasants, he victoriously resisted Paris life as the destroyer of the intellect. But the time had come to un

rebral tumor; he was not anaemic; he ate well; he did not suffer with neuralgia, nor with any acute or chronic affection that generally accompanied the absence of sleep; he dr

omide of potassium, in spite of its hypnotic properties, produced no more effect than the over-working of the brain and body. When he realized this he replaced

and since it is acknowledged that chloral produces a calmer sleep than morphine, it seemed as if the latter would prove

of these injections to continue them beyond what was strictly

end of a certain time what he feared came to pass-his leanness increased; he lost his appetite, his muscula

topped, f

to absorb new doses of poison, a desire as imperious, as irresistible in morphinism as that of alcohol for the alcoholic, and more terrible in

m should return, and following them, this over- excitement of the brain in troubling the n

other, dementia from the constant excit

up morphine, and this choice forced itself upon him with so much more strength, because if

he man he had always been, master of his strength and mind. But the action of the morphine rapidly weakened this all-powerful will, so much so, that when these ideas crossed his mind during his

es, even when they were closed-that of this old rascal and of this unfortunate woman? In order not to complicate this impression with another that humiliated him,

Madame Dammauville motionless and pink on her bed, to him it was not less cruel to se

ot the less certain that these two dead persons and the condemned one weighed upon him with a terrible weight, frightful, suffocating, like a

since these dead bodies seized hold of his

f things and of persons, looking only before him and never behind, master of his

been weak in action an

it was also in uneasiness for the future; for, if he lacked this strength that he attribut

lk alone because they need no one. And he needed a woman; and so great was the need that it was throug

on account of this? Per