Legends

are. Besides, as he has related his troubles to everyone who would listen to them, without having deposed to the facts under a seal of secr

cquaintanceship, when he offered me a refuge in his house, he treated me with friendly brotherliness, and tended me like a sick person, that is to

led, did not illuminate the corners where the shadows fell, my friend confided to me, in answer to my expressions of gratitude, that the obligation lay on his side. For h

o?" I ex

hat I am only speaking of dre

cert

e ridden by a nightmare, which is a disorder of the chest caused b

r supper, and then one has it!

g doctors-you know your

let us speak of your dead friend. Does he appe

ange circumstances. Only think! A young talented man who had made a very promising début in literature must die of a

s body appe

d what I mean. Let u

riend seems to suffer from an acute degree of nervousness. When I part

om time to time. Although recently engaged to be married, he regards the future in the most gloomy light. But instead of resisting his troubles, he takes a journey in order to distr

grown black in the face, so that he can be scarcely recognised. He lies stretched out on the bed, and is watched by a friend and

sion of five devils in the shape of red apes with black eyes, which cr

niary affairs in order, he tells his dream to every

ong. Amid these gloomy reflections, with intervals of cheerfulness, the unhappy man, who seems to have fallen into disfavour with the Powers, receives a fresh and crushing bl

ss of everything, and one night my friend wakes up to see the whole room full of mice. Fully convinced of their reality, he takes a stick and strikes at them till they disappear. That was an attack of delirium, but an attac

to give a detailed description of the body of the suicide which had appeared to him, and he accompanies it w

words he turned pale, stood up from the table, and with a gesture of disgust po

e finds a piece of chicken surrounded by white maggots. He cannot eat alt

an? What does it

ill of the dead. The

But they

ore they are more al

lf to speak openly of the weaknesses of the deceased

ndah of a garden-restaurant, one of the guests

, and they laughed

"you will soon see. It i

planks. "I think we have had enough of rats,"

and find myself face to face with my friend, who looks disturbed and excited. He asks to be allowed to s

al woman, o

e able to die. It is enough to drive one mad. If I

, deprived of the simple pleasure of being able to undress himself, he rouses my sympathy and I offer him my bed as a sign of my gratitude. But he refuses. He asks to have the lamp lit, and the light falls strai

o seek rest on other people's sofas

I think" is

ass over others of his adventures and come to the story of the Madonna and the telepathic vision he had of some one at the moment he died. It is quite short. On the occasion of an excursion into

elation of the Blessed Virgin! It would be a good

to the great astonishment of his compan

ow he h

ho

the death struggle, the chamber,

-past seven o'clock, at the same moment in which the visionary received intimation of it. Those who had ridiculed him were greatly impressed, so that the

t ones suggested that the witnesses were liars. The result was a protest on the part of my friend the

isible powers in our petty affairs, but this modesty itself may be an "obstacle cast up by t

e contains only exist on man's account, on the ground that the admission of such an idea would be only conceit. But they have not been afraid of the laziness and cowardice which are the inevitable results of this affected modesty. The present-day avoidance of the belief that we are the highest in the universe is the reason

ailments spring from "moral" grounds. But "moral" is a word which is nowadays despised and suspected, and I am not the man to reassert it. Only on one occasion, when the unfortunate man was in a state of deep depressi

d. "What does thi

from going mad. Consider now, he has given me back th

t, I b

very time that the possessed man has

rds which are worth all the docto

r himself. I, the undersigned, declare that I have obta

AU

fession, not