drops of water falling from a robinet into a fountain. Obeying a
feeling of panic terror he was about to rise and call the innkeeper
and waken Wahlenfer and Wilhelm, but he suddenly remembered, alas! to
his great misfortune, the tall wooden clock; he fancied the sound was
that of the pendulum, and he fell asleep with that confused and
indistinct perception.

["Do you want some water, Monsieur Taillefer?" said the master of the
house, observing that the banker was mechanically pouring from an
empty decanter.

Monsieur Hermann continued his narrative after the slight pause
occasioned by this interruption.]

The next morning Prosper Magnan was awakened by a great noise. He
seemed to hear piercing cries, and he felt that violent shuddering of
the nerves which we suffer when on awaking we continue to feel a
painful impression begun in sleep. A physiological fact then takes
place within us, a start, to use the common expression, which has
never been sufficiently observed, though it contains very curious
phenomena for science. This terrible agony, produced, possibly, by the
too sudden reunion of our two natures separated during sleep, is
usually transient; but in the poor young surgeon's case it lasted, and
even increased, causing him suddenly the most awful horror as he
beheld a pool of blood between Wahlenfer's bed and his own mattress.
The head of the unfortunate German lay on the ground; his body was
still on the bed; all its blood had flowed out by the neck.

Seeing the eyes still open but fixed, seeing the blood which had
stained his sheets and even his hands, recognizing his own surgical