"Wednesday - is it Wednesday? They brought me a newspaper to-day
which had the date of Wednesday, the 20th of November. The ink
still smells fresh, but it is so damp here, the paper may have
been older. I do not know surely on what day it is that I begin
to write this narrative. I do not know either whether I may not
have been ill for days and weeks; I do not know what may have been
the matter with me - I know only that I was unconscious, and that
when I came to myself again, I was here in this gloomy room. Did
any physician see me? I have seen no one until to-day except the
old woman, whose name I do not know and who has so little to say.
She is kind to me otherwise, but I am afraid of her hard face and
of the smile with which she answers all my questions and entreaties.
"You are ill." These are the only words that she has ever said
to me, and she pointed to her forehead as she spoke them. She
thinks I am insane, therefore, or pretends to think so.

"What a hoarse voice she has. She must be ill herself, for she
coughs all night long. I can hear it through the wall - she sleeps
in the next room. But I am not ill, that is I am not ill in the
way she says. I have no fever now, my pulse is calm and regular.
I can remember everything, until I took that drink of tea in the
railway station. What could there have been in that tea? I suppose
I should have noticed how anxious my travelling companion was to have
me drink it.

"Who could the man have been? He was so polite, so fatherly in his
anxiety about me. I have not seen him since then. And yet I feel
that it is he who has brought me into this trap, a trap from which
I may never escape alive. I will describe him. He is very tall,
stout and blond, and wears a long heavy beard, which is slightly