Suddenly, as I cast my eyes round the room, old memories seemed to
awaken in me. The fire, after making the green wood hiss, sent a flame
up the chimney, and the whole room was illumined with a bright
though unsteady light, which gave all the objects a weird, ambiguous
appearance. Blaireau rose, turned his back to the fire and sat down
between my legs, as if he thought that something strange and unexpected
was going to happen.

I then realized that this place was none other than my grandfather
Tristan's bed-room, afterward occupied for several years by his eldest
son, the detestable John, my cruelest oppressor, the most crafty and
cowardly of the Hamstringers. I was filled with a sense of terror and
disgust on recognising the furniture, even the very bed with twisted
posts on which my grandfather had given up his blackened soul to God,
amid all the torments of a lingering death agony. The arm-chair which I
was sitting in was the one in which John the Crooked (as he was pleased
to call himself in his facetious days) used to sit and think out his
villainies or issue his odious orders. At this moment I thought I saw
the ghosts of all the Mauprats passing before me, with their bloody
hands and their eyes dulled with wine. I got up and was about to yield
to the horror I felt by taking to flight, when suddenly I saw a figure
rise up in front of me, so distinct, so recognisable, so different in
its vivid reality from the chimeras that had just besieged me, that I
fell back in my chair, all bathed in a cold sweat. Standing by the
bed was John Mauprat. He had just got out, for he was holding the
half-opened curtain in his hand. He seemed to me the same as formerly,
only he was still thinner, and paler and more hideous. His head was
shaved, and his body wrapped in a dark winding-sheet. He gave me a
hellish glance; a smile full of hate and contempt played on his thin,
shrivelled lips. He stood motionless with his gleaming eyes fixed on me,