restlessness, and sleeplessness:--


"One day, perceiving this growing illusion, I said, 'I really
believe my nerves are getting overstretched: my mind has suffered
somewhat too much; a malady is growing upon it--what shall I do?
How shall I keep well?'

"Indeed there was no way to keep well under the circumstances. At
last a day and night of peculiarly agonising depression were
succeeded by physical illness; I took perforce to my bed. About
this time the Indian summer closed, and the equinoctial storms
began; and for nine dark and wet days, of which the hours rushed on
all turbulent, deaf, dishevelled--bewildered with sounding
hurricane--I lay in a strange fever of the nerves and blood. Sleep
went quite away. I used to rise in the night, look round for her,
beseech her earnestly to return. A rattle of the window, a cry of
the blast only replied--Sleep never came!

"I err. She came once, but in anger. Impatient of my importunity
she brought with her an avenging dream. By the clock of St. Jean
Baptiste, that dream remained scarce fifteen minutes--a brief
space, but sufficing to wring my whole frame with unknown anguish;
to confer a nameless experience that had the hue, the mien, the
terror, the very tone of a visitation from eternity. Between twelve
and one that night a cup was forced to my lips, black, strong,
strange, drawn from no well, but filled up seething from a
bottomless and boundless sea. Suffering, brewed in temporal or
calculable measure, and mixed for mortal lips, tastes not as this
suffering tasted. Having drank [sic] and woke, I thought all was