""Primitive..." "Primitive... tempered by the arguments and the restraints of a civilized being." Yes." "End of the first chapter:" ""... tempered by the arguments and the restraints of a civilezed being."" "That's it." "The first paragraph of the third chapter is changed." "It should say:" ""I am passionately fond of the water:" "of the sea, though it is too vast, too full of movement, impossible to hold"" ""impossible to hold" "and above all of the marshes"" ""Why should a vague terror hang over...?"" ""Why should a vague terror hang over these low plains covered with water?"" ""Is it the low rustling of the rushes, the strange will-o'-the-wisp lights, the silence which prevails on calm nights, or is it the still mists which hang over the surface like a shroud."" "The last page is modified." ""The sun had risen, when two birds, with extended necks and outstretched wings, glided rapidly over our heads." "I fired, and one of them fell almost at my feet." "It was a teal, with a silver breast." "Then, in the blue space above me, I heard a voice, the voice of a bird."" ""Never have any groans of suffering pained me so much as that desolate appeal, as that lamentable reproach of this poor bird which was lost in space."" ""I returned to Paris the same evening."" ""Never have any groans of suffering pained me so much as that desolate appeal, as that lamentable reproach of this poor bird which was lost in space."" ""I returned to Paris the same evening."" "The Horla" "8th of May." "What a lovely day!" "I have spent all the morning lying on the grass." "I like this part of the country;" "I am fond of living here because I am attached to it by deep roots;" "I love the house in which I grew up." "What a delicious morning it was!" "12th of May." "I have had a slight feverish attack for the last few days..." "... and I feel ill, or rather I feel low-spirited." "Everything that surrounds us, has upon us, on our being itself, rapid, surprising and inexplicable effect." "How profound that mystery of the Invisible is!" "We cannot fathom it with our miserable senses." "our ears deceive us, for they transmit to us the vibrations of the air in sonorous notes... who works the miracle of changing that movement into noise,... and by that metamorphosis give birth to music which makes the mute agitation of nature a harmony." "16th of May." "I am ill, decidedly!" "I have without ceasing the horrible sensation of some danger threatening me." "18th of May." "I just came from consulting my medical man, for I can no longer get any sleep." "25th of May." "No change!" "My state is really very peculiar." "As the evening comes on, an incompre- hensible feeling of disquietude seizes me." "I am frightened..." "...of what?" "Up till the present time I've been frightened of nothing." "I listen..." "I listen to what?" "I feel that I am in bed and asleep..." "I feel it and I know it and I feel also that somebody is coming close to me, is looking at me, touching me, is getting on to my bed, is kneeling on my chest is taking my neck between his hands and squeezing it" "squeezing it with all his might in order to strangle me." "2nd of June." "My state has grown worse." "What is the matter with me?" "Sometimes, in order to tire myself out, though I am fatigued enough already," "I go for a walk in the forest." "A sudden shiver ran through me, not a cold shiver, but a shiver of agony." "Suddenly it seemed as if I were being followed, that someone was walking at my heels, quite close to me, near enough to touch me." "The trees were dancing round me and the earth heaved." "I no longer remembered how I had come!" "What a strange idea!" "What a strange, strange idea!" "3rd of June." "I have had a terrible night." "I shall go away for a few weeks." "2nd of July." "I have come back, quite cured." "3rd of July." "I am decidedly taken again;" "for my old nightmares have returned." "4th of July." "Last night I felt somebody leaning on me who was sucking my life from between my lips with his mouth." "Yes, he was sucking it out of my neck like a leech would have done." "5th of July." "Have I lost my reason?" "What I saw last night is so strange that my head wanders when I think of it!" "As I do now every evening," "I had locked my door." "I accidentally noticed the waterbottle was full up to the cut-glass stopper." "Then I went to bed and fell into one of my terrible sleeps." "Picture to yourself a sleeping man who is being murdered, who wakes up with a knife in his chest, a gurgling in his throat, covered with blood, can no longer breathe, is going to die and does not understand anything at all about it." "The water-bottle was empty!" "It was completely empty!" "Some body had drunk the water, but who?" "Me?" "It could surely only be me?" "In that case I was a somnambulist, was living, without knowing it, that double, mysterious life, which makes us doubt whether there are not two beings in us." "Oh!" "Who will understand my horrible agony?" "Who will understand the emotion of a man sound in mind, wide-awake, full of sense, who looks in horror at the disappearance of a little water while he was asleep!" "6th of July." "I am going mad." "Again all the contents of my waterbottle have been drunk during the night or rather I have drunk it!" "But is it me?" "Is it me?" "Oh!" "God!" "Am I going mad?" "Who will save me?" "10th of July." "I have just been through some surprising ordeals." "Undoubtedly I must be mad!" "And yet!" "On July the 6th, before going to bed, I put on my table some wine, milk, water, bread, and strawberries." "Somebody drank, I drank, all the water and a bit of the milk, but neither the wine, nor the strawberries were touched." "On the 7th of July I renewed the same experiment, with the same results." "On the 8th of July I left out the water and the milk and nothing was touched." "Last, on the 9th of July I put only water and milk on my table." "I had not moved, and my sheets were not marked." "The muslin round the bottles remained intacts." "All the water had been drunk, and so had the milk!" "I must start for Paris immediately." "30th of July." "I returned to my own house yesterday." "Everything is fine." "2nd of August." "Nothing fresh;" "it is splendid weather." "6th of August." "This time, I am not mad." "I have seen." "I have seen!" "I have seen!" "As I stopped to look at a rosetree which had three splendid blooms," "I distinctly saw the stalk of one of the roses bend close to me, as if an invisible hand had bent it, and then break, as if that hand had picked it!" "Then the flower raised itself, following the curve which a hand would describe carrying it to a mouth," "and remained suspended in the transparent air, alone and motionless a terrible red spot, three yards from my eyes." "In desperation I rushed at it to take it!" "I found nothing, it had disappeared." "I am certain now, certain as I am of the alternation of day and night, that there exists close to me an invisible being who lives on milk and on water, who can touch objects, take them and change their places," "who is, consequently, endowed with a material nature, although imperceptible to sense, and who lives as I do, under my roof." "7th of August." "He drank the water from my decanter, but did not disturb my sleep." "I ask myself whether I am mad." "I certainly should think that I was mad, absolutely mad, if I were not conscious." "But was it not possible that one of the imperceptible keys of the cerebral finger-board had been paralyzed in me?" "By degrees, however, an inexplicable feeling of discomfort seized me." "It seemed to me as if some unknown force were numbing and stopping me, were preventing me from going further and were calling me back." "I returned despite of myself, feeling certain that I should find some bad news awaiting me." "There was nothing, however, and I was surprised and uneasy, more so than if I had had another fantastic vision." "8th of August." "I spent a terrible evening, yesterday." "He does not show himself any more, but I feel that he is near me." "9th of August." "Nothing." "10th of August." "Nothing." "11th of August." "All day long I have been trying to get away, and have not been able." "I have no power left to will anything, but someone does it for me and I obey." "14th of August." "I am lost!" "Somebody possesses my soul and governs it!" "Somebody possesses my soul and governs it!" "Somebody orders all my acts, all my movements, all my thoughts." "But, this invisible being that rules me, who is he?" "15th of August." "How I should have enjoyed such a night formerly!" "Who inhabits those worlds?" "What forms, what living beings, what animals are there yonder?" "Do those who are thinkers in those distant worlds know more than we do?" "What can they do more than we?" "Will not one of them, some day or other, traversing space, appear on our earth to conquer it." "I fell asleep, dreaming thus in the cool night air." "And then, having slept for about forty minutes," "I opened my eyes without moving." "At first I saw nothing." "I knew that he was there, and sitting in my place, and that he was reading." "My table rocked, my lamp fell and went out... and my window closed as if some thief had been surprised and had fled out into the night, shutting it behind him." "Now I know, I can divine." "The reign of man is over." "And he has come." "He whom frightened first terrors of trusting peoples, he whom disquieted priests exorcised, whom sorcerers evoked on dark nights, without seeing him appear." "Woe to us!" "Woe to man!" "He has come, the... the..." "what does he call himself." "I fancy that he is shouting out his name to me and I do not hear him." "Yes." "He is shouting it out..." "Horla." "I have heard." "The Horla." "It is him, the Horla." "He has come!" "The vulture has eaten the pigeon, the wolf has eaten the lamb, the lion has devoured the sharp-horned buffalo, man has killed the lion with an arrow, with a spear, with gunpowder, but the Horla will make of man what man has made of the horse and the ox:" "his chattel, his slave, and his food, by the mere power of his will." "Woe to us!" "A new being!" "Why not?" "It was assuredly bound to come!" "Why should we be the last?" "We do not distinguish it, like all the others created before us?" "The reason is, that its nature is more delicate, its body finer and more finished than ours." "Our makeup is so weak, so awkwardly conceived it's a brute machine which is a prey to maladies, malformations, decay, ingeniously yet badly made." "There are only a few, so few stages of development in this world, from the oyster up to man." "Why should there not be one more." "Why not one more?" "Why not, also, other trees with immense, splendid flowers, perfuming whole regions?" "Why not other elements beside fire, air, earth, and water?" "There are four, only four." "Why should not there be forty, four hundred, four thousand!" "How poor everything is, how mean and wretched, grudgingly given, poorly invented, clumsily made!" "Ah!" "the elephant and the hippopotamus, what power!" "And the camel, what suppleness!" "But the butterfly, you will say, a flying flower!" "I dream of one that should be as large as a hundred worlds, with wings whose shape, beauty, colors and motion I cannot even express." "But I see it, it flutters from star to star, refreshing them and perfuming them with the light and harmonious breath of its flight!" "And the people up there gaze at it as it passes in an ecstasy of delight!" "What is the matter with me?" "It is him, the Horla who haunts me and who makes me think these foolish things!" "He is within me, he is becoming my soul." "I shall kill him!" "19th of August." "I shall kill him." "I have seen him!" "Yesterday I sat down at my table and pretended to write very assiduously, to deceive Him for he also was watching me," "and suddenly I felt, I was certain, that he was reading over my shoulder, that he was there, almost touching my ear." "The glass was empty, clear, profound, full of light!" "But my figure was not reflected in it." "Kill, how?" "Since I could not get hold of him?" "20th of August." "Kill him." "How could I kill him, since I could not get hold of him?" "Poison?" "But he would see me mix it with the water, and then would our poisons have any effect on his impalpable body?" "No, no doubt about the matter." "Then?" "Then?" "25th of August." "It is done, but is he dead?" "My mind is thoroughly upset by what I have seen." "Well then, yesterday, I left everything open until midnight, although it was getting cold." "Suddenly I felt that he was there, and joy, mad joy took possession of me." "I reflected that he was dead." "Dead?" "Perhaps?" "His body?" "Was not his body, which was transparent, indestructible by such means as would kill ours?" "If he were not dead..." "Why this transparent, unrecognizable body, this body belonging to a spirit, if it also had to fear ills, infir- mities, and premature destruction?" "Premature destruction?" "All human terror springs from that!" "After man the Horla." "After man the Horla!" "Perhaps time alone has power over that invisible and redoubtable being." "After man the Horla..." "After him who can die every day, at any hour, at any moment, by any accident, he came, he who was only to die at his own proper day, proper hour and minute, because he had touched the limits of his existence!" "No." "No, there is no doubt about it." "There is no doubt about it." "He is not dead." "Then... then..." "I suppose I must kill myself!" "Subs created by joachim with help from limedebois."