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I remembered, shuddering, the mad enthusiasm that hurried me on

to the creation of my hideous enemy, and I called to mind the

night in which he first lived. I was unable to pursue the train

of thought; a thousand feelings pressed upon me, and I wept

bitterly.

Ever since my recovery from the fever, I had been in the custom

of taking every night a small quantity of laudanum, for it was by

means of this drug only that I was enabled to gain the rest

necessary for the preservation of life. Oppressed by the

recollection of my various misfortunes, I now swallowed double my

usual quantity and soon slept profoundly. But sleep did not

afford me respite from thought and misery; my dreams presented a

thousand objects that scared me. Towards morning I was possessed

by a kind of nightmare; I felt the fiend's grasp in my neck and

could not free myself from it; groans and cries rang in my ears.