He was a workman, pale, of a nervous temperament, sluggish intellect, and rather childish, but industrious at his work. His mother had suffered all her life from epileptic attacks, eventually dying in a fit of this kind. His father, too, was epileptic. His maternal aunt and her children were insane; his sister died, as a child, in convulsions. From his infancy he had been the victim of terrifying dreams, in which he used to spring, screaming, out of bed. These dreams troubled him especially when he had suffered any emotion during the day. He had once saved his little sister from falling into the water, and this had made such an impression on him that he often rose during the night, called loudly to his sister, and clasped her in his arms as though to keep her from falling. Sometimes he would awake, sometimes go back to bed, still sleeping, and in the morning would feel depressed without remembering anything. After his marriage in 1875 the attacks assumed a different character.
He was pursued by terrible dreams, and used to spring out of bed screaming 'Fire!’ or that his son was in convulsions, or that a wild animal had got into the room, which he would then try to find and hit with anything which fell into his hands. Several times he had seized his wife, his father, and a friend who lived with him, by the throat, nearly strangling them in the belief that he had caught the wild animal. In these attacks his eyes were wide-open and full of expression, and he saw all objects, although he was blind to everything which did not agree with his mental illusions. It was in one of these attacks that he killed his son.
And he was an affectionate father! The mind shudders at the thought of his unspeakable grief when consciousness returned.
CHAPTER XIV
FRIGHT AND TERROR
I
One of the most terrible effects of fear is the paralysis which allows neither of escape nor defence.
The history of battles and massacres, the chronicles of the courts of justice, are full of frightful occurrences when terror strangled even the instinct of flight in the victim.