But even a freethinker may have his dark hours of depression, the cause of which he knows not. Late one evening, when the room was in twilight, and the lamps, though kindled, did not illuminate the corners where the shadows fell, my friend confided to me, in answer to my expressions of gratitude, that the obligation lay on his side. For he had, he said, a short while ago lost his best friend by death. Since then he was troubled by uneasy dreams, in which there always mixed the image of his departed friend.
"You also?" I exclaimed.
"I also! But you understand that I am only speaking of dreams such as one has at night."
"Yes, certainly."
"Sleeplessness, nightmares, and so forth. You know what it is to be ridden by a nightmare, which is a disorder of the chest caused by disturbed digestion following on excesses. Have you never had it?"
"Yes, indeed. One eats crabs for supper, and then one has it! Have you tried sulphonal for it?"
"Yes. But as to trusting doctors—you know yourself already, perhaps?"
"I should think so! I know them thoroughly. But let us speak of your dead friend. Does he appear to you in a disturbing way,—I mean in dreams?"
"I need hardly tell you it isn't he who appears before me. It is his corpse, and I am sorry to say he died under strange circumstances. Only think! A young talented man who had made a very promising début in literature must die of an obscure disease, tuberculosis miliaris, which caused his body to so decompose that it looked like a heap of millet."
"And now his body appears to you?"