"No, it was an attack of nightmare."
"Incubus!"
"Yes, indeed! It squeezed my lungs together, something like angina pectoris."
I gave him a glass of milk; he lights a cigar, and I return to my room. But now all my chance of sleep is gone. What I had seen was too terrible, and till the morning my companions continue their conflict with the invisible.
We meet at breakfast, and make a joke of the adventures of the night. But our host does not laugh, a circumstance which I ascribe to his religious way of thinking, which makes him hold the hidden Powers in awe. The delicate position in which I find myself between the seniors whom I admire, and the juniors whom I have no right to blame, makes me hasten my departure. As we rise from table the master of the house asks the doctor for a special consultation, and they retire for half an hour.
"What is the matter with the old man?" I ask, when the doctor returns.
"He cannot sleep,—has heart attacks at night."
"He also! That good and pious man! Then it is an epidemic which spares no one."
I will not deny that this circumstance restored my courage, and the old spirit of rebellion and scepticism took possession of my soul. To challenge the demons, to defy the invisible, and finally to subdue it,—that, was the task I proposed to myself as I left this hospitable family in order to proceed upon my projected excursion in Schonen.