"Never?" persisted Adolphe.
"Oh, I couldn't go so far as to say never," said Theophrastus. "In fact, I remember having dreamt four or five times in my life. I remember it because I always woke up at the same point in the dream; and it was always the same dream. But how on earth does it affect this business which is worrying us?"
"Dreams have never been explained by Science," said Adolphe solemnly. "It fancies that it has said everything when it has ascribed them to the effect of the imagination. But it gives us no explanation of the quite clear and distinct visions we sometimes have which have nothing whatever to do with the events or preoccupations of the previous day. In particular how are we to account for those visions of actually existing things which one has never seen in the waking state, things of which one has never even thought? Who will dare to say that they are not retrospective visions of events which have taken place before our present existence?"
"As a matter of fact, Adolphe, I can assure you that the things of which I dream—and I remember now that I have dreamt of them three times—are perhaps real in the past or future, but that I have never seen them in the present."
"You understand my point," said Adolphe in a gratified tone. "But what are these things you have dreamt of but never seen?"
"That won't take long to tell and thank goodness for it, for they're not particularly pleasant. I dreamt that I was married to a wife whom I called Marie-Antoinette and who annoyed me extremely."
"And then?" said Adolphe, whose eyes never quitted the document.
"And then I cut her up into little bits," said Theophrastus, blushing faintly.
"What a horrible thing to do!" cried Marceline.
"As a matter of fact it was rather horrible," said Theophrastus. "And then I put the pieces into a basket and was going to throw them into the Seine near the little bridge of the Hôtel-de-Ville. At that point I awoke; and I was jolly glad to awake, for it wasn't a pleasant dream."