Her cough was very violent, and Reyer attended her again, but she never told him about her Brussels doctor, who had prescribed her the morphine-drops, as she remembered that Reyer would never allow her to take an opiate. It was February, the cold was [[299]]intense, and she did not leave the house. When in the morning she rose, she felt as formerly she had felt at Madame van Raat’s, too fatigued and languid to dress herself. She wrapped herself in her peignoir and sank down on a couch. Then a delicious feeling would come over her that she need not trouble herself about any one, that there was no need for her to dress herself, and that she could remain as she was in her slippers as long as she liked. Often Madame van Raat or Betsy, Madame Verstraeten or Marie and Lili, found her thus undressed, dishevelled, vacantly staring out of the window. She did not read, she did not do anything, and hour after hour passed by during which she did not even think. At times she would suddenly throw herself on the floor, her face pressed down on the carpet, and then it grew dark, oh, so dark around her, until a knock at the door—the servant who brought her dinner—made her start up with a sudden fright. Then she would sit down and eat a very little, and then a wan little smile would hover around her lips, in which at once something satirical and something idiotic were intermingled.
The nights that followed on those days were for Eline veritable hours of terror. Everything within her began to live, and she felt as if electrified by the horror, so that she could not sleep. Her brain was in a mad whirl. Shrill, mysterious sounds rushed through her ears. A very maelstrom of memories whirled round and round in her mind. Visions of all shapes and forms rose up around her. She started in terror at everything—at a shadow falling along the wall, at a pin glistening on the floor; then she took her drops, and a dull sleep at last fell upon her like a leaden mantle.
For minutes at a time she would stand staring in the glass at her faded features. The tears would then start to her eyes, whose brightness was for ever extinguished, and she thought of former days, she longed for that past again without really asking herself what that past had been. For latterly she was no longer capable of continuous thought. It was as if before her thoughts a barrier had been placed, which she could not cross. But it was that very dullness which now overtook her that in some measure lessened her melancholy, which, had her brain been of its normal clearness, would certainly have risen to an unbearable crisis. But instead of that melancholy she now struggled through hours of doubt, in which she was at a loss what to do with her useless self, her useless existence, which dragged itself along within these four walls, with [[300]]only her violent fits of coughing to break the weary monotony. Then she fell to weeping bitterly about her unfulfilled desires, and she writhed on the ground, stretching forth her arms towards an image which vaguely shaped itself to her eyes; for in her dreams, as well as in her waking thoughts, the forms of Otto and St. Clare began to be confused in her mind. The observations and sayings, the ideas of the one she ascribed to the other, and she could no longer say which of them she had ever loved in truth, or which of them she still loved. When, in such doubts, she attempted to continue her train of thought, that impassable barrier stopped her, and her impotency enraged her; with her clenched fist she beat herself on the forehead, as if therein there was something broken that she would repair.
“What can it be?” she would then ask herself in despair. “Why is it that I forget so many things that have happened, and of which I can only remember that they have happened? All that dullness here in my head! Rather the most horrible pain than that dullness! It is as if I am going mad!”
A shudder crept over her back like a cold snake at that thought. Suppose she were to go mad, what then would they do with her? But she would not follow up such terrible suppositions, although it seemed to her that if she could only think through that spectre of rising insanity, she would suddenly pass over the barrier that had been placed before her thoughts! But when once she should have passed into it, then—then, indeed, she would be insane.
At such moments she covered her face with her hands and pressed her fingers in her ears, as though she would not hear, would not see; as if the first impression she would now receive would drive her mad. And at that idea she was so terrified that she said not a word about that dullness to Reyer.
Her uninterrupted, listless idleness made her yield herself up entirely like a slave to the strange fantasies and ideas which frequently rose to the most senseless ecstasies, from which she suddenly awoke in dread terror; reclining on her couch, her fingers nervously plucking at the tassels of the cushions, playing with the loose hair that hung dishevelled about her head, her thoughts went back to her theatrical illusions in the days when she had sung duets with Paul, and when she thought she loved Fabrice. Then she became an actress; she saw the stage, the public, she smiled [[301]]and bowed, flowers rained down upon her. Quite unconscious of herself, she would rise from her couch, and with her broken voice softly hum a recitative, a phrase from some Italian aria; and she moved about her room as if she were playing a part—she acted, she stretched forth her arms in movements of despair, or lifted them up with longing towards the fleeing lover; she sank down on her knees, and imagined that she was dragged forward, although she prayed and implored for mercy. Various rôles rose confused in her brain: Marguerite, Juliette, Lucia, Isabelle, Mireille—of all these in the space of a few minutes she would go through the most tragic scenes, and suddenly, roughly awakened from that madness, she would see herself once more alone in her room, and making the strangest motions. Then she drew back in terror for herself, and tremblingly she thought—
“Heavens above! is it coming over me?”
After such moments she would remain lying down staring about her with frightened eyes, as if she expected that some crushing catastrophe would occur, as if the features of the statuettes, the figures in the pictures and plates around her, would suddenly come to life and laugh at her—a hard, grinning laugh, cruel as that of demons.
After such a day she did her best in her silent terror to become herself once more. In the morning, after awakening from her leaden, artificial sleep, she would quickly get up, dress herself with much care, and go out shopping; then go and take coffee with Henk and Betsy, with the Verstraetens, or with Madame van Raat. She complained about her loneliness, and as, in such moments, she showed herself rather amiable, they asked her here and there out of pity to stay to dinner. Then the evening would pass cheerily enough, and she returned home, glad that another day was gone, but fainting almost with fatigue at her unusual emotions by her artificially excited gaiety, unnatural and full of shrill laughter, mingled with coughs. And such a day she had to pay for dearly at night; the drops gave her no relief, she remained all through hopelessly wide awake, struggling with horrible nightmares, haunted by spectres of her diseased brain.