Every now and again, Lerne flung into the basin cotton-wool stained with green blood....
Johann was the first to perceive my awaking, and he told the Professor of it. There was then a movement of general curiosity with regard to me, which, breaking up the group, allowed me to see an absolutely naked man bound to the table, with his hands under it—motionless and white, the color of wax, like a corpse, the blackness of his mustache making the paleness still paler, and his head, enveloped in bandages bedabbled with spurts of green.
His breast rose rhythmically. He was breathing in the air with all his lungs, his nostrils quivering with each inhalation. This man—it took me some time to accept it—was myself.
When I was certain that no mirror was giving me back my own image, which was an easy matter to settle, it came into my mind that Lerne had doubled my being, and that now I was two....
Or else, was I not dreaming?
No, assuredly not, but up to now the adventure had not got beyond the bizarre stage. I was neither dead nor mad, and the evidence of this cheered me mightily.
(Protest as one may against the conviction which I felt of possessing all my reason, the future was to confirm this rash judgment.)
The man on the operating-table shook his head. Wilhelm had unfastened him, and I beheld my other self awaking to a faint-like condition.
Opening eyes like those of a blind man, he waggled his head about with an idiotic air, stroked the edges of the table and sat up.
He did not look at all well. I could not accept the idea that my double should behave so like a brute beast.