I had but to obey. “Bah,” I said to myself, “in spite of his exhortations, he is more to be pitied than I am.”
The happenings of that night cooled my pity most notably.
The incident troubled me all the more that it did nothing to lighten the darkness of the mystery; in itself it seemed incomprehensible. This is what it was:
I had peacefully fallen asleep with my mind dwelling on Emma, and the delightful hope she inspired; but sleep instead of bringing me pleasant dreams, brought back the absurdities of the preceding night, the moaning and barking plants. The intensity of the sound kept increasing in my dream, and at last it became so acute, so real, that I suddenly woke up.
Sweat was drenching my body and my hot sheets. The echo of a recent cry was just dying on my tympanum. It was not the first time I heard it. No—in the labyrinth I had heard it before, that cry, far away in the direction of Fonval.
I raised myself on my hands. A ray of moonlight lit my room. I could hear nothing. Only from the old-fashioned clock came any sound—that of Time’s sickle. My head fell back on the pillow.
Then suddenly, with a shuddering of my whole being, I buried myself in the blankets with my fingers in my ears. The sinister howling was rising from the park into the night, a sinister, unearthly howling. It was indeed that which I had heard in my nightmare; my dream had mingled with reality.
With a superhuman effort I arose, and it was then that I heard yelpings—a sort of stifled yelpings, very much stifled.
Well, after all, it might all be proceeding from a dog’s throat, hang it!
Nothing to be seen from the window on the garden side except the plane tree and the other trees drowsing in the moonlight.