“The door of the attic is open,” I said to myself. “The light is coming from the attic stairway. It’s unexcusable of the servants to leave the door of the attic open, for thieves might get up into the attic.”
But there was no attic door. There was only an ordinary stairway like the others.
I had counted wrong, then; I had still a flight to go up.
But when I had mounted this flight and stood in the corridor, I had to control myself so as not to shriek aloud. For this corridor, too, was light, neither was there any attic door open, but a new stairway led up just as before. Through the stair window the moon glimmered in, and it was ashen-gray and lustreless and unnaturally big.
I rushed up the stairway. I could no longer think. I tottered up another, and yet another; I did not count them any longer.
I wanted to cry out, I wanted to wake that accursed house and see human beings around me; but my throat was constricted.
Suddenly it occurred to me to try if I could read the names on the door-plates. What kind of people could it be that lived in this tower of Babel? The moonlight was too faint; I struck a match and held it close to a brass plate.
I read there the name of one of my friends who was dead.
Then the bonds of my tongue were loosed and I shrieked: “Help! help! help!”
That cry was my salvation, for it waked me up out of the terrible dream of eternity.