This etext was produced by David Widger <widger@cecomet.net>
[NOTE: There is a short list of bookmarks, or pointers, at the end of thefile for those who may wish to sample the author's ideas before making anentire meal of them. D.W.]
By HECTOR MALOT
During the first years of his sojourn in Paris, Saniel had published in aLatin Quarter review an article on the "Pharmacy of Shakespeare"—thepoison of Hamlet, and of Romeo and Juliet; and although since his choiceof medicine he read but little besides books of science, at that time hewas obliged to study the plays of his author. From this study therelingered in his memory a phrase that for ten years had not risen to hislips, and which all at once forced itself uppermost in his mind withexasperating persistency. It was the words of Macbeth:
"Macbeth does murder sleep, the innocent sleep;
Sleep, that knits up the ravell'd sleeve of care,
The death of each day's life, sore labor's bath,
Balm of hurt minds."
He also had lost it, "the innocent sleep, sore labor's bath, balm of hurtminds." He had never been a great sleeper; at least he had accustomedhimself to the habit, hard at first, of passing only a few hours in bed.But he employed these few hours well, sleeping as the weary sleep, handsclenched, without dreaming, waking, or moving; and the thought thatoccupied his mind in the evening was with him on waking in the morning,not having been put to flight by others, any more than by dreams.
After Caffie's death this tranquil and refreshing sleep continued thesame; but suddenly, after Madame Dammauville's death, it became broken.
At first it did not bother him. He did not sleep, so much the better!He would work more. But one can no more work all the time than one canlive without eating. Saniel knew better than any one that the life ofevery organ is composed of alternate periods of repose and activity, andhe did not suppose that he would be able to work indefinitely withoutsleep. He only hoped that after some days of twenty hours of work daily,overcome by fatigue, he would have, in spite of everything, four hours ofsolid sleep, that Shakespeare called "sore labor's bath."
He had not had these four hours, and the law that every state ofprolonged excitement brings exhaustion that should be refreshed by afunctional rest, was proved false in his case. After a hard day's workhe would go to bed at one o'clock in the morning and would go to sleepimmediately. But very soon he awoke with a start, suffocating, coveredwith perspiration, in a state of extreme anxiety, his mind agitated byhallucinations of which he could not rid himself all at once. If he didnot wake suddenly, he dreamed frightful dreams, always of MadameDammauville or Caffie. Was it not curious that Caffie, who until thenhad been completely effaced from his memory, was resuscitated by MadameDammauville in the night, ghost of the darkness that the daylightdissipated?
Believing that one of the causes of these dreams was the excitement ofthe brain, occasioned by excessive work at the hour when he should notexercise it, but on the contrary should allow it to rest, he decided tochange a plan which produced so little success. Instead of intellectualwork he would engage in physical exercise, which, by exhausting hismuscular functions, would procure him the sleep of the laboring class;and as