II
It was night when he awoke. All was quiet. The heavy breathing of patients sleeping in the large room near was audible. A patient, placed for the night in the dark room, was talking to himself in a strange and monotonous voice. Above, in the women’s ward, a hoarse contralto was singing some wild song. The patient listened to these sounds. He felt a terrible weakness and lassitude in all his limbs. His neck was dreadfully painful.
“Where am I? What has happened to me?” came into his head. Then suddenly, with extraordinary vividness, his life during the last month came before him, and he understood that he was unwell, and in what way he was unwell. He recalled a series of absurd thoughts, words, and actions which made him shudder throughout his whole being. “But that is ended; thank God, it is ended!” he whispered to himself, and again fell asleep.
An opened window, but guarded with iron bars, looked out on a little corner between the big buildings and a stone wall. Into this corner no one ever went, and it was overgrown with some wild shrub and a lilac in gaudily full blossom at this time of the year. Behind these bushes directly opposite the window a high wall loomed, from behind which, in turn, glanced lofty tops of trees, and through their leafy branches pierced the moonlight, which was bathing all around, including the big garden from which these trees arose. On the right was the white building of the Asylum, with its iron-barred windows, through which the lights were visible. On the left, white and brilliant in the moonlight, was the blank wall of the mortuary. The moon’s rays, shining past the iron bars of the window into the room, fell on to the floor, and lighted up a part of the bed, bringing into relief the worn pallid face of its occupant lying with closed eyes. There was no trace of insanity in its features now. It was the deep, heavy sleep of an exhausted being, dreamless, motionless, and almost breathless. For a few seconds he awoke, fully conscious, and apparently sane, only to rise in the morning from his bed again bereft of reason.