After that, he remembered nothing distinctly. On
reaching the street he had been overcome by the fresh air, just as
a carouser is overcome on emerging from a heated dining-room.
Perhaps the champagne which he had drank had contributed to this
cerebral disorder. At all events, even now, in his own room,
seated in his own arm-chair, and surrounded by familiar objects,
he did not succeed in regaining the possession of his faculties.
He had barely strength enough to throw himself on to the bed, and
in a moment he was sleeping with that heavy slumber which so often
seizes hold of one on the occasion of a great crisis, and which
has so frequently been observed among persons condemned to death,
on the night preceding their execution. Four or five times his
mother came to listen at the door. Once she entered, and seeing
her son sleeping soundly, she could not repress a smile of
satisfaction. "Poor Pascal!" she thought; "he can bear no excess
but excess of work. Heavens! how surprised and mortified he will
be when he awakes!"
Alas! it was not a trifling mortification, but despair, which
awaited the sleeper on his wakening; for the past, the present,
and the future were presented simultaneously and visionlike to his
imagination. Although he had scarcely regained the full use of
his faculties, he was, to some extent, at least capable of
reflection and deliberation, and he tried to look the situation
bravely in the face.
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