The Horla

May 8
. What a wonderful day! I spent all morning stretched out on the grass in front of my house, beneath the huge plane tree that completely covers, shelters, and shades the lawn. I love the country here, and I love living here because this is where I have my roots, those profound and delicate roots that attach a man to the land where his ancestors were born and died, and that attach him to what one should think and what one should eat; to customs as well as to foods; to local idioms and peasant intonations; to the smells of the earth, of the villages, of the air itself.

I love my house, I grew up in it. From my windows, I can see the Seine flowing along the whole length of my garden, behind the road, almost in my back yard,
the great, wide Seine, which goes from Rouen to Le Havre, covered with boats passing by.

To the left, over there, Rouen, the vast blue-roofed city, beneath the peaked crowd of Gothic bell towers. They are countless, slender or broad, dominated by the iron spire of the cathedral, and full of bells that ring in the blue air on fine mornings, carrying towards me their gentle, distant metal drone, their bronze song the breeze carries to me, now stronger, now weaker, depending on whether the wind is awakening or growing drowsy.

How fine it was this morning!

Around eleven o’clock, a long procession of ships, pulled by a tugboat fat as a fly, groaning from the effort and vomiting a thick plume of smoke, filed past my gate.

After two English schooners, whose red flags rippled on the sky, came a superb Brazilian three-master, all white, admirably clean and gleaming. I saluted it, I don’t know why, it made me so happy to see this ship.

May 11
. I’ve been a little feverish for a few days now. I feel unwell, or rather I feel sad.

Where do these mysterious influences come from that change our happiness into despondency and our confidence into distress? You might say that the air, the invisible air, is full of unknowable Powers, from whose mysterious closeness we suffer. I wake up full
of joy, with songs welling up in my throat. Why? I go down to the water; and suddenly, after a short walk, I come back disheartened, as if some misfortune were awaiting me at home. Why? Is it a shiver of cold that, brushing against my skin, has affected my nerves and darkened my soul? Is it the shape of the clouds, or the color of the daylight, the color of things, so changeable, that, passing in front of my eyes, has disturbed my thoughts? How can we know? Everything that surrounds us, everything we see without looking at it, everything we brush against without recognizing it, everything we touch without feeling it, everything we encounter without discerning it, everything has on us, on our organs, and, through them, on our ideas, on our heart itself, swift, surprising, and inexplicable effects.

How profound this mystery of the Invisible is! We cannot fathom it with our wretched senses, with our eyes that don’t know how to perceive either the too-small or the too-big, the too-close or the too-far, the inhabitants of a star or the inhabitants of a drop of water … with our ears that deceive us, for they transmit to us the vibrations of the air as ringing tones. They are fairies that perform the miracle of changing this movement into a sound, and by this metamorphosis, give birth to music, which makes the mute agitation of nature into a song … with our sense of smell, weaker than a dog’s … with our sense of taste, which can scarcely tell the age of a wine.

If only we had other organs that could work other miracles for us, how many things we could then discover around us!

May 16
. I am sick, no doubt about it—and I was feeling so healthy last month! I have a fever, a terrible fever, or rather a feverish nervous exhaustion, which makes my soul as sick as my body. I keep having this terrifying feeling of some danger threatening, this apprehension of a misfortune on the way, or of death approaching, this premonition that must be the onset of a sickness still unknown, germinating in the blood and the flesh.

May 18
. I’ve just gone to consult my doctor, since I could no longer sleep. He found my pulse was rapid, my eyes dilated, my nerves vibrating, but without any alarming symptom. I must submit to taking showers and drinking potassium bromide.

May 25
. No change. Really, I am in a strange condition. As evening approaches, an incomprehensible anxiety invades me, as if night hid a terrible threat for me. I dine quickly, then I try to read; but I do not understand the words. I can scarcely make out the letters. Then I walk back and forth in my living room, under the oppression of a confused and irresistible fear, the fear of sleep and fear of my bed.

Around ten o’clock, I climb up to my bedroom. As soon as I’m inside, I turn the key twice and bolt the locks; I am afraid … of what?… I never feared anything till now.… I open my wardrobes, look under my bed, listen … listen … for what? Is it strange that a simple illness, a circulatory disorder perhaps, an irritated nerve ending, a little congestion, a tiny perturbation in the all too imperfect and delicate functioning of our living mechanism, can turn the happiest of men into a melancholic, and the bravest into a coward? Then I go to bed, and I wait for sleep like someone waiting for the executioner. I wait for it, with terror at its arrival; and my heart beats, my legs tremble; and my whole body trembles in the warmth of the bedclothes, till the moment I suddenly fall into repose, the way one drowns oneself, dropping into an abyss of stagnant water. I don’t feel it coming, as I used to, this treacherous sleep, hidden beside me, that lies in wait for me, that is about to seize me by the head, close my eyes, annihilate me.

I sleep—for a long time—two or three hours—then a dream—no—a nightmare grips me. I am fully aware that I am lying down and sleeping.… I feel it and I know it … and I also feel that someone is approaching me, looking at me, feeling me, is climbing into my bed, kneeling on my chest, taking my neck in his hands and squeezing … squeezing … with all his strength, to strangle me.

And I struggle with myself, bound by the atrocious powerlessness that paralyzes us in dreams. I want to cry out—I cannot. I want to move—I cannot. I try, with terrible efforts, gasping for breath, to turn over, to throw off this being that is crushing me and suffocating me—I can’t!

And all of a sudden, I wake up, panic-stricken, covered with sweat. I light a candle. I am alone.

After this crisis, which is renewed every night, I finally sleep, calmly, until dawn.

June 2
. My condition has become even worse. What do I have? The bromide does nothing for it; the showers do nothing. This afternoon, in order to tire out my body (which was weary to begin with), I went to the forest of Roumare for a walk. First I thought that the fresh air, gentle and sweet, full of the fragrance of grass and leaves, would imbue my veins with a new blood, my heart with a new energy. I took a broad avenue we use for hunting, then turned towards La Bouille by a narrow path between two armies of unusually tall trees that set a thick, green, almost black roof between the sky and me.

Suddenly I was seized by a shiver, but not of cold—a strange shiver of anxiety.

I quickened my step, uneasy at being alone in this wood, frightened for no reason, stupidly, because of the profound solitude. All of a sudden, it seemed to
me I was being followed, that someone was walking just behind me, very close, very close, close enough to touch me.

I turned around suddenly. I was alone. Behind me I saw only the straight, wide lane, empty, high, terribly empty; and in the other direction it also stretched away out of sight, exactly the same, terrifying.

I closed my eyes. Why? And I began to spin on one heel, very quickly, like a top. I almost fell; I opened my eyes again; the trees were dancing; the earth was floating; I had to sit down. And then, I no longer knew how I had gotten there! Strange idea! Strange! Strange idea! I didn’t know anymore. I left by the path that was at my right, and I returned to the avenue that had brought me to the middle of the forest.

June 3
. The night was horrible. I am going to go away for a few weeks. A little journey will surely set me to rights.

July 2
. I have returned. I am cured. And I’ve had a delightful excursion, too. I visited Mont Saint-Michel, which I’d never seen before.

What a vision, when you arrive, as I did, in Avranches, towards the end of day! The city is on a hill; and I was led into the public garden, on the edge of the city. I let out a cry of astonishment. A vast bay stretched out in front of me, as far as the eye could
see, between two coasts far apart from each other, disappearing in the distance into the mist; and in the middle of this immense yellow bay, beneath a luminous golden sky, there rose up, dark and sharp-pointed, a strange mountain, in the middle of the sands. The sun had just disappeared, and on the still blazing horizon the outline of this fantastic rock stood out, bearing on its summit a fantastic monument.

At dawn, I went towards it. The sea was low, as it had been the night before, and I watched the surprising abbey rise before me as I approached it. After several hours of walking, I reached the massive hill of stones that supports the little city dominated by the great church. After climbing the narrow, steep street, I entered the most wonderful Gothic dwelling built for God on Earth, vast as a city, full of low chambers crushed beneath vaults, and high galleries supported by frail columns. I entered this giant granite jewel, light as lace, covered with towers and slim pinnacles, in which winding staircases rise up, and which hurl into the blue sky of day, and the dark sky of night, their strange heads bristling with chimeras, devils, fantastic animals, monstrous flowers, and which are linked to each other by slender, finely carved arches.

When I was at the summit, I said to the monk who was with me, “Father, how happy you must be here!”

He answered, “It is very windy, Monsieur”; and we set to talking as we watched the sea rise, as it
came running onto the sand and covering it with a breastplate of steel.

And the monk told me stories, all the old stories of this place, legends, always more legends.

One of them particularly struck me. The local people, the ones who live on the hill, claim they hear voices at night in the sands. They say they hear two goats bleating, one with a strong voice, the other with a feeble voice. Scoffers assert they’re the cries of seabirds, which sometimes resemble bleating, and sometimes human moans; but late-night fishermen swear they have seen, roaming about on the dunes, between the two tides, around the little town cast so far from the world, an old shepherd, whose head, covered with his cloak, could never be seen; and who led, walking in front of them, a billygoat with a man’s face, and a nanny-goat with a woman’s face, both with long white hair, talking ceaselessly, arguing with each other in an unknown language, then suddenly stopping to bleat with all their might.

I said to the monk, “Do you believe this?”

He murmured, “I don’t know!”