Page:Garshin - A Red Flower (1911).djvu/22

20 the extraordinary appetite of the patient, the latter grew thinner each day, and the assistant physician noted in the book a fewer and fewer number of pounds. The sick man rarely slept and passed whole days in ceaseless motion.

He was conscious that he was in an insane asylum, and was also aware that he was sick. Sometimes, as on the first night, he would awaken amidst the stillness, after a whole day of turbulent motion, feeling rheumatic pains in all his organs and a terrible heaviness in the head, but nevertheless in full consciousness. Perhaps this effect was produced by the absence of sensations in nocturnal stillness and dusk; or perhaps it was due to the weak efforts of a suddenly awakened brain, enabling him to catch, during these few moments, a glimpse of reason, and to understand his condition as if he were in a normal state. With the approach of day, however; with the reappearance of light and the reawakening of life in the hospital, the other mood would seize him again; the sick brain could not cope with it, and he would