Page:Georges Eekhoud - Escal Vigor, a novel.djvu/116

92 of anomaly; and something whispered to her also that the young Count would be unhappy, if he was not already so. She was alarmed at the readiness, or rather, at the restlessness of his genius. He would work by fits and starts, would shut himself up in his apartment and remain there for weeks without seeing the streets, reading, rhyming, composing scores, saturating himself with the spirit of Beethoven, Schumann and Wagner, daubing canvas, arranging his papers; then afterwards, to these times of excessive confinement, succeeded periods in which he experienced an imperious need to play the fool, when he would take pleasure in frequenting the suspicious quarters of the town, in exploring the low lodging-houses of sailors and boatmen, giving himself up to unbridled night-wanderings, disappearing for several days, passing entire carnivals without seeing his bed, and when at last he came to throw himself down on it like jetsam thrown on the beach, or like a wounded, hunted deer, which has succeeded in reaching its lair, spent and exhausted, it was to go out no more for several days, and to sleep, sleep, and sleep again!

The reader may imagine the nightmare