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CHAPTER IV

FORMS ASSUMED BY

SUFFERING DURING SLEEP

Three o’clock in the morning had just struck, and he had
been walking thus for five hours, almost uninterruptedly,
when he at length allowed himself to drop into his chair.
There he fell asleep and had a dream.
This dream, like the majority of dreams, bore no rela-
tion to the situation, except by its painful and heart-rending
character, but it made an impression on him. This nightmare
struck him so forcibly that he wrote it down later on. It is
one of the papers in his own handwriting which he has be-
queathed to us. We think that we have here reproduced the
thing in strict accordance with the text.
Of whatever nature this dream may be, the history of
this night would be incomplete if we were to omit it: it is the
gloomy adventure of an ailing soul.
Here it is. On the envelope we find this line inscribed, ‘The
Dream I had that Night.’
‘I was in a plain; a vast, gloomy plain, where there was no
grass. It did not seem to me to be daylight nor yet night.

404 Les Miserables