up' within me—I can find no other word for it. I was overcome by a sort of numbness. Suddenly I noticed that he had left the door, and was standing a step or two nearer to me; then he gave a slight bound, both feet together, and stood closer still.. . . Then again . . . and again; while the menacing eyes were simply fastened on my whole face, and the hands remained behind, and the broad chest heaved painfully. These leaps struck me as ridiculous, but I felt dread too, and what I could not understand at all, a drowsiness began suddenly to come upon me. My eyelids clung together . . . the shaggy figure with the whitish eyes in the blue smock seemed double before me, and suddenly vanished altogether! . . . I shook myself; he was again standing between the door and me, but now much nearer. . . . Then he vanished again—a sort of mist seemed to fall upon him; again he appeared . . . vanished again . . . appeared again, and always closer, closer . . . his hard, almost gasping breathing floated across to me now. . . . Again the mist fell, and all of a sudden out of this mist the head of old Dessaire began to take distinct shape, beginning with the white, brushed-back hair! Yes: there were his warts, his black eyebrows, his hook nose! There too his green coat with the brass buttons, the striped waistcoat and jabot.. . . I shrieked, I got up.. . . The old man vanished, and in his place I saw
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