But I could not sleep. I took more cream of tartar. It must be the
heat of the bed-clothes, I decided, that excited my hives. And yet,
whenever I ceased struggling for sleep, and lighted the lamp and
read, my skin irritation decreased. But as soon as I turned out the
lamp and closed my eyes I was troubled again. So hour after hour
passed, through which, between vain attempts to sleep, I managed to
wade through many pages of Rosny's Le Termite--a not very cheerful
proceeding, I must say, concerned as it is with the microscopic and
over-elaborate recital of Noel Servaise's tortured nerves, bodily
pains, and intellectual phantasma. At last I tossed the novel aside,
damned all analytical Frenchmen, and found some measure of relief in
the more genial and cynical Stendhal.
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