The faces of those automata, the public, whose brains he is
to wind up, are grinning at him; the critics whose good-will he must
enlist, stare at him through the spectacles of envy; he is haunted by
the gloomy face of the publisher, which it is his task to brighten. He
sees the jurymen sitting round the black table in the centre of which
lies a Bible; he hears the sound of the opening of prison doors behind
which free-thinkers are suffering for the crime of having thought bold
thoughts for the benefit of the sluggards; he listens to the noiseless
footfall of the hotel porter who is coming with the bill....
And all the while the fever is raging and his pen flies, flies over
the paper without a moment's delay at the vision of publisher or
jurymen, leaving in its track red lines as of congealed blood which
slowly turn to black.
When he rises from his chair, after a couple of hours, he has only
enough strength left to stumble across the room. He sinks down on his
bed and lies there as if Death held him in his clutches. It is not
invigorating sleep which has closed his eyes, but a stupor, a long
fainting fit during which he remains conscious, tortured by the
horrible thought that his strength is gone, his nervous system
shattered, his brain empty.
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