'Yes, everything has happened,' a voice said to me, and directly another said the opposite.

'Are you mad?
It is impossible!' said the second voice.
"It was too painful to me to remain thus stretched in the darkness.
I struck a match, and the little yellow-papered room frightened me.

I lighted a cigarette, and, as always happens, when one turns in a circle of inextricable contradiction, I began to smoke.

I smoked cigarette after cigarette to dull my senses, that I might not see my contradictions.

All night I did not sleep, and at five o'clock, when it was not yet light, I decided that I could stand this strain no longer, and that I would leave directly.