Again, he had read of cholera breaking out in a certain town.

Once more, he had talked about the particular lady with this friend, who had narrated facts which clearly proved her selfishness.

The hastening to flee from the infected neighbourhood and to overtake the procession was prompted by the sensation of heart-beating.

Finally, the crowd of red bier-followers, and the profusion of nosegays, owed their origin to subjective visual sensations, the "light-chaos" which often appears in the dark.
Let us now see for a moment how these various elements may have become fused into a connected chain of events.

First of all, it is clear that this dream is built up on a foundation of a gloomy tone of feeling, arising, as it would seem, from an irregularity of the heart's action.
Secondly, it owes its special structure and its air of a connected sequence of events, to those tendencies, passive and active, to order the chaotic of which I have been speaking.