As you know, I do not often sleep.

But I lay awake and thought and thought.

The lightning showed me faces I had not seen for thirty years, and forms I remembered, black against eternity.

But all at once, in a certain after-clap of silence that followed the roaring thunder, I heard a voice call to me.
"'My father--my father" it cried.
"It was like a soul in danger calling on God.
"I rose and went, clad as I was in the red of mine office (for that day I had done the final grace more than once); even so, I ran down the stairs to the room of my little Helene.
"The lightning showed me my lamb crouched in the corner, her lips open, white, squared with horror, her arms extended, as though to push some monstrous thing away.

A black shape, whose, I could not tell, I saw bending over her.