Endnotes

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[1] Arise!

[2] This story is a tragic experience and prophecy. It was insanity that robbed the world of its most finished short story writer, the author of this tale; and even before his madness became overpowering, de Maupassant complained that he was haunted by his double—by a vision of another Self confronting and threatening him. He had run life at its top speed; this hallucination was the result. Medical science defines in such cases "an image of memory which differs in intensity from the normal"—that is to say, a fixed idea so persistent and growing that to the thinker it seems utterly real. —EDITOR.

[3] Frog-island.

[4] A collection of prescriptions indorsed by the Faculty of Paris.—Trans.

[5] For the narrative "Melmoth the Wanderer," and a description of Balzac's debt to its author, see Volume III, page 161.—EDITOR.

[6] Protested.

[7] Referring to John Melmoth—see note at head of this story.—EDITOR.