huile sur toile
(vendu)
It happened one day, about noon, going towards my boat, I was
exceedingly surprised with the print of a man's naked foot on the
shore, which was very plain to be seen on the sand. I stood like
one thunderstruck, or as if I had seen an apparition. I listened, I
looked round me, but I could hear nothing, nor see anything; I went
up to a rising ground to look farther; I went up the shore and down
the shore, but it was all one; I could see no other impression but
that one. I went to it again to see if there were any more, and to
observe if it might not be my fancy; but there was no room for
that, for there was exactly the print of a foot - toes, heel, and
every part of a foot. How it came thither I knew not, nor could I
in the least imagine; but after innumerable fluttering thoughts,
like a man perfectly confused and out of myself, I came home to my
fortification, not feeling, as we say, the ground I went on, but
terrified to the last degree, looking behind me at every two or
three steps, mistaking every bush and tree, and fancying every
stump at a distance to be a man. Nor is it possible to describe how
many various shapes my affrighted imagination represented things to
me in, how many wild ideas were found every moment in my fancy, and
what strange, unaccountable whimsies came into my thoughts by the
way.
When I came to my castle (for so I think I called it ever after
this), I fled into it like one pursued. Whether I went over by the
ladder, as first contrived, or went in at the hole in the rock,
which I had called a door, I cannot remember; no, nor could I
remember the next morning, for never frightened hare fled to cover,
or fox to earth, with more terror of mind than I to this
retreat.
I slept none that night; the farther I was from the occasion of my
fright, the greater my apprehensions were, which is something
contrary to the nature of such things, and especially to the usual
practice of all creatures in fear; but I was so embarrassed with my
own frightful ideas of the thing, that I formed nothing but dismal
imaginations to myself, even though I was now a great way off.
Sometimes I fancied it must be the devil, and reason joined in with
me in this supposition, for how should any other thing in human
shape come into the place? Where was the vessel that brought them?
What marks were there of any other footstep? And how was it
possible a man should come there? But then, to think that Satan
should take human shape upon him in such a place, where there could
be no manner of occasion for it, but to leave the print of his foot
behind him, and that even for no purpose too, for he could not be
sure I should see it - this was an amusement the other way. I
considered that the devil might have found out abundance of other
ways to have terrified me than this of the single print of a foot;
that as I lived quite on the other side of the island, he would
never have been so simple as to leave a mark in a place where it
was ten thousand to one whether I should ever see it or not, and in
the sand too, which the first surge of the sea, upon a high wind,
would have defaced entirely. All this seemed inconsistent with the
thing itself and with all the notions we usually entertain of the
subtlety of the devil...
ROBINSON
CRUSOE DANIEL DEFOE
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