My neighbours began to appear somewhat strange. Their pupils became as big as a screech owl’s; their noses stretched into elongated probosces; their mouths expanded like bell bottoms. Faces were shaded in supernatural light…Little by little the salon was filled with extraordinary figures, such as are found only in the etchings of Callot or the aquatints of Goya, a pele-mele of rags and tatters, bestial and human shapes…it teemed, it crawled, it toddled, it leapt, it grumbled, it hissed, as Goethe says in the Walpurgis Night…
A small, unknown voice said to me: Take care, for you are surrounded by enemies; invisible forces are trying to lure and hold you. You are a prisoner here: try to escape and you shall see”.
 …I rose to my feet with difficulty and went towards the door of the salon, which I reached at last after a considerable time, an unknown force pulling me back one step in every three…on looking down I saw an abyss of stairs, whirlpools of spirals, bewildering circumvolutions. This stair must pierce through the very ends of the earth, I thought, as I continued my mechanical march. - Theophile Gautier