A nightmare which persuaded him that he was being pursued by Fascists, turned M. Thomas, a Communist, into an astounding acrobat.
He was sleeping in a train on his return journey from the Communist Congress near Paris.
After dreaming that the Fascists were*upon him he leapt from his seat, abused a number of peaceful card-players, climbed out of the carriage window, scrambled along the roofs of the coaches to the engine, and there put his foot on a lever which shot a great jet of water over him.
Thomas jumped on to a station platform, climbed the wall of a woman's garden, and then via another roof entered an estate. He burst into the cellars of the house, and was fired on by the gamekeeper.
Next he tried to break into a caravan, but was frightened off by a woman who rose hastily in her night clothes, Away went Thomas into the woods, and later he was almost run down by a train, He was tially detained when, dirty and bloodstained, he emerged from a tunnel.
His incoherent and extraordinary tale has been verified by the police, and he is now at a home at Bernay (Cure Department), stil suffering from his dream that "the Fascists were after him.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.