In the dark of night, one light still yet burns.

Frightened fingers tremble as brittle pages turn.

Fireside Mystery Theater presents The Midnight Reading,

a special series of dramatic recitations of dark masterpieces in miniature

by the Masters of the Macab. Good evening, I'm Ali Silva.

I have coveted everything and taken pleasure in nothing. Such dour words for an epitaph, wouldn't you say?

Those are the very words that were prescribed by Guy de Mopisand, the great man of letters to be

chiseled into his own tombstone. It can be found here in Section 26 of the Montparnasse Cemetery

in Paris.

If we make our way around this historic site,

we can see the final resting places of other French luminaries,

such as Charles Baudelaire, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir,

and Serge Gainsbourg.

Although widely loved and admired in his own lifetime, and one of the few authors of his time to be made wealthy exclusively from his own writings, his was a life that ultimately descended into madness and despair. And finally, this elegant but lonesome grave.

He died in Paris at a private asylum

called Esprit Blanche.

He was only 42.

Well, all this talk of gravestones and churchyards

is an eerily prescient segue

for tonight's terse tale of the unexpected.

Here to read,

Was it a Dream by Guy de Mopisson, is our own James Reeser.

...