summer
resort, a girl with the name L. Adle von D. I had left my tutor
behind. She was the first girl I met, and my romantic character, my
easily-excited nervous system, overpowered me and I fell in love, in
love as deep as a man can fall. A few months after that I was engaged
to her, and we should have been married on the 23d of April, 1899. On
the 22d of April my beautiful beloved bride was riding horseback with
me in the park, when at once her horse frightened, threw her off,
dragged her for a distance and then left her behind, a motionless,
bleeding mass. I saw right away that she was dead, lost to me, lost
forever; there was but one way not to lose her, and that was to follow
her soul, and that as quickly as possible. There in the park beside
her I took my pistol and shot myself. The public had gathered and
stopped me, and then I don't know what happened. I only remember that
I was ill for a long time, and then I was ill again, and they told me
L. was alive, and then I found out that she was not alive and I was
ill again."

Of course, the entire episode is a fabrication. The patient admitted
quite as much, but the interesting thing in this episode is the fact
that it illustrates how rigidly dependent lying is upon unconscious
motives. Had this episode really taken place, the patient, because of
his particular make-up, would have acted, in all likelihood, just the
way he behaved in his fantastic adventure.

After his year's confinement in the insane asylum his foster-mother
traveled with him in France, England, Egypt, and Turkey, in order to
divert his mind. Finally arriving at Transylvania, he became infatuated
with a poor girl named P., whom he christened L. in memory of his former
love, and married. The highly dramatic adventures of this second
matrimonial venture are altogether too numerous to describe in detail.
He describes in a very dramatic style how this lady was kidnapped from
him by a family of New York artists and spirited away across the ocean;
how after awakening from his unconsciousness, induced by some dope
administered to him in a tea which he had with these artist-friends the
night before, he at once made for the dock, arriving there just as the
ship carrying his wife was disappearing from sight; how he pursued them
across the Atlantic, to England, the continent, and so on, finally
locating them in Cape Town, South Africa; how upon arriving there he was
mortally wo