ly
see that; it only was a matter of waiting till the spirit moved me; and
why shouldn't the spirit move me? Why should it not come over me even
now, at a very early date? There was no longer anything the matter with
me. My landlady gave me a little food every day, some bread and butter,
mornings and evenings, and my nervousness had almost flown. I no longer
used cloths round my hands when I wrote; and I could stare down into
the street from my window on the second floor without getting giddy. I
was much better in every way, and it was becoming a matter of
astonishment to me that I had not already finished my allegory. I
couldn't understand why it was....

But a day came when I was at last to get a clear idea of how weak I had
really become; with what incapacity my dull brain acted. Namely, on
this day my landlady came up to me with a reckoning which she asked me
to look over. There must be something wrong in this reckoning, she
said; it didn't agree with her own book; but she had not been able to
find out the mistake.

I set to work to add up. My landlady sat right opposite and looked at
me. I added up these score of figures first once down, and found the
total right; then once up again, and arrived at the same result. I
looked at the woman sitting opposite me, waiting on my words. I noticed
at the same time that she was pregnant; it did not escape my attention,
and yet I did not stare in any way scrutinizingly at her.

"The total is right," said I.

"No; go over each figure now," she answered. "I am sure it can't be so
much; I am positive of it."

And I commenced to check each line--2 loaves at 2 1/2d., 1 lamp
chimney, 3d., soap, 4d., butter, 5d.... It did not require any
particularly shrewd head to run up these rows of figures--this little
huckster account in which nothing very complex occurred. I tried
honestly to find the error that the woman spoke about, but couldn't
succeed. After I had muddled about with these figures for some minutes
I felt that, unfortunately, everything commenced to dance about in my
head; I could no longer distinguish debit or credit; I mixed the whole
thing up. Finally, I came to a dead stop at the following entry--"3.
5/16ths of a pound of cheese at 9d." My brain failed me completely; I
stared stupidly down at the cheese, and got no farther.

"It is really too confoundedly crabbed writing," I exclaimed in
despair. "Why, God bless me, here is 5/16ths of a pound of cheese
entered--ha