the baron also, by the way ... but, for some reason or
other, the words died on my lips.

Nevertheless I did bring myself to remark to my mother that visions do
not manifest themselves in the daylight....

"Stop," she whispered, "please stop; do not torture me now. Some day
thou shalt know...." Again she relapsed into silence. Her hands were
cold, and her pulse beat fast and unevenly. I gave her a dose of her
medicine and stepped a little to one side, in order not to disturb her.

She did not rise all day. She lay motionless and quiet, only sighing
deeply from time to time, and opening her eyes in a timorous
fashion.--Every one in the house was perplexed.

VIII

Toward night a slight fever made its appearance, and my mother sent me
away. I did not go to my own chamber, however, but lay down in the
adjoining room on the divan. Every quarter of an hour I rose, approached
the door on tiptoe, and listened.... Everything remained silent--but my
mother hardly slept at all that night. When I went into her room early
in the morning her face appeared to me to be swollen, and her eyes were
shining with an unnatural brilliancy. In the course of the day she
became a little easier, but toward evening the fever increased again.

Up to that time she had maintained an obstinate silence, but now she
suddenly began to talk in a hurried, spasmodic voice. She was not
delirious, there was sense in her words, but there was no coherency in
them. Not long before midnight she raised herself up in bed with a
convulsive movement (I was sitting beside her), and with the same
hurried voice she began to narrate to me, continually drinking water in
gulps from a glass, feebly flourishing her hands, and not once looking
at me the while.... At times she paused, exerted an effort over herself,
and went on again.... All this was strange, as though she were doing it
in her sleep, as though she herself were not present, but as though some
other person were speaking with her lips, or making her speak.

IX

"Listen to what I have to tell thee," she began. "Thou art no longer a
young boy; thou must know all. I had a good friend.... She married a man
whom she loved with all her heart, and she was happy with her husband.
But during the first year of their married life they both went to the
capital to spend a few weeks and enjoy themselves. They stopped at a
good hotel and went out a great deal to theatres and assemblies. My
friend was ve