be visited before twelve o'clock, I have myself driven to a fishing village some miles north, where there is a celebrated view over the Sound. As the carriage drives through the turnpike gate before the village, I feel a violent compression of the chest, just as though someone pressed his knees into my back. The illusion is so complete that I turn round to see the enemy who is sitting behind me. Then a number of crows raise a loud croaking, and fly over the head of the horse. He is frightened, rears, pricks his ears, and large drops of sweat roll down his flanks. He champs the bit, and the driver has to get down to quiet him. I ask why the horse is so unreasonably nervous, and the answer is legible in the look which the driver directs towards the crows, who follow us for some minutes. It is a quite natural occurrence, but of an unfortunate kind, and, according to popular belief, of evil omen.

After spending two useless hours, because a fog cuts off the view over the Sound, we drive into the village Mölle. Determined to scale the summit of the Kulle on foot, I dismiss the driver, and tell him to await my return in the inn. After my mountain walk I return to the village to look for him. But I have no knowledge of the place, and I look for some one to ask the way. Not a living soul is to be seen on the street or anywhere else. I knock at doors, but get no answer. Although it is eleven o'clock in the morning, and I am in a village of two hundred inhabitants, there is not a man, woman, child, or even a dog to be seen. Driver, horse, and carriage have disappeared. I roam about the streets, and after half an hour find the inn. Sure of finding the driver there, I order breakfast, and, after I have eaten it, ask them to send the driver to me.

"Which driver?"

"My own."

"I haven't seen one."

"Haven't you seen a carriage drawn by a chestnut horse, and driven by a man with a dark complexion?"

"No, indeed I have not."

"Yet I told him to wait here in the inn."

"Oh, then he will be sitting in the bait-house close by."

The servant girl shows the way and I set off. But I am doomed to be unfortunate, and mistake my way, so that I cannot find the inn again. Nor is anyone to be seen. Then I get nervous,—nervous in broad daylight! The village is bewitched. I cannot walk any more, but stand still as if spellbound. What is the good of seeking when the devil has a finger in the pie?

After I have had a great deal of trouble the driver at last turns up. I am ashamed to tell him of my annoyances or to demand from him explanations which explain nothing. We drive back to Höganäs and when we reach the hotel the horse falls suddenly, as though someone were standing before the door who frightened it.

I now ask the way to the coal-mines, and this time, in order to make no mistake, I go the "five minutes' walk" which has been pointed out to me on foot. I walk for ten minutes, quarter of an hour, half an hour, till I come to an open plain, without a sign of buildings or chimneys to indicate the presence of a coal-mine. The plain, which is under cultivation, seems to stretch to infinity; there is not even a hut, and no one of whom to ask the way. It is the Devil who has played me this trick! I remain standing as though fast-bound and blinded, without being able to move a step forwards or backwards. Finally I return to the village, take a room, and have a good rest on a sofa.

After quarter of an hour I am roused out of my sad thoughts by a disturbance—a sound like that of hammering nails. Incredulous as to spirit-rappings, I attribute the phenomenon to malicious people or to greater ill-luck than usual. I ring, pay my bill, and betake myself to the station.

I have three hours to wait! That is a great deal when one is impatient, but there is no help for it. After I have spent two hours on a seat, a well-dressed female figure passes me, in order to enter into the first-class waiting-room. In the gait and manner of this lady and in her whole bearing was something that aroused vague recollections in me. Anxious to see her aspect from the front I watch the door, waiting for her reappearance. After waiting a long time I venture into the waiting-room. There is no one there at all, nor is there any other exit nor dressing-room. There are double windows, so that there is no possibility of her having gone out by them.

Do I suffer from optical delusion? Has anyone got the power to tamper with my faculty of sight? Can one make oneself invisible? These are unsolved questions which make me feel near despair. Am I mad? No, the doctors say I am not. There is inducement enough to believe in miracles.

If one may believe Swedenborg, I am a damned soul in hell and the Powers punish me ceaselessly and mercilessly. The spirits which I conjure up have no wish to enter the flask which I have unsealed.

I spend the evening of the same day in a good first-class hotel in the town of Malmö. At half-past ten they begin to split wood in the corridor without anyone objecting to it, and that in a continental hotel full of tourists! This is followed by dancing. Later on they turn a machine with wheel-work. I get up, pay my reckoning, and determine to continue my journey the whole night. Absolutely alone, in the cold January night, I drag myself on, with my carpet bag, under a pitch black sky. For a moment I think the best thing would be to lie down in the snow, and die. But the next moment I collect my strength, and turn into a deserted back street where I find an unpretending hotel. After making sure that I am not watched, I slink in through the door. Without taking off my clothes I stretch myself upon the bed, firmly resolved rather to let myself be killed than obliged to get up again.

There is a death-like silence in the house, and delightful sleep approaches. Suddenly I hear a sound as though an invisible paw was scratching in the paper covering of the ceiling immediately over my head. It cannot be a mouse, for the loosely hanging paper does not move; besides, it seems to be a fairly large paw, like that of a hare, or a dog. Till the grey of morning I lie awake, expecting to feel the claws in my flesh, but in vain, for anxiety is more painful than death.

Why do I not become ill after such tortures as these? Because I have to empty the cup of suffering to the dregs, in order that the punishments undergone may be equivalent to the wrongs committed. And it is really remarkable how I manage to endure the tortures; I swallow them down with a kind of grim joy in order to get done with them.

II

MY WRETCHEDNESS INCREASES

When the New Year with its numerous holidays has passed, I find myself one fine day alone. It is as though a hurricane had passed by; all are scattered, blown away, shipwrecked. My friend the doctor has entered the hospital as a patient. As a matter of fact, weakened by dipsomania, hard-pressed by poverty, and worn out by want of sleep, he is suffering from "neurasthenia." This is pitiful, and, instead of going to the tavern, I turn my steps to the hospital for an hour's conversation and society. In the café I am the only one who drinks anything alcoholic, for my three companions have taken the pledge. The poet has gone away. The young aesthete, the son of the Professor of Ethics, has been sent abroad in order to be freed from the evil companionship of the "seducer of youth," i.e. myself.

A doctor of philosophy is laid up through having broken his leg. At the same time it happens that the young chemist, the standard-bearer of the party of progress, falls ill and has to be treated for neurasthenia. He suffers from sleeplessness, attacks of nightmare and giddiness. All these sad events and others happen in the course of a month and a half. And what makes my situation insupportable is, that they attribute the blame more or less to me. I am the Evil One himself and have the evil eye! It is a good thing that they know nothing about the power