"She dances without stopping, has dressed herself as a bride and fancies she is Burger's Lenore."
"She weeps in terror of death, who she believes will come and take her."
What lends a darker shade to this tragedy is that the lady has occupied the same house I live in now, and that her husband died in the same room where the children are noisily dancing.
Explain me that, O doctors, psychiatrists, psychologists, or acknowledge the bankruptcy of science!
My little daughter has exorcised the evil spirit who, driven out by her innocence, has entered into an old lady who used to boast of being a free thinker.
The death-dance lasts the whole night. The lady is guarded by friends, who she says, are to ward off the attack of death. She calls it "death" because she does not believe in the existence of evil spirits. And yet she often asserted that her deceased husband tormented her.
My departure is postponed, but, in order to recruit my strength after so many sleepless nights, I remove to my aunt's house on the other side of the street, and leave the "rose-red" room. It is a curious fact that in the good old times the torture chamber in Sweden was called the "Chamber of Roses."
At last I spend a night again in a quiet room. The walls are painted white and covered with pictures of saints. Over my bed hangs a crucifix. But when night comes the spirits begin their tricks again.
I light the candles in order to kill the time with reading. There is a weird stillness in which I can hear my heart beating. Then a slight noise startles me, like an electric spark.
A large piece of wax has dropped from the candle on the ground. Nothing more, but the people here believe it is a sign of death! It may be, as far as I am concerned. After reading for half an hour, I want to take my handkerchief from under my pillow. It is not there, and when I look for it, I find it on the ground. I stoop to pick it up. Something falls on my head, and when I extricate it from my hair, I find it is another piece of wax. Instead of being alarmed, I cannot help smiling; the whole thing seems a piece of practical joking.
Smiling at death! How could that be possible, were not life essentially comic. Such a fuss about nothing! Perhaps in the depth of our souls there lurks a shadowy consciousness that everything down here is all humbug, a masquerade, a mere pretence, and that all our sufferings afford mirth to the gods.