gether understand them, but all of which, when I danced in after years, came vividly back into my mind.[1] At such a time strange memories seemed to possess me. I forgot myself, and was another person tormented with all terrors and mysteries, but so soon as I ceased to dance all vanished from my mind.'
"While Mademoiselle Laurence spoke, slowly and as if questioning, she stood before me by the fireplace, where the fire gleamed ever more and more agreeably, and I sat in the great armchair, which was probably the seat of her husband when he of evenings related his battles before going to bed. Laurence looked at me with her great eyes, as if asking me for counsel, nodding her head in so mournfully reflective a manner that she inspired in me a deep sympathy. She was so delicate, so young, so beautiful, this slender lily sprung from the grave, this daughter of
- ↑ Should this seem incredible to any reader, I would state that when I was a child not three years old, still suffering terribly from the results of a nervous fever, a very pious old lady was in the habit of frightening me in a manner every whit as cruel as that described by Laurence, and very much like it. Paving made me believe that a "bugaboo" lived in a certain closet, she would dress herself up in a horrible fashion, come out of the closet, and approach me growling. I have often wondered that I survived the awful terrors of this discipline, which, by the way, was common enough in nurseries at that time. Heine forgets to mention that such torturing children was usual when the supernatural was in fashion.
