She ceased speaking and covered her eyes with her hand. I was on the
point of communicating to her what I had heard from the gardener--and
my meeting with 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