frightful an aspect, as though she were a sinner tortured by the
gnawings of conscience? Macbeth slew Banquo, so it is not to be
wondered at that he should have visions ... but I...."

But my mother's speech became so entangled and confused that I ceased to
understand her ... I no longer had any doubt that she was raving in
delirium.




X


Any one can easily understand what a shattering effect my mother's
narration produced upon me! I had divined, at her very first word, that
she was speaking of herself, and not of any acquaintance of hers; her
slip of the tongue only confirmed me in my surmise. So it really was my
father whom I had sought out in my dream, whom I had beheld when wide
awake! He had not been killed, as my mother had supposed, but merely
wounded.... And he had come to her, and had fled, affrighted by her
fright. Everything suddenly became clear to me; the feeling of
involuntary repugnance for me which sometimes awoke in my mother, and
her constant sadness, and our isolated life.... I remember that my head
reeled, and I clutched at it with both hands, as though desirous of
holding it firmly in its place. But one thought had become riveted in it
like a nail. I made up my mind, without fail, at any cost, to find that
man again! Why? With what object?--I did not account to myself for
that; but to find him ... to find him--that had become for me a question
of life or death!