He has gnawed his way into me, he has taken up his abode within me. He
sits inside of me like the mysterious magician at moving-picture shows
who turns the crank inside of the black booth above the heads of the
spectators. He casts his picture through my eyes upon every wall, every
curtain, every flat surface that my eyes fall on.

But even when there is no background for his picture, even when I
frantically look out of the window and stare into the distance so as to
be rid of him for a short while, even then he is there, hovering in
front of me as though impaled upon the lance of my gaze, like a banner
swaying at the head of a parade. If X-rays could penetrate the skull,
one would find his picture woven into my brain in vague outline, like
the figures in old tapestries.

I remember a trip I took before the war from Munich to Vienna on the
Oriental Express. I looked out upon the autumnal mellowness of the
country around the Bavarian lakes and the golden glow of the Wiener
Wald. But across all this glory that I drank in leaning back on the
comfortable seat in luxurious contentment, there steadily ran an ugly
black spot--a flaw in the window-pane. That is the way my obstinate
comrade flits across woods and walls, stands still when I stand still,
dances over the faces of passers-by, over the asphalt paving wet from
the rain, over everything my eyes happen to fall upon. He interposes
himself between me and the world, just like that flaw in the window-
pane, which degraded everything I saw to the quality of the background
that it made.

The physicians, of course, know better. They do not believe that He
lives in me and stays by me like a sworn comrade. From the standpoint of
science it rests with me not to drag him round any longer, but to give