Side by side with the mania of which the message to Munch is typical, Strindberg retained a sanity during this time which Uddgren had occasion to observe. He went to see Strindberg at Hotel Orfila, and saw the traces of the torture through which he had passed in his haggard, ashen face. Uddgren had heard that Strindberg's insanity was on the point of breaking out, but in the course of a long talk with him he could find no signs of brain-softening. The mania, the eccentricities, the flashing imagination, the instinct for self-martyrisation were there intensified, but not the incoherency which he had observed in other literary friends who were victims of insanity. It is also remarkable that throughout Strindberg's period of lunacy his writings were accepted and printed. After the flight from Hotel Orfila he hid himself in an hotel in rue de la Clef. All went well for some time. Feeling that he was at a safe distance from his persecutors, he abandoned his incognito, and sent his address to Hotel Orfila. There was an immediate recurrence of the attacks. An old man, with "grey and wicked eyes like a bear," carried empty cases, pieces of tin, and other mysterious objects into the room adjoining his. In the room overhead a noise of hammering and dragging began which suggested the installation of an infernal machine. The noisy preparations were followed by the sound of a revolving wheel, suggestive of preparations for his execution. "I am sentenced to death," he thought; but by whom? By the pietists, catholics, jesuits, theosophists? Was he condemned as a sorcerer or as a black magician? Or was it by the police? Was he suspected of being an anarchist? In the manners of the landlady and the servant he read suspicion and contempt. The struggle seemed hopeless. Preparing to die at the hands of his enemies, he arranged his papers, wrote necessary letters, and said a solemn farewell to Nature as represented by the Jardin des Plantes. "Farewell," he cried, "stones, plants, flowers, trees, butterflies, birds, snakes, all created by God's good hand." Resigned and at peace with Fate he re-entered his hotel, but his anguish returned at the sight of the change which had been made in the room adjoining his. On the mantelpiece lay sheets of metal isolated from each other by pieces of wood, and on the top of each pile a book or a photographic album had been placed, so as to give an innocent look to what could be nothing but accumulators, infernal machines. Two workmen on the roof of a neighbouring house were handling some objects, and pointing to his window--the chain of evidence was complete.