He rushed downstairs where another bed had been made up for him in case of need. He lay down, and tried to collect his thoughts. Could this be electricity? No, for he had used the compass as indicator, and the result had been negative. Whilst pondering on the mysterious force, another discharge of "electricity" struck him with the strength of a cyclone, and lifted him out of bed. He tried in vain to escape. His own graphic description of what followed shows the agony through which he passed. "I hide behind walls, I lie down by the thresholds, and in front of the stoves. Everywhere, everywhere the furies seek me out. My soul's anguish overpowers me. The panic terror of everything and nothing gets hold of me, and I flee from room to room, and end my flight on the balcony, where I remain crouching." At dawn he went into his friend's studio, where he lay down on a rug. Even here he was disturbed, but now by rats, and, fearing that he might be a victim of delirium, he fled to the hall, where the door-mat became his resting-place. He hurriedly left Dieppe for the south of Sweden, and sought refuge in the house of his friend, Dr. Eliasson, in Ystad. Strindberg had rightly surmised that his friends in Dieppe were convinced of his insanity. His conduct during the first days of his stay in Ystad caused his medical friend to treat him with the firmness and authority necessary towards one who is mentally irresponsible. The result was that Strindberg suspected that the doctor intended to imprison him in a lunatic asylum, and to appropriate his secret of gold-making. The month which he spent at the doctor's house was devoted to a cold-water cure which did not assuage his misery. The shape and material of the bed in which he had to sleep suggested electrical devices of evil, the nightly assault by the vampire which sucked his heart was repeated, and brought him out of bed in terror of death; he heard voices, saw signs, feared he was being poisoned by hemlock, hashish, digitalis, or daturine. One night he heard the doctor handle a very heavy object and wind up a spring, and through the wall which separated them he felt the approach of the electric current. It reached his heart. Seizing his clothes he fled through the window into the street, and to the house of another physician who succeeded in calming him, and--so he believed--in intimidating his treacherous friend, and thus saved Strindberg's life.