This was the inevitable end. How could he live without a mother? The future seemed wrapped in impenetrable darkness and misery. Then oh, horror!--a shameful thought crossed his mind. Some time before his mother had shown him a little ring, and said that it would belong to him after her death. And now, at the solemn and awful moment, the promise of the ring rose in his unwilling memory. He saw it on his finger--one bright spot in this sorrowful hour, something to look forward to. But only for a moment--such low covetousness, such a shameful thought by the side of a dying mother must come straight from the devil. The pangs of remorse and shame were so persistent that the incident fixed itself in his memory, and years afterwards the recollection made him blush. The allurements of thoughts which we ought not to think, and which range from sudden inconvenient flashes of recognition of the comical in the midst of the serious business of life, to the haunting ideas which are the débris of mental combustion, could not be understood by the boy. Nor did he know that he was destined to live through the gamut of cerebral phenomena, an exponent of extravagant thought and lawless ideation. When the stillness of death fell upon the room the unworthy thought was far away and August screamed like a drowning child. The father was softened and spoke kind words to the two boys. Strindberg tells us with his usual candour that his sorrow lasted scarcely three months. "Sorrow," he writes, "has the happy quality of consuming itself. It dies of starvation. As it is essentially an interruption of habits it can be replaced by new ones." After six months his father married the housekeeper. August was now learning five languages, besides his own. Botany, zoology and the physical sciences aroused his keen interest. He had collections of insects and minerals, and a herbarium to which he devoted much time. He developed an insatiable appetite for knowledge, but he claimed freedom to find his intellectual food without extraneous interference or restrictions. He not only wanted to know everything, but he wanted to be able to do everything, to be endowed with all human talents. His brother had been praised for his drawings; August wanted to draw. During the Christmas holidays he copied all his brother's drawings, but on finding that he could do it without difficulty his interest waned and he gave it up. All his brothers and sisters could play some instrument. The house resounded with exercises on the piano, the violin and the 'cello. August wanted to play, but without practising scales. He taught himself to play the piano and learnt to read and copy music. He played badly, but it gave him pleasure. He learnt the names of composers and the number of opus of everything that was played in the house, so that he should have superior knowledge.