The father not unnaturally decided to do what lay in his power to curb the troublesome spirit of independence in his son. August disliked his stepmother and resented her usurpation of his mother's place. He was now _gymnasist_[1] and treated with respect in the school. The lessons took the form of lectures, and the teachers showed due regard for individual rights and tastes. At home everything was done to humiliate him. He attributed what he regarded as a systematic persecution to the mean and revengeful spirit of the stepmother. He was made to wear old clothes which did not fit him; his gymnasist-cap, which should have been the pride of his heart, was home-made and an object of ridicule; he was compelled to work in the stable between school hours, and commanded to take the groom's place during the holidays. His weekly allowance for the school lunch was 3 1/2 d., a sum which he found sufficient for tobacco but not for sandwiches. He had a healthy appetite and was always hungry. The parsimoniousness of the home régime subjected him to humiliating experiences at school. Once he accidentally broke the eye-glasses of a friend. In vain he exhausted all his inventive resources in attempts to mend them. They had to be mended by an expert at the cost of 7d. On the following Monday August brought his friend 3 1/2 d., and after another week discharged his debt of honour by shamefacedly paying another 3 1/2 d. His miserable poverty could no longer be kept a secret, and he hated the cause of his oppression. At the age of fifteen he fell in love with a woman of thirty. The love was platonic, an attraction of souls--a contact of minds seeking spiritual enlightenment along the same path. She was a woman of the world, engaged to another who lived abroad, animated by religious emotionalism and half-conscious eroticism. They attended the same circle for French conversation and added the spice of Gallic expression to their correspondence, which treated of Jesus, the struggle against sin, life, death, God in nature, love, friendship and doubt. August became her conscience, and she was his spiritual mother. Strindberg publishes some of his French compositions from this period in his autobiography. All speculations were eventually smashed against the bedrock of Jesus. The parental authorities objected strongly to August's friendship, and especially to the atmosphere of French secrecy in which it was enveloped.