Strindberg fell seriously ill with fever. In delirious dreams he was haunted by futile remorse, by angry creditors and subscribers. In his brain-storms he battled with the evil one, who was permitted to bring deception and suffering to innocent humanity whilst God looked on complacently. His illness was followed by ague, which troubled him for many years. A plan to find Nirvana in the waves ended in the return of the will to live and a liaison with the housekeeper in the cottage. The friends who shared the cottage with him had left, and Strindberg fell passionately in love. She had been kind to him during his illness, and he felt drawn towards her by invisible cords which, under the circumstances, spelt tragedy. For after a short time she was unfaithful to him, and he fell a prey to tormenting jealousy. No human experience passed him by lightly; he was a sensitive subject, who received impressions with painful vividness, and responded with the volcanic intensity of surcharged emotion. The description which he gives in _In the Red Room_ of the psychosis of his jealousy is of much interest: "But as he walked on the shore, through glades and into the forest, design and colour began to mingle as if he had seen it all through tears. The mental shock, remorse, repentance, shame, began to dissolve him, and consciousness was loosened in its fixtures. Old thoughts about a task unfulfilled, about humanity suffering under mistakes and delusions, arose. Suffering enlarged his ego, the impression that he was fighting an evil power stimulated his resistance into wild defiance; the desire to battle with fate awoke, and from a heap of stakes he thoughtlessly picked up a long pointed stick. In his hand it became a spear and a club. "He burst into the forest, breaking branches as if he had been fighting its dark giants. He kicked the fungi under his feet as if he were battering in so many empty gnomes' skulls. He yelled as if he were driving wolves and foxes, and opp! opp! opp! echoed the cry through the pine forest. "At last he came to a rock which rose as an almost perpendicular wall in front of him. He struck it with his spear as if he wished to hew it down, and stormed up its side. Bushes crackled under his hand, and rustled down the mountain, tom up by the roots; stones rolled down; he put his foot on young junipers and whipped them till they lay broken like down-trodden grass. Thus he forced himself up and stood on the top.