“You are to drink a mixture of brandy and Tokay, as much as you like. Take good long draughts--the brandy will do you good. You must forget everything in your past, your wife as well. When you are convinced that you have succeeded in doing that, you are on the road to recovery. You must destroy the past, you understand. The alcohol will help you there.” “Destroy the past,” stammered the Count, as if sinking into a bog that threatened to engulf him, “destroy ... the ... past....” “In two years’ time you can think about resuming your ordinary life again. In what time?” he broke off suddenly. “What time did I say?” he thundered. The Count aroused himself from his lethargy. Horrified at the length of time involved, he answered in a low tone, “Two years.” “Do you know that your wife wants to put you into a lunatic asylum? She is getting the State Attorney, Wenk, to help her. Was not that the man who rang you up?... I am coming again to-morrow.” The Count remained alone, dejected and humiliated. It seemed as if elephants were trampling out his brains, that his spirit was a prey to crocodiles and he was covered with mud and slime. “The whole world has forsaken me,” he murmured. The pictures he had collected around him seemed to be celebrating orgies on the walls. He could no longer understand how it was they could ever have pleased him, nor why he had endured them so long. He took a hunting-knife and slit every one of them from top to bottom, hacking at their frames. When he had done it, he sprang back in horror. He held his head in his hands, groaning, “Oh God, am I really mad?” He began drinking brandy, and he drank it out of a claret tumbler. When he had had three glasses he was intoxicated. Then it seemed as if the doctor had left something behind him and that this lay in front of him. He did not know what it was, but he tried to grasp it, and then suddenly it had jumped to his head. It seemed like a wedge fastened there, fitting tightly between the two halves of the brain. Fear seized upon him and tore his courage to shreds. “Doctor, Doctor,” he shouted, and he heard his voice re-echo in the empty rooms. The world was so wide, yet he was alone. And then he became unconscious. * * * * * Karstens succumbed to his wounds, and again the public imagination busied itself with the death of a second victim. Wenk found himself in a difficulty and decided one day to make a final appeal to the dancer. He went to her cell. “I am not going to speak to you,” said Cara when she perceived him. Wenk took no notice, and said in a troubled tone, his hopes disappearing: “Do you know that the beautiful lady who was always looking on at the play at Schramm’s has disappeared?” “Not the one you sent to me in prison?” answered the dancer instantly.