Next evening Dr. Mabuse was invited to spend the evening at the house of Privy Councillor Wendel, who was interested in hypnotism. After an early supper an interesting medium would appear. In her trances memories were awakened within her which referred to her very earliest days ... to a time when the mind was not developed enough to be able to record or describe the physical existence of the moment. Mabuse had made the Privy Councillor’s acquaintance through a patient of his, an aristocratic and wealthy dame, who had suffered from severe neurosis and whom Mabuse had very successfully treated by hypnotic suggestion. In the company were to be found not only professors, but also authors, artists and the reputed friends of art, such as frequent the society of the wealthy and fashionable nowadays. Mabuse’s neighbour at the supper-table was a lady whom he recognized with astonishment and perplexity. In the gambling-dens she was known to his accomplices by the nickname of “the dummy.” The lady was Countess Told. Throughout the meal he devoted himself to her, paying her every possible attention, and relating to her eager ears tales of strange and wonderful experiences in hazardous places, of the chase of wild animals or of human beings in parts of the world that are little frequented. He spoke with a grim earnestness, a savage unrestraint, enjoying once more in recollection the powers he had exercised in such circumstances. He realized what it was that drove this woman to the gambling-dens, and it seemed as if this sudden disclosure gave him a pang, as if there opened up within him a chasm and a gulf so deep that only a palpitating human heart could fill it. With his imagination and with his bold recital he was pursuing such a heart, as in the jungle he had pursued the tiger. The hope of conquest inflamed his blood; he felt he must make it his own. It was this woman’s heart he wished to subjugate. He was consumed with passionate desire as he read in her eyes how his recital fired her blood. That was the kind of life she craved, and her nature understood and responded to it. He painted wild scenes for her; he showed himself struggling for conquest with body, soul and spirit pitted against unrestrained nature, and he desired her to believe that this wild and unrestrained nature was within her. She trembled at his words, and, swayed by his ardour, a longing for support and tenderness overcame her. The recitals by which he sought to enchain her interest aroused so forceful an impression of human power that it seemed, in tearing herself away from them, she was actually tearing a fragment of living, bleeding flesh when she sought out her husband with an almost supplicating gesture, as if desirous of protection from a force too powerful to endure.