I spend the evening of the same day in a good first-class hotel in the town of Malmö. At half-past ten they begin to split wood in the corridor without anyone objecting to it, and that in a continental hotel full of tourists! This is followed by dancing. Later on they turn a machine with wheel-work. I get up, pay my reckoning, and determine to continue my journey the whole night. Absolutely alone, in the cold January night, I drag myself on, with my carpet bag, under a pitch black sky. For a moment I think the best thing would be to lie down in the snow, and die. But the next moment I collect my strength, and turn into a deserted back street where I find an unpretending hotel. After making sure that I am not watched, I slink in through the door. Without taking off my clothes I stretch myself upon the bed, firmly resolved rather to let myself be killed than obliged to get up again. There is a death-like silence in the house, and delightful sleep approaches. Suddenly I hear a sound as though an invisible paw was scratching in the paper covering of the ceiling immediately over my head. It cannot be a mouse, for the loosely hanging paper does not move; besides, it seems to be a fairly large paw, like that of a hare, or a dog. Till the grey of morning I lie awake, expecting to feel the claws in my flesh, but in vain, for anxiety is more painful than death. Why do I not become ill after such tortures as these? Because I have to empty the cup of suffering to the dregs, in order that the punishments undergone may be equivalent to the wrongs committed. And it is really remarkable how I manage to endure the tortures; I swallow them down with a kind of grim joy in order to get done with them. II MY WRETCHEDNESS INCREASES When the New Year with its numerous holidays has passed, I find myself one fine day alone. It is as though a hurricane had passed by; all are scattered, blown away, shipwrecked. My friend the doctor has entered the hospital as a patient. As a matter of fact, weakened by dipsomania, hard-pressed by poverty, and worn out by want of sleep, he is suffering from "neurasthenia." This is pitiful, and, instead of going to the tavern, I turn my steps to the hospital for an hour's conversation and society. In the café I am the only one who drinks anything alcoholic, for my three companions have taken the pledge. The poet has gone away. The young aesthete, the son of the Professor of Ethics, has been sent abroad in order to be freed from the evil companionship of the "seducer of youth," _i.e._ myself.