The person fond of solitude draws back into his corner, closes his inner eye and ear, and sinks in himself in order to ward off a new "influence." Or he looks at the landscape through the window, and lets his thoughts wander, while he steps outside the magic circle of those shut up with him, to whom, however, he is indifferent. The secret of the success of a great actor consists in his inborn capacity of letting his soul "ray out," and thus enter into touch with the audience. In great moments there is actually a radiance round an eloquent speaker, visible even to the incredulous. The actor with a dreamy nature, who has a keen intelligence, and has studied much, but not acquired the power of going out of himself, will never make a great impression on the stage. Shut up in himself, his mind cannot penetrate the minds of the spectators. In the great crises of life, when existence itself is threatened, the soul attains transcendent powers. It seems sometimes as though the fear of poverty drove the tortured soul to fly to seek a life somewhere else, where living is easier, and it is not for nothing that suicide attracts the unhappy by promising to open the gates of their prison. Some years ago I had the following experience. One autumn morning I sat at my writing table before, the window, which looked out on a gloomy street in a small industrial town of Moravia. In the neighbouring room, of which the door was on the jar, my wife, who was expecting her first confinement, was resting. While I was writing, I imagined myself transplanted to a scene many hundred miles north, which I well knew. Although where I was, it was autumn and approaching winter, I found myself in my thoughts under a green oak in the sunshine. The little garden which I had myself cultivated in my youth was there; the roses--I could tell them by their names--the syringas, the jasmines exhaled their scents so that I could smell them; I picked caterpillars off my cherry-trees, I trimmed the currant-bushes *** Suddenly I hear a hoarse cry, I find myself standing on the ground, I feel a kind of cramp in my spine causing intolerable pain, and fall senseless on my chair. When I recover consciousness, I find that my wife had come from behind in order to say good morning, and had quite gently laid her hand upon my shoulder. "Where am I?" That was my first question, and I said it in my native language, which my wife, as a foreigner, did not understand.