Then all of a sudden they seem disposed to give me better food, and the manageress smiles at me. At the same time the feeling of being bewitched ceases, and I go my way without rancour, and as if freed from a burden, with the assurance that for my part the penance is over, and perhaps also for my absent friend. If it was mere fancy on my part that I was badly treated, and if the manageress was quite blameless, I ask her pardon. In that case it was I who punished myself with a well-deserved chastisement. "The chastising spirits take possession of the imagination of the man who deserves punishment, and effect his moral improvement by letting him see everything distorted" (Swedenborg). How often it has happened to me that when I really wished to enjoy a meal, all the dishes inspired disgust in me as though they were bad, while my companions were enthusiastically unanimous in praising the good food. The man "continually discontent" is an unfortunate under the scourge of the invisible Powers, and it is with very good reason that people avoid him, for he is condemned to be a disturber of the peace, who, doomed to solitude and suffering, atones for secret misdoings. Accordingly I go about alone, and when, after not hearing my own voice for weeks at a time, I seek any one's company, I so overpower him with my loquacity that he is bored and retires, and involuntarily gives me to understand that he does not wish for another meeting. There are other moments when the longing to see a human being drives me into bad society. Then it happens that in the midst of conversation a feeling of discomfort, accompanied by headache, seizes me. I become dumb, unable to bring out another word. And I find myself compelled to leave the circle, who always show that they are glad to be rid of an intolerable person who had no business there.