They seem to understand the part they have to play, and ask first for food. My friend and I continue our philosophical conversation in German, now and then speaking a word to the women, who are not presuming, and who seem more anxious to eat than to be attended to. For a moment the thought strikes me, "Suppose one of your acquaintances saw you now?" Yes, I know what he would say, and I know what I would answer: "You have thrust me out of society, condemned me to solitude, and I am compelled to purchase the companionship of pariahs, outcasts like myself, and hungry as I have been. My simple pleasure is to be able to see these despised ones plume themselves on a conquest which is no conquest, to sec them eat and drink, and to hear their voices, which are at any rate those of women. Moreover, I have not paid them in any way, not even in order to append a moral exhortation." I simply find a pleasure in sitting together with human beings, and in being able to give out of my momentary superfluity, for in a month I may be as poor as they are. It is now morning; the clock strikes five, and we go. But my companion demands fifteen francs for having given me her society, a demand which from her point of view I find quite comprehensible, for my society is as worthless as my power to protect her against the police. But I do not believe that will increase my self-respect, rather the opposite. Meanwhile I go home with a good conscience after a well-spent night, sleep till ten o'clock, awake well rested, and spend the day in work and meditation. But the following night I have an attack of the terrible kind which Swedenborg describes in his _Dreams_. So that was the punishment! What for? I really don't understand. I thought that this was a new lesson in the art of life,--that I should learn that all men alike are good cabbage-eaters, and had actually for a moment imagined that the part I had played in the night-café was rather that of a philanthropist than of a sinner, or at any rate morally indifferent. During the following days I was much depressed, and one evening I looked forward to passing a night of terror. At nine o'clock I had Cicero's _Natura Deorum_ before me, and was so pleased with Aristotle's doctrine that the gods quite ignored our world, and would pollute themselves if they had anything to do with this filth, that I determined to copy it out. At the same time I noticed that blood had broken out on the back of my right hand without any apparent cause. When I wiped it off, I found no mark of a scratch. But I forgot it, and went to bed. About half-past twelve I awoke with the fully developed symptoms of what I have called "the electric girdle." Notwithstanding that I know its nature and inner significance, I am compelled to seek the cause of it outside myself. I made an effort and lighted the lamp. As the Bible lay close by I determined to consult it, and it gave the answer: "I will instruct thee and teach thee in the way that thou