That same evening I received a letter from the fire insurance company, La Foncière, asking which day their agent might call to have the agreement signed. I replied that he might come on Saturday. On Friday I was so utterly wretched that I sent to ask my mother to come and lunch with me. I was not playing that day, as I never used to perform on Tuesdays and Fridays, days on which répertoire plays only were given. As I was playing every other day in new pieces, it was feared that I should be over-tired. My mother on arriving thought I looked very pale. “Yes,” I replied. “I do not know what is the matter with me, but I am in a very nervous state and most depressed.” The governess came to fetch my little boy, to take him out for a walk, but I would not let him go. “Oh no!” I exclaimed. “The child must not leave me to-day. I am afraid of something happening.” What happened was fortunately of a less serious nature than, with my love for my family, I was dreading. I had my grandmother living with me at that time, and she was blind. It was the grandmother who had given me most of my furniture. She was a spectral-looking woman, and her beauty was of a cold, hard type. She was very tall indeed, six feet, but she looked like a giantess. She was thin and very upright, and her long arms were always stretched in front of her, feeling for all the objects in her way, so that she might not knock herself, although she was always accompanied by the nurse whom I had engaged for her. Above this long body was her little face, with two immense pale blue eyes, which were always open, even when asleep at night. She was generally dressed from head to foot in grey, and this neutral colour gave something unreal to her general appearance. My mother, after trying to comfort me, went away about two o’clock. My grandmother, seated opposite me in her large Voltaire arm-chair, questioned me: “What are you afraid of?” she asked. “Why are you so mournful? I have not heard you laugh all day.” I did not answer, but looked at my grandmother. It seemed to me that the trouble I was dreading would come through her. “Are you not there?” she insisted. “Yes, I am here,” I answered; “but please do not talk to me.” She did not utter another word, but with her two hands on her lap sat there for hours. I sketched her strange, fatidical face. It began to grow dusk, and I thought I would go and dress, after being present at the meal taken by my grandmother and the child. My friend Rose Baretta was dining with me that evening, and I had also invited a most charming and witty man, Charles Haas. Arthur Meyer came too. He was a young journalist already very much in vogue. I told them about my forebodings with regard to that day, and begged them not to leave me before midnight. “After that,” I said, “it will not be to-day, and the wicked spirits who are watching me will have missed their chance.”