After my return home from the journey, I had mentioned before, I had cause to call on my sister, who was married to a man from Hohenstein. I lived with her for a few days, and there, I made the acquaintance of a girl, who made a very singular impression on me. In the beginning of this book, I have said that I have the strange peculiarity to see a person standing before me more as a soul than as a body. Whether this is a blessing or a shortcoming, I cannot decide; but due to this idiosyncrasy of mine, it happens rather frequently that I regard an ugly person as pretty and a pretty person as ugly. To me, the most interesting beings are those in whom the form of their souls appears as a mystery to me, whose spiritual shape I cannot make out, or whose shadings I cannot grasp. Such persons attract me, even when they appear repulsive; I cannot help it. And about the girl, I am talking about here, there was also something else, something rather peculiar. It was like this: When I was, at the age of fourteen, a proseminarist in Waldenburg, one day in November, I went from there to Ernstthal to see my parents and to get my laundry. On the way back, I came across the market square of Hohenstein. There, they were singing. The students' choir stood in front of a house. There was a corpse, which was to be buried. I knew the house. Downstairs lived a man selling flour and upstairs lived a gentleman, who had moved here from out of town and was sometimes referred to as a barber, then as an army-surgeon, physician, or doctor. He did not shave just anybody, and it was well known that he could do even much more than this. His name was Pollmer. He had a daughter, who was considered to be the most beautiful girl of both towns; I knew this. She was now to be buried. Therefore, I stopped. Two women, who also wanted to listen and watch, came and stood behind me. A third woman joined them, who was from a village, she asked whose funeral this would be. "Pollmer's daughter", answered one of the first two women. "Oh?! The dentist's? Whatever did she die of?" "Of her own child. It would be better if the child was dead, but she was still alive. There can never be a blessing on such a child, the mother has died for; that'll bring nothing but mischief for everyone." "What's the father's profession?" "Him? But it has no father!" "Good God! This as well? If that's so, thing would surely be better, if the nickel [a] could be buried right alongside with the mother!"