One thing more this novel also confirms, which our earlier discoveries have already taught us, the abnormal muscle excitability and muscle erotic. For Maria was seized with a hysterical convulsion when her father's unkindness pressed itself upon her. It is interesting that this abnormal muscle excitability, which manifested itself in various muscular convulsions, was present with Otto Ludwig throughout his earthly career. Already as a boy he often suffered convulsive muscular twitchings, when he had exceptional tasks to perform or hard thinking was required of him, and "nervous twitchings of the head" are recorded of him when twenty-three years old, also presumably a tic had won for him the nickname of "the shaker." Later moreover our poet suffered chronically from convulsive manifestations of a lesser degree, repeatedly however in a stronger, special form although only in temporary attacks.[25] [25] Cf. with this especially Ernst Jentsch, "Das Pathologische bei Otto Ludwig," "Grenzfragen des Nerven- und Seelenlebens," published by L. Löwenfeld, No. 90. In other words, it may be said that Ludwig assigns to Maria and the young Eisener a series of his own personal characteristics. That is to say, not only was the tendency to convulsive attacks peculiar to him, but also to fainting, and a compulsive neurotic and hysterical tendency, the high grade myopia, a fondness for discussing painting, talking with inanimate things,[26] colored audition, as well as other synesthesias, and finally a special reverence for his mother. [26] Cf. here the poet's words: "It is strange that nature is personified for me, that I not only live in her, but as one human being with another, exchanging, not merely receiving, thoughts and feelings, and even so, that different places become as individual to me, distinct from others and, as it were, transformed in consciousness, so that I not only feel that they effect an influence upon me but it seems to me as if I work upon them, and the forms, as they appear to me, show the traces of this influence." Further: "I ... who stood even in a wonderful mutual understanding with mountain and flora, because the kingdom of love was not to be restrained...." "BUSCHNOVELLE," by Otto Ludwig.