Chattering incessantly she dragged me towards the winter grounds, as the most sheltered part of the Wassermauer is called, for there an old cloister and its high garden-wall keep off all cold winds, evergreen shrubs flourish and the rose-bushes are still covered with roses. This place is always crowded, the band plays and the whole society of strangers walk there or sit basking in the sunshine. My protectress seemed purposely to have brought me here with the intention of introducing me to this beau monde. I had to run the gauntlet of a curious, but to me quite indifferent crowd of ladies and gentlemen. I saw not one face that pleased me, heard not one word that reached my heart. Then the heat under those arbours, the noise of the importunate brass band, and the rebellion which was chafing within me against this soft tyranny, nearly drove me distracted. Still more revolting to me than the dull unfeelingness of the healthy, was the behaviour of many of my fellow sufferers. There sat a young countess who as I heard had been parted from her husband, in order to avoid all excitement, but she was not too ill to notice my simple old-fashioned dress, which she scanned from head to foot, and then with a crushing look, she wrapped herself up in her cashemere burnouss, as I sat on the bench beside her. And that young girl who treated me as an old acquaintance in the first five minutes, and told me all the scandal of Meran, though death was written in her face, and her cough went to my heart. Are those figures of wax, dressed up automatons, who exhibit all their old minauderies, though when spring comes they will have to lie in their coffins. It seemed to me quite a deliverance when the dinner-bell of the hôtel de la poste rang, and most of the company departed and my protectress had to go to her sick friend. I hardly bid her good-bye. I could no longer speak, or listen to a word, for I felt quite paralized; so she has at last obtained her object and tried her cure on me, and the result is, that both in mind and body I am more dead than alive. Certainly that is a sort of recovery. The 13th--Evening. I have at last succeeded, and cannot sufficiently express my joy at this achievement. I reflected that it was only just, that if I wished for freedom, I should purchase it by the exertion of some courage and determination. Armed with a book, I calmly walked through the winter grounds without recognizing any one, sat down in the midst of the whole society and read for several hours without once looking up. Of course the life-preserver made her appearance and at once approached my bench, but I coolly told her that talking hurt me; she looked astonished, shrugged her shoulders, and left me to myself.