"And thus I went to bed; but sleep would not come. I was lying there, my hands crossed on my bosom, and I repeated to myself over and over again what I had sworn; and whenever my heart became heavy--ah, so heavy! from an unspeakable sense of wretchedness--then I put the point of my dagger upon my disobedient, rebellious heart, and it became quiet again and humble! It felt, so to say, that it had no hope of victory in a battle between pride and love. At last I fell asleep and dreamed I was reconciled to my mother. She covered me with kisses and with jewels; but the kisses were icy, and the jewels chilled me to the marrow of my bones. Yet I suffered it to be done, and she took me by the hand and led me through dark passages into the brilliantly-lighted interior of a church which was full of people. The eyes of all these people were fixed upon me. Then it was suddenly no longer my mother who held my hand, but a tall, strange man in a uniform dazzling with gold and diamonds. I could not see his face, for he held it always aside. Thus we approached the altar; a priest was standing on the steps. The organ sounded, and song filled the high vaults. Above the priest hung a large wooden crucifix, such as we have hanging in the chapel at Grenwitz, which always filled me with horror when I was a child. The same horror overcame me now; for while the priest was speaking, the image was continually shaking its head; and when I examined it more accurately it bore Oswald's features, but disfigured and deadly pale, and in the side of the body my dagger was sticking up to the hilt, and black drops of blood were trickling down one by one. Then it opened its lips and cried aloud--a fearful, yelling cry--and the cry scattered the crowd, the vaults came down with a crash, and the man by my side changed into a skeleton. I tried in vain to escape from its hold. It seized me with its bony arms and went down with me into dark depths--faster, faster, till I awoke with horror! The dismal autumn morning was looking into my room, but I thought I still heard the trumpets, and it took me some time before I could make out that they were the melancholy strains of a military band which escorted a funeral past our house to the graveyard near by. "I tried to smile at my ridiculous dream, and I succeeded; because I _willed_ it; because I was determined not to allow empty fancies of an excited imagination to influence my decision. Besides, I could now, when I was calm again, readily explain how the dream had come about. The night before I had seen Oswald take leave of me, suffering greatly; on this very day I was to meet my mother once more after a long, long interval. My father had brought about this interview. He wished me to be at a party which they proposed to give, and I could not refuse my good father this request.