Viewing page 12 of 143

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

below.  This tragic girl, who had lost her mind on reaching the age of puberty, was lovely and blonde, and like my brother, the eldest child.  I remember her two long braids of hair, and also an occasion when, as I sat on her knee she opened her bodice and pressed my mouth to her bosom, under the delusion that I was her child.  She was kept shut up in rooms at the top of the house, and it was known that at times she became dangerous

Years afterwards, when as a little girl I kept vigil with my mother, she spoke to me of this cousin whose death she had had a premonition.  One late afternoon, she was walking towards her room she said when, in the corner behind a chair, she saw the crouching figure of the mad girl.  As she approached to speak to her, my cousin rose, and floating in the air, disappeared out of the bedroom window.

This story so haunted me that in my child's imagination I was led back again with terror to that night.