ke when we were living together, because we accused
each other of wicked thoughts before they'd become actions; and lived in
mental reservations instead of realities. For instance, I once noticed
how you enjoyed the defiling gaze of a strange man, and I accused you of
unfaithfulness';

to which THE LADY, to Strindberg's satisfaction, has to reply:

'You were wrong to do it, and right. Because my thoughts were sinful.'

As regards the other figures in the gallery of characters in Part I,
we have already shown THE LADY as the identical counterpart in all
essentials of Strindberg's second wife, Frida Uhl. Like the latter THE
LADY is a Catholic, has a grandfather, Dr. Cornelius Reisch--called THE
OLD MAN in the drama--whose passion is shooting; and a mother, Maria
Uhl, with a predilection for religious discourses in Strindberg's own
style; another detail, the fact that she was eighteen years old before
she crossed to the other shore to see what had shimmered dimly in the
distant haze, corresponds with Frida Uhl's statement that she had been
confined in a convent until she was eighteen and a half years old.
On the other hand, the chief female character of the drama does not
correspond to her real life counterpart in that she is supposed to have
been married to a doctor before eloping with THE STRANGER, Strindberg.
Here reminiscences from Strindberg's first marriage play a part. Siri
von Essen, Strindberg's first wife, was married to an officer, Baron
Wrangel, and both the Wrangels received Strindberg kindly in their home
as a friend. Love quickly flared up between Siri von Essen-Wrangel
and Strindberg. She obtained a divorce from her husband and married
Strindberg. Baron von Wrangel shortly afterwards married again, a cousin
of Siri von Essen. Knowing these matrimonial complications we understand
how Strindberg must have felt when, on the point of leaving for
Heligoland to marry Frida Uhl, he met his former wife's (Siri von Essen)
first husband, Baron Wrangel, on Lehrter Station in Berlin, and found
that, like Strindberg himself, he was on a lover's errand. Knowing all
this we need not be surprised at the extremely complicated matrimonial
relations in _The Road to Damascus_, where, for example, for the sake
of THE STRANGER, THE DOCTOR obtains a divorce from THE LADY in order to
marry THE STRANGER'S first wife. In addition to Baron Wrangel a doctor
in the town of Ystad, in the south of Sweden--Dr. Eliasson who attended
Stri