ne injustice is wrought upon innocent persons and cannot be
undone?"

Frederick turned very pale. He was seized by a violent attack of nausea.
His lids opened wide, his eyes popped with a curious expression of
horror. He trembled slightly, and in some alarm clutched impetuously at
his friend's arm. His brain reeled dully as he felt the ground beneath
his feet beginning to heave.

"I have never had anything like this before," he said. "I think the
accident has left me with something."

Peter Schmidt led his friend to a bench, which fortunately happened to be
close by. He saw it was a nervous attack. Frederick's hands turned numb,
cold sweat broke out on his body, and he suddenly fell over in a faint.
When he awoke, it took some time for him to recognise his surroundings.
He said things meant for somebody else. He thought he saw his wife, then
his children, and then his father in full uniform. When he regained
complete consciousness, he implored his friend to keep the incident a
secret. Peter Schmidt promised he would.

"My opinion is," he said, "that your over-wrought, over-taxed nerves are
in revolt. They are taking revenge and at the same time curing
themselves."

"Though I have inherited the strongest constitution from both my father's
and mother's sides," said Frederick, "yet, from last summer on, I have
been assailed by so many things that I have long been expecting a
collapse. I know this will not be the last attack. I should have cause
for rejoicing were the condition not to become chronic."

"Oh," said Schmidt, "you may have two or three more attacks, but if you
live quietly for a few months, they may never recur again."

In coming out of his swoon Frederick, as he himself said, returned from
a trip around the world. He had travelled through the axis of the earth
to the antipodes, which actually did hang head downward.

"I felt as if I had been dead and had come back to life," he said, trying
to give his friend a conception of the remarkable state through which he
had passed. "It was not like being asleep. During the first part of my
dreams, I felt as if I had been something like a block of granite for
hundreds of years. On awaking I stood in the shadow of the deepest abyss.
I saw subterranean landscapes, gigantic caves, heavens of stone, enormous
Adelsberg grottoes. Something lifted me up. The only thing I can compare
it to was the way a diver must feel who slowly, slowly rises to brighter
and brighter