n that vortex. At times, the tempest seems once more to
be gathering, and, as it passes overhead, to be wrapping me in its
folds, until I have lost my sense of order and reality, and continue
whirling and whirling and whirling around.

Yet, it may be that I shall be able to stop myself from revolving if
once I can succeed in rendering myself an exact account of what has
happened within the month just past. Somehow I feel drawn towards the
pen; on many and many an evening I have had nothing else in the world
to do. But, curiously enough, of late I have taken to amusing myself
with the works of M. Paul de Kock, which I read in German translations
obtained from a wretched local library. These works I cannot abide, yet
I read them, and find myself marvelling that I should be doing so.
Somehow I seem to be afraid of any SERIOUS book--afraid of permitting
any SERIOUS preoccupation to break the spell of the passing moment. So
dear to me is the formless dream of which I have spoken, so dear to me
are the impressions which it has left behind it, that I fear to touch
the vision with anything new, lest it should dissolve in smoke. But is
it so dear to me? Yes, it IS dear to me, and will ever be fresh in my
recollections--even forty years hence....

So let me write of it, but only partially, and in a more abridged form
than my full impressions might warrant.

First of all, let me conclude the history of the Grandmother. Next day
she lost every gulden that she possessed. Things were bound to happen
so, for persons of her type who have once entered upon that road
descend it with ever-increasing rapidity, even as a sledge descends a
toboggan-slide. All day until eight o'clock that evening did she play;
and, though I personally did not witness her exploits, I learnt of them
later through report.

All that day Potapitch remained in attendance upon her; but the Poles
who directed her play she changed more than once. As a beginning she
dismissed her Pole of the previous day--the Pole whose hair she had
pulled--and took to herself another one; but the latter proved worse
even than the former, and incurred dismissal in favour of the first
Pole, who, during the time of his unemployment, had nevertheless
hovered around the Grandmother's chair, and from time to time obtruded
his head over her shoulder. At length the old lady became desperate,
for the second Pole, when dismissed, imitated his predecessor by
declining to go away; with the re