"As mamma does—majestically!"
Then, flitting off to another idea:
"Tell me; Socrates, how comes it that you saw this sordid individual rather than another? You had hired a donkey from him, and you were no longer thinking of him. And yet he came. Say what you like, it's queer."
"You ask me why it was he rather than another? It would be very hard for me to tell you. Our visions, bound up with our innermost thoughts, often present their images to us; sometimes there is no connection between them, and they show us an unexpected figure."
He once more exhorted her not to allow herself to be frightened by phantoms.
"The dead do not return. When one of them appears to you, rest assured that what you see is a thing imagined by your brain."
"Can you," she inquired; "guarantee that there is nothing after death?"
"My child, there is nothing after death that could frighten you."
She rose, picked up her little bag and her part, and held out her hand to the doctor, saying:
"As for you, you don't believe in anything, do you, old Socrates?"