An evil spirit! That is what I am always suspecting! While the children are dancing, my mother-in-law comes in in order to fetch the little one, and when she sees them, she stands still, astonished. Then she tells me that just now, down in the village, a lady of good family has been seized with an attack of frenzy.
"What is the matter with her?"
"She dances without stopping, has dressed herself as a bride and fancies she is Burger's Lenore."
"She dances, and then?"
"She weeps in terror of death, who she believes will come and take her."
What lends a darker shade to this tragedy is that the lady has occupied the same house I live in now, and that her husband died in the same room where the children are noisily dancing.
Explain me that, O doctors, psychiatrists, psychologists, or acknowledge the bankruptcy of science!
My little daughter has exorcised the evil spirit who, driven out by her innocence, has entered into an old lady who used to boast of being a free thinker.
The death-dance lasts the whole night. The lady is guarded by friends, who she says, are to ward off the attack of death. She calls it "death" because she does not believe in the existence of evil spirits. And yet she often asserted that her deceased husband tormented her.