Dr. Pierson adopted an air of kindness and devotion. He told me, in tones of real alarm, about certain information which he declared came from a reliable source, and which he advised me to take into consideration if I did not wish to grieve him. He said he had heard that bandits had resolved to attack me suddenly in the forest and rob me of the jewels which I usually wore. Dr. Pierson did not deny that the count might have written to me. But he said that the letter which had been seized by my "lady-in-waiting" was not what I imagined it to be. It was spurious and very mysterious. It could not be shown me because it belonged first of all to the Law. I should be well advised to give up the letter I had kept. It evidently emanated from the gang who had planned to rob and assassinate me.
Frightened into listening to him and being utterly depressed by my existence I allowed myself to be convinced. I did not want to go out. For several days I lived in anguish, oppression and uncertainty. I could not sleep. When I reflected, I did not know what to think and what to believe. Suffering upon suffering overwhelmed me. Nobody can conceive the will-power necessary to preserve a certain amount of lucidity when one lives for years among lunatics. The haunting terror is such that if you have not the strength to detach yourself from your surroundings you must inevitably succumb.
But God permitted me to escape in spirit and to rejoin my hoped-for rescuer. I ended by pulling myself together and I again asked to go out. They dared not refuse.
However, I was still somewhat impressed by what I had heard, and I dared not go as far into the forest as formerly. And if I saw one or more cyclists I was afraid, although I said nothing.
Had they come to attack me? I wondered. Had they, perhaps, come to rescue me?
What a power is imagination! The cyclists were only harmless people quietly going about their business.
My doctor-professor had not forgotten his promise. His intervention obtained the desired effect, and it was decreed that I should go to Bad-Elster in Bavaria. This place is in the mountains about a quarter of an hour's drive from the German frontier. If I escaped Charybdis I should encounter Scylla!
The country is wild and the spa deserves to attract a cosmopolitan clientèle. But its fame, which is purely German, reassured my jailers. No one would look for me in this modest Bavarian Wiesbaden. And if, peradventure, my defender should arrive, he would find all the avenues to escape well guarded.
In fact, the hotel at which I arrived with my suite of police officials, male and female, was immediately surrounded, according to the rules of the profession, by a cordon of sentries and inspectors.
If any unknown or suspicious person approached he was followed, observed, and promptly identified.