Here is one which is in no way remarkable, but which
plainly shows the normal course of the operation. In September,
1913, while I was at Elberfeld, visiting Krall's horses, my wife
went to consult Mme. M--, gave her a scrap of writing in my
hand--a note dispatched previous to my journey and containing no
allusion to it--and asked her where I was and what I was doing.
Without a second's hesitation, Mme. M-- declared that I was very
far away, in a foreign country where they spoke a language which
she did not understand. She saw first a paved yard, shaded by a
big tree, with a building on the left and a garden at the back: a
rough but not inapt description of Krall's stables, which my wife
did not know and which I myself had not seen at the time when I
wrote the note. She next perceived me in the midst of the horses,
examining them, studying them with an absorbed, anxious and tired
air. This was true, for I found those visits, which overwhelmed
me with a sense of the marvelous and kept my attention on the
rack, singularly exhausting and bewildering. My wife asked her if
I intended to buy the horses. She replied:
"Not at all; he is not thinking of it."
And, seeking her words as though to express an unaccustomed and
obscure thought, she added:
"I don't know why he is so much interested; it is not like him.
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