"
[1] Proceedings, vol. xiv., p. 266.
A week before the catastrophe, a violent smell of fire fills the
house. From that time, the mother begins to be careful about
matches, seeing that they are in safe places and out of reach.
She looks all over the house for them and feels a strong impulse
to burn all matches of the kind easily lighted. About an hour
before the fatal disaster, she reaches for a box to destroy it;
but she says to herself that her eldest boy is gone out, thinks
that she may need the matches to light the gas-stove and decides
to destroy them as soon as he comes back. She takes the child up
to its crib for its morning sleep and, as she is putting it into
the cradle, she hears the usual mysterious voice whisper in her
ear:
"Turn the mattress."
But, being in a great hurry, she simply says that she will turn
the mattress after the child has taken its nap. She then goes
downstairs to work. After a while, she hears the child cry and,
hurrying up to the room, finds the crib and its bedding on fire
and the child so badly burnt that it dies in three hours.
14
Before going further and theorizing about this case, let us once
more state the matter precisely. I know that the reader may
straightway and quite legitimately deny the value of anecdotes of
this kind. He will say that we have to do with a neurotic who has
drawn upon her imagination for all the elements that give a
dramatic setting to the story and surround with a halo of mystery
a sad but commonplace domestic accident.
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