B1038 <=> B1040 [BTG XLII Beelzebub in America, p. 1039]

“The same day an hour after the pupils were sent home, one of what are called the ‘porters’ of the institute happened to find in the ‘woodshed’ that two as yet undeveloped growing future mothers were hanging by ropes fastened to the beams.

“In Mary’s pocket was found a note with the contents:

“’Together with my dear Elizabeth, I do not wish to live any longer with such nonentities as you, and I am going with her to a better world.’

“This case then so interested me that I began, of course privately, to investigate psychoanalytically from every aspect the psyche of all the parties in this sad story. I partly elucidated among other things that at the moment of the manifestation of her violent outburst, there was in the psyche of poor Elizabeth what is called there ‘chaos.’

“And indeed it would have been astonishing if such a ‘chaos’ had not been in the psyche of this as yet unself-conscious thirteen-year-old girl, who before this miserable event had always lived on her father’s big estate, where she had always seen and felt the same richness of nature as on that day in the field near the city of St. Petersburg.

“She had been brought to that stifling noisy city of St. Petersburg and had been kept for a long time in an improvised box. Suddenly she had found herself in an environment where every fresh impression evoked all kinds of memories of former pleasantly perceived sensations.

“On your planet, during what is called ‘early spring’ there are indeed sometimes pictures to the charm of which it is difficult not to yield.

“Picture to yourself the following: afar, cows are seen at pasture; near, at one’s feet snowdrops shyly peep out from the earth; close to one’s ear, a little bird flies by; to the right is heard the twittering of quite an unknown bird; on the left one’s sense of smell is quickened by the perfume of some also unknown flower.