Remarks.—The narrator pays special attention to the getting up, but is uncertain whether in the original it referred to getting up on the teacher or the steamer. This uncertainty is, however, amply compensated for by the elaborate invention of the two strangers who take the girls upon their backs. The getting up is too valuable a thought for the narrator to surrender, but she is troubled by the idea of the teacher seeing the object. The want of clothing likewise arouses much interest. The bride’s veil has, it is true, become the black veil of mourning (naturally in order to conceal anything indelicate). There is not only no innocent twisting, but it is conspicuously virtuous (“dear, generous children”); the amoral wish has become changed into virtue which receives special emphasis, arousing suspicion as does every accentuated virtue.
This narrator exuberantly fills in the blanks in the scene of the barn: the men take off their coats; the teacher also, and is therefore . . . i.e. naked and hence cold. Whereupon it becomes too improper.
The narrator has correctly recognised the parallels which were suspected in the criticisms of the original dream; she has filled in the scene about the undressing which belongs to the bathing, for it must finally come out that the girls are together with the naked teacher.
Witness III.—M. told me she had dreamt: Once I went to the baths but there was no room for me. The teacher took me into his dressing-room. I undressed and went bathing. I swam until I reached the bank. Then I met the teacher. He said would I not like to swim across the lake with him. I went, and L. P. also. We swam out and were soon in the middle of the lake. I did not want to swim any further. Now I can’t remember it exactly. Soon a ship came up, and we got up on the ship. The teacher said, “I am cold,” and a sailor gave us an old shirt. The three of us each tore a piece of the shirt away. I fastened it round the neck. Then we left the ship and swam away towards K.
L. P. and I did not want to go further, and two fat men took us upon their backs. In K. we got a veil which we put
