your birthday and we will keep it for you until then.' While the children were thus playing there was a sudden diffusion of an intense odor. The children forgot the pastry which they were cooking and it became burned. Since then I have been troubled by this odor, it is really always present but is more marked during excitement."
"Do you see this scene distinctly before you?"—"As clearly as I experienced it."—"What was there in it that so excited you?"—"I was touched by the affection which the children displayed towards me."—"But weren't they always so affectionate?"—"Yes, but I just got the letter from my mother."—"I can't understand in what way the affection of the little ones and the letter from the mother contrasted, a thing which you appear to intimate."—"I had the intention of going to my mother and my heart became heavy at the thought of leaving those dear children."—"What is the matter with your mother? Was she so lonesome that she wanted you, or was she sick just then and you expected some news?"—"No, she is delicate but not really sick, and has a companion with her."—"Why then were you obliged to leave the children?"—"This house had become unbearable to me. The housekeeper, the cook, and the French maid seemed to be under the impression that I was too proud for my position.
Still I was not satisfied, perhaps there was something else which provoked or strengthened the hysterical disposition in a hitherto normal girl. My suppositions were directed to the menstrual indisposition as an appropriate moment, and I asked, " Do you know when during that month you had your menses?"—She became indignant: "Do you expect me to know that? I only know that I had them then very rarely and irregularly. When I was seventeen I only had them once."—"Well let us enumerate the days, months, etc., so as to find when it occurred."—She with certainty decided on a month and wavered between two days preceding a date which accompanied a fixed holiday.—Does that in any way correspond with the time of the ball? — She answered quietly: "The ball was on this holiday. And now I recall that I was impressed by the fact that the only menses which I had had during the year occurred just when I had to go to the ball. It was the first invitation to a ball that I had received."
The combination of the events can now be readily constructed and the mechanism of this hysterical attack readily viewed. To be sure the result was gained after painstaking labor. It necessitated on my side full confidence in the technique and individual directing ideas in order to reawaken such details of forgotten experiences after twenty-one years in a sceptical and awakened patient. But then everything agreed.
