The road-house immediately suggests to the dreamer's recollection a quotation:
"Of that marvellous host
I was once a guest."
But the host in the poem by Uhland is an apple tree. Now a second quotation continues the train of thought:
Faust (dancing with the young witch).
"A lovely dream once came to me;
I then beheld an apple tree,
And there two fairest apples shone:
They lured me so, I climbed thereon."
The Fair One.
"Apples have been desired by you,
Since first in Paradise they grew;
And I am moved with joy to know
That such within my garden grow."
Translated by Bayard Taylor.
There remains not the slightest doubt what is meant by the apple tree and the apples. A beautiful bosom stood high among the charms with which the actress had bewitched our dreamer.
According to the connections of the analysis we had every reason to assume that the dream went back to an impression from childhood. In this case it must have reference to the nurse of the patient, who is now a man of nearly fifty years of age. The bosom of the nurse is in reality a road-house for the child. The nurse as well as Daudet's Sappho appears as an allusion to his abandoned sweetheart.
The (elder) brother of the patient also appears in the dream content; he is upstairs, the dreamer himself is below. This again is an inversion, for the brother, as I happen to know, has lost his social position, my patient has retained his. In reporting the dream content the dreamer avoided saying that his brother was upstairs and that he himself was down. It would have been too frank an expression, for a person is said to be "down and out" when he has lost his fortune and position. Now the fact that at this point in the dream something is represented as inverted must have a meaning. The inversion must apply rather to some other relation between
