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PARTISAN REVIEW
of Christmas trees lying on the streets and on rubbish heaps she
broke into hysterical sobs. Then she had a real attack of
insanity
which the family tried to discount as a nervous breakdown. At a
coffee party in a friend's house she struck a dish out of her hostess'
hand as the latter was smilingly offering her butter-and-almond
cookies. My cousin is, to be sure, what is called a temperamental
woman: and so she struck the dish from her friend's hand, went up
to the Christmas tree, tore it from its stand and trampled on the
glass balls, the artificial mushrooms, the candles and the stars, the
while emitting a continuous roar. The assembled ladies fled, including
the hostess. They let Lucie rage, and stood waiting for the doctor in
the vestibule, forced to give ear to the sound of crashing china
within. Painful though it is for me, I must report that Lucie was
taken away in a straitjacket.
Sustained hypnotic treatment checked her illness, but the actual
cure proceeded very . slowly. Above all, release from the evening
celebration, which the doctor demanded, seemed to do her visible
good; after a few days she began to brighten. At the end of ten days
the doctor could risk at least talking to her about butter-and-almond
cookies, although she stubbornly persisted in refusing to eat them.
The doctor then struck on the inspired idea of feeding her some
sour pickles and offering her salads and nourishing meat dishes.
That was poor Lucie's real salvation. She laughed once more and
began to interject ironic observations into the endless therapeutic
interviews she had with her doctor.
To be sure, the vacancy caused by her absence from the evening
celebration was painful to my aunt, but it was explained to her by a
circumstance that is an adequate excuse in any woman's eyes–
pregnancy.
But Lucie had created what is called a precedent: she had
proved that although my aunt suffered when someone was absent,
she did not immediately begin to scream, and now my Cousin
Johannes and
his
brother-in-law Carl attempted to infringe on the
severe regulations, giving sickness as excuse or business appointments
or some other quite transparent pretext. But here my uncle remained
astonishingly inflexible: with iron severity he decreed that only in
exceptional cases upon presentation of acceptable evidence could
very short leaves of absence be permitted. For my aunt noticed
