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blood, thereafter suffered prolonged torments through the wound’s neglect, and was eventually restored, solely by the invisible physician, without any further defect than a scar, which I still bear as a memorial of the strange occurrence.

Every conceivable mode of torment was used to test my endurance, my strength to suffer and bear; during a cold winter I was not thinly clad enough; some of my many-patched rags had to be put aside, so that I found myself almost half-naked.

As if it were an event of yesterday, I see myself clearly in this condition, standing in a corner without stockings and shoes, and having my place there for several hours.

Once my stepfather approached me, stopped, regarded me, and said: ‘You are full of vermin—come!’

Then he led me out into the yard to the woodpile as unclothed as I was, with bare feet in the snow, picked up an oak branch, and gave me, at a slow tempo and amid lengthy speaking, many hard blows, whereby the double purpose was thus achieved that I, apart from a bruised back, contracted erysipelas in both legs and a rather large frost wound on my right foot.

Certainly I was plagued by vermin, but the