At the Magdeburg theatre I had already made the acquaintance of a very interesting woman called Mme. Haas.  She was an actress, no longer in her first youth, and played so-called ’chaperone’s parts.’  This lady won my sympathy by telling me she had been friendly ever since her youth with Laube, in whose destiny she continued to take a heartfelt and cordial interest.  She was clever, but far from happy, and an unprepossessing exterior, which with the lapse of years grew more uninviting, did not tend to make her any happier.  She lived in meagre circumstances, with one child, and appeared to remember her better days with a bitter grief.  My first visit to her was paid merely to inquire after Laube’s fate, but I soon became a frequent and familiar caller.  As she and Minna speedily became fast friends, we three often spent pleasant evenings talking together.  But when, later on, a certain jealousy manifested itself on the part of the elder woman towards the younger, our confidential relations were more or less disturbed, for it particularly grieved me to hear Minna’s talents and mental gifts criticised by the other.  One evening I had promised Minna to have tea with her and Mme. Haas, but I had thoughtlessly promised to go to a whist party first.  This engagement I purposely prolonged, much as it wearied me, in the deliberate hope that her companion—­who had already grown irksome to me—­might have left before my arrival.  The only way in which I could do this was by drinking hard, so that I had the very unusual experience of rising from a sober whist party in a completely fuddled condition, into which I had imperceptibly fallen, and in which I refused to believe.  This incredulity deluded me into keeping my engagement for tea, although it was so late.  To my intense disgust the elder woman was still there when I arrived, and her presence at once had the effect of rousing my tipsiness to a violent outbreak; for she seemed astonished at my rowdy and unseemly behaviour, and made several remarks upon it intended for jokes, whereupon I scoffed at her in the coarsest manner, so that she immediately left the house in high dudgeon.  I had still sense enough to be conscious of Minna’s astonished laughter at my outrageous conduct.  As soon as she realised, however, that my condition was such as to render my removal impossible without great commotion, she rapidly formed a resolution which must indeed have cost her an effort, though it was carried out with the utmost calmness and good-humour.  She did all she could for me, and procured me the necessary relief, and when I sank into a heavy slumber, unhesitatingly resigned her own bed to my use.  There I slept until awakened by the wonderful grey of dawn.  On recognising where I was, I at once realised and grew ever more convinced of the fact that this morning’s sunrise marked the starting-point of an infinitely momentous period of my life.  The demon of care had at last entered into my existence.