These delusions of horror were suspended by a letter from his wife which breathed love and pity, and in which she invited him to come to Austria and see his little daughter. The thought of the child, of holding her in his arms, of begging her to forgive him, of making her happy by a father's tenderness, brought about a spiritual metamorphosis. He left Sweden, and arrived at his mother-in-law's country house on the Danube in September, 1896. During the months which he spent there he did not meet his wife-a separation which he bore with equanimity, in consequence of "an indefinable lack of harmony in our temperaments"--but he saw the child daily.
"Every man, if he is sincere, may tread again for himself the road to Damascus-a journey which must vary for each individual soul," wrote Victor Hugo. Here, in the presence of the child, Strindberg was brought face to face with his own sinfulness. He had set out to persecute, but the light from heaven had prostrated him and struck him with blindness. Before the scales could fall from his eyes his penance must be made complete. He had left an infant of six weeks. The little girl of two and a half years, who now met him, scrutinised his soul with eyes full of serious inquiry, and then allowed her father to clasp her to his breast. "This is Dr. Faust's resurrection to earthly life, but sweeter and purer," he writes. "I cannot cease carrying the little one in my arms, and feeling her little heart beat against mine. To love a child is for a man to become woman; it is to lay aside the manly, to experience the sexless love of the dwellers in heaven, as Swedenborg called it." But an incident soon occurred which disturbed his peace. At supper he gently touched the child's hand in order to help her. She cried out, and, drawing back her hand with a look full of horror, said, "He hurts me." Another evening he was humiliated by the mysterious conduct of the child. Pointing at an invisible person behind Strindberg's chair, she began to cry with fear, and said, "The sweep is standing there." Her grandmother who believed in clairvoyance in children made the sign of the cross over the child's head, and-a painful silence fell upon the company.
