_The Quarantine Master_, 'articles of food, excrements, wet-nurses
treated like milch-cows, cooks and decaying vegetables.' He longed
for cleanliness and peace, and in letters to an artist friend he
spoke of entering a monastery. He even thought of founding one
himself in the Ardennes and drew up detailed schemes for rules,
dress, and food. The longing to get away and common interests with
his Parisian friend (a musician named Leopold Littmansson)
attracted Strindberg to Paris, where he settled down in the
beginning of the autumn 1894. His wife joined him, but left again
at the close of the autumn. In reality Strindberg was at this time
almost impossible to live with. Persecution mania and hallucinations
took possession of him and his morbid suspicions knew no bounds. In
spite of this he was half conscious that there was something wrong
with his mental faculties, and in the beginning of 1895, assisted
by the Swedish Minister, he went by his own consent to the St.
Louis Hospital in Paris. During his chemical experiments, in which
among other things he tried to produce gold, he had burnt his hands,
so that he had to seek medical attention on that account also. He
wrote about this in a letter:

'I am going to hospital because I am ill, because my doctor has
sent me there, and because I need to be looked after like a child,
because I am ruined. ... And it torments me and grieves me, my
nervous system is rotten, paralytic, hysterical. ...'

Never before had Strindberg lived in such distress as at this
period, both physically and mentally. With shattered nerves,
sometimes over the verge of insanity, without any means of
existence other than what friends managed to scrape together,
separated from his second wife, who had opened proceedings for