The marriage, made at her request in a headstrong fit of impatience, took place a few days after the proposal had been made.  A child was born, but long before its birth she had become tired of her husband.  The child she loved passionately at first, but soon became weary even of this object of her tenderest affection, and looked upon it with indifference!  All these events had taken place during the reign of my predecessor.  Under my laws such a marriage would have been impossible.

At the age of twenty-six a frightful accident happened to this lady—­she fell into a vat of scalding liquor—­a beverage prepared with honey.  We have a very effective remedy for scalds, and, though severely burnt, she was eventually cured, but the fright had sadly shocked her nerves; a violent fever seized the blood, she fell into a trance, her eyes were fixed and glassy, and she gave no signs of movement except by swallowing the little nourishment that was offered her in a liquid form.

This trance lasted some days.  On awakening, the patient asked with the tone and manner of a child, how old she was?  She was extremely calm, and a remarkable change had come over her.  On the doctor’s asking why she inquired about her age, she replied that during her sleep she had been in what seemed a long, sad, and changeful dream!  She then related some details of the injury she received when at four years old she fell down the stone steps.  Those around her at first thought that her mind was wandering, but this notion was soon dispelled.  She spoke of incidents of her life extending over many years, as though they passed in a dream; one incident of this dream being that she had given birth to a child, and suffered acute pain.  At one moment she saw herself in a family of strangers who were very kind, but she knew them not,—­then she saw her family in great grief.

One of the impressions that this seeming sad dream made upon her was, that swarms of insects had followed and enveloped her on all sides, stinging and causing her excruciating suffering, which had extended over a series of years of more than lifelong duration.

Sometimes in moments of despondency she saw the beautiful form of an angel radiant with light, who spoke to her in soothing tones, and entreated her to be patient, assuring her that her sufferings were ordained for a good end, and that by patience and the sweetness of her nature, she would attain the power of casting from her the torments she endured, and that after doing much good during her mortal career she would, when her time came to quit the world, be placed high amongst myriads of angels.  She said that whenever urged by despair to relieve herself from her pains by a desperate course, this bright and beautiful angel would stand before her and pour words of consolation and hope into her ear.

In relating the incidents of her supposed dream, her whole manner was so different from the former state of excitement, to which her friends had been accustomed, that all saw she was perfectly rational, although relating as a dream what had occurred during twenty-two years of her actual life.  It seemed as though all the time that had elapsed since she was four years of age belonged as it were to another and differently constituted brain; and that she had now resumed the thread of her life from the time when she was four years old, the period of the first accident.