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[Budapest,] November 20, 1909
Dear Professor,
About four weeks ago I visited a Frau Jelinek for the first time in the outer Trommelgasse in Budapest in the company of two women, one of whom had once had her fortune told by her.
In a darkened apartment on the ground floor with its entrance under a dark gate, we found an approximately seventy-year-old man, with very energetic features, brewing coffee on the kitchen stove. The place is actually a coffeehouse for very poor people/ through the kitchen one gets to the actual guest room, with dirty walls, several round tables, and an icebox containing a large jug of milk. We were not allowed in.—
The second time the husband dismissed me in a rather unfriendly manner, saying his wife was not at home.—I came two more times. First I was turned away with the information that the woman was ill. The third time the man let me in, but he was very mistrustful and asked how I knew her. I heard a conversation in monotone from the next room. But its content escaped me. The man again behaved very morosely and said one should not be impatient here, it was only a question of whether his wife would receive me. After a long wait a very fragile, thin, about fifty-five to sixty-year-old, apparently ill female comes out with a lady, who goes away. She (Frau Jelinek) turns to me with the question, What do I want? When I explained to her that I wanted her to tell my fortune, she told me that if I wanted card reading and the like swindle, I should go away immediately. She was a medium, a somnambulist. I agreed to this and sharply condemned those swindlers and explained that I only believed in extraordinary