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And now a second association to ‘table d’hôte.’ A few weeks ago, while we were at table in a hotel at a mountain resort in the Tyrol, I was very much annoyed because I thought my wife was not being sufficiently reserved towards some people sitting near us whose acquaintance I had no desire at all to make. I asked her to concern herself more with me than with these strangers. This was again as though I were getting the worst of the bargain at the table. I was struck too by the contrast between my wife’s behaviour at table and that of Frau E. L. in the dream, who ‘turned her whole attention to me.’

To proceed. I now saw that the events in the dream were a reproduction of a small episode of a precisely similar kind which occurred between my wife and me at the time at which I was secretly courting her. The caress which she gave me under the table-cloth was her reply to a pressing love letter. In the dream, however, my wife was replaced by a comparative stranger - E. L.

Frau E. L. is the daughter of a man to whom I was once in debt. I could not help noticing that this revealed an unsuspected connection between parts of the content of the dream and my associations. If one follows the train of association starting out from one element of a dream’s content, one is soon brought back to another of its elements. My associations to the dream were bringing to light connections which were not visible in the dream itself.

If a person expects one to keep an eye on his interests without any advantage to oneself, his artlessness is apt to provoke the scornful question: ‘Do you suppose I’m going to do this or that for the sake of your beaux yeux [beautiful eyes]?’ That being so, Frau E. L.’s speech in the dream, ‘You’ve always had such beautiful eyes’, can only have meant: ‘People have always done everything for you for love; you have always had everything without paying for it.’ The truth is, of course, just the contrary: I have always paid dearly for whatever advantage I have had from other people. The fact that my friend took me home yesterday in a cab without my paying for it must, after all, have made an impression on me.