Heidi’s sleepwalking is discovered

The discovery that Heidi is the sleepwalker behind the nightly opening of the front door turns a household mystery into evidence of her hidden distress. What the people in Herr Sesemann’s house had treated as a possible intruder or ghost is revealed to be an unconscious repetition of Heidi’s longing for home; the doctor’s recognition makes that longing a matter of health and prompts an urgent proposal that she return to the mountain.

The Mystery of the Open Door

For several mornings, the servants found the front door standing open, although it had been doubly locked and secured with a wooden bar the night before. Their first suspicion was that a thief had entered and escaped, so the rooms and corners were searched. Nothing had been taken, and everything remained in its place. Even when the household rose earlier, the door had already been opened before anyone came downstairs, while the neighboring houses remained shut and still.

The unexplained repetition altered the household’s ordinary routines. Fraulein Rottenmeier moved through corridors and rooms cautiously, looking behind her and calling Tinette to accompany her in parts of the house. Tinette in turn summoned Sebastian, who called John when sent to distant rooms. Their stated need for assistance concealed a shared apprehension: no one wanted to be alone in the house. The mystery’s effect was therefore visible before its cause was known, in the chain of escorts and in the servants’ unease.

A first effort to watch for the intruder did not settle the question. Sebastian and John agreed to sit up, but the strengthening cordial they drank made them talkative and then sleepy. The later decisive watch was kept by Herr Sesemann and the doctor. At one o’clock, they heard the bar being pushed aside, then the key turned and the door open. They took lights and revolvers and went into the hall, where the moonlight showed a motionless figure in the doorway.

The Figure in the Doorway

The figure was Heidi, in her nightgown and barefoot. When the doctor and Herr Sesemann approached, she turned and cried out; she trembled and stared at the lights and weapons. The doctor recognized her as Herr Sesemann’s young charge, and the apparent apparition became a frightened child before them. That recognition abruptly changes the meaning of the household’s nightly alarm: the opening door was not evidence of a hidden visitor but an episode involving someone already inside the house.

Herr Sesemann asked what Heidi had wanted and why she had come downstairs. The doctor took responsibility for the immediate response, put down his revolver, and led her upstairs by the hand. In her room he lifted her onto the bed, covered her, and stayed beside her until she was calmer. Rather than treating the episode as misconduct or demanding an explanation at once, he waited, then asked where she had been trying to go.

Heidi said that she had not meant to go anywhere and did not know she had gone downstairs; she had simply found herself there. The gap between her movements and her awareness is central to the discovery. The door had opened repeatedly, but Heidi could not account for opening it. When the doctor asked about dreaming, the conversation turned toward the mountain. Heidi called it beautiful, then began to weep so intensely that she could not continue. Her response connects the strange nighttime episodes to a longing she had not been able to express in ordinary conversation.

Diagnosis and the Proposed Return

After leaving Heidi to rest, the doctor returned downstairs and explained his conclusion to Herr Sesemann: Heidi was a sleepwalker and had been opening the front door at night. He also described her as consumed by homesickness and dangerously weakened. In his judgment, the two problems had the same remedy: she needed the mountain air, and she should start home the next day. His diagnosis thus gives the mystery a practical consequence. The question is no longer who is entering the house, but what Heidi’s unconscious movements and visible distress reveal about her condition.

Herr Sesemann was deeply concerned that Heidi had become ill in his care without anyone in the household noticing. He resisted sending her home in what he understood to be a miserable and depleted state, insisting that the doctor should first make her well and sound. The exchange establishes a conflict between the doctor’s urgent recommendation and Herr Sesemann’s wish to see her restored before she travels. The proposed return is clear, but the immediate decision is not yet settled in this scene.

Significance

The revelation is structured as a change in interpretation. Repeatedly secured locks and a bar seemed to promise that the house was protected, yet each morning the open door renewed the servants’ fears. The late-night encounter supplies a human explanation without erasing what the mystery has already disclosed: Heidi’s distress has been occurring beyond the household’s awareness, including beyond her own conscious recollection. The contrast between the anxious vigilance of the adults and Heidi’s inability to explain her movements makes the diagnosis an act of recognition, not merely the solution to a puzzle.

The doctor’s bedside manner and his judgment then redirect the episode from alarm toward care. He calms Heidi, listens to her account, and understands her tears about the mountain alongside the sleepwalking. The episode therefore makes homesickness consequential in the plot: it is not simply a feeling to be endured, but a condition serious enough, in the doctor’s view, to require a change of place. The open door has brought the hidden problem into view, while the disagreement that follows shows that recognizing Heidi’s need and deciding how to meet it are separate steps.