It is
only Aniela who may with impunity trample on my nerves. Never did I
look at Clara so critically and resentfully; for the first time
I became fully aware of the amplitude of her figure, the bright
complexion, the dark hair, and blue, somewhat protruding eyes, the
lips like ripe cherries,--in brief, her whole beauty reminded me of
the cheap chromo-lithographs of harem beauties in second-class hotels.
I left her in the worst of humors, and went straight to a book-shop to
select some books for Aniela.
For a week I had been thinking what to choose for her reading. I did
not wish to neglect anything, though I did not attach undue weight
to this, as it acts very slowly. Besides, I have noticed that to
our women, though their imagination is more developed than their
temperament, a book is always something unreal. If it falls even into
the hands of an exceptionally susceptible person, it creates in her
at the most an abstract world, that has no connection with real life
whatever. To almost none of them it occurs that ideas taken from books
can be applied to any practical purpose. I am convinced that if a
great writer tried to prove, for instance, that purity of thought and
mind were not only superfluous in a woman, but even blameworthy from
a moral point of view,--Aniela would opine that the principle might
apply to the whole world with the exception of herself.
Pages:
325
326
327
328
329
330
331
332
333
334
335
336
337
338
339
340
341
342
343
344
345
346
347
348
349