If you were able, you would deprive me of your presence
altogether,--although you had the certainty that if I could not see
you my eyes would perish forever. But I begin to understand you now,
begin to see that your inflexibility is so great because your heart is
so small. You are cold and unfeeling, and your virtue is nothing
but an enormous egoism, that wants above everything to be left
undisturbed, and for that peace is capable of sacrificing all else."
During the whole time of breakfast I did not say a word. When alone
in my own room I held my head with both hands and with a weary,
over-wrought brain, began to think again of what had happened. My
thoughts were still very bitter. Women of narrow hearts often remain
unyielding through a certain philistinism of virtue. The first thing
with them is to keep their accounts in order, like any tradesman. They
fear love, as the grocer fears street-risings, war, riots, exalted
ideas, and audacious flights of fancy. Peace at any price, because
peace is good for business. Everything that rises above the rational
and commonplace standard of life is bad, and deserves the contempt of
reasonable beings. Virtue has its heights and precipices, but also its
level plains.
I now struggled with the exceedingly painful question whether Aniela
did not belong to that kind of commonplace virtuous women, who want to
keep their accounts in order, and reject love because it reaches above
the ordinary standard of their hearts and minds.
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