I searched in the
past for proofs. "Who knows," I said to myself, "whether her simple
ethical code is not resting upon such a foundation?" I had believed
her to be one of those exceptional natures, different from all other
women, inaccessible as the snowy heights of the Alps that without any
slope soar straight heavenward. And now this lofty nature considers it
the most proper thing that a husband in slippers should trample on
those snows. What does it all mean? Whenever thoughts like these crowd
my brain I feel as if I were on the brink of madness; such a rage
seizes me that if I could I would throw down, trample, and spit upon
the forces of life, reduce the whole world to chaos and obliterate its
existence. On my journey back from Vienna I was searching for some
unearthly abode where I might love Aniela even as Dante loved
Beatrice. I built it of the sufferings from which as from fire my love
had risen purified, of my renunciations and sacrifices, and thought
that in a superhuman, simply angelic way she would be mine, and feel
that she belonged to me. And now it came into my thoughts that it was
not worth while to speak about it, as she would not understand me; not
worth while leading her on to those heights, as she would not be able
to breathe there. She might agree, in her soul, that I should go on
loving her, go on suffering, since that flatters her vanity; but no
compact, no union the most spiritual, no mutual belonging even in
the Dantesque meaning,--to none of these will she agree, because she
understands only one belonging and one right, which is expressed in a
man's dressing-gown, and her soul cannot rise above the narrow, mean,
matrimonial, book-keeping spirit.
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