M---- VILLAGE, _August 22, 1850_.
I take up my pen ten days after my last letter.… Oh my dear fellow, I
can’t hide my feelings any longer!… How wretched I am! How I love her!
You can imagine with what a thrill of bitterness I write that fatal
word. I am not a boy, not a young man even; I am no longer at that
stage when to deceive another is almost impossible, but to deceive
oneself costs no effort. I know all, and see clearly. I know that I
am just on forty, that she’s another man’s wife, that she loves her
husband; I know very well that the unhappy feeling which has gained
possession of me can lead to nothing but secret torture and an utter
waste of vital energy--I know all that, I expect nothing, and I wish
for nothing; but I am not the better off for that. As long as a month
ago I began to notice that the attraction she has for me was growing
stronger and stronger. This partly troubled me, and partly even
delighted me.… But how could I dream that everything would be repeated
with me, which you would have thought could no more come again than
youth can? What am I saying! I never loved like this, no, never! Manon
Lescauts, Fritilions, these were my idols--such idols can easily be
broken; but now … only now, I have found out what it is to love a
woman. I feel ashamed even to speak of it; but it’s so. I’m ashamed.…
Love is egoism any way; and at my years it’s not permissible to be an
egoist; at thirty-seven one cannot live for oneself; one must live to
some purpose, with the aim of doing one’s duty, one’s work on earth.
And I had begun to set to work.… And here everything is scattered to
the winds again, as by a hurricane! Now I understand what I wrote to
you in my first letter; I understand now what was the experience I had
missed. How suddenly this blow has fallen upon me! I stand and look
senselessly forward; a black veil hangs before my eyes; my heart is
full of heaviness and dread! I can control myself, I am outwardly calm
not only before others, but even in solitude. I can’t really rave like
a boy! But the worm has crept into my heart, and gnaws it night and
day. How will it end? Hitherto I have fretted and suffered when away
from her, and in her presence was at peace again at once--now I have no
rest even when I am with her, that is what alarms me. Oh my friend,
how hard it is to be ashamed of one’s tears, to hide them! Only youth
may weep; tears are only fitting for the young.…
I cannot read over this letter; it has been wrung from me
involuntarily, like a groan. I can add nothing, tell you nothing.… Give
me time; I will come to myself, and possess my soul again; I will talk
to you like a man, but now I am longing to lay my head on your breast
and----
Oh Mephistopheles! you too are no help to me! I stopped short of set
purpose, of set purpose I called up what irony is in me, I told myself
how ludicrous and mawkish these laments, these outbursts will seem to
me in a year, in half a year.… No, Mephistopheles is powerless, his
tooth has lost its edge.… Farewell.--Yours, P. B.