I SOMETIMES despise myself... Is not that the reason why I despise
others also?... I have grown incapable of noble impulses; I am afraid of
appearing ridiculous to myself. In my place, another would have offered
Princess Mary son coeur et sa fortune; but over me the word “marry” has
a kind of magical power. However passionately I love a woman, if she
only gives me to feel that I have to marry her--then farewell, love! My
heart is turned to stone, and nothing will warm it anew. I am prepared
for any other sacrifice but that; my life twenty times over, nay, my
honour I would stake on the fortune of a card... but my freedom I will
never sell. Why do I prize it so highly? What is there in it to me? For
what am I preparing myself? What do I hope for from the future?... In
truth, absolutely nothing. It is a kind of innate dread, an inexplicable
prejudice... There are people, you know, who have an unaccountable dread
of spiders, beetles, mice... Shall I confess it? When I was but a child,
a certain old woman told my fortune to my mother. She predicted for me
death from a wicked wife. I was profoundly struck by her words at the
time: an irresistible repugnance to marriage was born within my soul...
Meanwhile, something tells me that her prediction will be realized; I
will try, at all events, to arrange that it shall be realized as late in
life as possible.