A coquette is like a usurer, giving very little and exacting upon it a
high percentage. To-day, as I am growing more composed and can think
again, I must render Aniela justice; she never encouraged me or
exacted anything. What I mistook for a touch of coquetry at Warsaw
was mere joyfulness of a youthful spirit that had shaken itself
momentarily free from all trouble. All that has happened was brought
on by me. I made mistake after mistake, and it is all my fault.
To know something, and to make it a matter of calculation are two
different things. We account to ourselves for unknown factors which
act upon the soul of a given individual, but in dealing with the same
we generally take ourselves as a point of issue. This happened to me.
I knew, or at least was conscious of the fact, that Aniela and I are
as different from each other as if we were the inhabitants of two
separate planets, but I did not always remember it. Involuntarily I
counted upon her acting in a certain position as I should have acted.
In spite of the consciousness that we two are the most dissimilar
beings under the sun, as opposite as the poles, I note it down with a
certain surprise, and seem not able to get used to the thought. And
yet it is true. I am a thousand times more like Laura Davis than
Aniela.
And now I begin to understand why I failed.
The rock I split against is the want of that which has vanished within
me, thereby freeing my thoughts, but bringing instead of it the mortal
disease that has become my tragedy; it is the catechismal simplicity
of the soul.
Now I can account for it clearly, perhaps not quite satisfactorily,
for I am of so complex a disposition as to have lost the very instinct
of simplicity. "I hear thy voice, but I see thee not." My spiritual
sight suffers from Daltonian disease and cannot distinguish colors.
I cannot even understand how any one can accept a principle, however
hallowed by ages, without looking at it from both sides, pulling it to
pieces, into shreds and atoms, until it crumbles into dust and cannot
be put together any more.
Aniela cannot understand that a principle once considered good,
hallowed by religion, as well as by public opinion, could be
considered otherwise than as a sacred duty.
It does not matter to me whether she is conscious of it, or it is
instinctive impulse reasoned out by her intelligence, or merely
acquired; it is enough that it has entered her very nature.
I had a glimpse of it the other day when I spoke about Pani Korytzka's
divorce suit: "You can prove everything, and yet when one does wrong
conscience tells us: 'It is wrong, it is wrong!'" I did not then
attach the importance to these words that belonged to them. In Aniela
there is no wavering, no doubt whatever. Her soul winnows the chaff
from the grain with such precision that there can be no question about
its purity. She does not try to find her own norma, but takes it
ready-made from religion, general moral principles, and clings to
them so strongly that they become her very own, for they permeate her
system. The simpler the differential quality of good and evil, the
more absolute and merciless it grows. In this ethical code there are
no extenuating circumstances. As according to it the wife belongs to
her husband, she who gives herself to another does wrong. There are no
discussions, no considerations, or reflections,--there is the right
hand for the righteous, the left for the sinners, God's mercy above
all,--but nothing between, no intermediate place.
It is the code of the honest villager, so simple that people like me
do not understand it. It seems to us that human life and human souls
are too complex to find room in it. Unfortunately we have not found
anything to replace it, and consequently we flutter here and there
like stray birds, in loneliness and alarm.
The greater part of our women still hold fast to that code. Even those
who occasionally stray from it do not permit themselves a momentary
doubt as to its truth and sacredness. Where it begins, reasoning
leaves off.
The poets erroneously represent woman as an enigma, a living Sphinx.
Man is a hundred times more of an enigma and a Sphinx. A healthy woman
that is not hysterical may be either good or bad, strong or weak, but
she has more spiritual simplicity than man. Forever and all times the
Ten Commandments are enough for her, whether she live according to
their tenets, or through human frailty set them aside.
The female soul is so dogmatic that I have known a woman whose very
atheism took the form of religion.
It is strange that this code of the honest villager does not exclude
in women either keen intelligence, a subtle mind, or loftiness of
ideas. Their soul seems to have something of the humming-bird which
flits in and out the thickest shrubs, without getting entangled in
their branches, or touching a single leaf.
This may be said especially in regard to Aniela. The greatest
subtility of feeling and thought goes hand in hand with the utmost
simplicity of moral ideas. Her Ten Commandments are the same as the
village girls', with the exception that those of the latter are
wrought on coarse linen, and hers on a web as fine as lace. Why do
I discuss this question? Simply because it is a question of my
happiness, almost my life; for I feel that with all my complex and
intricate philosophy of love, I cannot get over the Ten Commandments.
And how can I conquer them, since I do not even believe in that
philosophy, while Aniela's faith in her principles is calm and
unshaken?
Only the lips that have been drinking at the fountain of doubt opine
that a forbidden kiss is not a sin. A religious woman may be carried
away, as a tree is swept away by a hurricane, by forbidden love, but
she will never acknowledge it.
Shall I ever be able to carry off Aniela? It is possible that my
present state of despondency and discouragement is only a passing one,
and to-morrow I shall feel more hopeful,--to-day all seems impossible.
I wrote once in this same diary that in certain families they
inoculate their children with modesty as they inoculate for small-pox.
The rule which says the wife shall belong to the husband, and in which
Aniela believes so firmly, is strengthened by that modesty, so knitted
into her being, so worked into the system, that I could sooner fancy
Aniela cold and lifeless than baring her bosom in my presence.
And I can still delude myself with the idea that I may expect anything
from her! It is simple idiocy!
What am I to do then? Go away?
No; I shall not go away. I will not, and cannot.
I will remain, and since my love is idiotic, I will do as idiots do.
Enough of systems, calculations, forethought! Let things take their
own way. My former ways did not lead to anything.