I have a crippled heart, but it is capable of love. It is only now I
fully understand what Sniatynski meant. If I were not a man out
of joint, without an even-balanced mind, poisoned by scepticism,
criticism of myself, and criticism of criticism, if my love were in
harmony with law and principles, I should have found in Aniela the
dogma of my life, and other dogmas, other beliefs, would have come
to me in course of time. Yet I do not know; perhaps I could not love
otherwise than crookedly; and in this lies my incapacity for life.
In short, that which ought to have been my health and salvation has
become my disease and damnation. Strange to say, there was no lack of
warnings. It almost seems as if people had foreseen what would befall
me. I remember constantly the words Sniatynski wrote to me when I was
with the Davises at Peli: "Something must always be growing within
us; beware lest something should grow in you which would cause your
unhappiness, and the unhappiness of those near and dear to you." I
laughed then at the words, yet how true they were. My father, too,
spoke several times as if he had pierced the veil that hides the
future. To-day the remembrance is too late. I know it is useless to
rake up the ashes of the past, but I cannot help it. I am sorry for
myself, but more sorry still for Aniela. She would have been a hundred
times happier with me than with Kromitzki. Supposing even I should
have subjected her at first to analysis, and discovered various
faults, I should have loved her all the same. She would have been
mine, and as such she would have become part of me and entered into
the sphere of my egoism. Her faults would have been my weaknesses, and
we are always ready to make allowance for ourselves, and though we
criticise self we do not cease to care for its well-being. Thus she
would have been dear to me; and as she is infinitely better than I, in
time she would have become my pride, the noblest part of my soul; I
should have found out that criticism, as far as she was concerned, was
out of place; gradually she would have won me over to her pure faith
and wrought my salvation. All that has been wasted, spoiled, and
transmuted into a tragedy for her,--into evil and a tragedy for me.