What a rôle coffee has played in my family as a disturber of domestic peace! I am ashamed to think of it, all the more as a happy result does not depend on goodwill or cleverness, but on circumstances out of our control.
Accordingly to-morrow I shall have the greatest enjoyment or the greatest chagrin.
May 13th.—The woman has made the most horrible coffee imaginable.
I sacrifice it to the Powers, and henceforth drink chocolate without murmuring.
May 26th.—Excursion to the beech-wood. Some hundreds of young people have collected there. They sing melodies belonging to the time when I was young, thirty years ago. They play the games and dance the dances of my youth. Melancholy overcomes me, and suddenly my whole past life unrolls before the eyes of my spirit. I can survey the path I have traversed, and feel dazzled. Yes, it will soon end; I am old, and the path descends to the grave. I cannot restrain my tears,—I am old.
June 1st.—A young doctor of a gentle nature, and such a sensitive disposition that the mere fact of his existence causes him suffering, spends the evening in my company. He also is plagued by qualms of conscience; be bewails the past which cannot be altered, though not worse than that of others. He explains to me the Mystery of Christ. "We cannot do again what has once been done, we cannot obliterate a single evil deed; and this thought leads to pure despair. Then it is that Christ reveals Himself. He alone can wipe out the debt which cannot be paid, perform a miracle, and lift off the burden of an evil conscience and of self-reproach. 'Credo quia absurdum' and I am saved.
"But that I cannot, and I prefer to pay my own debts by my sufferings. There are hours when I long for a cruel death, to be burnt alive at the stake, and to feel the joy of injuring my own body—this prison of a soul which strives upwards. The kingdom of heaven for me means to be freed from material needs, to see enemies again in order to pardon them and to press their hands. No more enemies! No malice! That is my kingdom of heaven. Do you know what makes life bearable for me? The fact that I sometimes imagine it to be only half real, an evil dream inflicted on us as a punishment, and that in the moment of death we awake to the real reality and come to see that it was only a dream,—all the evil that one has done, only a dream! So the pangs of conscience vanish together with the act that was never committed. That is redemption and deliverance."
June 25th.—I have now finished writing Inferno. A lady-bird has settled on my hand. I await an omen for the journey for which I am preparing. The lady-bird flies off towards the south. Very well, let us go south.
From this moment I resolve on going to Paris. But it seems to me doubtful how far the Powers will agree with me. A prey to inner conflicts I let July pass, and with the commencement of August I wait for a sign to determine me. Sometimes it appears to me that the guides of my destiny are not agreed among themselves, and that I am the object of a protracted discussion. One urges me on, and another holds me back. Finally, on the morning of the 24th August, I get out of bed, pull up the window-blind, and see a crow standing on the chimney of a very high house. It stands just like the cock on the tower of Nôtre Dame, and looks as though it were about to fly towards the south.
I open the window. The bird rises, keeps close to the wind, flies straight towards me, and disappears. I take the omen, and pack my things.