“You have been a child, and that was all that was expected of you; there is no reason why you should not remain such for a while yet. Destinies and tasks are unequally distributed. Not all men can give themselves exclusively to caring for the weal of others; there must be some, also, who are carelessly happy themselves—especially in life’s Maytime.”
The morning after the supper with Helmer, Franka awoke with a dull headache. She had not slept well, but restlessly, feverishly, anxiously. She could not have told what had filled her mind with worry, with anticipation, with uncertainty; for her thoughts had led her on rather confused meanderings. Now as she got up, she felt that there was a burden on her mind, and she explained this state of things by the deluge of impressions that had swept over her, and by the fact that her resolution to renounce her career as a lecturer had left her facing an uncertain and aimless future.... And yet at the same time this resolution was agreeable to her, for in that career she no longer saw before her any shining goal, any prize of victory to satisfy her longing.
Aye, it was longing which lurked in the background of her unrest. Longing? For what? Franka was no unsophisticated child, and she put the question to herself, without unconscious bashfulness: “Is my hour come? Does Nature demand her rights? Do I wish to live, to love?”
Her thoughts turned on the two young men who for several days had filled her imagination and her dreams. But neither of them had declared himself. The prince was perhaps too proud, the poet too modest, to want to marry her. And to which of them should she give the preference? To this question her heart gave a whispered answer, but so softly whispered that it was not decisive.
After her cold morning bath and her hot morning tea, she felt refreshed and somewhat calmer. She put on a simple street-toilette and left her room. She felt the need of getting out into free nature, and she bent her steps toward the neighboring wood. Purposely she refrained from inviting Frau Eleonore to accompany her, for she wanted to be alone with her thoughts, to take counsel of her own heart.
She wanted to ask herself what now were her wishes, her hopes, her purposes.—Was the resolution definitely fixed to retire from a public career? Was it justified? She had taken up as her task “To accomplish something great”: was this task accomplished? And was it not presumption to suppose that she was capable of accomplishing anything “great”? To do that, one must be great one’s self, and that she certainly was not. During this Rose-Week, when she had met with so many brilliant men and women of genius, she had fallen very low in her own estimation.
What was she with her rather superficial fluency in comparison with all these mighty artists, thinkers, poets, inventors? Could she only tell them all how insignificant she felt in comparison with them! Just as there are attacks of pride and ambition, so Franka now had an attack of the deepest humility, a strong yearning for seclusion:—it was one of those hours when one wishes one’s Ego dismounted from its too prominent pedestal, whereon it has been standing in far too haughty isolation; when one would like to compel it into a kneeling and leaning attitude of humbleness before a dearer “Thou”....
Through the grove breathed a delicious fragrance of warm resin and moist moss. Buried in her thoughts, Franka had been wandering for an hour hither and thither through the forest, and had reached a spot where a wooden seat was built around an ancient oak tree. She was rather tired, and so sat down on the seat, winding her arm around the trunk and leaning her forehead on it: thus she rested. The air was hot and full of the hum of insects. An agreeable weariness closed Franka’s eyelids; yet she was not asleep, only sinking into a comfortable half-doze, comparable to the feeling that plants may have under the caress of the sunbeams or the fanning of gentle breezes. Her breath, the beating of her heart and the song of the forest, the whispering of the tree-tops, melted together into one harmonious rhythm. It was the undefined, softly soothing delight of mere existence—nothing more. And yet with it all was mingled something new, something never before experienced by her, something that did not seem to belong wholly to the present, but throbbed as if at the coming of a future fulfillment—
A voice startled her out of this twilight of the soul: “Is that you, Signorina Garlett?”
It was the great Italian tragédienne who was out also for a lonely morning walk.