I am so weary, so exhausted, that I feel as though my limbs must break under me! I should like to do nothing but sleep; to sleep always.
I should like to perform a pilgrimage to some place or person, as an act of expiation.
I now understand the basis of a religion of symbols--a religion that speaks to the eye.
I will go hence--to Italy, to Spain, to Paris, to the East, to America. I will go to Rome and become an artist. I must be one. If I am still to live on in the wide world, I must enjoy it fully and deny myself nothing, for I am not of a self-sacrificing temperament. I could hurl the full cup of life into the abyss, but to see it before my eyes, and yet languish and mortify myself--that I cannot do. I will, I must go. Something calls me hence. Naples lies before me. I see a villa on the shore; merry excursions by water; a crowd of laughing, singing, gayly attired creatures--I plunge into the current of life. Better there than in that of death. And yet--I cannot--
A gloomy, terrible, twilight hour. Something urges me to turn back, and tells me that the whole world is mine. What has happened? Are there not thousands like me, who live honored, oblivious of themselves? What is it within me that whispers; "You must expiate?" I can go hence. It will seem as if nothing had occurred. "A piquant adventure," "a disappearance for a few weeks."--What more can they say? All I need is to be bold--the carriage rolls along, all salute me. I am beautiful, and no one will see the writing on my brow, for a diadem sparkles there.
But the terrible words are written there--it seems as if I could behold my own soul face to face.
There is a childhood of the soul and, with all her experience, the grandmother possesses it. Oh, that I could gain that childlike feeling! But have not those who seek it, forever lost it?