"And you do recognize that you have wronged me."
"That I have, Lucia - not now, but before this."
"But then you surely want to make some amends, to somewhat mitigate the blow - when it's so easy to do it. See I shall leave you absolutely free. I shall not question you, not pry, not even make an allusion. But do you then spare our family too. That is all I ask. Spare our children this disgrace."
I was not prepared, and it is not easy when taking a critical step in life to go just far enough and with neither half-heartedness nor exaggeration. Therefore my answer was weak.
"Very well, dear friend," said I. "I shall as far as possible take account of your desires."
Then we wished each other a good night, well knowing that we had pronounced an idle wish.
XXIV
It was not a strict and definite promise I had given. But still it was a yielding from tender-heartedness that I deplore, though without self-reproach. He who chooses the high, unbeaten tracks should have overcome all tender-heartedness that leads to half measures. What is counted as virtue in the faithful member of the herd, is vice in the seceder. But I knew, how immediately beyond the safe confederacy of the group, skulked the wolf of fanaticism. I knew how difficult it is to keep one's balance upon the steep, lonely paths of originality, how easily the pathfinder, overwhelmed by the giddy sense of unbounded freedom, falls down into gulfs of fanaticism, hysteria, bigotry and madness.
Who shall always know how to find the exact medium between bold consistency and reckless extravagance?
The tendency toward self-sacrifice is an instinct, like all others, beautiful and useful when it remains in harmony with all our other instincts, and helps along in the common battle for Christ, who has given them to us. But this instinct can be perverted and run wild into asceticism and a passion for self-mortification, as hunger into gluttony and thirst into drunkenness.