March 12.
I cannot go on as I began, dear friend; it costs me too much effort and re-opens my wounds too cruelly. The disease, to use the doctor’s words, became defined, and Vera died of it. She did not live a fortnight after the fatal day of our momentary interview. I saw her once more before her death. I have no memory more heart-rending. I had already learned from the doctor that there was no hope. Late in the evening, when every one in the house was in bed, I stole to the door of her room and looked in at her. Vera lay in her bed, with closed eyes, thin and small, with a feverish flush on her cheeks. I gazed at her as though turned to stone. All at once she opened her eyes, fastened them upon me, scrutinised me, and stretching out a wasted hand—
‘Was will er an dem heiligen Ort
Der da … der dort …’[1]
[1] Faust, Part I., Last Scene.
she articulated, in a voice so terrible that I rushed headlong away. Almost all through her illness, she raved about Faust and her mother, whom she sometimes called Martha, sometimes Gretchen’s mother.
Vera died. I was at her burying. Ever since then I have given up everything and am settled here for ever.
Think now of what I have told you; think of her, of that being so quickly brought to destruction. How it came to pass, how explain this incomprehensible intervention of the dead in the affairs of the living, I don’t know and never shall know. But you must admit that it is not a fit of whimsical spleen, as you express it, which has driven me to retire from the world. I am not what I was, as you knew me; I believe in a great deal now which I did not believe formerly. All this time I have thought so much of that unhappy woman (I had almost said, girl), of her origin, of the secret play of fate, which we in our blindness call blind chance. Who knows what seeds each man living on earth leaves behind him, which are only destined to come up after his death? Who can say by what mysterious bond a man’s fate is bound up with his children’s, his descendants’; how his yearnings are reflected in them, and how they are punished for his errors? We must all submit and bow our heads before the Unknown.
Yes, Vera perished, while I was untouched. I remember, when I was a child, we had in my home a lovely vase of transparent alabaster. Not a spot sullied its virgin whiteness. One day when I was left alone, I began shaking the stand on which it stood … the vase suddenly fell down and broke to shivers. I was numb with horror, and stood motionless before the fragments. My father came in, saw me, and said, ‘There, see what you have done; we shall never have our lovely vase again; now there is no mending it!’ I sobbed. I felt I had committed a crime.
I grew into a man—and thoughtlessly broke a vessel a thousand times more precious.…