"No, sooner give me the frenzy which one draws from the temple of love as well as from that of the Eumenides! Better burn up in a real flame of misery, without hope, without utterance, even to paleness and madness, than be so loving and not loved! He who has once burned in this hell, Albano, continues to frequent it forevermore: that is the last misery. Can I not worry down life and death, and wounds and stings beforehand?—and certainly I am not weak. Nevertheless, I am not the man to put restraints upon a sentimental discourse, or harpsichord fantasy, or reading or singing, not though sorrow in person should hold before me a menace, undersigned by all the gods, that a female listener whom I cannot endure would immediately thereupon become my lover, and from that my mistress and my hell.
"The Greeks gave Love and Death the same form, beauty, and torch; for me it is a murderous torch; but I love Death, and therefore Cupid. Long has life been to me a tragic muse; willingly to the dagger of a muse do I offer my breast; a wound is almost half a heart.
"Hear further! Rabette has a fine nature, and follows it; but mine is for her a cloud of empty, transitory form and structure; she does not understand me. Could she, then would she be the first to forgive me. O, I have indeed treated her hardly, as if I were a destiny, and she I. Resent, but hear![[31]] On the night of the Illumination her longing and my emptiness brought us in the fiery rain of joy more warmly together; among the shiningly mailed and smoothly polished court-faces her ingenuous one bloomed lovely and living as a fresh child on the stage or at court; we happened into Tartarus,—we sat down in the place where thou didst swear to me thy resignation of Linda; in my senses wine glowed, in hers the heart. O, why is it that, when one speaks and streams, she has no other words than kisses, and makes one sensual from ennui, and forces one to speak her speech? My mad boldness, which fancy and intoxication breathe into me, and which I see coming on and yet await, seized me and drove me like a night-walker. But always is there in me something clear-seeing, which itself weaves the drag-net of delusion, throws it over me, and carries me away entangled in its meshes. So behold me on that night with the burning net-work about my head; the rivulet of death murmurs to me, the skeleton sweeps across the harp-strings,—but, enveloped, imprisoned, darkened, dazzled with the fiery hurdle-work of pleasure, I heed neither annihilation nor heaven, nor thyself and that evening, but I drag all together and into the hurdle,—and so sank thy sister's innocence into the grave, and I stood upright on the royal coffin, and went down with it.
"I lost nothing,—in me there is no innocence; I gained nothing,—I hate sensual pleasure. The black shadow, which some call remorse, swept broadly along after the vanished motley-colored pleasure-images of the magic-lantern; but is the black less optical than the motley?
"Condemn not thy poor sister; she is now more miserable than I, for she was happier; but her soul remains innocent. Her innocence lay treasured up in her heart as a kernel in the stony peach; the kernel itself burst its mail-coat in the warm, nourishing earth, and forced a way for its green leaves to the light.
"I visited her afterward. All her soul's pangs passed over into me; for all actions and sacrifices on her account, I felt myself ready; but for no feelings. Do what you will, thou and my father, I will positively, in this stupid stubble-field of life, where one reaps so little in freedom, not banish myself into the narrow thirty-years' hedge of marriage. By Heaven! for the miserable, forced intoxication of the senses, and under it, I have already endured more than it is worth.
"Not that which I yesterday read in thy presence gives me this resolution,—as to that, ask Rabette about it,—and my frankness toward thee is a voluntary offering, since the mystery between two might, but for me, have remained a mystery still: but I will not be misapprehended by thee,—by thee, the very one who, with so little reflection upon thy inner being, so easily makest unfavorable comparisons, and dost not perceive that thou didst sacrifice my sister in Lilar precisely so, only with more spiritual arms, and didst cast her eyes and joys into Orcus. I blame thee not; fate makes man a sub-fate to woman. The passions are poetic liberties, which the moral liberty takes to itself. Thou didst not, I assure thee, have too good an opinion of me; I am all for which thou tookest me, only, however, still more too; and the more too is still wanting to thyself.
"O, how much swifter my life flies since I know that she[[32]] is coming! Fate, which so oft plays weight and wheels, and swings the pendulum of life with its own hand, heaves off mine, and all wheels roll unrestrainedly to meet the blissful hour. She is my first love; before her I tore up all my blooming years, and flung them to her on her path as flowers; for her I sacrifice, I dare, I do all, when she comes. O, whoso fears nothing in the empty froth-and-sham-love, what should he dread or decline in the real, living sun-love? Thou angel, thou destroying angel, thou camest flying down into my stale, flat life, thou fleest and appearest, now here, now there, on all my paths and pastures: O tarry only long enough for me to dig my grave at thy feet, while thou lookest down upon me!
"Albano, I behold the future and anticipate it; I see full clearly the long net stretched over the whole stream which is to catch, entangle, and strangle thee; thy father and others, too, are drawing you both toward one another therein, God knows for what. It is for that she comes now, and thy tour is only show. My poor sister is soon conquered, that is, murdered; particularly, as one needs for the purpose, with her belief in spirits, no other voice than that incorporeal one, which over the old Prince's heart pointed out to thine its limits!
"What lights burn in the future, between dark situations and bushes, in murderous corners! Be it as it may, I march forward into the caverns; I thank God, that this impotent cold-sweating life gains again a pulsation of the heart, a passion; and then or now do to me, who could act safely and secretly and dishonestly, what thou choosest. Fight with me to-day or to-morrow. It shall rejoice me, if thou layest me on my back in the last, long sleep. O the opium of life makes one in the beginning lively, then drowsy, how drowsy! Willingly will I love no more, if I can die. And so without a word further, hate or love me, but farewell!