“The first night we met, you fainted away from exhaustion and long fasting. You said you would tell me why you had allowed yourself to do so, but you have never kept your word.”
“I didn’t care to eat. People eat to live—except those who live to eat, and I was not very anxious to live, I didn’t care for my life, in fact, I wished I was dead.”
“Why? An unlucky love?”
“I, bewahre! I never knew what it was to be in love in my life,” said I, with perfect truth.
“Is that true, Friedel?” he asked, apparently surprised.
“As true as possible. I think a timely love affair, however unlucky, would have roused me and brought me to my senses again.”
“General melancholy?”
“Oh, I was alone in the world. I had been reading, reading, reading; my brain was one dark and misty muddle of Kant, Schopenhauer, von Hartmann, and a few others. I read them one after another, as quickly as possible; the mixture had the same effect upon my mind as the indiscriminate contents of taffy-shop would have upon Sigmund’s stomach—it made it sick. In my crude, ungainly, unfinished fashion I turned over my information, laying down big generalizations upon a foundation of experience of the smallest possible dimensions, and all upon one side.”
He nodded. “Ei! I know it.”