The clouds aspire to reach the height of the stars as my thoughts aspire to your love. But they know perfectly well that they are striving after the unattainable.
And when my thoughts have tarried a while up there in the sky, they become weighed down with depression and float softly earthwards, where they properly belong, and my heart itself drops like an anchor into the deep, quiet waters of sorrow.
But why do I talk of sorrow, I who am the happiest of the happy?... I didn’t mean it, no, I didn’t mean it in the least.
But if the impossible were to happen, the impossible....
If it could happen that you would love me? If your glance told me so just once.
I know what I should do—yes, I know. I should shut my eyes on that glance, so as never to let it go from me. I should leave my home, and my children, and go away. I should take leave of life, and fall asleep quietly, oh, so quietly, never to awake.
The darkness of the grave would have to be round me, so that not a sound disturbed my happiness.
To live and know that you loved me! I could not do it. My strength would be lacking. I can only love.
Henry said one day, “Don’t touch any of my little bottles.” I was staring at them so hard. Each of the little bottles contained the peace of the grave. But I must go on living for the sake of my little children, for Henry’s sake. And why should I not go on living? I have no reason to wish to do otherwise. Yet I am not with them, though in their midst. When I move about in my rooms, when I talk to the children and Henry, I am not there. My eyes are seeking him, my ears strain after him....
From the first moment we met, my beloved, you and I—I became a stranger amongst my own people. But no one knows it, except myself. And I feel that if I was bound by a thousand ties, I should break them all, where you, my love, were concerned.