"A heretic was begotten in me, secession from the dark doctrine proclaimed itself in my heart. A principal figure of those revelations which illumine the creation of the world with mysterious light, stood before my soul, and I had the temerity to compare myself with it. It was that Eloah of light, that Lucifer who suddenly perceived that the powers of light which flowed from him became diminished, and now retained them defiantly within himself, in opposition to the plan of creation. Thus I felt within me the spirit of revolt, the individual power which receives the light of revelation in itself merely for its own defiant illumination.
"And on that evening the Gräfin from the Castle led Frau Salden to me as my spiritual bride. Spiritual bride!--profound significance lay in this word, a significance which extended far away beyond the span of earthly life; it contained a consecration for this and for that other world.
"Yet I was no longer capable of grasping that import--earthly love had laid hold of my heart; now I no longer recognised the barriers, as I did after that confession to the Gräfin; like a tempest in spring, I felt it rage within me: the spring of love and beauty had for the first time made their entry into my soul.
"I visited Frau Salden, but how changed everything appeared to me in those cosy rooms! All rest, all peace had vanished from them. The lines in the splendid open Bible ran confusedly into one another, the Magdalene on the wall seemed to rise from her couch, throw the Bible aside, and be wafted towards us in that seductive beauty in which she once wandered on the shores of the Sea of Galilee, and, as if in mockery of my feverish unrest, the windmill sails on yonder side of the river moved with irritating regularity.
"But the seraphic kisses of my spiritual bride burned upon my lips.
"She was gentle and calm before my passionate fervour. I acknowledged to her that I loved her; she replied that such was my right and my duty, and that this love was reciprocated by her; certainly it might not be of a perishable form, not like children of the world must we love one another, but with imperishable spiritual love. My heart, all my feelings were bound up in her. Nevertheless, it was not merely indistinctness, but hypocrisy on my part when I still spoke of such spiritual love, for I loved her with all fervour, as mortals love who do not belong to the elect and chosen.
"I still frequently attempted to attune my mind to those emotions which filled me when woman still stood before me sublime, unknown; but that magic was broken, and as I previously, probably more than all others of that circle, had been capable of the purest spiritual love, so was I now, when since that fatal evening on which the unhemmed waves of passion broke over me, more incapable of it than all others.
"What to the others appeared to be the hermit's grotto of Saint Anthony, who resisted the allurements of the spirit of beauty, had become a mount of Venus for me, and like a modern Tannhäuser, I lay beneath the spell of the immortal goddess.
"I dared not confess my heresy to the beloved one; perhaps she would have turned angrily away from me for ever, and I could justify my silence, because I too had moments in which I could join in my spiritual bride's fervent prayers, but they were merely moments. My internal estrangement from the faith of the elect community increased. I only ventured to express the faintest doubts, then she looked at me with an expression of infinite love; her large tender eye rested upon me with such soul-felt meaning; verily her love for me was different from mine for her: she appeared to watch over my whole life, she felt that we must all be prepared to welcome the coming hour of the Millennium; atonement, forgiveness, purification spoke from out her looks, infinite desire to rescue, to sanctify the sinner.
"I came frequently, I came daily; she withheld all tokens which love demands, although her saintly eyes expressed an increasing, more intense emotion. I became a hypocrite, I required these tokens in the name of salvation, of spiritual exercises; could my spiritual bride deny me them?