—How long is this to continue, I want to know. Here it is afternoon and they are still chattering. Every time I have tried to compose my thoughts they have come back and begun chattering again. And so I can only pace about, and then rush out into the street—and wear myself sick. I call this simply monstrous. That my soul should be tied down to such vulgarity as this—is it not maddening? Here I am—with all my load of woe—at this fearful crisis! And I am to be shattered and wrecked and ruined by this! Just as long as they choose to sit there, just so long I am helpless. Was it for this that I have borne all the pain?
It seems to me that I hear jeering laughter around me from a swarm of little demons. I hide my face and flee, but they follow me.
But what can you expect? Have they not a right to talk?—Yes—all the world has a right to be as hideous as it can. And I have no right but to suffer and to choke in my rage.
Three vile, ignorant serving-women! Serving-women—ah yes, and if they were my servants! If I could pay them!—But who serves me! Of what consequence am I!
These things goad me, they are like poisoned thorns in my flesh. The infinite degradation of it all, the shame, the outrage!
It has burned a brand deep into my flesh, and never while I live will it come out. Ah, you rich men! You who rule us, who own the treasures, the opportunities, the joys! You who trample the fair gardens of life like great blind beasts!
Do you think it is nothing to me that the inspiration and the glory of my whole lifetime is to be trampled into nothingness for lack of what others spend upon one dress? Yes, of my whole lifetime! My whole lifetime! Give me but what another will spend upon one foolish gimcrack that he never looks at again, and I will live for a whole lifetime! And I will write such music—Bah! What am I doing?