A week has passed. I have spent it chiefly in trying to win her love.
Is she, after all, only a child, and is this love of mine but a monstrous passion?
What is to be done? Life is beginning to be a torture. If I send her away, I shall eat my heart out. If she stays, fuel is but added to the fire. Her caressing ways will drive me mad. To repulse her were brutal—she loves to be fondled; she can scarcely speak to me without touching me, leaning over me, thus filling me with the sense of her. She treats me with an affectionate child’s innocence, as if I were sexless. My happiest time with her is spent in public places, restaurants, and theatres where her unclouded pleasure is reflected in my heart.
I am letting her take music lessons with Herr Stuer, who lives close by in the Avenue Road. Perhaps music may help in her development.
October 21st.
To please her I am accustoming myself to this out-of-door life, which once I despised so cordially. Pasquale has joined us two or three times. Last night he gave a dinner in Carlotta’s honour at the Continental. The ladies of the party have asked her to go to see them. She must have some society, I suppose, and I must go with her. They belong to the half smart set, eager to conceal beneath a show of raffishness their plentiful lack of intellect and their fundamental bourgeois respectability. In spite of Pasquale’s brilliance and Carlotta’s rapturous enjoyment I sat mumchance and depressed, out of my element.
My work is at a standstill, and Carlotta is my life. I fear I am deteriorating.
On Judith, whom I have seen once or twice since Carlotta’s return, I called this afternoon. She is unhappy. Although I have not confessed to my thraldom, her woman’s wit, I feel sure, has penetrated to the heart of my mystery. There has been no deep emotion in our intercourse. Its foundation has been real friendship sweetened with pleasant sentimentality. And yet jealousy of Carlotta consumes her. Her amour propre is deeply wounded. She makes me feel as if I had played the part of a brute. But O Judith, my dear, I have only been a man. “The same thing,” I fancy I hear her answer. But no. I have never loved a woman, my dear, in all my life before, and as I made no secret of it, I am guiltless of anything like betrayal. In due season I will tell you frankly of the new love; but how can I tell you now? How could I tell any human being?
I imagine myself as Panurge, taking counsel with a Pantagruelian friend. “I am in love with Carlotta and desire to marry her.” “Then marry her,” says Pantagruel. “But she does not love me.” “Then don’t marry,” says Pantagruel. “But nay,” urges poor Panurge, “she would marry me according to any rite, civil or ecclesiastical, to-morrow.” “Mariez-vous doncques de par dieu,” replies Pantagruel. “But I should be a villain to take advantage of her innocence and submission.” “Then don’t marry.” “But I can’t live without her,” says Panurge, desperately. “I am as a man bewitched. If I don’t marry her I shall waste away with longing.” “Then marry her in God’s name!” says Pantagruel. And I am no wiser by his counsel, and I have paraded the complication of my folly before mocking eyes.
October 23d.