"Since some time I have begun to notice that the force of my emotions grows less, decidedly—a condition of which I unwillingly convince myself—but which, for all that, is irresistibly clear to me. Like a dream, do I remember the time when in the moonlight nights I could forget the whole world; could elevate myself to a degree of emotional enthusiasm, to think of which nowadays makes me feel fairly dizzy. I am no longer in a state to turn out even a mediocre poem … In a word, I am an unlucky mortal, and if destiny does not soon pull me out of this torturing condition, I shall put a bullet into my head But fie! I am ashamed of such a contemptible picture of myself! Am I he who was once so full of courage and strength, ready to accept the course of destiny!—am I the fiery, the deep-feeling creature who fairly swam in all that was poetical, a part of the domain of measureless, vast fancy? I can endure anything except despising myself. That must be got rid of, come what may! One way or another! If no old road out of it all appears to my view, then I will make one for myself, even if the path out of my labyrinth be also that out of my life—I must break one, cost what it will. Another such a day as this one, and—!
"It is not possible for me—I cannot get the damned thought of it out of my head! This relationship (to Altmütter) that I have so long regarded as a part of my happiness!… Parted, parted from him who has betrayed me through every word that is more confidential with another this could make coldness into deep melancholy. I, sacrificed to a new-coming, unknown young fellow! of whose want of sound character his recent obtruding of himself has so plainly given evidence! And Altmütter, who cannot change in me my frequently ill-considered and repellant demeanour, he seeks now in the bosom of this … creature, the Friendship that he cannot find with me! Till now, he feels himself "always deceived in what is friendship"!—and therefore he flies to this other person! So then has happened what I have always thought impossible to happen, and Wohlgemuth is quite right; but the break is not through my inconstancy (with which Altmütter has always so reproached me) but through his own But where have been my eyes? Why have I not seen, this long time, his indifference to me? He in whose arms I lay in that holy hour; he who alone, out of all humanity, saw into the innermost of my neart; he is it who began first awhile ago to interest himself in that Arabian pedant! and he is it who again gets to knowing this common fellow—he can write to him, can call him "thou"! Oh, that evening, so unforgettable for me, when for the first time I called Altmütter "thou", and set the seal forever on my friendship, with that word!—and now what misuse he— 305 —
