No sleep came to my eyes during that night.
I heard the clock on the Kreuz church strike one quarter after the other while I tossed to and fro on my bed. Sometimes my thoughts began to ramble in the uncertain way that is so often the harbinger of slumber, but then a wave of fever-heat rolled over me, and I was wide awake again. Dull despair took possession of me, and made everything seem lost, and by-and-bye my tears began to flow.
The more impossible a misfortune seems, the nearer is its realisation as soon as it comes within the range of possibility, for because it has already taken the leap over the widest precipice, one cannot doubt that it will also have the strength to overcome the smaller chasm. Having developed to something from nothing, why should it not be able to become everything? Certainties exist, which to us seem so incontestable that they are almost argued away, when we are brought to dispute about them at all; for together with their indisputability their inmost being seems to disappear.
What can be a more certain possession, more remote from any danger, than a faithful woman's love? I felt that Minna loved me, I knew that hers was, as Stephensen also had said, a faithful nature.
But the dreadful, Nemesis-like thing was, that this fidelity recoiled upon itself: it was her faithfulness towards older
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