| 128 | 129 | 130 | 131 | 132 |
| 1 | 73 | 145 | 218 | 290 |
|
"First I listened to him, but I did not understand what he said. He
noticed it, and exacted my attention to his person. Then I rose and
entered my own compartment.
"'I must consider,' said I to myself, 'whether what I think is true,
whether there is any reason to torment myself.' I sat down, wishing to
reflect quietly; but directly, instead of the peaceful reflections, the
same thing began again. Instead of the reasoning, the pictures.
"'How many times have I tormented myself in this way,' I thought (I
recalled previous and similar fits of jealousy), 'and then seen it end
in nothing at all? It is the same now. Perhaps, yes, surely, I shall
find her quietly sleeping. She will awaken, she will be glad, and in her
words and looks I shall see that nothing has happened, that all this is
vain. Ah, if it would only so turn out!' 'But no, that has happened too
often! Now the end has come,' a voice said to me.
"And again it all began. Ah, what torture! It is not to a hospital
filled with syphilitic patients that I would take a young man to deprive
him of the desire for women, but into my soul, to show him the demon
which tore it. The frightful part was that I recognized in myself an
indisputable right to the body of my wife, as if her body were entirely
mine. And at the same time I felt that I could not possess this body,
that it was not mine, that she could do with it as she liked, and that
she liked to do with it as I did not like. And I was powerless against
130
Page
Quick Jump
|