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SEPTEMBER 3.
I sometimes cannot understand how she can love another, how she dares love
another, when I love nothing in this world so completely, so devotedly, as I love
her, when I know only her, and have no other possession.
SEPTEMBER 4.
It is even so! As nature puts on her autumn tints it becomes autumn with me
and around me. My leaves are sere and yellow, and the neighbouring trees are
divested of their foliage. Do you remember my writing to you about a peasant
boy shortly after my arrival here? I have just made inquiries about him in
Walheim. They say he has been dismissed from his service, and is now avoided
by every one. I met him yesterday on the road, going to a neighbouring village. I
spoke to him, and he told me his story. It interested me exceedingly, as you will
easily understand when I repeat it to you. But why should I trouble you? Why
should I not reserve all my sorrow for myself? Why should I continue to give
you occasion to pity and blame me? But no matter: this also is part of my
destiny.
At first the peasant lad answered my inquiries with a sort of subdued
melancholy, which seemed to me the mark of a timid disposition; but, as we
grew to understand each other, he spoke with less reserve, and openly confessed
his faults, and lamented his misfortune. I wish, my dear friend, I could give
proper expression to his language. He told me with a sort of pleasurable
recollection, that, after my departure, his passion for his mistress increased daily,
until at last he neither knew what he did nor what he said, nor what was to
become of him. He could neither eat nor drink nor sleep: he felt a sense of
suffocation; he disobeyed all orders, and forgot all commands involuntarily; he
seemed as if pursued by an evil spirit, till one day, knowing that his mistress had
gone to an upper chamber, he had followed, or, rather, been drawn after her. As
she proved deaf to his entreaties, he had recourse to violence. He knows not
what happened; but he called God to witness that his intentions to her were
honourable, and that he desired nothing more sincerely than that they should
marry, and pass their lives together. When he had come to this point, he began to
hesitate, as if there was something which he had not courage to utter, till at
length he acknowledged with some confusion certain little confidences she had
encouraged, and liberties she had allowed. He broke off two or three times in his
narration, and assured me most earnestly that he had no wish to make her bad, as
he termed it, for he loved her still as sincerely as ever; that the tale had never
before escaped his lips, and was only now told to convince me that he was not
utterly lost and abandoned. And here, my dear friend, I must commence the old
song which you know I utter eternally. If I could only represent the man as he
stood, and stands now before me, could I only give his true expressions, you
would feel compelled to sympathise in his fate. But enough: you, who know my
misfortune and my disposition, can easily comprehend the attraction which
draws me toward every unfortunate being, but particularly toward him whose
story I have recounted.
On perusing this letter a second time, I find I have omitted the conclusion of
my tale; but it is easily supplied. She became reserved toward him, at the
instigation of her brother who had long hated him, and desired his expulsion
from the house, fearing that his sister’s second marriage might deprive his
children of the handsome fortune they expected from her; as she is childless. He
was dismissed at length; and the whole affair occasioned so much scandal, that
the mistress dared not take him back, even if she had wished it. She has since
hired another servant, with whom, they say, her brother is equally displeased,
and whom she is likely to marry; but my informant assures me that he himself is
determined not to survive such a catastrophe.
This story is neither exaggerated nor embellished: indeed, I have weakened
and impaired it in the narration, by the necessity of using the more refined
expressions of society.
This love, then, this constancy, this passion, is no poetical fiction. It is actual,
and dwells in its greatest purity amongst that class of mankind whom we term
rude, uneducated. We are the educated, not the perverted. But read this story
with attention, I implore you. I am tranquil to-day, for I have been employed
upon this narration: you see by my writing that I am not so agitated as usual. I
read and re-read this tale, Wilhelm: it is the history of your friend! My fortune
has been and will be similar; and I am neither half so brave nor half so
determined as the poor wretch with whom I hesitate to compare myself.
Do'stlaringiz bilan baham: | 
