I soothed her agitation as well as I could, and then said:—­

“You must not mind me, dearest aunt; I am like a woman,—­a nervous woman!”

“You a woman?” she said, indignantly.  “Everybody is liable to make mistakes.  I only wish everybody had as much intelligence and character as you; the world would then be quite a different place!”

Ah, me! how can I dispel these illusions?  Sometimes I grow quite desperate as I say to myself:  “What business have I in this house, among these women who have taken a monopoly for saintliness?  For me it is too late to convert myself to their faith; but how many troubles, disappointments, misfortunes may I not bring upon them?”

10 June.

To-day I received two letters,—­one from my lawyer in Rome, the other from Sniatynski.  The lawyer informs me that the difficulties the Italian government usually raises at the exportation of art treasures can be got over, my father’s collections being private property and as such not under government control, and that they could be transported simply as furniture.

I shall have to see to the arrangement of the house, which I do unwillingly, as my heart is not any more in the scheme.  What does it matter to me now, and what is the use of it?  If I do not give it up altogether, it is only because I spread the news about it myself, and cannot possibly draw back.  I have fallen back into that state of mind which possessed me during my wanderings after Aniela’s marriage.  Again I understand nothing, cannot act or look upon anything that has no direct bearing upon Aniela.  The thoughts in which I do not see her image at the bottom are meaningless to me.  It is a proof how far a man may sink his own self.  I read this morning a lecture by Bunge called “Vitality and Mechanism,” and I perused it with exceptional interest.  He demonstrates scientifically that which has been in my mind more as a dim, shapeless idea than a definite conviction.  Here science confesses scepticism in regard to itself, and, moreover, not only confirms its own impotence but clearly points to the existence of another world which is something more than matter and motion, which cannot be explained either physically or chemically.  It does not concern me in the least whether that world be above matter or subject to it.  It is a mere play of words!  I am not a scientist; I am not bound to be careful in my deductions; therefore I throw myself headforemost into that open door, and let science prate and say a hundred times over that all is dark there.  I feel it will be lighter than here.  I read with almost feverish eagerness and great relief.  Only fools do not acknowledge how materialism wearies and oppresses us, what secret fear lurks in the mind lest their science should prove true, what a dreary waiting for new scientific evolutions, and joy of the prisoners when they see a small door ajar through which they may escape into the open air.  The worst of it is that the spirit is already so oppressed that it dares not breathe freely or believe in its own happiness.  But I dared, and had a sensation as if I had escaped from a stifling cellar.