various faults, I should have loved her all the same.  She would have been mine, and as such she would have become part of me and entered into the sphere of my egoism.  Her faults would have been my weaknesses, and we are always ready to make allowance for ourselves, and though we criticise self we do not cease to care for its well-being.  Thus she would have been dear to me; and as she is infinitely better than I, in time she would have become my pride, the noblest part of my soul; I should have found out that criticism, as far as she was concerned, was out of place; gradually she would have won me over to her pure faith and wrought my salvation.  All that has been wasted, spoiled, and transmuted into a tragedy for her,—­into evil and a tragedy for me.

7 July.

I have been reading what I wrote yesterday, and am struck by what I said at the end, namely:  that the love which might have been my salvation has become a source of evil.  I cannot quite agree with the thought.  How can love for a pure woman like Aniela bring forth evil?  One word explains it,—­it is a crooked love.  I must own the truth.  If two years ago somebody had told me that I, a civilized man, a man with aesthetic nerves, and living in peace with the penal code, should meditate for nights and days how to put out of the world, even by murder, a man who would be in my way, I should have taken that somebody for an escaped lunatic.  Yet it is true; I have come to that.  Kromitzki shuts out from me the world; he takes from me the earth, water, and air.  I cannot live because he lives; and for that reason I incessantly think of his death.  What a simple and complete solution of all the difficulties and entanglements his death would be.  I thought more than once that since the hypnotizer can send his medium to sleep, a more concentrated power would be able to put him to sleep forever.  I have sent for all the newest books about hypnotism.  In the mean while with every glance I say to Kromitzki, “Die!” and if such a suggestion were sufficient, he would have been dead some time ago.  But the whole result of it is that he is as well as ever, is Aniela’s husband, and I remain with the consciousness that my intention is equally criminal and foolish, ridiculous, and unworthy of an active man; and it makes me lose my self-respect more and more.  Yet it does not prevent my trying to hypnotize Kromitzki.

It is the old story again of the intelligent man who, given up by the doctors, goes for advice to quacks and wise women.  I want to kill my enemy by hypnotism; and as it only shows my own worthlessness, it is I who suffer by it.  I must also confess that as often as I am alone, I begin to think of all possible means in human power to put the hateful man out of the way.  For some time I nursed the thought of killing him in a duel; but this would not lead to anything.  Aniela would never marry the man who had killed her husband; then, like a common criminal, I began to think of other ways.  And what is the strangest thing of all, I discovered ways which human justice would not be able to detect.  Foolishness! vain thoughts! pure theory!