I made those confidences also for another reason, namely, to introduce the habit of mutual confidence between us, and make her tell me what was going on in her mind at the same time.  But I could not manage it.  I tried to ask, but the words seemed to come from her with such difficulty, there was such evident constraint and uneasiness, that I left off asking.  To be quite open with me, she would have to reveal all she felt for me and what was her relation to her husband.  I wanted her to come to that; but her modesty and her loyalty for the absent husband would not permit her to speak.

I understood all perfectly, but I could not help feeling very sore, and my pessimism says:  “It is you who pay the score; you give everything, without getting anything in return; you are deceived in thinking her soul belongs to you; even that soul remains a blank to you; then what do you possess?”

I admit the truthfulness of the utterance, but still I count upon the future.

17 August.

I am often reminded of the poet Mickiewicz’s words, “Alas! it was only a half-salvation!” But even if I did not see in that half-salvation all that is wanting, I could not arrive at perfect peace.  This would be achieved only by not desiring anything more, in other words by ceasing to love.  There come upon me, more and more, moments of despondency when I say to myself that this is only another enchanted circle.  I found some relief from torments I could bear no longer, that is true; but relief is not the same as the removal of the pain.  When the famished Arab sucks pebbles instead of drinking water, he does not satisfy his thirst; he only deceives it.  Query:  Do I deceive my self?  There are again two persons within me:  the spectator and the actor; and the one criticises and mocks the other.  The sceptic Ploszowski, the Ploszowski who has no settled and unshakable belief in the existence of a soul, in love with a soul, appears simply ridiculous to that critical number two.  What is, after all, my relation with Aniela?  Sometimes I see in it merely the product of a diseased imagination.  I am now indeed like the bird that drags one wing on the earth.  I have doomed to paralysis one half of my being, live only half a life, and love with half a love.  It is a vain enterprise.  To separate desire from love is as impossible as to separate thought from existence.  Even religious feelings, the most ideal of all feelings, manifest themselves by words, by songs, by kneeling, and kissing of sacred objects; and I would deprive the love for a woman of all embodiment, sever all connection with the earth, and make it live upon earth in a transmundane shape!  Love is a natural tendency and desire.  What did I take away from it?  The tendency and the desire.  I might as well have gone to Aniela, and said to her, “Since I love you above everything, I pledge myself to love you no longer.”

There is some terrible mistake in this.  I had truly lost my way in the desert; no wonder that I saw a Fata Morgana.