Sometimes it seems to me as if I were hunted by a Providence that, not satisfied by the logic of facts that contain in themselves a Nemesis, took a special delight in fastening personally upon me.  There are many others who love their neighbors’ wives, and they do not suffer, because they love less honestly, more thoughtlessly.  Is there any justice in that?  No, it is not that.  There is no self-conscious thought in the ordering of these things; they happen by chance and by virtue of necessity.

10 September.

The thought still pursues me that as a rule human tragedy is the outcome of exceptional events and calamities, and mine comes from a natural event.  Really I do not know which is worst.  The natural order of things seems to me past bearing.

11 September.

I have heard that a man struck by lightning stiffens, but does not fall down at once.  I too keep up, sustained by that thunderbolt that struck me, but I feel myself falling.  As soon as it grows dark in the evening something strange takes place within me.  I feel so oppressed that it costs me an effort even to sigh; it seems as if the air could not get to my lungs, and that I breathe with only a part of them.  During the night, and also in the day, a sudden nameless terror seizes me,—­terror of nothing in particular.  I feel as if something horrible was going to happen, something worse than death.  Yesterday I put the question to myself:  “What would become of me if, in this foreign town, I suddenly forgot my name and where I lived, and wandered on and on in darkness without knowing where I was going?”

These are sick fancies.  Besides, in such a case that would happen to my body which has already happened to my soul; for in a moral sense I do not know where I dwell,—­I walk in darkness, aimlessly, in a kind of madness.  I am afraid of everything, except of death.  Strictly speaking, I have a strange sensation as if it were not that I am afraid, but as if fear dwelt in me, as a separate being,—­and I tremble; I cannot bear darkness now.  In the evening I go out and walk in the streets, lighted by electric lamps, until I am thoroughly tired.  If I met anybody I knew, I should escape, if to the other end of the world; but crowds have become a necessity to me.  When the streets are getting empty I feel terrified.  The thought of night fills me with nameless fear.  And how long they seem, these nights!

I have continually a metallic taste in my mouth.  I felt it for the first time that night when I came home and found Kromitzki waiting for me; the second time I felt it when Pani Celina told me the “great news.”  What a day!  I had gone to ask how Aniela was, when the doctor had seen her for the second time.  There was not the slightest suspicion in my mind; I did not understand anything even when Pani Celina said:  “The doctor says that those are purely nervous symptoms, and have nothing to do with her state.”

Seeing that I did not understand, she said, with a certain uneasiness:—­