2 May.

I carried the letter to the post-office myself.  It was not a long one: 
“I wish Pan Kromitzki every happiness with Panna Aniela, and Panna
Aniela with Pan Kroinitzki.  You wished for a decision, dear aunt, and
I comply with your wish.”

3 May.

I was thinking whether my aunt’s allusion to Kromitzki was but a piece of female diplomacy in order to bring me to book.  If so, she is to be congratulated upon her skill and knowledge of human nature.

10 May.

A week has passed.  I have not written because I feel half suffocated, torn by doubts, sorrow, and anxiety.  Aniela has never been, and is not indifferent to me.  The words of Hamlet recur to me:—­

  “I loved Ophelia; forty thousand brothers
  Could not, with all their quantity of love,
  Make up my sum.”

I should only have to change the outcry:—­

“I loved Aniela; forty thousand Lauras could not make up my sum.”

And needs must be that with my own hands I wrought the evil.  There is a glimmer of comfort in the thought that to be united to a man like me might be a worse fate for her,—­but it is not so.  If she were mine I would be true to her.  Then again it rankles in my mind that perhaps a Kromitzki is sufficient to her happiness.  When I think of this everything seethes within me, and I feel ready to send off another such letter.

It is done with! that is the only comfort for people like me, for then they can fold their hands and idle away their time as before.  Perhaps it is a sign of exceptional weakness, but I find some comfort in it.  Now I can think in peace.

I put to myself the question, “How is it that a man who not only boasts of a thorough knowledge of self, but also possesses it, has for some time almost blindly followed his instinctive impulses?” Of what use is self-knowledge if at the first commotion of the nerves it hides in a remote nook of the brain and remains there, a passive witness to impulsive acts?  To investigate things post factum? I do not know of what use this can be to me, but as I have nothing else to do, let us investigate.  Why did I act as I did?  It must be because though I am an intelligent man, very intelligent even (the deuce take me if I intend to boast or flatter myself), I lack judgment.  And chiefly it is the calm, masculine judgment that is wanting.  I do not control my nerves, I am hypersensitive, and a crumpled roseleaf would irritate me.  There is something feminine in my composition.  Perhaps I am not an exception, and there are more of that type in my country, which is of small comfort.  This kind of mind may have much understanding, but is a bad guide through life; it darts restlessly here and there, hesitates, sifts, and filters every intention, and at last loses itself among cross-roads.  Consequently the capacity for acting gets impaired, and finally it degenerates into a weakness of character, an innate and not uncommon