I had indirect news of Laura through my lawyer, who is also their legal adviser.  Mr. Davis is already in a lunatic asylum, and Laura at Interlaken, at the foot of the Jungfrau.  Perhaps she has some ideas about climbing the mountain heights, drapes herself in Alps, eternal snow, and rising sun, sails gracefully on the lake, and bends over precipices.  I expressed my regret at Mr. Davis’s condition, and the lady’s, who at so early an age was left without protection.  Thereupon the old lawyer set my mind at rest, telling me that Count Maleschi, a Neapolitan, and Laura’s cousin, had gone to Switzerland.  I know him.  He is beautiful as an Antinous, but an inveterate gambler, and somewhat of a coward.  It appears I was a little out of my reckoning when I compared Laura to the tower of Pisa.

It has happened to me literally for the first time that the memory of a woman whom I did not love, though I made her believe I did, rouses within me much ill-feeling.  I am so ungrateful and ungenerous to her that it makes me feel ashamed.  Plainly, what reason have I for any ill-feeling, and what has she done to me that I cannot forgive?  It is because, as I said before, from the very beginning of our relations, though not through any fault of hers, I did many things I have never done before in my life.  I did not respect my sorrow, had no consideration for the weakness and helplessness of Davis, got corrupted, slothful, and finally sent off that fatal letter.

It is all my fault!  But the blind man when he stumbles over a stone, curses the stone, not the blindness that made him stumble.

17 June.

To-day I paid Lukomski, gave a power of attorney to the lawyer, had my things packed, and am ready for the journey.  Rome begins to pall upon me.

18 June.

I have been counting that my aunt’s reply ought to have reached me by this.  Putting aside all the worst suppositions, I try to guess what she is going to tell me.  I regret, for I do not know how many times, that my letter was not more conclusive.  Yet I wrote that I would come to Ploszow if I felt sure my presence would be acceptable to my aunt’s guests, sending them my kindest regards at the same time.  I also mentioned that during the last days of my stay at Peli I felt so irritable that I scarcely knew what I was doing.  The letter, while I was writing it, seemed to me very clever; now it appears to me as the height of folly.  It was simply that my vanity did not permit me to revoke clearly and decidedly what I had written previously.  I counted upon my aunt grasping at the opportunity I gave her for settling matters, and then I meant to make my appearance as the generous prince.  Human nature is very pitiful.  Nothing now remains but to hold fast to the hope that my aunt would guess how it stood with me.