I have sacrificed my morning hour. So do I atone for the evil which in a moment of madness I had wished to conjure down on this angel's head. What a penance--to be loved! Truly the powers are not so cruel as we are!
[1] The title of Strindberg's first autobiography.
The Brahmin has fulfilled his duty as regards life when he has begotten a child. Then he goes into the desert, to dedicate himself to solitude and asceticism.
_My mother-in-law_.--"What have you done in your former human existence that Fate deals so hardly with you?"
_I_.--"Think! Remember a man who was first married to another man's wife, like myself, and who separated from her in order to marry an Austrian, like myself! Then his little Austrian is torn from him, as mine has been from me, and their only child is kept in the Bohemian mountains as mine is. Do you remember the hero of my romance, _On the Open Sea_, who commits suicide on an island----"
_I_.--"You don't know that my father's mother was called Neipperg----"
_I_.--"And that my little Christina resembles the greatest murderer of the century to a hair. Only look at her, the little tyrant, the man-tamer at two and a half!"
_I_.--"Yes! And what sins have you women formerly committed, since your lot is still harder than ours? See how justly I have called woman our evil angel. Each has his or her deserts."
_I_.--"And so woman is a twofold devil. As regards reincarnation, that is a Christian doctrine which has been maintained by some of the clergy. Christ said that John the Baptist was Elijah reborn on earth. Is that an authority or not?"
_M_.--"Yes, but the Roman Church forbids inquiry into secrets."
_I_.--"And science permits it, as soon as science itself is tolerated."
The spirits of discord are abroad, and despite of the fact that we are quite aware of their game and our freedom from blame in the matter, our repeated misunderstandings leave a bitter wish for revenge behind them. Moreover, both sisters suspect that my evil wishes caused their mother's mysterious illness, and remembering that it is to my interest to have my separation from my wife terminated, they cannot suppress the fairly reasonable thought that the death of the old lady would cause me joy. The mere existence of this wish makes me hateful in their eyes, and I do not venture any more to ask how their mother is because I fear to be regarded as a hypocrite.