Ah, my dear Herr Ebeling, just be a whipped dog yourself, year in year out! The dog doesn't resist either--but suddenly, some day--when he's at the very end of his endurance--he bites his master's hand. I shall bite soon!
Oh, I'll grant you that your mother has probably made some mistakes. But only out of love, or because she knew no better. Just ask yourself what would have become of you if you'd been left to yourself all this time?
I should have been embittered just the same--you're right--but I should not have let myself fall.
Never! And I'll tell you something to prove it. Severely as I have been watched--and--surely there's nothing coquettish about me?
You can believe me when I say that, in the general moral tone prevailing over our society just now--and of which our mothers naturally know nothing--there lurks a temptation which has over and over again enticed even me. Such things are so personal, so secret--one cannot describe them. Oh, I could have done whatever I wished! But I said to myself: the first time, you were ignorant, you were sacrificed--or, at least, you can talk it into yourself that you were sacrificed--but if ever again--no, I can't say it after all!
If ever again--then you'll be lost--forever! Then there can be no more ideals, no more poetry--nothing lofty--nothing for which to work--and, worst of all, nothing of which to dream. For to dream--ah, one must dream, mustn't one? When one no longer has _that_!----
But you mustn't think that I'm trying to make myself interesting, or that I stand here before you beautifully whitened and purified! Oh, no! What I'm going to say to you now has never been said to any one, to any man before. And you are going to despise me utterly. But I must say it--once, once in my life--and then the old hypocrisy can go on again. Well, I don't know what it is, but it's like a fire in me. No, worse, much worse! When I think of that frightful man, my heart fairly shrivels up. And yet--I can never get away from it. There's always a terror, a horror in me; and yet there is always an eternal--an eternal hunger. Yes--a restlessness--a search--the whole day long. It's strongest toward twilight. Then I want to go out--out into the wide world--to fly to unknown lands. Then I think to myself--out there, no one knows you; out there, there is no sin. Ah, it's as if I were lashed! And I heap such reproaches upon myself because of it! Even now you have not heard the worst. I must tell you the worst, too. Well, you know how I hate that man--yet, sometimes it seems to me that I must go to him and say to him--Behold, here I am again!