All this suffering inspired me with a sort of rage, and at times I was
tempted to imitate the monks and murder myself in order to conquer my
senses; at times I felt like going out into the street and throwing
myself at the feet of the first woman I met and vowing eternal love.
God is my witness that I did all in my power to cure myself. Preoccupied
from the first with the idea that the society of men was the haunt of
vice and hypocrisy, where all were like my mistress, I resolved to
separate myself from them and live in complete isolation. I resumed my
neglected studies, I plunged into history, poetry, and anatomy. There
happened to be on the fourth floor of the same house an old German who
was well versed in lore. I determined to learn his tongue; the German was
poor and friendless and willingly accepted the task of instructing me. My
perpetual state of distraction worried him. How many times seated near
him with a smoking lamp between us, he waited in patient astonishment
while I sat with my arms crossed on my book, lost in reverie, oblivious
of his presence and of his pity.
"My dear sir," said I to him one day, "all this is useless, but you are
the best of men. What a task you have undertaken! You must leave me to my
fate; we can do nothing, neither you nor I."
I do not know that he understood my meaning, but he grasped my hand and
there was no more talk of German.
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