16. CHAPTER XVI
25th June.
I SOMETIMES despise myself. . . Is not that
the reason why I despise others also? . . .
I have grown incapable of noble impulses; I
am afraid of appearing ridiculous to myself. In
my place, another would have offered Princess
Mary son cœur et sa fortune; but over me the
word "marry" has a kind of magical power.
However passionately I love a woman, if she only
gives me to feel that I have to marry her — then
farewell, love! My heart is turned to stone, and
nothing will warm it anew. I am prepared for
any other sacrifice but that; my life twenty times
over, nay, my honour I would stake on the fortune of a card . . . but my freedom I will never
sell. Why do I prize it so highly? What is there
in it to me? For what am I preparing myself?
What do I hope for from the future? . . . In
truth, absolutely nothing. It is a kind of innate
dread, an inexplicable prejudice. . . There are
people, you know, who have an unaccountable
dread of spiders, beetles, mice. . . Shall I confess
it? When I was but a child, a certain old
woman told my fortune to my mother. She predicted for me
death from a wicked wife. I was
profoundly struck by her words at the time: an
irresistible repugnance to marriage was born within my soul. . . Meanwhile, something tells me
that her prediction will be realized; I will try, at
all events, to arrange that it shall be realized as
late in life as possible.
