INGOLF. You need not tell me this, I know it.
HADDA PADDA. What do you know?
INGOLF. I know that you deny your own heart for the sake of
others.
HADDA PADDA. Now you think too highly of both of us. I am not so
good as you would make me, and it is not so difficult to forget
you as you imagine.--You won't believe that I have succeeded in
forgetting you. Won't you believe, either, that I have made every
effort to do it? The day before yesterday I locked myself in my
room, and took out your letters to see whether I could bear to
read them. I wanted to test myself,--you know I like to get to the
very heart of things. Well, I read letter after letter. It is a
remarkable power that is given to a trivial matter. If I had not
read the letters, I might still have felt unhappy, but I read and
read with ever increasing calmness. I don't believe my feelings. I
go walking, searching for all the places where the earth must be
scorched with burning pleasures, in order to know whether they
enkindle memories so sacred that they can again inflame me.
Everything, everything, is extinguished. What is the matter,
little Hadda? Does everything leave you cold? Is this death
perhaps? And a mixed feeling of joy and pain seizes me, for this
came so unexpected--it came so unexpected--it came so unexpected--
INGOLF.
Pages:
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71