t your wife of
robbing the household bank. But I have wasted nothing, and should have
been content to meet my eternal Judge without this confession, if she,
upon whom the management of your establishment will devolve after my
decease, would be free from embarrassment upon your insisting that the
allowance made to me, your former wife, was sufficient."

I talked with Charlotte of the inconceivable manner in which men allow
themselves to be blinded; how any one could avoid suspecting some
deception, when seven florins only were allowed to defray expenses
twice as great. But I have myself known people who believed, without
any visible astonishment, that their house possessed the prophet's
never-failing cruse of oil.

JULY 13.

No, I am not deceived. In her dark eyes I read a genuine interest in me
and in my fortunes. Yes, I feel it; and I may believe my own heart which
tells me--dare I say it?--dare I pronounce the divine words?--that she
loves me!

That she loves me! How the idea exalts me in my own eyes! And, as you
can understand my feelings, I may say to you, how I honour myself since
she loves me!

Is this presumption, or is it a consciousness of the truth? I do not
know a man able to supplant me in the heart of Charlotte; and yet when
she speaks of her betrothed with so much warmth and affection, I feel
like the soldier who has been stripped of his honours and titles, and
deprived of his sword.

JULY 16.

How my heart beats when by accident I touch her finger, or my feet meet
hers under the table! I draw back as if from a furnace; but a secret
force impels me forward again, and my senses become disordered.
Her innocent, unconscious heart never knows what agony these little
familiarities inflict upon me. Sometimes when we are talking she lays
her hand upon mine, and in the eagerness of conversation comes closer to
me, and her balmy breath reaches my lips,--when I feel as if lightning
had struck me, and that I could sink into the earth. And yet, Wilhelm,
with all this heavenly confidence,--if I know myself, and should ever
dare--you understand me. No, no! my heart is not so corrupt, it is weak,
weak enough but is not that a degree of corruption?

She is to me a sacred being. All passion is still in her presence: I
cannot express my sensations when I am near her. I feel as if my soul
beat in every nerve of my body. There is a melody which she plays on the
piano with angelic skill,--so simple is it, and yet so