ence superfluous?

I do not apologize for doing what I should rather like to do again,
with full confidence in your objective sense for the artistic
productions of the awkwardness which, often and not unwillingly,
borrows the material for its creations from masculine inspiration.

It is a soft Furioso and a clever Adagio of friendship. You will be
able to learn various things from it; that men can hate with as
uncommon delicacy as you can love; that they then remold a wrangle,
after it is over, into a distinction; and that you may make as many
observations about it as pleases you.

JULIUS To ANTONIO

You have changed a great deal of late. Beware, my friend, that you do
not lose your sense for the great before you realize it. What will
that mean? You will finally acquire so much modesty and delicacy that
heart and feeling will be lost. Where then will be your manhood and
your power of action? I shall yet come to the point of treating you as
you treat me, since we have not been living with each other, but near
each other. I shall have to set limits for you and say: Even if he has
a sense for everything else that is beautiful, still he lacks all
sense for friendship. Still I shall never set myself up as a moral
critic of my friend and his conduct; he who can do that does not
deserve the rare good fortune to have a friend.

That you wrong yourself first of all only makes the matter worse. Tell
me seriously, do you think there is virtue in these cool subtleties of
feeling, in these cunning mental gymnastics, which consume the marrow
of a man's life and leave him hollow inside?

For a long time I was resigned and said nothing. I did not doubt at
all that you, who know so much, would also probably know the causes
that have destroyed our friendship. It almost seems as if I was
mistaken, since you were so astonished at my attaching myself to
Edward and asked how you had offended me, as if you did not understand
it. If it were only that, only some one thing like that, then it would
not be worth while to ask such a painful question; the question would
answer and settle itself. But is it not more than that, when on every
occasion I must feel it a fresh desecration to tell you everything
about Edward, just as it happened? To be sure you have done nothing,
have not even said anything aloud; but I know and see very well how
you think about it. And if I did not know it and see it, where would
be the invisible communion of our sp