irits and the beautiful magic of
this communion? It certainly cannot occur to you to want to hold back
still longer, and by sheer finesse to try to end the misunderstanding;
for otherwise I should myself really have nothing more to say.

You two are unquestionably separated by an everlasting chasm. The
quiet, clear depth of your being and the hot struggle of his restless
life lie at the opposite ends of human existence. He is all action,
you are a sensitive, contemplative nature. For that reason you should
have sense for everything, and you really do have it, save when you
cultivate an intentional reserve. And that really vexes me. Better
that you should hate the noble fellow than misjudge him. But where
will it lead, if you unnaturally accustom yourself to use your utmost
wit in finding nothing but the commonplace in what little of greatness
and beauty there is in him, and that without renouncing your claim to
a liberal mind?

Is that your boasted many-sidedness? To be sure you observe the
principle of equality, and one man does not fare much better than
another, except that each one is misunderstood in a peculiar way. Have
you not also forced me to say nothing to you, or to anyone else, about
that which I feel to be the highest? And that merely because you
could not hold back your opinion until it was the proper time, and
because your mind is always imagining limitations in others before it
can find its own. You have almost obliged me to explain to you how
great my own worth really is; how much more just and safe it would
have been, if now and then you had not passed judgment but had
believed; if you had presupposed in me an unknown infinite.

To be sure my own negligence is to blame for it all. Perhaps too it
was idiosyncrasy--that I wanted to share with you the entire present,
without letting you know anything about the past and the future.
Somehow it went against my feelings, and I regarded it too as
superfluous; for, as a matter of fact, I gave you credit for a great
deal of intelligence.

O Antonio, if I could be doubtful about the eternal truths, you might
have brought me to the point of regarding that quiet, beautiful
friendship, which is based merely upon the harmony of being and living
together, as something false and perverse.

Is it now still incomprehensible if I quite go over to the other side?
I renounce refined enjoyment and plunge into the wild battle of life.
I hasten to Edward. Everything is ag