urned from the workshop. Formerly, when making
excursions from the summer palace into the surrounding country, we
would stop at the industrial villages and visit the large workshops,
where everything was shown us. I used to feel a sense of shame--ah!
that was long ago--at the thought of our merely looking on for a
moment, while others were working. And when we returned to our
carriages and drove off, leaving the men still at their work, what must
they have thought of us?

I am now at the workbench myself.

*

Why does no religion place the command: "Thou shalt work" above all
others?

*

They say that the wound sucked by living lips heals quickly. O thou who
art called queen! I would like to suck up the blood that trickles from
thy heart!

*

Did I destroy the letter to the queen, or did it reach her?

*

I started with fright, when the grandmother asked me why I had pained
the queen by informing her that I meant to take my life.

Why? I know not why. All I know is that I could not help it; it was the
last, the unavoidable tribute I owed to truthfulness.

Why is it that we only concern ourselves about what others may think of
us after death when life has become but an empty sound?

*

Sad and painful days.

I regarded it as my duty to write to the queen from my place of
concealment. Uncle Peter, a true-hearted and obliging little man, who
is always at my service and would like to show me a kindness every
moment, offered to carry a letter for me to a distant town. The queen
shall not grieve on my account--not for my death, at all events. I will
let her know that I am yet alive, but that my life is one of expiation.
If I only felt sure that I had really burnt the letters, or that they
reached him and her. Him I need tell no more. The good mother noticed
that something was troubling me--something that I had kept from her.
She often came to me, but asked no questions. At last I could bear it
no longer, and told her what I had determined on. She took me by the
hand--whenever she means to make her words additionally impressive, she
does this, as if she felt that she must hold fast to me physically--and
said: "Child, you've only to make up your mind clearly as to what you
mean to do. Ask your own heart whether you wouldn't rather be
dis