lowed to sell plants, and Walpurga brought them to me, saying:
"You've always had flowers about you, and these will last through the
winter."

These few plants make me happy. The flower does not ask what sort of a
pot it is in, so long as it gets its share of sunshine and rain. What
enjoyment do those who dwell in the palace have, of the hot-house
flowers? They neither planted nor tended them: they are strangers to
each other.

*

Hansei came to me to-day and said:

"Irmgard, if I've ever wronged you--though I don't know that I have--I
beg you to forgive me!"

"What makes you ask me that question?"

"Because to-morrow we go to confession and communion."

The tears that fall upon these pages are my confession, a confession
that I cannot frame in words.

*

Why was I obliged to cross the threshold of evil before entering this
circumscribed and yet peaceful existence? Why not pure and free, proud
and strong?

I have somewhere read that Francis of Assisi, returning, early in the
morning, with the merry fellows who had been his comrades in the
drinking bout of the night before, was suddenly seized by the Holy
Spirit and, renouncing the world, led a holy life ever afterward.

And must it always be through paths of sin?

But far sadder is the question: Why were you, O queen! obliged to
suffer thus?

*

I often wander about the fields in the pouring rain, and feeling like a
prisoner. What keeps me here? what lures me hence?

*

I lead the life of a prisoner, confined by walls and iron gratings
formed by my own will.

I endure all the pain of exile!

I live in a state of torpor. Why must I wait for death?

It often seems to me as if I were lying at the edge of a precipice, and
yet cannot awake and rise.

Whither should I go?

*

The thought sometimes flashes across the desert waste that fills my
soul, and drags me along, like a powerless rider mounted on some
enchanted steed: "You know nothing of the world you have left behind
you: those who are about you conceal what knowledge they may possess,
and you dare not ask."

How would it be if the queen were dead, and he who once loved you and
whom you loved in return--ah, so deeply!--were doubly alone and
forsaken, and grieving because of thee? Let him have but the faintest
token