have not yet done with the schoolmaster's suit.

Walpurga asked me why I wished to remain so lonely. As long as I did
not care to return to the great world, I might as well make this good
man happy, and would be able to do much good to the children and the
poor of the village. I have thus come to know myself anew. I am not
made for beneficence. I am not a sister of mercy. I cannot visit the
sick, unless I know and love them. I could nurse the grandmother, but
no one else. I dislike peasant rooms, and the dull, heavy atmosphere of
these abodes of simplicity. I am not a beneficent fairy. My senses are
too easily offended. I do not care to make myself better than I am;
that is, I should like to make myself better, but all one can do is to
improve the good traits that already exist, and that one good trait I
do not possess. I must be honest about the matter. I could find it
easier to live in a convent. This confession does not make me unhappy,
but melancholy. The desire to enjoy life, and to commune with myself is
so strong.

*

Franz, Gundel's betrothed, had been summoned to join his regiment.

My little pitchman has just returned from the town, and brings me news
that "there'll be war with the French." He tells me, too, that our
business will become poor, that the people do not care to buy, and that
our employer offers only half the usual price; and so I will be working
for stock.--I, too, must help to bear the world's burden.

How strange it seems that I no longer know anything about my country
and the age in which we live. One consolation is left me. In such
warlike times, they will not seek the lost one.

*

We are all, unconsciously, on heights from which the graves of our
beloved dead are invisible. Were they ever present, there would be
neither work nor song in this world.

Self-oblivion or self-knowledge--about this, everything revolves.

*

Even in hottest summer, I can always see the snowcapped mountains
before me. I do not know how to express it, but they always inspire me
with strange and confused emotions. I pay no regard to the date or the
seasons, for I have them all at once.

In my heart there is also a spot on which rest eternal snows.

*

I have now been here between two and three years. I have formed a
resolve which it will be difficult to carry out. I