and my sorrow becomes almost sweet to me. I never before understood
the exceeding beauty of heaven. Never has human mind taken such a
lofty flight, encompassed such greatness, or borrowed such a slice
from infinity as in this sublime, immortal poem. The day before
yesterday and the two days following, we read it together in the boat.
We usually go out a long distance, and when the sea is quite still I
furl the sail; and we read, rocked by the waves,--or rather, she reads
and I listen. Surrounded by the glories of the sunset, far from the
shore, with the most beautiful woman reading to me Dante, I was under
a delusion, that I had been transferred to another world.


30 March.

At times the sorrow that seemed to be lulled to sleep wakes up with
renewed force. I feel then as if I wanted to fly hence.


VILLA LAURA, 31 March.

To-day I thought a great deal about Aniela. I have a strange feeling,
as if lands and seas divided us. It seems to me as if Ploszow were a
Hyperborean island somewhere at the confines of the world. We have
delusions of that kind when personal impression takes the place of
tangible reality. It is not Aniela who is far from me, it is I who go
farther and farther away from the Leon whose heart and thoughts were
once so full of her. This does not mean that my feelings for her have
vanished. By close analysis I find they have only changed in their
active character. Some weeks ago, I loved her and wanted something; I
love her still, but want nothing. My father's death has scattered the