that would not be set aside, and I woke from my musings surprised
to find myself sick with longing.
It is foolish but natural to quarrel with one's cousins,
and especially foolish and natural when they have done nothing,
and are mere victims of chance. Is it their fault that my not being a boy
placed the shoes I should otherwise have stepped into at their disposal?
I know it is not; but their blamelessness does not make me love them more.
"Noch ein dummes Frauenzimmer!" cried my father, on my arrival into the world--
he had three of them already, and I was his last hope,--and a dummes
Frauenzimmer I have remained ever since; and that is why for years I
would have no dealings with the cousins in possession, and that is why,
the other day, overcome by the tender influence of the weather,
the purely sentimental longing to join hands again with my childhood
was enough to send all my pride to the winds, and to start me off without
warning and without invitation on my pilgrimage.

I have always had a liking for pilgrimages, and if I had
lived in the Middle Ages would have spent most of my time on
the way to Rome. The pilgrims, leaving all their cares at home,
the anxieties of their riches or their debts, the wife that
worried and the children that disturbed, took only their sins
with them, and turning their backs on their obligations,
set out with that sole burden, and perhaps a cheerful heart.
How cheerful my heart would have been, starting on a fine morning,
with the smell of the spring in my nostrils, fortified by
the approval of those left behind, accompanied by the pious
blessings of my family, with every step getting farther from
the suffocation of daily duties, out into the wide fresh world,
out into the glorious free world, so poor, so penitent,
and so happy! My dream, even now, is to walk for weeks