"Perhaps we shall one day laugh together at this idea. God grant it may be so!
"I cannot very well bear to write any more to-night. Good-night, my Friend."
"Do you know what made me carry through (by the way, with great difficulty) this trip to Rathen, before the asylum closed its doors behind me, and why I came to the Grotto? Not only that, which likewise brought you there, but also the idea, that something would happen to me there, something extraordinary. However, not what happened, which was in reality still more wonderful, no, I thought that the agitation of mind in coming there would be too overpowering for me—that it would either kill me or drive me mad, even this I would prefer to the state of mind in which I was.
"But how blessed it was to meet you there, Harald! I saw that you were the same, and you also felt that I was unaltered—towards you. Towards him I surely was changed.
"I know quite well how painful it was to you that my indignation towards him was so apparent, and still I could not help it. So nasty I have already become, so much bitterness—yes, hatred—has risen up in me.
"This you will very likely not understand.
"How is it possible to detest a human being one has loved? Or perhaps better ask (for very likely, to you, that is what seems incomprehensible): 'How can one love a being whom one comes to look down upon to such a degree, when by daily intercourse one gets to know his true character?' And here we are not speaking about a passing falling in love, for I did know something of him.
"This I have thought of more than anything else, and
