Meanwhile, I cannot help respecting Albert. His easygoing behavior contrasts strangely with my restlessness, which cannot be concealed. He is a man of strong feelings and knows what a treasure he has in Lotte. He seems to be a man of good spirits too, and you know that, as far as I am concerned, moroseness is a man’s greatest vice. He apparently takes me for a sensible fellow, and my devotion to Lotte, my warm pleasure in everything in which she takes part, only increases his sense of triumph and makes him love her more!
I have no idea whether or not he sometimes plagues her with little outbursts of jealousy—we will have to leave that point undecided—but if I were in his shoes, I don’t think I would be entirely free of this base emotion.
Be that as it may, the joyous days with Lotte are over. What shall I call it? Folly? Delusion? It does not need a name. The dilemma speaks for itself. I knew all I know now before he came; I knew that I had no claim to her and demanded none, or let us say, I did not desire her more than one simply has to desire anyone so altogether lovely. And now, idiot that I am, I stare wide-eyed with astonishment at my rival, who has come at last to take the girl away!
I grit my teeth and scoff at my misery and would scoff even more if anyone dared tell me to resign myself to the situation because there is nothing to be done about it. Just keep such straw men away from me! I tear through the woods and when I have gone as far as I can and find Lotte sitting beside Albert in the summerhouse in her little garden, I behave like an idiot and indulge in all sorts of absurdities. I don’t even make sense! “For heaven’s sake,” she told me today, “please, I beg of you, no more scenes like the one in the garden last night. You are perfectly horrible when you are trying to be funny.” Just between you and me, I watch out for the times when he is busy and then…whoosh, there I am and when I find her alone I feel perfectly wonderful!
August 8th
I assure you, dear William, that I did not mean you when I took those men to task who demand from us resignation to an unavoidable fate. It never occurred to me that you might be of the same opinion. And actually you are right. But, my good friend, in this world things can be settled with an either-or attitude only very rarely. Feelings and behavior overshadow each other with an effect as varied as the difference between hawk- and pug-nose. So you won’t be offended with me, I hope, if I concede your entire argument and try to squeeze through between the either and the or!
You say that I must “either” have hope of winning Lotte “or” I must have none. Very well. In the first case I am to try to grasp the fulfillment of my wish and make my hopes come true; in the second I am to pull myself together and try to rid myself of this miserable emotion that must in the end utterly debilitate me. Dear William, you put it so well, and it is easily advised. But can you demand of an unfortunate human who is dying by inches of an insidious disease that he should end his misery with one knife thrust? Wouldn’t you rather say that his misfortune weakens him to such an extent that it must rob him also of the courage to rid himself of it?
Of course you might reply with an appropriate parable: who would not rather sacrifice his right arm than lose his life through hesitation and despair? I don’t know. And don’t let us settle it with parables. Enough! Yes, William, sometimes I do have moments of surging courage to shake it all off, and then…if only I knew whither…probably I would go.
Evening
Today I came across my diary. I haven’t written in it for some time, and I was astonished to see how I got into all this, step by step, with my eyes wide open; how clearly I saw the whole thing and my condition, yet dealt with it like a child. I see just as clearly today and note no sign of improvement.
August 10th
I could be leading the best of happiest lives if I were not such a fool. It would be hard to find more agreeable circumstances than those granted me now. But I am absolutely sure that our hearts alone can give us happiness. To be counted as a member of this charming family, to be loved like a son by her father and like a father by the children, and by Lotte! And then there is good, worthy Albert, who does nothing to disturb my joy with moody behavior and accepts me in a spirit of friendliness—even prefers me to anyone else, after Lotte! William, it is a pleasure to listen to us when we are out walking together and we talk about Lotte. I don’t think you will find anything in the whole wide world more ridiculous than our relationship, and still my eyes fill with tears when I think of it.
He talks to me about her good mother—how, on her deathbed, she handed over house and children to Lotte, who since then has been quite changed; how, through having to care for a household and face the more serious aspects of life, she has become a real mother, and not a moment of her time passes without work or an act of love; how, in spite of all this, her blitheness and vitality have never forsaken her. I wander along at his side, pick flowers, arrange them carefully into a bouquet and…throw them into the stream rushing by and look after them as they are slowly sucked down. I don’t know whether I wrote to you that Albert intends to remain here, and that the Prince will let him have a tidy little income because he is well liked at court. I have rarely seen his equal when it comes to orderliness and diligence in matters of business.
August 12th
Albert is the best man on earth…agreed! Yesterday I had a strange experience with him. I went to see him, to bid him farewell, for it had occurred to me that a ride up into the mountains (I am writing to you from there now) was just what I wanted to do. As I was pacing up and down his room, I happened to see his pistols. “Lend me your pistols for the trip,” I said.
“By all means,” he replied, “if you want to take the trouble to load them. I only have them hanging around here pro forma.” As I took one down, he went on: “Since my sense of caution played me such a nasty trick, I don’t want to have anything more to do with them.”
I was anxious to hear the story. “I was in the country, staying with a friend for about three months,” he said. “I had a brace of pistols with me, unloaded, and slept peacefully. On a rainy afternoon I was sitting there with nothing much to do and, I don’t know why, but it occurred to me that we could be attacked; we might need the pistols and could—you know how it is. I gave them to a servant to clean and load. He fooled around with the girls, wanted to frighten them…. God knows how it happened, but the gun went off with the ramrod still in the barrel and shot the ramrod into the thumb of one of the girls, smashing it. And I had to listen to all the lamentations and pay the surgeon’s bill. Since then I leave the pistols unloaded. My dear fellow, what is precaution? We can never learn all there is to know about danger. To be sure…”
Now, you know that I love this man very much, except for his “to be sure,” for isn’t it obvious that every generalization admits of exceptions? But this fellow is full of such self-justification. When he thinks he has said something too hastily, or spoken a half-truth, or generalized too much, then you can’t stop him from attaching limitations to what he has said, from modifying it, adding to it and subtracting from it, until at last nothing is left of the original idea!
In the end, Albert became so involved in what he was saying that I stopped listening and was soon lost in my own thoughts.
