i sometimes despise myself... is not that the reason why i despise others also?... i have grown incapable of noble impulses; i am afraid of appearing ridiculous to myself. in my place, another would have offered princess mary son coeur et sa fortune; but over me the word “marry” has a kind of magical power. however passionately i love a woman, if she only gives me to feel that i have to marry her—then farewell, love! my heart is turned to stone, and nothing will warm it anew. i am prepared for any other sacrifice but that; my life twenty times over, nay, my honour i would stake on the fortune of a card... but my freedom i will never sell. why do i prize it so highly? what is there in it to me? for what am i preparing myself? what do i hope for from the future?... in truth, absolutely nothing. it is a kind of innate dread, an inexplicable prejudice... there are people, you know, who have an unaccountable dread of spiders, beetles, mice... shall i confess it? when i was but a child, a certain old woman told my fortune to my mother. she predicted for me death from a wicked wife. i was profoundly struck by her words at the time: an irresistible repugnance to marriage was born within my soul... meanwhile, something tells me that her prediction will be realized; i will try, at all events, to arrange that it shall be realized as late in life as possible.