It was almost the same after these letters. But even without opening them, the prince felt that the very fact of their existence and possibility was already like a nightmare. How did shedare write to her,he asked, wandering alone in the evening (sometimes not even remembering himself where he was walking). How could she write about that,and how could such an insane dream have been born in her head? But that dream had already been realized, and what was most astonishing for him was that, while he was reading these letters, he almost believed himself in the possibility and even the justification of that dream. Yes, of course, it was a dream, a nightmare, and an insanity; but there was also something in it that was tormentingly actual and painfully just, which justified the dream, the nightmare, and the insanity. For several hours in a row he was as if delirious with what he had read, continually
recalled fragments, lingered over them, reflected on them. Sometimes he even wanted to tell himself that he had sensed and foreseen it all before; it even seemed to him as if he had read it all long, long ago and that everything he had yearned for since then, everything he had suffered over and been afraid of—all of it was contained in these letters read long ago.
"When you open this letter" (so the first one began), "you will first of all look at the signature. The signature will tell you everything and explain everything, so that I need not justify myself before you or explain anything to you. If I were even slightly your equal, you might be offended at such boldness; but who am I and who are you? We are two such opposites, and I am so far out of rank with you, that I could not offend you in any way, even if I wanted to."
Further on in another place she wrote:
"Do not consider my words the morbid rapture of a morbid mind, but for me you are—perfection! I have seen you, I see you every day. I do not judge you; it is not by reason that I have come to consider you perfection; I simply believe it. But there is also a sin in me before you: I love you. Perfection cannot be loved, perfection can only be looked at as perfection, isn't that so? And yet I am in love with you. Love equates people, but don't worry, I have never equated myself with you even in my innermost thoughts. I have written: 'don't worry'; but how could you worry? ... If it were possible, I would kiss the prints of your feet. Oh, I am not trying to make us equals . . . Look at the signature, quickly look at the signature!"
"I notice, however" (she wrote in another letter), "that I am uniting him with you, and have not yet asked whether you love him. He loved you after seeing you only once. He remembered you as 'light'; those were his own words, I heard them from him. But even without words I understood that you were his light. I lived by him for a whole month, and here I understood that you love him as well; you and he are one for me."
"How is it" (she also wrote) "that I walked past you yesterday, and you seemed to blush? It cannot be, I must have imagined it. Even if they bring you to the filthiest den and show you naked vice, you should not blush; you cannot possibly be indignant over an offense. You may hate all those who are mean and base, but not for your own sake, but for others, for those who are offended. No one can offend you. You know, it seems to me that you should
even love me. You are the same for me as for him: a bright spirit; an angel cannot hate, and cannot not love. Can one love everyone, all people, all one's neighbors? I have often asked myself that question. Of course not, and it is even unnatural. In an abstract love for mankind, one almost always loves oneself. It is impossible for us, but you are another matter: how could there be anyone you do not love, when you cannot compare yourself with anyone and when you are above any offense, above any personal indignation? You alone can love without egoism, you alone can love not for yourself but for the one you love. Oh, how bitter it would be for me to learn that you feel shame or wrath because of me! That would be the ruin of you: you would at once become equal to me .. .
"Yesterday, after meeting you, I came home and thought up a painting. Artists all paint Christ according to the Gospel stories; I would paint him differently: I would portray him alone—the disciples did sometimes leave him alone. I would leave only a small child with him. The child would be playing beside him, perhaps telling him something in his child's language. Christ had been listening to him, but now he has become pensive; his hand has inadvertently, forgetfully, remained on the child's blond head. He gazes into the distance, at the horizon; a thought as great as the whole world reposes in his eyes; his face is sad. The child has fallen silent, leaning his elbow on his knees, and, his cheek resting on his hand, has raised his little head and pensively, as children sometimes become pensive, gazes intently at him. The sun is setting . . . That is my painting! You are innocent, and all your perfection is in your innocence. Oh, remember only that! What do you care about my passion for you? You are mine now, I shall be near you all my life ... I shall die soon."
Finally, in the very last letter there was:
"For God's sake, do not think anything about me; do not think, also, that I humiliate myself by writing to you like this or that I am one of those who take pleasure in humiliating themselves, even though it is only out of pride. No, I have my own consolations; but it is hard for me to explain that to you. It would be hard for me to say it clearly even to myself, though it torments me. But I know that I cannot humiliate myself even in a fit of pride. Nor am I capable of self-humiliation out of purity of heart. And that means I do not humiliate myself at all.
"Why do I want to unite the two of you: for your sake or for my own? For my own, naturally, then everything will be resolved
for me, I told myself that long ago ... I have heard that your sister Adelaida once said of my portrait that one could overturn the world with such beauty. But I have renounced the world; do you find it funny to hear that from me, meeting me in lace and diamonds, with drunkards and scoundrels? Pay no attention to that, I almost do not exist now and I know it; God knows what lives in me in place of me. I read that every day in two terrible eyes that constantly look at me, even when they are not before me. Those eyes are silentnow (they are always silent), but I know their secret. His house is gloomy, dreary, and there is a secret in it. I am sure that hidden in a drawer he has a razor, wound in silk, like the one that Moscow murderer had; that one also lived in the same house with his mother and also tied silk around his razor in order to cut a certain throat. All the while I was in their house, it seemed to me that somewhere, under the floorboards, maybe even hidden by his father, there was a dead man wrapped in oilcloth, like the one in Moscow, and surrounded in the same way by bottles of Zhdanov liquid, 30I could even show you the corner. He is always silent; but I know he loves me so much that by now he cannot help hating me. Your wedding and my wedding will come together: that is how he and I have decided it. I have no secrets from him. I could kill him out of fear . . . But he will kill me first... he laughed just now and says I'm raving. He knows I'm writing to you."
And there was much, much more of the same sort of raving in these letters. One of them, the second, was on two sheets of stationery, of large format, in small handwriting.