I
went hungry to bed, muttering ludicrous imprecations, but fully
determined to win Foedora. Her heart was my last ticket in the
lottery, my fortune depended upon it.
"I spare you the history of my earlier visits, to reach the drama the
sooner. In my efforts to appeal to her, I essayed to engage her
intellect and her vanity on my side; in order to secure her love, I
gave her any quantity of reasons for increasing her self-esteem; I
never left her in a state of indifference; women like emotions at any
cost, I gave them to her in plenty; I would rather have had her angry
with me than indifferent.
"At first, urged by a strong will and a desire for her love, I assumed
a little authority, but my own feelings grew stronger and mastered me;
I relapsed into truth, I lost my head, and fell desperately in love.
"I am not very sure what we mean by the word love in our poetry and
our talk; but I know that I have never found in all the ready
rhetorical phrases of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, in whose room perhaps I
was lodging; nor among the feeble inventions of two centuries of our
literature, nor in any picture that Italy has produced, a
representation of the feelings that expanded all at once in my double
nature.
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