I have been mistaken, but more in what may be imputed to me than
in what I have thought. My only comfort is, that I shall never be
known by you or anybody, and that I shall be forgotten, as I shall
forget."
"Never! But who can have spread the infamous slander! What
dreadful treachery of some wretch or gossiping wench, who knows
nothing about me! And how can she believe it! How in such a town
as Copenhagen can it be a matter of doubt for five minutes, if a
Superior Court Counsellor is married or not! Or maybe there is
some other Counsellor Bagger married,--a Chamber Counsellor or the
like? Or maybe she lives at a distance, in a quiet world, so that
the truth of it does not easily reach her? So there is no sunshine
more!
"If she should sometime meet me, and know that I was, am, and have
been unmarried, that meanwhile we have both become old and gray,--
can one think of anything more sad? It is enough to make the heart
cease beating! But suppose, too, that to-morrow she finds out that
she has been deceived: she has once written, 'I was mistaken,' and
cannot, as a true woman, write it again, unless she first heard
from me, and learned how I longed--and so I am cut off from her,
as if I lived in the moon. More, more! for I can meet her upon the
street and touch her arm without surmising it. It is
insupportable! Our time has mail, steamboats, railroads,
telegraphs: to me these do not exist; for of what use are they
altogether, when one knows not where to search.
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