- Project Runeberg -  The Confession of a Fool /
295

(1912) [MARC] Author: August Strindberg Translator: Ellie Schleussner
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a stone wall. People listened to what I had to say with
a furtive smile and stared at me as if I were a rare animal.
No information was vouchsafed to me; I was deserted by
every one, especially by those who secretly yearned for
my ruin, so that they might rise over my fallen body.

I returned to my prison. Marie met me with evident
misgivings; I learned more from the expression of her
face than I had learned during the whole of my
melancholy journey.

For two months I champed upon the bit; then I fled
for the fourth time, in the height of summer, this time
to Switzerland. But the chain which held me was not an
iron chain which I might have been able to break; it was
rather an indiarubber cable, elastic and capable of infinite
expansion. The stronger the tension, the more
irresistibly I was pulled back to the starting point.

Once more I returned, to be rewarded with open
contempt; she was sure that another attempt to free myself
from her net would kill me, and my death was her only
hope.

I fell ill, severely ill, so that I believed myself to be
dying; I made up my mind to write the whole story of
the past. I could see plainly now that I had been in the
power of a vampire. I only wanted to live long enough
to cleanse my name from the filth with which she had
sullied it. I wanted to live long enough to revenge
myself; but first of all I must have proofs of her infidelity.

I hated her now with a hatred more fatal than
indifference because it is the antithesis of love. I hated her
because I loved her.

It was on a Sunday, while we were dining in the
summer-arbour, that the electric fluid which had gathered
during the last ten years discharged itself. I cannot
remember my actual motive, but I struck her, for the
first time in my life. I struck her face repeatedly, and

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