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talking to the gardener’s wife about my illness, mingled
with these gay sounds of country life.
And as I gazed and listened life seemed good to me,
death to be shunned. I had too many duties to perform,
too many debts to pay. My conscience tortured me, I
felt an overpowering need to confess myself, to ask all
men’s forgiveness for the wrongs I had committed, to
humiliate myself before some one. I felt guilty, stricken
with remorse, I did not know for what secret crime; I
was burning with the desire to relieve my conscience by
a full confession of my fancied culpability.
During this attack of weakness, the result of a sort of
innate despondency, my wife returned carrying a cup in
her hand; alluding to a slight attack of persecutional
mania from which I had once suffered, she tasted the
contents before offering it to me.
“You may drink without fear,” she said smilingly,
“it contains no poison.”
I felt ashamed. I did not know what to say. And to
make amends for my suspicion I emptied the cup at one
draught.
The somniferous elder tea, the fragrance of which
recalled in me reminiscences of my own country where
the mystic shrub is held sacred by the people, made me
feel so sentimental that I there and then gave expression
to my remorse.
“Listen to me carefully,” I said, “for I believe that
my days are numbered. I confess that I have always
lived a life of utter selfishness. I have sacrificed your
theatrical career to my literary ambition.... I will tell
you everything now... only forgive me....”
She tried to calm me, but I interrupted her and
continued—
“In compliance with your wishes we married under
the dotal system. In spite of it, however, I have wasted
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