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108 AUTOBIOGRAPHY.
Now I stood in need of faith; now I stood in need of
religious comfort. Wildly impatient, L prayed for it; my
agony remained the same. Exasperated, I turned away
my looks from heaven and asked, with niy eyes riveted
upon the night of human misery, a shuddering wherefore ?
No voice, either from heaven or from earth, returned an
answer; my faith and my hope were shaken in their deep-
est foundations. Every thing was tottering; I doubted,
I despaired, and now I understood — hell. I suffered so
deeply, so dreadfully, but at the same time so quietly, that
just thereby I felt a kind of superiority over other people ;
because, during this suffering, I becanie so good, so gentle,
that I would willingly have suffered still more to save the
most insignificant insect a pang. And I knew nobody so
good as I. God — may He forgive my weakness this irrev-
erence or blinduess — permitted this suffering. Man hum-
bled me, because I was a kind of Lazarus, at any rate in
my own imagination; but I overlooked mankind; in my
soul raged giant agony. I felt that I could suffer, and that
I suffered more than others.
Although at this time I should have found it easy to
achieve any great and noble action, even at the sacrifice
of my life; yet I must in truth confess, that on the other
hand, I have never looked upon crime and vice with so
little abhorrence as then, and it is only Him, who rules
events and circumstances, to whom IJ ascribe the innocence
of my actions. One thing only afforded me some consola-
tion during this long time of suffering, and this was paint-
ing. Seated at my easel, I frequently forgot, for hours
together, my agony and the bitterness of my life; and in
creating the beautiful with my pencil, I found therein con-
solation for not being able to re-create myself, for I was
ever weak for beauty. In order to find pecuniary means
for assuaging affliction which made my heart bleed to hear
mentioned, I tried to earn money with my paintings. I
painted little portraits of the Crown-Princess, whom I had
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