Without Dogma | Page 9

either, that I am a nullity. I
possess alike a great facility for acquiring knowledge, and a desire for it;
I read much, and have a good memory. Perhaps I could not summon
energy enough for a long, slow work, but the greater facility ought to
serve instead; and besides, there is no urgent necessity for me to write
encyclopedias, like Littré. He who cannot shine with the steady light of
a sun might at least dazzle as a meteor. But oh! that nothingness of the
past,--the most probable nothingness of the future! I am growing
peevish--and tired; and will leave off writing for to-day.
ROME, 10 January.
Last night, at Count Malatesta's reception, I heard by chance these two
words: "l'improductivité Slave." I experienced the same relief as does a
nervous patient when the physician tells him that his symptoms are
common enough, and that many others suffer from the same disease. I

have many fellow-sufferers, not only among other Slavs, a race which I
know but imperfectly, but in my own country. I thought about that
"improductivité Slave" all night. He had his wits about him who
summed the thing up in two words. There is something in us,--an
incapacity to give forth all that is in us. One might say, God has given
us bow and arrow, but refused us the power to string the bow and send
the arrow straight to its aim. I should like to discuss it with my father,
but am afraid to touch a sore point. Instead of this, I will discuss it with
my diary. Perhaps it will be just the thing to give it any value. Besides,
what can be more natural than to write about what interests me?
Everybody carries within him his tragedy. Mine is this same
"improductivité slave" of the Ploszowskis. Not long ago, when
romanticism flourished in hearts and poetry, everybody carried his
tragedy draped around him as a picturesque cloak; now it is carried still,
but as a jaegervest next to the skin. But with a diary it is different; with
a diary one may be sincere.
ROME, 11 January.
The few days which remain to me before my departure I will use in
retrospects of the past, until I come to note down day after day the
events of my present life. As I said before, I do not intend to write an
autobiography; who and what I am, my future life will show
sufficiently. I should not like to enter into minute details of the past,--it
is a kind of adding number to number, and a summing up. I always
hated the four rules of arithmetic, and especially the first. But I want to
have a general idea of the total, so as to have a clearer view of myself.
Therefore I go on with the mere outline.
After having finished my studies at the university I went to an
agricultural school in France. The work there was easy enough, but it
had no special attraction for me. I did it as one who knows that this
special branch of knowledge will be useful to him, but at the same time
feels that he lowers himself to it and that it does not respond either to
his ambition or his faculties. I derived a twofold gain from my sojourn
there. Agriculture became to me familiar enough to protect me from
being cheated by any agents or bailiffs, and it strengthened my frame so
that it could withstand the life I later on led in Paris.
The years following I spent either in Koine or in Paris, not to mention
short stays at Warsaw, where my aunt summoned me now and then in

order to introduce me to some special favorite of hers with a view to
matrimony.
Paris and its life attracted me greatly. With the truly excellent opinion I
had then of myself, with more confidence in my intelligence and the
self-possession an independent position gives, I still played a very
unsophisticated part on this scene of the world. I began by falling
desperately in love with Mademoiselle Richemberg of the Comédie
Française, and absolutely insisted upon marrying her. I will not dwell
now upon the many tragicomic imbroglios, as I am partly ashamed of
those times, and partly inclined to laugh at them. Still later on it
happened that I took counterfeits for pure gold. The French women,
and for the matter of that, my own countrywomen, of whatever class
and in spite of all their virtues when young, remind me of my fencing
lessons. As the fencer has his hour of practice with the foils so as to
keep his hand in, so women practise with sentimental foils. As a mere
youth, fairly good looking, I was sometimes invited to a passage