only
in his alley. In what way, does my exceptional position find expression?
Admitting that I am celebrated a thousand times over, that I am a hero
of whom my country is proud. They publish bulletins of my illness in
every paper, letters of sympathy come to me by post from my colleagues,
my pupils, the general public; but all that does not prevent me from
dying in a strange bed, in misery, in utter loneliness. Of course, no
one is to blame for that; but I in my foolishness dislike my popularity.
I feel as though it had cheated me.

At ten o'clock I fall asleep, and in spite of the tic I sleep soundly,
and should have gone on sleeping if I had not been awakened. Soon after
one came a sudden knock at the door.

"Who is there?"

"A telegram."

"You might have waited till tomorrow," I say angrily, taking the
telegram from the attendant. "Now I shall not get to sleep again."

"I am sorry. Your light was burning, so I thought you were not asleep."

I tear open the telegram and look first at the signature. From my wife.

"What does she want?"

"Gnekker was secretly married to Liza yesterday. Return."

I read the telegram, and my dismay does not last long. I am dismayed,
not by what Liza and Gnekker have done, but by the indifference with
which I hear of their marriage. They say philosophers and the truly wise
are indifferent. It is false: indifference is the paralysis of the soul;
it is premature death.

I go to bed again, and begin trying to think of something to occupy my
mind. What am I to think about? I feel as though everything had been
thought over already and there is nothing which could hold my attention
now.

When daylight comes I sit up in bed with my arms round my knees, and
to pass the time I try to know myself. "Know thyself" is excellent and
useful advice; it is only a pity that the ancients never thought to
indicate the means of following this precept.

When I have wanted to understand somebody or myself I have considered,
not the actions, in which everything is relative, but the desires.

"Tell me what you want, and I will tell you what manner of man you are."

And now I examine myself: what do I want?

I want our wives, our children, our friends, our pupils, to love in
us, not our fame, not the brand and not the label, but to love us as
ordinary men. Anything else? I should like to have had helpers and
successors. Anything else? I should like to wake up in a hundred years'
time and to have