everlasting source of weakness is love of self, vanity, and coquetry
in regard to others. Almost unconsciously everybody tries to please,
to gain sympathy; and towards that end often sacrifices his own
opinions and convictions. At present this coquetry, if not altogether
gone, is greatly diminished; and the indifference as to whether I
please or not gives me a kind of superiority over others. I have
noticed that during my travels, and especially now at Paris. There are
many here who at one time had an ascendency over me; now I have the
ascendency, for the very reason that I care less for it.

In a general way I look upon myself as a man who could be energetic
if he wished to exert himself; but the will acts in proportion to the
passions, and mine are in the passive state.

As the habit of giving an account to myself for my thoughts and
actions still remains with me, I explain in this way that in certain
conditions of life we may as strongly desire not to live, as in others
we should wish the contrary. Most likely my indifference springs from
this dislike of life. It is this which renders it different from the
apathy of such men as Davis.

It is quite certain that I have grown more independent than formerly,
and might say with Hamlet that there is something dangerous in
me. Fortunately nobody crosses my path. Everybody is as supremely
indifferent and cool towards me as I am in regard to them. Only my
aunt in far-away Ploszow loves me as of old; but I suppose even
her love has lost its active character, and there will be no more
match-making in my behalf.

3 April.

Alas! that indifference I compared to pure water without taste or
color is only apparently colorless. Looking more closely I perceive
tiny bubbles which dim its purity. They are my idiosyncrasies.
Everything else has left me and they remained. I do not love anybody,
have no active hatred towards any one, but am full of aversions in
regard to various people. One of these is Kromitzki. I do not hate him
because he has taken Aniela from me; I dislike him for his long, flat
feet, his thick knees, lank figure, and that voice like a coffee-mill.
He was always repulsive to me, and I mention the fact now because that
aversion has such a strange vitality in me. I cannot help thinking of
people who jar upon my nerves. If only Kromitzki and Pani Celina came
under that category, I might think those antipathies were hatred in
the disguise of aversion. But it is n