rgy 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 Littre. 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'improductivite 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
"improductivite 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
"improductivite 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