Free Confusion by Stefan Zweig Page B

without having to shout for our half-deaf old landlady. However, the more I became one with this new community, the more totally did I turn away from the outside world: I shared not only the warmth of this inner sphere but its frosty isolation. My fellow students, without exception, showed me a certain coldness and contempt—who knew whether some secret verdict had been passed on me, or just jealousy provoked by our teacher’s obvious preference for me? In any case, they excluded me from their society, and in class discussions it seemed that they had agreed not to speak to me or offer any greeting. Even the other professors did not hide their hostility; once, when I asked the professor of Romance languages for some trivial piece of information, he fobbed me off ironically by saying: “Well, intimate as you are with Professor … , you should know that.” I sought in vain to account to myself for such undeserved ostracism. But the words and looks I received eluded all explanation. Ever since I had been living on such close terms with that lonely couple, I myself had been entirely isolated.
    This exclusion would have given me no further cause for concern, since my mind, after all, was entirely bent on intellectual pursuits, except that in the end the constant strain was more than my nerves could stand. You do not live for weeks in a permanent state of intellectual excess with impunity, and moreover in switching too wildly from one extreme to the other I had probably turned my whole life upside down far too suddenly to avoid endangering the equilibrium secretly built into us by Nature. For while my dissolute behaviour in Berlin had relaxed my body pleasantly, and my adventures with women gave playful release to dammed-up instincts, here an oppressively heavy atmosphere weighed so constantly on my irritated senses that they would only churn around in electrical peaks within me. I forgot how to enjoy deep, healthy sleep, although—or perhaps because—I was always up until the early hours of the morning copying out the evening’s dictation for my own pleasure (and burning with puffed-up impatience to hand the written sheets to my beloved mentor at the earliest opportunity). Then my university studies and the reading through which I raced called for further preparation, and my condition was aggravated, not least, by my conversations with my teacher, since I strained every nerve in Spartan fashion so as never to appear to him in a poor light. My abused body did not hesitate to take revenge for these excesses. I suffered several brief fainting fits, warning signs that I was putting an insane strain on Nature—but my hypnotic sense of exhaustion increased, all my feelings were vehemently expressed, and my exacerbated nerves turned inward, disturbing my sleep and arousing confused ideas of a kind I had previously restrained.
    The first to notice an obvious risk to my health was my teacher’s wife. I had already seen her concerned glance dwelling on me, and she made admonitory remarks during our conversations with increasing frequency, saying, for instance, that I must not try to conquer the world in a single semester. Finally she spoke her mind. “Now that’s enough,” she said sharply one Sunday when I was working away at my grammar, while it was beautiful sunny weather outside, and she took the book away from me. “How can a lively young man be such a slave to ambition? Don’t take my husband as your example all the time; he’s old and you are young, you need a different kind of life.” That undertone of contempt flashed out whenever she spoke of him, and devoted to him as I was it always roused me to indignation. I felt that she was intentionally, perhaps in a kind of misplaced jealousy, trying to keep me further away from him, countering my extreme enthusiasm with ironic comments. If we sat too long over our dictation in the evening she would knock energetically on