Free Peter Camenzind by Hermann Hesse

while.
    â€œThat’s another of your romantic notions,” she said, “to have a woman tell you stories at night in the middle of a lake. Unfortunately I can’t do it. You poets are accustomed to finding words for everything beautiful and you don’t even grant that people have hearts if they are less talkative about their feelings than you. Well, you couldn’t be more wrong in my case, for I don’t think anyone can love more passionately. I am in love with a man who is married, and he loves me just as much. Yet neither of us knows whether we will ever be able to live together. We write to each other and occasionally we meet…”
    â€œCan I ask whether this love makes you happy or miserable, or both?”
    â€œOh, love isn’t there to make us happy. I believe it exists to show us how much we can endure.”
    This I understood so deeply that I was unable to repress a little moan, which escaped my lips instead of a reply. She heard it.
    â€œAh,” she said, “so you know what it’s like. And you are so young still! Do you want to tell me about it now—but don’t unless you really want to.”
    â€œPerhaps another time, Erminia. I don’t feel up to it now and I’m sorry if I’ve spoiled your evening by bringing up the subject. Shall we turn back?”
    â€œAs you wish. How far from shore are we actually?”
    I made no reply but dipped the oars violently into the water, swung the boat about, and pulled as though a storm were drawing near. The boat glided rapidly over the water. Amid the confusion and anguish and mortification seething within me, I felt sweat pouring down my face; I shivered at the same time. When I realized how close I had been to playing the suitor on his knees, the lover rejected with motherly and kindly understanding, a shudder ran down my spine. At least I had been spared that, and I would simply have to come to terms with my misery on my own. I rowed back like one possessed.
    Erminia was somewhat taken aback when I left her as soon as we stepped on shore. The lake was as smooth, the music as lighthearted, and the paper moons as colorful and festive as before, yet it all seemed stupid and ridiculous to me now. I felt like hitting the fop in the velvet coat, who still carried his guitar ostentatiously on a silk band around his neck. And there were still fireworks to come. It was all so childish.
    I borrowed a few francs from Richard, pushed my hat back, and marched off, out of town, on and on, hour after hour until I began to feel sleepy. I lay down in a meadow but woke again within the hour, wet with dew, stiff, shivering with cold, and walked on to the nearest village. It was early morning now. Reapers on their way to mow clover were in the streets, drowsy farmworkers stared at me wide-eyed from stable doors, everywhere there was evidence of farmers pursuing their summer’s work. You should have stayed a farmer, I told myself, and stalked shamefaced through the village and strode on until the first warmth of the sun allowed me to rest. At the edge of a beech grove I flopped down on the dry grass and slept in the sun until late afternoon. When I awoke with my head full of the aroma of the meadow and my limbs agreeably heavy, as they can only be after lying on God’s dear earth, the fete, the trip on the lake, and the whole affair seemed remote, sad, and half forgotten, like a novel read months ago.
    I stayed away three whole days, let the sun tan me, and considered whether I should not head straight home—now that I was underway—and help my father bring in the second crop of hay.
    Of course, my misery was not overcome as easily as all that. After I returned to the city, I fled the sight of Erminia. But it was not possible to keep this up very long. Whenever we met afterward, the misery rose up again in my throat.

Chapter Four
    T HE MISERY OF UNREQUITED LOVE accomplished what had been beyond my father’s