There she should live as an independent person, there she should be happy, even – when his self-tormenting imagination took him that far – happy with somebody else.

Thus did his days pass in a never-ending vacillation between hope and torment, between tears and serenity, between plans, preparations and despair. He was not surprised by the sight of Mittler. He had long expected him and so he half welcomed his arrival. If he had been sent by Charlotte, Eduard had already armed himself with excuses and procrastinations of all kinds and then with certain more definite suggestions; if he brought some news of or from Ottilie, Mittler was as welcome as a messenger from heaven.

Eduard was therefore depressed and annoyed to learn that Mittler had not come from the mansion but was there on his own initiative. His heart was hardened and conversation would not at first get under way. But Mittler knew well that a heart preoccupied with love has an urgent need to express itself, to pour out to a friend what is going on within it, so after a certain amount of desultory chatter he was content to step out of his usual role and, deserting the role of mediator, to play the old comrade.

In this character he took it upon himself to rebuke Eduard gently for the solitary life he was leading, but Eduard replied: ‘Oh I cannot imagine a more pleasant way of spending my time! I think about her constantly, I am always with her. I possess the inestimable privilege of being free to imagine where Ottilie is, where she goes, where she stops, where she rests. I see her before me acting as she always does, doing things and planning other things – admittedly always things which are most flattering to me. But it does not stop at that, because how can I be happy away from her! I set my imagination to work to decide what Ottilie has to do in order to come to me. I write myself sweet intimate letters and sign them with her name, I reply to them, and then I preserve the letters together. I have promised not to approach her in any way and that promise I shall keep. But what is stopping her from turning to me? Has Charlotte perhaps been so cruel as to demand from her a promise and vow not to write to me or let me have news of herself? It would be natural enough, I even think it probable, and yet the idea seems to me monstrous and unendurable. If she loves me, as I believe she does, as I know she does, why does she not resolve, why does she not dare to flee the house and come and throw herself in my arms? I often think that is what she ought to do, that is what she could do if she wanted to. Whenever I hear a noise in the hallway I look up at the door: “It’s her!” I think, I hope. And since what is perfectly possible is apparently impossible, I imagine the impossible must be possible. When I awake at night and the lamp throws an uncertain light over the bedroom her figure, her spirit, an intuition of her ought to be wafted across to me, approach me, seize me, for no more than a moment, so that I could have some kind of assurance she is thinking of me, that she is mine.

‘One joy alone remains to me. When I was near her I never dreamt of her, now we are apart we are together in dreams, and strange to say it is only since I have got to know other charming people here in this neighbourhood that her image appears to me in dreams, as if she were trying to say: “Look about you as you will, you will find nothing more lovely than me!” And so her image comes into all my dreams. All that befalls me with her in dreams is mixed and mingled together. Sometimes we are putting our names to a contract: there is her hand and there is mine, there is her name and my name, they efface one another, they blend together. But these rapturous illusions of fantasy can be painful too. Sometimes she does something that offends the pure idea I have of her, and it is only then I know how much I love her, because I am then distressed beyond all power of description. Sometimes she teases and torments me in a way quite unlike her, and then straightway her image alters, her heavenly little round face grows longer, and she is somebody else; but still that does not appease me, my torment continues, and I am thrown into confusion.

‘You can smile at me, my dear Mittler, or not smile, just as you like! Oh I am not ashamed of this attachment, of this foolish mad infatuation if you want to call it that. No, I have never loved before, it is only now I know what love is. Everything in my life was until now merely prologue, merely delay, merely pastime, merely waste of time, until I came to know her, until I came to love her, until I wholly and truly loved her. People have reproached me, not exactly to my face but certainly behind my back, with being only a bungler, with being only a dabbler and an incompetent in most things. It may be so, but I had not yet found that in which I can now show myself a master. I should like to see the man who has a greater talent for love than I have.

‘It is a lamentable talent, I know, it is one full of tears and suffering, but it comes so naturally to me, I find it so congenial, that I should be hard put to it ever to give it up again.’

While Eduard had certainly relieved his feelings by this energetic outpouring, it had also all at once brought every detail of his singular situation clearly into focus and, overwhelmed by the painful conflict, he burst into tears and his tears flowed the more freely in that his heart had been softened through disclosing what was in it.

Mittler, when he saw himself being deflected far from the object of his journey by Eduard’s painful and passionate outburst, found his natural impetuosity and inexorability of mind even less tractable than usual and he expressed his disapproval bluntly and with candour. Eduard ought to pull himself together (so he informed him); ought to consider what he owed to his dignity as a man; ought not to forget that what redounded most to a person’s honour was to be composed in face of misfortune; ought to remember that to endure suffering with equanimity and decorum was the way to be respected, esteemed and held up as an example to all.

Agitated and miserably distressed as he was, Eduard could not help thinking these expressions vain and hollow. ‘It is very well for the happy man to talk,’ he cried, flying into a passion, ‘but he would feel ashamed if he could see how intolerable he is to one who is not happy. You are supposed to have infinite endurance and patience, but infinite suffering is a thing your smug contented man refuses to recognize.