V.
_Warsaw, (I think) September 4th, 1830._
My ideas are growing more and more confused. I am here still, and cannot make up my mind to fix definitively a day for my departure. It seems to me as if I were leaving Warsaw for ever; I have a presentiment that I am bidding an eternal farewell to my home. Oh, how hard it must be to die anywhere but in oneʼs birth-place. How could I bear to see around my deathbed, instead of the faces of my beloved family, an unconcerned doctor and a hired servant. Believe me, dear Titus, I often long to come to you to ease my heavy heart, but as I cannot do that I rush out of doors without knowing why. But that does not calm or satisfy my restless, yearning spirit, and I go home only to sigh again....
I have not yet tried my Concerto. At any rate I shall have left my treasure behind me before Michaelmas.[53] In Vienna I shall be condemned to eternal sighs and languishing. This is so when oneʼs heart is no longer free. You know very well what that is, but can you account for that peculiar feeling which makes people always expect something better from the morrow? “Do not be so foolish,” is all the answer I can give myself; if you know a better one, pray, pray tell it me....
These are my plans for the winter: I think of staying two months in Vienna; then going to Italy and perhaps spending the winter in Milan. Soliva always conducts the operas in which his pupils appear; in time, I think, he will unseat Kurpinski; he has one foot in the stirrup already, and is supported by a doughty cavalier.[54]
I finish my letter to-day with nothing, indeed with less than nothing, that is with what I have already said before. It is half-past eleven, and I am still sitting here _en deshabille_, although Mariolka will certainly be already waiting to go with me to dinner at C.ʼs. I have promised to visit Magnuszewski afterwards, so I shall not be back before four oʼclock to finish the page, and the sight of the blank paper annoys me.
But I will not worry myself unnecessarily, or I shall never come to an end, and Mariolka will be disappointed altogether; and, as you know, I like to make myself agreeable to people of whose good-will I am assured. I have not been to see her since my return, and I must confess that I often blame her as the cause of my dejection; other people seem to be of the same opinion, and this gives me at last some slight satisfaction. My father smiles, but if he knew all I think he would weep. I seem quite happy, but my heart....
By this day month you will have no more letters from Warsaw, nor perhaps from anywhere else; perhaps you will not hear from me again before we meet. I am writing nothing but nonsense now; only the thought of leaving Warsaw....
But wait awhile, and perhaps you will yourself be no better off. Man is never always happy, and very often only a brief period of happiness is granted him in this world; so why escape from this dream which cannot last long?
If I sometimes regard intercourse with the world as a sacred duty, at other times, I consider it a devilish invention, and that it would be better if mankind ... but enough.... Time flies, and I must wash ... donʼt kiss me yet ... but you would not kiss me even if I were anointed with Byzantian oil, unless by some magnetism I forced you to. Farewell.