'I care for everything that interests you; you possess all those things
after which I am seeking. Pity from you would be more precious to me
than passionate love from any other woman. Your hand upon my heart--I
know--would cause a second youth to spring up in me far purer than the
first and stronger. The ceaseless vacillation which makes up the sum of
my inner life would find rest and stability in you. My unsatisfied and
restless spirit, harried by a perpetual warfare between attraction and
repulsion, eternally and irremediably alone, would find in yours a haven
of refuge against the doubts which contaminate every ideal, and weaken
the will. There are men more unfortunate, but I doubt if in the whole
wide world there was ever one less happy than I.'
He was making use of Obermann's words as his own. In the sort of
sentimental intoxication to which he had worked himself up, all his
melancholy broodings surged to his lips, and the mere sound of his own
voice--with a little quiver of humble entreaty in it--served to augment
his emotions.
'I do not venture to tell you all my thoughts. At your side, during the
few days since I first met you, I have had moments of oblivion so
complete as almost to make me feel that I was back in the first days of
my convalescence, when the sense of another world was still present with
me.
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