I fitted
myself out, and purchased besides a great many jewels and valuables
for the sake of getting rid of some of the vast heap of hoarded-up
gold; but it seemed to me as if it were impossible to diminish it.
In the meantime I brooded over my situation in the most agonizing
doubts. I dared not venture a step out of my doors, and at evening I
caused forty waxlights to be lit in my room before I issued from
the shade. I thought with horror on the terrible scene with the
schoolboys, yet I resolved, much courage as it demanded, once more to
make a trial of public opinion. The nights were then moonlight. Late
in the evening I threw on a wide cloak, pressed my hat over my eyes,
and stole, trembling like a criminal, out of the house. I stepped
first out of the shade in whose protection I had arrived so far, in
a remote square, into the full moonlight, determined to learn my fate
out of the mouths of the passers-by.
Spare me, dear friend, the painful repetition of all that I had to
endure. The women often testified the deepest compassion with which
I inspired them, declarations which no less transpierced me than the
mockery of the youth and the proud contempt of the men, especially
of those fat, well fed fellows, who themselves cast a broad shadow.
A lovely and sweet girl, who, as it seemed, accompanied her parents,
while these discreetly only looked before their feet, turned by chance
her flashing eyes upon me.
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