For a long time I was resigned and said nothing.  I did not doubt at all that you, who know so much, would also probably know the causes that have destroyed our friendship.  It almost seems as if I was mistaken, since you were so astonished at my attaching myself to Edward and asked how you had offended me, as if you did not understand it.  If it were only that, only some one thing like that, then it would not be worth while to ask such a painful question; the question would answer and settle itself.  But is it not more than that, when on every occasion I must feel it a fresh desecration to tell you everything about Edward, just as it happened?  To be sure you have done nothing, have not even said anything aloud; but I know and see very well how you think about it.  And if I did not know it and see it, where would be the invisible communion of our spirits and the beautiful magic of this communion?  It certainly cannot occur to you to want to hold back still longer, and by sheer finesse to try to end the misunderstanding; for otherwise I should myself really have nothing more to say.

You two are unquestionably separated by an everlasting chasm.  The quiet, clear depth of your being and the hot struggle of his restless life lie at the opposite ends of human existence.  He is all action, you are a sensitive, contemplative nature.  For that reason you should have sense for everything, and you really do have it, save when you cultivate an intentional reserve.  And that really vexes me.  Better that you should hate the noble fellow than misjudge him.  But where will it lead, if you unnaturally accustom yourself to use your utmost wit in finding nothing but the commonplace in what little of greatness and beauty there is in him, and that without renouncing your claim to a liberal mind?

Is that your boasted many-sidedness?  To be sure you observe the principle of equality, and one man does not fare much better than another, except that each one is misunderstood in a peculiar way.  Have you not also forced me to say nothing to you, or to anyone else, about that which I feel to be the highest?  And that merely because you could not hold back your opinion until it was the proper time, and because your mind is always imagining limitations in others before it can find its own.  You have almost obliged me to explain to you how great my own worth really is; how much more just and safe it would have been, if now and then you had not passed judgment but had believed; if you had presupposed in me an unknown infinite.

To be sure my own negligence is to blame for it all.  Perhaps too it was idiosyncrasy—­that I wanted to share with you the entire present, without letting you know anything about the past and the future.  Somehow it went against my feelings, and I regarded it too as superfluous; for, as a matter of fact, I gave you credit for a great deal of intelligence.

O Antonio, if I could be doubtful about the eternal truths, you might have brought me to the point of regarding that quiet, beautiful friendship, which is based merely upon the harmony of being and living together, as something false and perverse.