But peace was just what he never had.  Now we come to the worst, or more properly, to the sum of what has gone before.  The ceaseless uneasiness in which Angelika lived broke out into perpetual quarrelling.  For one thing, she had no self-command.  A caprice, a mistake, an anxiety over-ruled everything.  She seized the smallest opportunities.  Again—­and this was a most important factor—­there was her overpowering anxiety to keep possession of him; this drew her away from what she should have paid most heed to, in order to let him have peace.  She continued her lavish housekeeping, she let the children drift, she concentrated all her powers on him.  Her jealousy, her fears, her debts, sapped his fertile mind, destroyed his good humour, laid desolate his love of the beautiful and his creative power.

He had in particular one great project, which he had often, but ineffectually, attempted to mature.  The effort to do so had begun seriously one day on the heights above Hellebergene, and had continued the whole summer.  Curiously enough, one morning, as he sat at some most wearisome work, Hellebergene and Helene, in the spring sunshine, rose before him, and with them his project, lofty and smiling, came to him again.  Then he begged for a little peace in the house.

“Let me be quiet, if only for a month,” he said.  “Here is some money.  I have got an idea; I must and will have quiet.  In a month’s time I shall have got on so far that perhaps I shall be able to judge if it is worth continuing.  It may be that this one idea may entirely support us.”

This was something which she could understand, and now he was able to be quiet.

He had an office in the town, but sometimes took his papers home with him in the evenings, for it often happened that something would occur to him at one moment or another.  She bestowed every care on him; she even sat on the stairs while he was asleep at midday, to prevent him from being disturbed.

This went on for a fortnight.  Then it so chanced that, when he had gone out for a walk, she rummaged among his papers, and there, among drawings, calculations, and letters, she actually, for once in a way, found something.  It was in his handwriting and as follows: 

“More of the mother than the lover in her; more of the solicitude of love than of its enjoyment.  Rich in her affection, she would not squander it in one day with you, but, mother-like, would distribute it throughout your life.  Instead of the whirl of the rapids, a placid stream.  Her love was devotion, never absorption.  You were one and she was one.  Together we should have been more powerful than two lovers are wont to be.”

There was more of this, but Angelika could not read further, she became so furious.  Were these his own thoughts, or had he merely copied them?  There were no corrections, so most likely it was a copy.  In any case it showed where his thoughts were.