overheat everything? Yes. Have I removed the key to the huntsman’s lodge? Yes. Have I paid the bill for the papering? Yes. I asked myself questions and gave myself answers. But the time wouldn’t pass. I got up and went down into the hall and checked my suitcases. I wanted to be sure they were locked firmly enough, and so I inspected the locks. Why am I doing all this to myself? I wondered. I went and sat in the east room on the ground floor and looked at the picture of my uncle, who had once been Ambassador in Moscow, as was evident from the picture. It was painted by Lampi and is of more artistic value than I originally assumed. I love this picture; my uncle reminds me of myself. But he lived longer than I shall, I thought. I was already wearing my travelling shoes. Everything I had on was too much for me, too tight and too heavy. And then there’ll be the fur coat, I thought. Wouldn’t it be better to get down to reading Voltaire as I intended, and my beloved Diderot, rather than go away suddenly, leaving behind everything that is so dear to me? I’m not at all the kind of unfeeling person that some people take me to be because they want to see me like that and because that’s how I very often make myself appear, not daring to show myself as I really am. But what am I really like? Once more I was caught up in speculations about myself. I don’t know why, but suddenly I recalled that twenty-five years ago, when I was just over twenty, I’d been a member of the Socialist Party. What a joke! I wasn’t a member for long. As with everything else, I resigned my membership after a few months. And to think that I once wanted to become a monk! That I once thought of becoming a Catholic priest! And that I once donated eight hundred thousand schillings for the starving in Africa! To think that that’s all true! At the time it all seemed logical and natural enough. But now I’ve completely changed. To think that I once believed I would marry! And have children! I even thought at one time of going into the army, of becoming a general or a field-marshal like one of my ancestors! Absurd. There’s nothing I wouldn’t once have given everything for, I told myself. But all these speculations added up, if not to nothing, then to ludicrously little. Poverty, wealth, the church, the army, parties, welfare institutions — all ludicrous. All I have left in the end is my present pathetic existence, which no longer has very much to offer. But that’s how it should be. No doctrine holds water any longer; everything that is said and preached is destined to become ludicrous. It doesn’t even call for my scorn any longer. It doesn’t call for anything, anything at all. When we really know the world, we see that it is just a world full of errors. But we are reluctant to part from it, because in spite of everything we’ve remained fairly naive and childlike, I thought. What a good thing that I had my eye-pressure measured. Thirty-eight! We mustn’t pretend to ourselves. We may keel over at any moment. I have more and more dreams in which people fly, in and out of the window* beautiful people, plants I’ve never seen before, with gigantic leaves as big as umbrellas. We take all the necessary precautions, but not for living, for dying. It was a sudden decision on my part to give my nephew nine hundred thousand schillings, a fact which I must now admit, so that he could set up a practice appropriate to today’s conditions, as he put it. What is appropriate to today’s conditions? On the one hand it was stupid to give him what is after all quite a large sum for nothing, but on the other, what are we to do with our money? When my sister gets to hear that I’ve sold the property in Ruhsam I shan’t be around any longer. This thought reassures me. I’ve packed my Voltaire, I thought, and my Dostoyevsky — a wise decision. At one time I got on well with simple people, those whom I have for a long time called the so-called simple people. I used to visit them every day, but my illness has changed all that: I no longer visit them, I avoid them wherever possible, I hide from them. Going away makes one sad, I said in passing. The so-called simple people, the woodcutters for instance, had my trust, and I had theirs. I used to spend half the night with the woodcutters. For decades they were the only people for whom I could feel any sympathy! They never see me now. And in fact, having been spoilt for anything simple, we only impose on such people and take up their time when we are with them; we do them no good, only harm. If I were to see them now I’d only try to destroy their faith in everything they hold dear, the Socialist Party or the Catholic Church for instance, both of which are now, as ever, unscrupulous organisations for the exploitation of humanity. But it is a basic error to say that only the weak-minded are exploited: everybody is exploited. On the other hand this is reassuring. This is how things balance out; perhaps it is the only way things can continue. If only I didn’t have to read the sickening newspapers that are published here, which are not newspapers at all, but simply dirt-sheets edited by greedy upstarts! If only I didn’t have to see what surrounds me here, I said. One delusion succeeded the other, I now realise, as I sat in my armchair waiting to leave. I’m leaving a country that is totally ruined, a repulsive state that fills one with horror every morning. At first it was exploited and then discarded by the so-called conservatives; now it’s the turn of the so-called socialists. An obstinate old idiot who, having become chancellor, is now quite unpredictable, a megalomaniac and a public menace. If someone says the days are numbered he makes himself look ridiculous. Why have I stopped writing to people, why have I given up my correspondence? At one time I used to write letters regularly, even if I didn’t particularly enjoy writing. Quite unconsciously we give up everything, and then it’s gone. Was it my steadily worsening condition that kept my sister in Peiskam for so long and not, as I thought, a sudden onset of boredom with Vienna? If I were to ask her she’d reply with one of her charming lies. Pred-ni-so-lone. I said the word a few times quite slowly to myself, just as I’ve written it down here. Doctors don’t get much below the surface. They always neglect everything, and that’s what they constantly reproach their patients with — negligence. Doctors have no conscience: they simply answer the medical call of nature. But we repeatedly run to them because we can’t believe that this is so. If I carry these suitcases for even the shortest distance it may finish me off, I told myself. We call out the word porter as we used to, but there no longer are any porters. Porters have become extinct. Everybody has to hump their things as best they can. The world has become colder by a few degrees — I don’t wish to calculate by how many — and people are that bit crueller and more inconsiderate. But this is a perfectly normal course of events which we were bound to reckon with and which we could predict, because we’re not stupid. But the sick don’t like allying themselves with the sick, or the old with the old. They run away from one another. To their destruction. Everyone wants to be alive, nobody wants to be dead. Everything else is a lie. In the end they sit in an armchair or in some wing-chair and dream dreams of the past which bear not the slightest relation to reality. There ought to be only happy people — all the necessary conditions are present — but there are only unhappy people. We understand this only late in life. While we are young and without pain we not only believe in eternal life, but have it. Then comes the break, then the breakdown, then the lamentation over it, and the end. It’s always the same. At one time I enjoyed cheating the inland revenue; now I don’t even want to do that, I told myself. Everybody is welcome to see my hand. This is how I feel at the moment. At