25th June. I SOMETIMES despise myself. . . Is not that the reason why I despise others also? . . . I have grown incapable of noble impulses; I am afraid of appearing ridiculous to myself. In my place, another would have offered Princess Mary son coeur et sa fortune; but over me the word "marry" has a kind of magical power. However passionately I love a woman, if she only gives me to feel that I have to marry her -- then farewell, love! My heart is turned to stone, and nothing will warm it anew. I am prepared for any other sacrifice but that; my life twenty times over, nay, my honour I would stake on the for- tune of a card . . . but my freedom I will never sell. Why do I prize it so highly? What is there in it to me? For what am I preparing myself? What do I hope for from the future? . . . In truth, absolutely nothing. It is a kind of innate dread, an inexplicable prejudice. . . There are people, you know, who have an unaccountable dread of spiders, beetles, mice. . . Shall I con- fess it? When I was but a child, a certain old woman told my fortune to my mother. She pre- dicted for me death from a wicked wife. I was profoundly struck by her words at the time: an irresistible repugnance to marriage was born with- in my soul. . . Meanwhile, something tells me that her prediction will be realized; I will try, at all events, to arrange that it shall be realized as late in life as possible.