In the days following I practised a new exercise in my bedroom several times. I sat stiffly on a chair, kept my eyes fixed, and held myself perfectly motionless. I waited to see how long I could maintain this attitude, and what the sensation would be like. However, I merely got very tired, and suffered from a violent twitching of the eyelids.

The confirmation took place soon after, of which no important recollections remain with me.

Everything was now quite changed. Childhood fell about me in ruins. My parents used to look at me with a certain embarrassment. My sisters had become quite strange in their conduct towards me. A disillusionment falsified and weakened the old sentiments and pleasures, the garden was without fragrance, the wood was no longer inviting, the world around me seemed like a clearance-sale of old articles, insipid and without charm, books were merely paper, music a noise. The leaves fall thus from a tree in autumn, the tree feels it not, rain drips on it, sun comes and frost, and the life in it recedes slowly into the narrowest and most inward recess. The tree is not dying. It is waiting.