The pleasant tranquillity of those weeks and months of the Beatrice period was long since gone. I thought at that time I had reached a haven and had found peace. But it was ever so⁠—scarcely did I begin to adapt myself to circumstances, scarcely had a dream done me good, when it faded again. In vain to complain! I now lived in a fire of unstilled desires, of tense expectation, which often rendered me completely wild and mad. I frequently saw before me the picture of my dream-mistress with extraordinary clearness, much more clearly than I saw my own hand. I spoke to it, wept over it, cursed it. I called it mother and knelt before it in tears. I called it my beloved and felt its ripe kiss of fulfilled desire. I called it devil and whore, vampire and murderer. It invited me to the tenderest dreams of love and to the most horrible abominations⁠—nothing was too good and precious for it, nothing too bad and vile.