Then I thought of you. Ah, my own, my darling, it is often that I think of you and feel my heart sink. How is it that you are so unfortunate, Barbara? How is it that you are so much worse off than other people? In my eyes you are kindhearted, beautiful, and clever⁠—why, then, has such an evil fate fallen to your lot? How comes it that you are left desolate⁠—you, so good a human being! While to others happiness comes without an invitation at all? Yes, I know⁠—I know it well⁠—that I ought not to say it, for to do so savours of free-thought; but why should that raven, Fate, croak out upon the fortunes of one person while she is yet in her mother’s womb, while another person it permits to go forth in happiness from the home which has reared her? To even an idiot of an Ivanushka such happiness is sometimes granted. “You, you fool Ivanushka,” says Fate, “shall succeed to your grandfather’s moneybags, and eat, drink, and be merry; whereas you