I travelled without any sort of aim, without a plan; I stopped wherever I liked the place, and went on again directly I felt a desire to see new faces--faces, nothing else. I was interested in people exclusively; I hated famous monuments and museums of curiosities, the very sight of a guide produced in me a sense of weariness and anger; I was almost driven crazy in the Dresden ‘Grüne-Gewölbe.’ Nature affected me extremely, but I did not care for the so-called beauties of nature, extraordinary mountains, precipices, and waterfalls; I did not like nature to obtrude, to force itself upon me. But faces, living human faces--people’s talk, and gesture, and laughter--that was what was absolutely necessary to me. In a crowd I always had a special feeling of ease and comfort. I enjoyed going where others went, shouting when others shouted, and at the same time I liked to look at the others shouting. It amused me to watch people … though I didn’t even watch them--I simply stared at them with a sort of delighted, ever-eager curiosity. But I am diverging again. And so twenty years ago I was staying in the little German town Z., on the left bank of the Rhine. I was seeking solitude; I had just been stabbed to the heart by a young widow, with whom I had made acquaintance at a watering-place. She was very pretty and clever, and flirted with every one--with me, too, poor sinner. At first she had positively encouraged me, but later on she cruelly wounded my feelings, sacrificing me for a red-faced Bavarian lieutenant. It must be owned, the wound to my heart was not a very deep one; but I thought it my duty to give myself up for a time to gloom and solitude--youth will find amusement in anything!--and so I settled at Z.