But what could, what ought he to do now, since the only profession for which his education and studies fitted him--that of politics--was closed to him in every direction? A quiet, inactive, private life, which but a few hours before, in the hope of a marriage with Cornelia, had appeared endurable, now seemed to him a moral death. He did not understand nature, the occupations of an agriculturist had no charms for him. Should he turn his estates into money, and invest it in some other way? But in what? All the pleasures that can be purchased he had already enjoyed to the dregs; life could afford him nothing more. The egotist had reached the end of his career, and could neither advance nor recede. Crushed and helpless, he looked back upon his past life, and now the point at which he had turned from the right path revealed itself to his searching gaze. The hours stood forth before his soul when he had struggled in his first conflict between inclination and duty, and inclination had conquered. All the strange, feverish fancies once more rose before his memory, and he perceived that they were the voices of his own heart which had spoken to him in the forms of delirium. Now he understood--now, after it was fulfilled--what they had said. With the first false step to which egotism urged him, he was lost. The frivolity with which he had degraded the first woman he loved, to be the prey of his passion, robbed him of his best possession, respect for the sex. Thus every base materialism, which only sought the enjoyment of the senses and thereby often formed the sharpest contrast with the demands of his intellectual nature, developed itself. The more frequently this conflict occurred, the greater it became, the further the two extremes became separated from each other, and the more distinctly their characteristics were stamped. The more the feelings were severed from the intellect, the lower they sank into sensuality, the stronger the passions became, and the more peremptorily they demanded their victim; while, on the other hand, the more exclusively the intellect withdrew into its own sphere, the further it banished the feelings, the colder and more obstinate it became, the more dull to everything which did not concern its own advantage, and therefore the more unprincipled. From this sprang the crimes which _Henri_ on the one hand, and _Heinrich_ on the other, had committed, whose consequences now drove him to despair, and had even terrified and driven from him forever the only woman for whom both extremes longed with equal ardor. Thus the cause of all the evil in his whole mistaken life was the separation between the mind and heart; the pleasure-seeking of the one, the immoderate ambition of the other, was the curse which had sprung from this division, the form under which egotism had taken possession of both portions of his nature. And of what he had enjoyed and obtained--nothing was left! His life had been fruitless to himself as well as to others.