First of all, there was myself, this is me, who was observing all of this. But who this "me" actually was and where he was within myself, I could not tell. He very much resembled my father and had all of his faults. A second being within myself always kept at a distance. It resembled a fairy, an angel, one of those impeccable, bliss bringing beings from grandmother's book of fairy-tales. It admonished; it warned. It smiled when I obeyed, and it mourned when I was disobedient. The third entity, of course not a physical one, but an appearance on the soul, was nothing less than abhorrent to me. Fateful, ugly, mocking, repulsive, always gloomy and threatening; I have never seen it any other way, and I have never heard it any other way. This is because I have not just seen it, I also heard it; it spoke. It often spoke to me for entire days and entire nights without interruption. And it never wanted what was good, but always just what was evil and unlawful. It was new to me; I had never seen it before, but only from now on, once my inner being was split. But when, for a short time, it kept silent and I therefore found the time to observe it secretly and attentively, then it struck me as so familiar and well acquainted, as if I had seen it a thousand times before. Then its appearance changed, and its face changed, too. At times, it was from the Batzendorf, then from the bowling alley, or from the Lügenschmiede. One day it looked like Rinaldo Rinaldini, the next day like the robber-knight Kuno of the Eulenburg <owls' castle>, and the day after like the god-fearing principal of the seminary, standing before my tallow-paper.