Unfortunately, this violent obstruction of my good intentions did not just extend to my studies and work, but to a much larger degree and quite particularly to my lifestyle, my daily routine, as well. It was as if I had brought quite a lot of invisible criminals back home from this cell, in which I had been incarcerated for six weeks; and those criminals, now, had made it their cause to force their companionship upon me and to turn my mind to their way of thinking. I did not see them; I only saw the dark, mocking, main character from the swamp which was my home town and the trashy novels from Hohenstein; but they persistently talked to me; they influenced me. And when I resisted, they grew louder, to cloud my senses and to tire me, so that I lost the strength to resist. The main point was that was supposed to seek revenge, revenge against the owner of that watch, who had reported me to the police just to get rid of me from his apartment, revenge against the police, revenge against the judge, revenge against the government, against mankind, against basically everybody! I was a model citizen, like a lamb so white, pure, and innocent. The world had cheated me out of my future, my happiness. By what means? By forever regarding me as this what they had turned me into: a criminal. This was what the tempters inside of me were demanding. I resisted as much as I could, as long as my strength would last. Everything I wrote at this time, especially my village-tales, I gave an ethical, strictly lawful, royalist tendency. I did this not just for the spiritual support of others, but also for my own. But how hard, how infinitely hard was this on me! Whenever I did not do as those loud voices demanded, I was assaulted with mocking laughter, with curses and maledictions, not just for hours, but for half days and entire nights. To escape these voices, I used to jump out of my bed and run out into the rain and the snowstorm. I felt urged to leave, to go so far, so very far away! I quitted my home to save myself, nobody knew where to, but I felt drawn back, again and again. I did not let anyone know what took place inside of me and how inhumanly or even superhumanly I fought, neither father, nor mother, nor grandmother, nor one of the sisters. And even much less someone else, a stranger; I would not have been understood, anyhow; but they would rather have thought that I had just gone crazy. Whether anybody else in my place would have been able to bear this, I do not know, but I hardly think so. I was physically as well as mentally a sturdy, even a very sturdy person, but nevertheless I grew more and more tired. First, there were days, then even entire weeks, when everything within me turned completely dark; then, I sometimes hardly knew and often did not know at all what I did. At these times, the luminous character within me had disappeared completely. The dark entity led me my the hand. It always walked along the edge of the abyss.