"I can still remember how, in those days, a shudder like the chill of death ran through my frame, as, one after another, I heard all the main points of the creed which my benumbed brain had for months vainly striven to comprehend, echo loudly through the church, and at each one a voice within me shrieked 'no! no!' and yet the 'yes' fell from my lips, and I suddenly felt as though I were dead, since I had so publicly and solemnly belied my own nature. It seemed as if I had forsworn my existence, renounced what was nearest for something alien, and taken what must ever be foreign to my character as my dearest possession. Oh! the shame, the confusion, in which I returned and was forced to allow myself to be congratulated on my disgrace and degradation. For months I have been unable to regain my courage, or enter into cordial relations with myself, so utterly was I crushed. "In those days, no palliating circumstances occurred to me, neither the timidity natural to my sixteen years, nor the horror that would have filled the solemn space if I had told the truth, nay I did not even think of the true motive of my decision, the grief I should have caused my dear father by a step so unprecedented. I heard only my own voice professing a religion of which my heart knew nothing, nay which to myself I had even clearly refuted, openly refused, and yet now acknowledged as the substance of my deepest thoughts and feelings. It weighed upon my conscience like a perjury; then I burned the books. "Why have I now commenced a new one? What have I to discuss with myself? Ah! the silence which I have become accustomed to keep, because I fear the sound of my own thoughts, has at last reached such a point that nature and the world and my own heart are also dumb to me. There is no one to whom I could utter my secret feelings. My father would be frightened if he should see such deep gulfs and lonely heights in my soul. Aunt Valentin speaks a different language, and others who come to the house take me for a strange and not very lovable girl, who has few attractions. "It's all the same. On the whole, silence makes us far happier; but we ought not to forget to talk to ourselves. I will practice the art again. Hitherto I have always lived at peace with myself, except for that one great discord. "And that--I have now clearly perceived it--is the fault of the bad habit of expecting young people, just as they are beginning to suspect the value of words, the difficulty of the enigma of the world, the depths of the abysses of life, to be contented with a few answers learned by rote to the most mysterious questions! It is cruel, to compel them either to carelessly cast aside every doubt, in obedience to the exhortations of a good man, who by virtue of his office is not permitted to doubt, or the tremendous courage to step forward before a whole congregation and reveal the inmost depths of their souls!