For me the erotic discussions had gradually become detestable. I always try to free myself. I am seldom successful. I know that an understanding woman might free me. This one wouldn't: Miss Neumann is a silly young thing, eighteen years old. The cook is an immature bitch. The housemaid Minna is arrogant; she is unapprochable, unjustifiably. Perhaps the head of the institution, Dr. Mondmilch, is a possibility, but when I try to make my valleys and peaks comprehensible to her, looking with longing into her eyes, give myself to her--she is distant, takes notes, has secret talks with Lenzlicht, prescribes tranquilizers. She is very brutal, I sometimes believe that she loves me secretly. She seems to be unhappy; I like her.-Yesterday I had to interrupt my writing, because the fat idiot Backberg called me to the table. I sit next to the Russian Recha. She likes to pinch my leg; she says I'm too fat. She kisses tall Lehkind, because he looks like a skeleton. Anyway, I can't stand the vermin that have been assembled here. There's trouble every day. In particular, the very small seven-year old Max Mechenmal--an unusually insignificant person--causes me unusual trouble. He does not like me, because he is conscious of my superiority. He tries in every way to make me look ridiculous. He is deceitful and cowardly. No one finds him nice. He likes nothing better than to provoke us against each other, to spread angry gossip, and to do as much damage as possible. He knows how to stay in the background, to disappear at the right moment. -Once I was writing, suspecting nothing bad, in our spacious bath and w.c. (here I was safe from surprises) a longer work on the "Hoax of Genius". I explained that genius is a title, not a quality. That fact is often overlooked, and engenders great confusion. The name is accidental, generally suspicious. Whoever is called a genius is therefore not a brilliant person. Brilliant people usually do not attain the title, which is awarded by the crowd. The most brilliant people of all time flowered in madhouses and prisons. Someone who is understood by thousands of