notes from underground

Veraguth strode slowly through his studio, then through his living room and bedroom. Then he went out, around the lake and through the park. He had taken this walk a hundred times, but today everything, house and garden, lake and park, seemed to echo loneliness. The wind blew cold in the yellowing leaves and brought new fleecy rain clouds in low-hovering files. The painter shivered with the cold. Now they were all gone. There was no one here to care for, to be considerate of, no one in whose presence he had to maintain his composure, and only now, in this frozen loneliness, were the cares and sleepless nights, the quivering fever and all the crushing weariness borne in on him. He felt them not only in his mind and bones but deep in his heart. In those days the last shimmering light of youth and expectancy had been extinguished; but the cold isolation and cruel disenchantment no longer frightened him.