The Remaining Works of Benedict de Spinoza

The female relative from Melenki was a kind and dreamy soul: young women are generally incomparably more expansive than our own brother; they possess a warmth that is always warming, a sympathy always ready to love; their feelings are rarely stifled by egoism, and they lack the calculating male mind. During one of her visits, she favored me and petted me; she felt sorry that I was so alone, so devoid of greeting; she began to treat me, a thirteen-year-old boy, as if I were a grown-up; I came to love her with all my heart for this; I offered her my small hand with fervor, swore friendship and love, and now, thirteen years later, I am ready to extend my hand again—yet how many circumstances, people, and miles have crowded between us! She flew in like a bright ghost from the banks of the Klyazma and then disappeared for a long time; at that time I wrote epistles to Melenki every week, and in those epistles all the dreams and beliefs of that time were preserved. She did not remain in debt, answered every letter, and lavished with extraordinary generosity nouns and adjectives for the description of the Melenki surroundings, her room with its green curtains and purple gillyflowers on the windows. But I was little satisfied with letters and waited with impatience for her herself; it was decided that she would come to us for a full half-year; I counted the days on my fingers... And so, one winter evening I am sitting with Vasily Evdokimovich; he is discoursing on the four kinds of poetry and washing down each kind with kvass. Suddenly a noise, kisses, loud conversations of joy, her voice... I opened the door; bundles and hatboxes are being dragged across the hall; my cheeks flushed with joy, I no longer listened to what Vasily Evdokimovich was saying about didactic poetry (perhaps that is why I still do not understand it, although since then I have had the occasion to read Petrosilius’s poem "On Porcelain"); a few minutes later, she came into my little room, and after the insulting "Oh, how you have grown!" she asked what we were doing. I proudly answered: "Analyzing poetic works." I even remember the red merino dress in which she appeared before me then. But, alas! times have changed: she braided her hair; this insulted me, me with my à l'enfant child-like collars—the new hairstyle so