The Remaining Works of Benedictus de Spinoza

a Melenki relative was a kind, dreamy soul: girls are generally incomparably more expansive than our own kind; there is in them a warmth that always heats, there is a sympathy always ready to love; in them, feelings are rarely suppressed by egoism and there is no male, calculating mind. During one of her visits, she petted me, showed me affection; she felt sorry that I was so lonely, so without greeting; she began to treat me, a thirteen-year-old boy, as if I were a grown-up; I loved her with all my soul for this; I offered her my little hand with fervor, swore friendship, love, and now, 13 other years later, I am ready to reach out again—but how many circumstances, people, and miles have pushed themselves between us!... She flew in like a bright ghost from the banks of the Klyazma and disappeared for a long time afterward; then I wrote epistles to Melenki every week, and in these epistles all the dreams and beliefs of that time were preserved. She did not remain in debt, answered every letter, and squandered with extraordinary generosity nouns and adjectives for the description of the Melenki surroundings, her room with green curtains and purple stocks 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 whole six months; I counted the days on my fingers... And so, one winter evening I sit with Vasily Evdokimovich; he talks about four types of poetry and washes down each type with kvass. Suddenly 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 occasion to read Petrosilius's poem "On Porcelain"); a few minutes later, she came to my little room and after the insulting "Oh, how you have grown!" she asked what we were doing. I proudly answered: "Analyzing poetic compositions." I even remember the red merino dress in which she appeared before me then. But, alas! times have changed: she braided her hair into a plait; this insulted me, me, with collars à l'enfant in the style of a child—the new hairstyle so