The Remaining Works of Benedictus de Spinoza

The Melenki relative was a kind, dreamy soul: young women are generally incomparably more expansive than our own kind; there is in them a warmth that always warms, a sympathy always ready to love; their feelings are rarely suppressed by egoism and they lack the masculine, calculating mind. During one of her visits, she petted me, showed me affection; she felt sorry that I was so lonely, so without a 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 little hand with fervor, swore friendship, love, and now, 13 other years later, I am ready to reach out my hand again—but how many circumstances, people, and miles have crowded between us!… She flew in like a bright ghost from the banks of the Klyazma and disappeared for a long time afterward; back then, I wrote epistles to Melenki every week, and in those epistles all the dreams and beliefs of that time are preserved. She did not remain in my debt; she answered every letter and lavished with extreme generosity nouns and adjectives to describe the surroundings of Melenki, her room with its green curtains and purple wallflowers 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 am sitting with Vasily Evdokimovich; he is discoursing on the four kinds of poetry and washing down each kind with kvass. Suddenly, noise, kisses, loud conversations of joy, her voice… I opened the door; bundles and cardboard boxes were being dragged through 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 do not understand it, although I have since had 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 compositions." I even remember the red merino dress in which she appeared before me then. But, alas! Times had changed: she had braided her hair; this insulted me, me with my collars à l'enfant child-style—the new hairstyle so