I only needed to hit upon
something that seemed to me to be the right thing and then say to
myself: "You dare not do it!" for all the youthful strength and daring
that was in me, all my deeper feelings of honour and of pride, all my
love of grappling with the apparently insurmountable to unite, and in
face of this _You dare not_, satisfy myself that I did dare.
As provisionally, self-abnegation, humility, and asceticism seemed to me
to be the most difficult things, for a time my whole spiritual life was
concentrated into an endeavour to attain them. Just at this time--I was
nineteen--my family was in a rather difficult pecuniary position, and I,
quite a poor student, was cast upon my own resources. I had consequently
not much of this world's goods to renounce. From a comfortable residence
in Crown Prince's Street, my parents had moved to a more modest flat in
the exceedingly unaristocratic Salmon Street, where I had an attic of
limited dimensions with outlook over roofs by day and a view of the
stars by night. Quiet the nights were not, inasmuch as the neighbouring
houses re-echoed with screams and shrieks from poor women, whom their
late-returning husbands or lovers thrashed in their cups. But never had
I felt myself so raised, so exhilarated, so blissfully happy, as in that
room.
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