My first sense was that of astonishment too intense not to appear unreal
and even amusing. It seemed to me that if I would laugh out loud all
would come back, as delusions yield to scepticism and mockery. But it
was too cold not to be real, the scene and persons were too familiar to
be erroneous. I had to realize that I was in one of the great and
terrible occasional convulsions of human nature. Do you know how it next
affected me? With an instant's sense of sublimity! I said to myself,
'How dared I marry so much beauty and womanly majesty? Doing so, I have
tempted the old gods and their fates and furies. This is poetical
punishment for my temerity.' Still all the while I was laboring at the
one scull left in the boat while my brain was fuming so, and listening
for sounds on the water. I heard the sailor cry twice, and then his
voice fainted away. I began to weep at the oar while I strained upon it,
and called 'Help!' and implored God's intervention. At last I sat down
in the boat, worn out and in despair, and let it drift down all the
city's front, past lights and glooms and floating ice, and wished that I
were dead. My father's kindness and all our disagreements rose to mind,
and it seemed God's punishment that I had married where his intentions
were.
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