There Can Be No Mercy For Me

Oh! Master! What is the matter? Why are you weeping so bitterly? ...Mary is worse than before... different, but still so bad she seems to be mad... I no longer understand her... So why do you think that she is bad? Tell Me what she does... Well. Since I came here, Mary has never left the house or the garden, not even to go out on the lake in her boat. That first night she said to me - and that is why I was so hopeful -, Hold me back, tie me if necessary but do not let me go out, do not let me see anybody but you and my nurse. Because I am not well and I want to recover... and she wept. And I did that; I did it kindly when she was reasonable but I acted firmly when she seemed a wild beast in a cage. She never rebelled against me; quite the contrary, when the worst moments of temptation are over, she comes and weeps at my feet, resting her head on my lap and she says: Forgive me, forgive me! And if I asked her: For what, sister?, she replied: Because a little while ago, or yesterday evening, when you said to me: You are not going out from here, I hated and cursed you in my heart and I wished you would die. Is she perhaps mad? Have her vices made her mad? I think that one of her lovers has given her a philter to make her a slave of his lust and that its poison has gone to her brains......And sometimes she weeps, sometimes she laughs sarcastically like a mad person or a demon or says to me: Look, I had rather do this and be done with it and she ties her plaits around her neck, pulling them tight until her face turns purple as though she wanted to strangle herself. Still other times, she pities or ill-treats herself ...I have caught her striking her breast and scratching her face savagely or banging her head against a wall and when I asked her: Why are you doing that? she would look at me with a wild deranged expression and say: ...