Confusion by Stefan Zweig Read Free Book Online Page A

help me as far as lay within him; I must not scruple to turn to him with any questions, ask anything I wanted to know. No one had ever before spoken to me with such sympathy, with such deep understanding; I trembled with gratitude, and was glad of the darkness that hid my wet eyes.
    I could have spent hours there with him, taking no notice of the time, but there was a soft knock on the door. It opened, and a slender, shadowy figure came in. He rose and introduced the newcomer. “My wife.” The slender shadow came closer in the gloom, placed a delicate hand in mine, and then said, turning to him: “Supper’s ready.” “Yes, yes, I know,” he replied hastily and (or so at least it seemed to me) with a touch of irritation. A chilly note suddenly seemed to have entered his voice, and when the electric light came on he was once again the ageing man of that sober lecture hall, bidding me good night with a casual gesture.

I spent the next two weeks in a passionate frenzy of reading and learning. I scarcely left my room, I ate my meals standing up so as not to waste time, I studied unceasingly, without a break, almost without sleep. I was like that prince in the Oriental fairy tale who, removing seal after seal from the doors of locked chambers, finds more and more jewels and precious stones piled in each room and makes his way with increasing avidity through them all, eager to reach the last. In just the same way I left one book to plunge into another, intoxicated by each of them, never sated by any: my impetuosity had moved on to intellectual concerns. I had a first glimmering of the trackless expanses of the world of the mind, which I found as seductive as the adventure of city life had been, but at the same time I felt a boyish fear that I would not be up to it, so I economized on sleep, on pleasures, on conversation and any form of diversion merely so that I could make full use of my time, which I had never felt so valuable before. But what most inflamed my diligence was vanity, a wish to come up to my teacher’s expectations, not to disappoint his confidence, to win a smile of approval, I wanted him to be conscious of me as I was conscious of him. Every fleeting occasion was a test; I was constantly spurring my clumsy but now curiously inspired mind on to impress and surprise him; if he mentioned an author with whom I was unfamiliar during a lecture, I would go in search of the writer’s works that very afternoon, so that next day I could show off by parading my knowledge in the class discussion. A wish uttered in passing which the others scarcely noticed was transformed in my mind into an order; in this way a casual condemnation of the way students were always smoking was enough for me to throw away my lighted cigarette at once, and give up the habit he deplored immediately and for ever. His words, like an evangelist’s, bestowed grace and were binding on me too; I was always on the qui vive, attentive and intent upon greedily snapping up every chance remark he happened to drop. I seized on every word, every gesture, and when I came home I bent my mind entirely to the passionate recapitulation and memorizing of what I had heard; my impatient ardour felt that he alone was my guide, and all the other students merely enemies whom my aspiring will urged itself daily to outstrip and outperform.
    Either because he sensed how much he meant to me, or because my impetuosity appealed to him, my teacher soon distinguished me by showing his favour publicly. He gave me advice on what to read, although I was a newcomer to the class he brought me to the fore in general debate in an almost unseemly manner, and I was often permitted to visit him for a confidential talk in the evening. On these occasions he would usually take a book down from the shelf and read aloud in his sonorous voice, which always rose an octave and grew more resonant when he was excited. He read from poems and tragedies, or he