The Wish by Hermann Sudermann — Read

"Forgive me, sister, for invoking from the grave your transfigured shade. In remembrance of the deep love you bore me, of the warmth with which my heart beat for you, suffer it, if I attempt to expiate the guilt that weighs so heavily upon me, and whose yoke I must drag along with me to the end of my days! Let me once more live through all the love and kindness you bestowed upon me, and in the memory thereof forget the horrors of loneliness that, like the breath of your tomb, chill my very bones.

"What a fool, what a wicked creature I was, to feel lonely while you yet dwelt on earth! Your love was the very air that I breathed! Your smile was the sunshine that animated me, your comforting, exhorting words were like the voice of God within us, to which we hearken reverently without understanding. And how did I thank you, sister? I grew a stranger to you -- in sorrow and misery I have to think of you, and the consciousness of guilt appals me when the soughing wind whispers your name in my ear. Between us there stands a wild phantom with flaming eyes -- terrible and distorted, its hair encircled by snakes -- stretching out its claw-like hands towards me, and separating me from you for ever. If it were no phantom, but flesh and blood, if what I committed were a sin, a crime, I would wrestle with it, I would overcome it with the last strength of my failing energy, or allow myself to be strangled in its bloody grip. But it is intangible, it melts away into empty air -- a spectre that mocks me, a mist that clouds my reason, and by its poison is slowly destroying me. A wish!