Diary of a Meshumad by Israel Zangwill — Read

_Tchemnovosk, Saturday (midnight)._ -- So! The first words have been written. For the first time in my life I have commenced a diary. Will it prove the solace I have heard it is? Shall I find these now cold, blank pages growing more and more familiar, till I shall turn to them as to a sympathetic friend; till this little book shall become that loved and trusted confidant for whom my lonely soul longs? Instead of either Black or White Clergy, this record in black and white shall be my father confessor. Our village pope, to whom I have so often confessed everything but the truth, would be indeed shocked, if he could gossip with this, his new-created brother. What a heap of roubles it would take to tranquillize him! Ah, God! _Ach_, God of Israel! how is it possible that a man who has known the tenderest human ties should be so friendless, so solitary in his closing years, that not even in memory can he commune with a fellow-soul?

Verily, the old curse has wrought itself out, that penalty of apostasy which came to my mind the other day after nearly forty years of forgetfulness, that curse which has filled my spirit with shuddering awe, and driven me to seek daily communion through thee, little book, even with my own self of yesterday -- "_And that soul shall be cut off from among its people._" Yea, and from all others, too! For so many days and years Caterina was my constant companion; I loved her as my own soul. Yet was she but a sun that dazzled my eyes so that I could not gaze upon my own soul; but a veil between me and my dead youth. The sun has sunk forever below the horizon; the veil is rent. No phantom from the other world hovers to remind me of our happiness. Those years, with all their raptures and successes, are a dull blank. It is the years of boyhood and youth which resurge in my consciousness; their tints are vivid, their tones are clear.