Hadda Padda monologue (Act 3) — Hadda Pada

Now you think too highly of both of us. I am not so good as you would make me, and it is not so difficult to forget you as you imagine.--You won't believe that I have succeeded in forgetting you. Won't you believe, either, that I have made every effort to do it? The day before yesterday I locked myself in my room, and took out your letters to see whether I could bear to read them. I wanted to test myself,--you know I like to get to the very heart of things. Well, I read letter after letter. It is a remarkable power that is given to a trivial matter. If I had not read the letters, I might still have felt unhappy, but I read and read with ever increasing calmness. I don't believe my feelings. I go walking, searching for all the places where the earth must be scorched with burning pleasures, in order to know whether they enkindle memories so sacred that they can again inflame me. Everything, everything, is extinguished. What is the matter, little Hadda? Does everything leave you cold? Is this death perhaps? And a mixed feeling of joy and pain seizes me, for this came so unexpected--it came so unexpected--it came so unexpected--