My disgust, my profound horror and dejection at this simple increase of
knowledge which, as every new acquisition of knowledge, should have
delighted and edified me - Yes! for that there was no room in his
explanation, as little as for his own embarrassment while imparting it.
And therefore, without any sentimentality, these toes must be lopped
off so that the boot would fit.

Reader, do not imagine that I demand of you deep regard and veneration
for the great foolish boy who lay helplessly weeping because of that
strange difference between men and flowers that with the former carries
so much discord into their most important vital function.

I myself now softly laugh at my self of fifty years ago, not
scornfully, but with gentle irony - sympathetically. I pat the boy on
the shoulder and admonish him kindly: "Quiet, laddie, be not so
dismayed. We are a strange mingling of ape and angel. But try, as
quickly as possible, to reconcile yourself to this, then everything
becomes quite bearable. Do you think this same thing would have caused
like consternation to Emmy Tenders, if the knowledge but came to her in
the right way, that is to say the way of reverent love, and deep
devotion? She is indeed wiser. And had you learned it as a poet and
lover and not as a philistine then you too would not have found it so
appalling."

But all this, dear reader, does not alter the mysterious and
distressing truth, and one cannot make disharmony bearable by denying
it. So much is certain that my father's assertion, declaring my horror
wholly unreasonable, affected me like an attempt at lopping off my toes
to make the boot fit. I resisted passionately, maintaining an