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the wound had extremely serious
consequences.[Ed.]]
Days later, our armies entered Bohemia;
when the sirens announced the news, I was in
that sedentary hospital, trying to lose myself,
forget myself, in the books of Schopenhauer. On
the windowsill slept a massive, obese cat—the
symbol of my vain destiny.
In the first volume of Parergaund
Paralipomena, I read once more that all things
that can occur to a man, from the moment of
his birth to the moment of his death, have been
predetermined by him. Thus, all inadvertence is
deliberate, every casual encounter is an
engagement made beforehand, every
humiliation is an act of penitence, every failure
a mysterious victory, every death a suicide.
There is no more cunning consolation than the
thought that we have chosen our own
misfortunes; that individual theology reveals a
secret order, and in a marvelous way confuses
ourselves with the deity. What unknown
purpose (I thought) had made me seek out that
evening, those bullets, this mutilation? Not the