Amid the political upheaval, he and Hilda continued their cat-and-mouse romance. She sent him some verses she’d written in which she spoke “stupidities,” as he called them. “What is happening to her,” he wrote in his diary, “is a mixture of calculation to win me over, fictive imagination, and the sense of honor of a free woman affronted by my indifference. I sent her a little animaloid verse:
