Beware of Pity

by Stefan Zweig

I realized why my visits, my presence, were so welcome to Edith’s father and Ilona, to the whole household. Long protracted suffering is apt to exhaust not only the invalid, but the compassion of others; violent emotions cannot be prolonged endlessly. Edith’s father and Ilona certainly shared to the full the sufferings of the poor impatient invalid, but by now their capacity for suffering was to some extent spent, they had become resigned to it. They regarded the invalid as an invalid, her lameness as a fact; they now waited with downcast eyes until the brief nerve-storms had played themselves out. But they were no longer appalled as I was appalled each time afresh, and because I was the only one to whom her suffering was a continually fresh source of consternation, I came to be the only one in whose presence she was ashamed of her lack of control. I had only to say, when she lost her self-control, ‘My dear Fraulein Edith!’ and the grey eyes would be lowered obediently. She would blush, and one could tell that she would have liked to run away from herself; but her crippled legs fettered her to her chair.