I want to confess from the very beginning, and plainly, that never did I think of love in those first months spent in Maitreyi’s company. What tempted me more was her being, what was sealed and fascinating in her life. If I often thought of Maitreyi, if in my journal from those days there are recorded a number of her words and incidents, if, above all, she troubled and unsettled me, it was due to the strangeness and mystery in her eyes, in her answers, in her laughter. It is true that I felt drawn to this girl. I do not know what charm and what call even her footsteps held for me. But I would be lying if I did not say that my entire life in Bhowanipore—not just the girl—seemed miraculous and unreal to me. I had entered so quickly and without reserve into a house where everything seemed to me incomprehensible and dubious, that sometimes I would wake from this Indian dream, my thoughts returning to my own life, to our life, and I would feel like smiling. Something had changed, certainly. Almost nothing from my old world interested me anymore; I saw no one except the guests of the Sen family, and I had even begun to change my reading habits. Gradually, my interest in mathematical physics waned, I began to read novels and politics, then more and more history. But something else happened. One day, Maitreyi asked me if…

I wanted to learn Bengali; she would give me lessons. I had already bought, in the very first week, a simple manual for Bengali conversation, from which I read in secret, struggling to grasp the meaning of those words Maitreyi would shout when she was called or when she was upset. Thus, I learned that giacè means “I’m coming now”; and ki vishan!—which I heard in every conversation—a kind of exclamation and wonder, something like “how extraordinary!” My manual didn’t teach me much, and when Maitreyi suggested we take lessons together, I accepted. In exchange, I was to give her French lessons.

That very day, immediately after lunch, we sat down to work in my room. At first, I was shy about having the lessons in my room and suggested the library, but the engineer advised me to stay in my own quarters, where it was quieter. (The visible efforts Sen made to befriend me with Maitreyi, and the excessive tolerance of Mrs. Sen, embarrassed me more and more, made me suspicious, even malicious. Sometimes I even wondered if they hadn’t set their minds on marrying me to their daughter, although, logically, such a thing was impossible, and they would all have lost their caste and name if they had allowed such a marriage.)

We both sat at the table, I quite far from her, and Maitreyi began her lessons. I understood at once that I would only be able to learn Bengali on my own. She explained everything so beautifully and looked at me from