But when I was devoting myself to the creation of my Nitetis, I envied no man, scarcely even a god.
So this novel approached completion.

It had not deprived me of an hour of actual working time, yet the doubt whether I had done right to venture on this side flight into fairer and better lands during my journey through the department of serious study was rarely silent.
At the beginning of the third volume I ventured to move more freely.
Yet when I went to Lepsius, the most earnest of my teachers, to show him the finished manuscript, I felt very anxious.

I had not said even a word in allusion to what I was doing in the evening hours, and the three volumes of my large manuscript were received by him in a way that warranted the worst fears.

He even asked how I, whom he had believed to be a serious worker, had been tempted into such "side issues." This was easy to explain, and when he had heard me to the end he said: "I might have thought of that.

You sometimes need a cup of Lethe water.
But now let such things alone, and don't compromise your reputation as a scientist by such extravagances." Yet he kept the manuscript and promised to look at the curiosity.
He did more.