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|I returned to Cracow with a heavy burden on my shoulders. My entire family had perished, leaving me the last of the Faust line. And I wished for the end of that line to come soon. But my dear friend kept me occupied from my morbid thoughts long enough to find a goal. I decided to pursue a doctorate in divinity, and then retire to a monastery and become a hermit. He would take my hands in his, and laugh, telling me that surely I would be happier doing something else. But he knew my depression and encouraged me to become a priest, to study the ancient texts and learn the ways in which men worshipped God. But he had always been full of questions, and over the next year, still supplied me with many of these.
He knew that I did not actually believe in God, so obtained for me a collection of books on the subject of mysticism and magic. He managed to purchase them from a band of gypsies that had come through town. He gave me a small black velvet bag, that contained three ancient texts. I examined each one carefully, turning it over before opening the cover. The first was a battered black journal, labelled with strange symbols on the front, and even stranger symbols on the inside. It was a spell book, with herbal formulas and magical recipes filling the handwritten pages. The second was a small plain-looking blue book. It was labelled in German on the inside and was filled with all sorts of songspells and incantations. The third was a very small red book. It had no label but the pages inside were covered in all manner of strange symbols and icons, each carefully labelled in Latin. These books were my first encounter with the occult. And I would wake every day with the sun so that I might read them for an hour before class.
My friend and I grew close in our time at the university, but the time came when we finally had to separate. I loathed losing someone else I loved and begged him to stay, but his father required him in Venice. And I could not join him. We parted with unshed tears in our eyes, never to see each other again, for he was lost at sea in the Mediterranean that year. I was only 25, and had surely lost every important person in my life. I was completely alone.
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