LITTLE HERR FRIEDEMANN (1897)
DISILLUSIONMENT (1896)
THE DILETTANTE (1897)
TOBIAS MINDERNICKEL (1897)
LITTLE LIZZY (1897)
THE WARDROBE (1899)
THE WAY TO THE CHURCHYARD (190I)
TONIO KROGER (1903)
TRISTAN (1902)
THE HUNGRY (1902)
THE INFANT PRODIGY (1903)
Gladius Dei (1902)
FIORENZA (1904)
A GLEAM (1904)
AT THE PROPHET'S (1904)
A WEARY HOUR (1905)
THE BLOOD OF THE WALSUNGS (1905)
RAILWAY ACCIDENT (1907)
THE FIGHT BETWEEN JAPPE AND DO ESCOBAR (1911)
FELIX KRULL (1911)
DEATH IN VENICE (1911)
A MAN AND HIS DOG (1918)
DISORDER AND EARLY SORROW (1925)
MARIO AND THE MAGICIAN (1929)




LITTLE HERR FRIEDEMANN



It was the nurse's fault. When they first suspected, Frau Consul
Friedemann had spoken to her very gravely about the need of
controlling her weakness. But what good did that do? Or the
glass of red wine which she got daily besides the beer which was
needed for the milk? For they suddenly discovered that she even
sank so low as to drink the methylated spirit which was kept for
the spirit lamp. Before they could send her away and get someone
to take her place, the mischief was done. One day the mother and
sisters came home to find that little Johannes, then about a month
old, had fallen from the couch and lay on the floor, uttering an
appallingly faint little cry, while the nurse stood beside him quite
stupefied.

The doctor came and with firm, gentle hands tested the little
creature's contracted and twitching limbs. He made a very serious
face. The three girls stood sobbing in a corner and the Frau Con-
sul in the anguish of her heart prayed aloud.

The poor mother, just before the child's birth, had already suf-
fered a crushing blow: her husband, the Dutch Consul, had been
snatched away from her by sudden and violent illness, and now
she was too broken to cherish any hope that little Johannes would
be spared to her. But by the second day the doctor had given
her hand an encouraging squeeze and told her that all immediate
danger was over. There was no longer any sign that the brain was
affected. The facial expression was altered, it had lost the fixed and
staring look....Of course, they must see how things went on--and
hope for the best, hope for the best.


The grey gabled house in which Johannes Friedemann grew
up stood by the north gate of the little old commercial city. The
front door led into a large flag-paved entry, out of which a stair
with a white wooden balustrade led up into the second storey.
The faded wall-paper in the living-room had a landscape pattern,
and straight-backed chairs and sofas in dark-red plush stood round
the heavy mahogany table.

Often in his childhood Johannes sat here at the window, which
always had a fine showing of flowers, on a small footstool at his
mother's feet, listening to some fairy-tale she told him, gazing at
her smooth grey head, her mild and gentle face, and breathing in
the faint scent she exhaled. She showed him the picture of his
father, a kindly man with grey side- whiskers--he was now in
heaven, she said, and awaiting them there.

Behind the house was a small garden where in summer they
spent much of their time, despite the smell of burnt sugar which
came over from the refinery close by. There was a gnarled old
walnut tree in whose shade little Johannes would sit, on a low
wooden stool, cracking walnuts, while Frau Friedemann and her
three daughters, now grown women, took refuge from the sun
under a grey canvas tent. The mother's gaze often strayed from
her embroidery to look with sad and loving eyes at her child.

He was not beautiful, little Johannes, as he crouched on his
stool industriously cracking his nuts. In fact, he was a strange sight,
with his pigeon breast, humped back, and disproportionately long
arms. But his hands and feet were delicately formed, he had soft
red-brown eyes like a doe's, a sensitive mouth, and fine, light-
brown hair. His head, had it not sat so deep between his shoulders,
might almost have been called pretty.


When he was seven he went to school, where time passed
swiftly and uniformly. He walked every day, with the strut de-
formed people often have, past the quaint gabled houses and shops
to the old schoolhouse with the vaulted arcades. When he had
done his preparation he would read in his books with the lovely
title-page illustrations in colour, or else work in the garden, while
his sisters kept house for their invalid mother. They went out too,
for they belonged to the best society of the town; but unfortu-
nately they had not married, for they had not much money nor
any looks to recommend them.

Johannes too was now and then invited out by his schoolmates,
but it is not likely that he enjoyed it. He could not take part in
their games, and they were always embarrassed in his company,
so there was no feeling of good fellowship.

There came a time when he began to hear certain matters talked
about, in the courtyard at school. He listened wide-eyed and
large-eared, quite silent, to his companions' raving over this or that
little girl. Such things, though they entirely engrossed the atten-
tion of these others, were not, he felt, for him; they belonged in
the same category as the ball games and gymnastics. At times he
felt a little sad. But at length he had become quite used to stand-
ing on one side and not taking part.

But after all it came about--when he was sixteen--that he felt
suddenly drawn to a girl of his own age. She was the sister of a
classmate of his, a blonde, hilarious hoyden, and he met her when
calling at her brother's house. He felt strangely embarrassed in
her neighbourhood; she too was embarrassed and treated him
with such artificial cordiality that it made him sad.

One summer afternoon as he was walking by himself on the
wall outside the town, he heard a whispering behind a jasmine
bush and peeped cautiously through the branches. There she sat
on a bench beside a long-legged, red-haired youth of his acquaint-
ance. They had their arms about each other and he was imprinting
on her lips a kiss, which she returned amid giggles. Johannes
looked, turned round, and went softly away.

His head was sunk deeper than ever between his shoulders, his
hands trembled, and a sharp pain shot upwards from his chest to
his throat. But he choked it down, straightening himself as well
as he could. "Good," said he to himself. "That is over. Never
again will I let myself in for any of it. To the others it brings joy
and happiness, for me it can only mean sadness and pain. I am
done with it. For me that is all over. Never again."

The resolution did him good. He had renounced, renounced
forever. He went home, took up a book, or else played on his
violin, which despite his deformed chest he had learned to do.

At seventeen Johannes left school to go into business, like every-
body else he knew. He was apprenticed to the big lumber firm
of Herr Schlievogt down on the river-bank. They were kind and
considerate, he on his side was responsive and friendly, time
passed with peaceful regularity. But in his twenty-first year his
mother died, after a lingering illness.

This was a sore blow for Johannes Friedemann, and the pain of
it endured. He cherished this grief, he gave himself up to it as one
gives oneself to a great joy, he fed it with a thousand childhood
memories; it was the first important event in his life and he made
the most of it.

Is not life in and for itself a good, regardless of whether we may
call its content "happiness"? Johannes Friedemann felt that it
was so, and he loved life. He, who had renounced the greatest joy
it can bring us, taught himself with infinite, incredible care to take
pleasure in what it had still to offer. A walk in the springtime in
the parks surrounding the town; the fragrance of a flower; the
song of a bird--might not one feel grateful for such things as
these?

And that we need to be taught how to enjoy, yes, that our
education is always and only equal to our capacity for enjoyment
--he knew that too, and he trained himself. Music he loved, and
attended all the concerts that were given in the town. He came
to play the violin not so badly himself, no matter what a figure of
fun he made when he did it; and took delight in every beautiful
soft tone he succeeded in producing. Also, by much reading he
came in time to possess a literary taste the like of which did not
exist in the place. He kept up with the new books, even the for-
eign ones; he knew how to savour the seductive rhythm of a
lyric or the ultimate flavour of a subtly told tale--yes, one might
almost call him a connoisseur.

He learned to understand that to everything belongs its own
enjoyment and that it is absurd to distinguish between an experi-
ence which is "happy" and one which is not. With a right good
will he accepted each emotion as it came, each mood, whether sad
or gay. Even he cherished the unfulfilled desires, the longings. He
loved them for their own sakes and told himself that with fulfil-
ment the best of them would be past. The vague, sweet, painful
yearning and hope of quiet spring evenings--are they not richer
in joy than all the fruition the summer can bring? Yes, he was a
connoisseur, our little Herr Friedemann.

But of course they did not know that, the people whom he met
on the street, who bowed to him with the kindly, compassionate
air he knew so well. They could not know that this unhappy
cripple, strutting comically along in his light overcoat and shiny
top hat--strange to say, he was a little vain--they could not
know how tenderly he loved the mild flow of his life, charged
with no great emotions, it is true, but full of a quiet and tranquil
happiness which was his own creation.


But Herr Friedemann's great preference, his real passion, was
for the theatre. He possessed a dramatic sense which was unusually
strong; at a telling theatrical effect or the catastrophe of a tragedy
his whole small frame would shake with emotion. He had his
regular seat in the first row of boxes at the opera-house; was an
assiduous frequenter and often took his sisters with him. Since
their mother's death they kept house for their brother in the old
home which they all owned together.

It was a pity they were unmarried still; but with the decline of
hope had come resignation--Friederike, the eldest, was seventeen
years further on than Herr Friedemann. She and her sister Henri-
ette were over-tall and thin, whereas Pfiffi, the youngest, was too
short and stout. She had a funny way, too, of shaking herself as
she talked, and water came in the corners of her mouth.

Little Herr Friedemann did not trouble himself overmuch about
his three sisters. But they stuck together loyally and were always
of one mind. Whenever an engagement was announced in their
circle they with one voice said how very gratifying that was.

Their brother continued to live with them even after he be-
came independent, as he did by leaving Herr Schlievogt's firm and
going into business for himself, in an agency of sorts, which was
no great tax on his time. His offices were in a couple of rooms on
the ground floor of the house so that at mealtimes he had but the
pair of stairs to mount--for he suffered now and then from
asthma.

His thirtieth birthday fell on a fine warm June day, and after
dinner he sat out in the grey canvas tent, with a new head-rest
embroidered by Henriette. He had a good cigar in his mouth and
a good book in his hand. But sometimes he would put the latter
down to listen to the sparrows chirping blithely in the old nut tree
and look at the clean gravel path leading up to the house between
lawns bright with summer flowers.

Little Herr Friedemann wore no beard, and his face had scarcely
changed at all, save that the features were slightly sharper. He
wore his fine light-brown hair parted on one side.

Once, as he let the book fall on his knee and looked up into the
sunny blue sky, he said to himself: "Well, so that is thirty years.
Perhaps there may be ten or even twenty more, God knows. They
will mount up without a sound or a stir and pass by like those that
are gone; and I look forward to them with peace in my heart."


Now, it happened in July of the same year that a new appoint-
ment to the office of District Commandant had set the whole town
talking. The stout and jolly gentleman who had for many years
occupied the post had been very popular in social circles and they
saw him go with great regret. It was in compliance with goodness
knows what regulations that Herr von Rinnlingen and no other
was sent hither from the capital.

In any case the exchange was not such a bad one. The new
Commandant was married but childless. He rented a spacious villa
in the southern suburbs of the city and seemed to intend to set up
an establishment. There was a report that he was very rich--
which received confirmation in the fact that he brought with
him four servants, five riding and carriage horses, a landau and a
light hunting-cart.

Soon after their arrival the husband and wife left cards on
all the best society, and their names were on every tongue. But
it was not Herr von Rinnlingen, it was his wife who was the
centre of interest. All the men were dazed, for the moment too
dazed to pass judgment; but their wives were quite prompt and
definite in the view that Gerda von Rinnlingen was not their sort.

"Of course, she comes from the metropolis, her ways would
naturally be different," Frau Hagenstrom, the lawyer's wife, said,
in conversation with Henriette Friedemann. "She smokes, and she
rides. That is of course. But it is her manners--they are not only
free, they are positively brusque, or even worse. You see, no one
could call her ugly, one might even say she is pretty; but she has
not a trace of feminine charm in her looks or gestures or her laugh
--they completely lack everything that makes a man fall in love
with a woman. She is not a flirt--and goodness knows I would be
the last to disparage her for that. But it is strange to see so young
a woman--she is only twenty-four--so entirely wanting in natu-
ral charm. I am not expressing myself very well, my dear, but
I know what I mean. All the men are simply bewildered. In a few
weeks, you will see, they will be disgusted."

"Well," Fraulein Friedemann said, "she certainly has every-
thing she wants."

"Yes," cried Frau Hagenstrom, "look at her husband! And
how does she treat him? You ought to see it--you will see it!
I would be the first to approve of a married woman behaving with
a certain reserve towards the other sex. But how does she behave
to her own husband? She has a way of fixing him with an ice-cold
stare and saying 'My dear friend!' with a pitying expression that
drives me mad. For when you look at him--upright, correct, gal-
lant, a brilliant officer and a splendidly preserved man of forty!
They have been married four years, my dear."


Herr Friedemann was first vouchsafed a glimpse of Frau von
Rinnlingen in the main street of the town, among all the rows of
shops, at midday, when he was coming from the Bourse, where he
had done a little bidding.

He was strolling along beside Herr Stephens, looking tiny and
important, as usual. Herr Stephens was in the wholesale trade, a
huge stocky man with round side-whiskers and bushy eyebrows.
Both of them wore top hats; their overcoats were unbuttoned on
account of the heat. They tapped their canes along the pavement
and talked of the political situation; but half-way down the street
Stephens suddenly said:

"Deuce take it if there isn't the Rinnlingen driving along."

"Good," answered Herr Friedemann in his high, rather sharp
voice, looking expectantly ahead. "Because I have never yet set
eyes on her. And here we have the yellow cart we hear so much
about."

It was in fact the hunting-cart which Frau von Rinnlingen was
herself driving today with a pair of thoroughbreds; a groom sat
behind her, with folded arms. She wore a loose beige coat and
skirt and a small round straw hat with a brown leather band, be-
neath which her well-waved red-blond hair, a good, thick crop,
was drawn into a knot at the nape of her neck. Her face was oval,
with a dead-white skin and faint bluish shadows lurking under
the close-set eyes. Her nose was short but well-shaped, with a
becoming little saddle of freckles; whether her mouth was as
good or no could not be told, for she kept it in continual motion,
sucking the lower and biting the upper lip.

Herr Stephens, as the cart came abreast of them, greeted her
with a great show of deference; little Herr Friedemann lifted his
hat too and looked at her with wide-eyed attention. She lowered
her whip, nodded slightly, and drove slowly past, looking at the
houses and shop-windows.

After a few paces Herr Stephens said:

"She has been taking a drive and was on her way home."

Little Herr Friedemann made no answer, but stared before him
at the pavement. Presently he started, looked at his companion,
and asked: "What did you say?"

And Herr Stephens repeated his acute remark.

Three days after that Johannes Friedemann came home at mid-
day from his usual walk. Dinner was at half past twelve, and he
would spend the interval in his office at the right of the entrance
door. But the maid came across the entry and told him that there
were visitors.

"In my office?" he asked.

"No, upstairs with the mistresses."

"Who are they?"

Herr and Frau Colonel von Rinnlingen."

"Ah," said Johannes Friedemann. "Then I will--"

And he mounted the stairs. He crossed the lobby and laid his
hand on the knob of the high white door leading into the "land-
scape room." And then he drew back, turned round, and slowly
returned as he had come. And spoke to himself, for there was no
one else there, and said: "No, better not."

He went into his office, sat down at his desk, and took up the
paper. But after a little he dropped it again and sat looking to one
side out of the window. Thus he sat until the maid came to say
that luncheon was ready; then he went up into the dining-room
where his sisters were already waiting, and sat down in his chair,
in which there were three music-books.

As she ladled the soup Henriette said:

"Johannes, do you know who were here?"

"Well?" he asked.

"The new Commandant and his wife."

"Indeed? That was friendly of them."

"Yes," said Pfiffi, a little water coming in the corners of her
mouth. "I found them both very agreeable."

"And we must lose no time in returning the call," said Frie-
derike. "I suggest that we go next Sunday, the day after to-
morrow."

"Sunday," Henriette and Pfiffi said.

"You will go with us, Johannes?" asked Friederike.

"Of course he will," said Pfiffi, and gave herself a little shake.
Herr Friedemann had not heard her at all; he was eating his soup,
with a hushed and troubled air. It was as though he were listening
to some strange noise he heard.

Next evening Lohengrin was being given at the opera, and
everybody in society was present. The small auditorium was
crowded, humming with voices and smelling of gas and perfum-
ery. And every eye-glass in the stalls was directed towards box
thirteen, next to the stage; for this was the first appearance of
Herr and Frau von Rinnlingen and one could give them a good
looking-over.

When little Herr Friedemann, in flawless dress clothes and
glistening white pigeon-breasted shirt-front, entered his box,
which was number thirteen, he started back at the door, making
a gesture with his hand towards his brow. His nostrils dilated
feverishly. Then he took his seat, which was next to Frau von
Rinnlingen's.

She contemplated him for a little while, with her under lip
stuck out; then .she turned to exchange a few words with her
husband, a tall, broad-shouldered gentleman with a brown, good-
natured face and turned-up moustaches.

When the overture began and Frau von Rinnlingen leaned over
the balustrade Herr Friedemann gave her a quick, searching side
glance. She wore a light-coloured evening frock, the only one in
the theatre which was slightly low in the neck. Her sleeves were
full and her white gloves came up to her elbows. Her figure was
statelier than it had looked under the loose coat; her full bosom
slowly rose and fell and the knot of red-blond hair hung low and
heavy at the nape of her neck.

Herr Friedemann was pale, much paler than usual, and little
beads of perspiration stood on his brow beneath the smoothly
parted brown hair. He could see Frau von Rinnlingen's left arm,
which lay upon the balustrade. She had taken off her glove and
the rounded, dead-white arm and ringless hand, both of them shot
with pale blue veins, were directly under his eye--he could not
help seeing them.

The fiddles sang, the trombones crashed, Telramund was slain,
general jubilation reigned in the orchestra, and little Herr Friede-
mann sat there motionless and pallid, his head drawn in between
his shoulders, his forefinger to his lips and one hand thrust into
the opening of his waistcoat.

As the curtain fell, Frau von Rinnlingen got up to leave the
box with her husband. Johannes Friedemann saw her without
looking, wiped his handkerchief across his brow, then rose sud-
denly and went as far as the door into the foyer, where he turned,
came back to his chair, and sat down in the same posture as
before.

When the bell rang and his neighbours re-entered the box he
felt Frau von Rinnlingen's eyes upon him, so that finally against
his will he raised his head. As their eyes met, hers did not swerve
aside; she continued to gaze without embarrassment until he him-
self, deeply humiliated, was forced to look away. He turned a
shade paler and felt a strange, sweet pang of anger and scorn. The
music began again.

Towards the end of the act Frau von Rinnlingen chanced to
drop her fan; it fell at Herr Friedemann's feet. They both stooped
at the same time, but she reached it first and gave a little mocking
smile as she said: "Thank you."

Their heads were quite close together and just for a second he
got the warm scent of her breast. His face was drawn, his whole
body twitched, and his heart thumped so horribly that he lost his
breath. He sat without moving for half a minute, then he pushed
back his chair, got up quietly, and went out.

He crossed the lobby, pursued by the music; got his top hat
from the cloak-room, his light overcoat and his stick, went down
the stairs and out of doors.

It was a warm, still evening. In the gas-lit street the gabled
houses towered towards a sky where stars were softly beaming.
The pavement echoed the steps of a few passers-by. Someone
spoke to him, but he heard and saw nothing; his head was bowed
and his deformed chest shook with the violence of his breathing.
Now and then he murmured to himself:

"My God, my God!"

He was gazing horror-struck within himself, beholding the
havoc which had been wrought with his tenderly cherished,
scrupulously managed feelings. Suddenly he was quite overpow-
ered by the strength of his tortured longing. Giddy and drunken
he leaned against a lamp-post and his quivering lips uttered the
one word: "Gerda!"

The stillness was complete. Far and wide not a soul was to be
seen. Little Herr Friedemann pulled himself together and went on,
up the street in which the opera-house stood and which ran steeply
down to the river, then along the main street northwards to his
home.

How she had looked at him! She had forced him, actually, to
cast down his eyes! She had humiliated him with her glance. But
was she not a woman and he a man? And those strange brown eyes
of hers--had they not positively glittered with unholy joy?

Again he felt the same surge of sensual, impotent hatred mount
up in him; then he relived the moment when her head had
touched his, when he had breathed in the fragrance of her body
--and for the second time he halted, bent his deformed torso back-
wards, drew in the air through clenched teeth, and murmured
helplessly, desperately, uncontrollably:

"My God, my God!"

Then went on again, slowly, mechanically, through the heavy
evening air, through the empty echoing streets until he stood be-
fore his own house. He paused a minute in the entry, breathing
the cool, dank inside air; then he went into his office.

He sat down at his desk by the open window and stared straight
ahead of him at a large yellow rose which somebody had set there
in a glass of water. He took it up and smelt it with his eyes closed,
then put it down with a gesture of weary sadness. No, no. That
was all over. What was even that fragrance to him now? What
any of all those things that up to now had been the well-springs
of his joy?

He turned away and gazed into the quiet street. At intervals
steps passed and the sound died away. The stars stood still and
glittered. He felt so weak, so utterly tired to death. His head was
quite vacant, and suddenly his despair began to melt into a gentle,
pervading melancholy. A few lines of a poem flickered through
his head, he heard the Lohengrin music in his ears, he saw Frau
von Rinnlingen's face and her round white arm on the red velvet
--then he fell into a heavy fever-burdened sleep.


Often he was near waking, but feared to do so and managed to
sink back into forgetfulness again. But when it had grown quite
light, he opened his eyes and looked round him with a wide and
painful gaze. He remembered everything, it was as though the
anguish had never been intermitted by sleep.

His head was heavy and his eyes burned. But when he had
washed up and bathed his head with cologne he felt better and
sat down in his place bv the still open window. It was early, per-
haps only five o'clock. Now and then a baker's boy passed; other-
wise there was no one to be seen. In the opposite house the blinds
were down. But birds were twittering and the skv was luminously
blue. A wonderfully beautiful Sunday morning.

A feeling of comfort and confidence came over little Herr
Friedemann. Why had he been distressing himself? Was not
everything just as it had been? The attack of yesterday had been
a bad one. Granted. But it should be the last. It was not too late,
he could still escape destruction. He must avoid every occasion of
a fresh seizure; he felt sure he could do this. He felt the strength
to conquer and suppress his weakness.

It struck half past seven and Friederike came in with the coffee,
setting it on the round table in front of the leather sofa against the
the rear wall.

"Good morning, Johannes," said she;" here is your breakfast."

"Thank.s," said little Herr Friedemann. And then: "Dear Frie-
derike, I am sorry, but you will have to pay your call without
me, I do not feel well enough to go. I have slept badly and have
a headache--in short, I must ask you--"

"What a pity!" answered Friederike, "You must go another
time. But you do look ill. Shall I lend you my menthol pencil?"

"Thanks," said Herr Friedemann. "It will pass." And Friederike
went out.

Standing at the table he slowly drank his coffee and ate a crois-
sant. He felt satisfied with himself and proud of his firmness.
When he had finished he sat down again by the open window.
with a cigar. The food had done him good and he felt happy and
hopeful. He took a book and sat reading and smoking and blinking
into the sunlight.

Morning had fully come, wagons rattled past, there were many
voices and the sound of the bells on passing trams. With and
among it all was woven the twittering and chirping; there was a
radiant blue sky, a soft mild air.

At ten o'clock he heard his sisters cross the entry; the front
door creaked, and he idly noticed that they passed his window.
An hour went by. He felt more and more happy.

A sort of hubris mounted in him. What a heavenly air--and
how the birds were singing! He felt like taking a little walk. Then
suddenly, without any transition, yet accompanied by a terror
namelessly sweet came the thought: "Suppose I were to go to
her!" And suppressing, as though by actual muscular effort, every
warning voice within him, he added with blissful resolution: "I
will go to her!"

He changed into his Sunday clothes, took his top hat and his
stick, and hurried with quickened breath through the town and
into the southern suburbs. Without looking at a soul he kept
raising and dropping his head with each eager step, completely
rapt in his exalted state until he arrived at the avenue of chestnut
trees and the red brick villa with the name of Commandant von
Rinnlingen on the gate-post.


But here he was seized by a tremor, his heart throbbed and
pounded in his breast. He went across the vestibule and rang at
the inside door. The die was cast, there was no retreating now.
"Come what come may," thought he, and felt the stillness of
death within him.

The door suddenly opened and the maid came towards him
across the vestibule; she took his card and hurried away up the
red-carpeted stair. Herr Friedemann gazed fixedly at the bright
colour until she came back and said that her mistress would like
him to come up.

He put down his stick beside the door leading into the salon
and stole a look at himself in the glass. His face was pale, the eyes
red, his hair was sticking to his brow, the hand that held his top
hat kept on shaking.

The maid opened the door and he went in. He found himself
in a rather large, half-darkened room, with drawn curtains. At
his right was a piano, and about the round table in the centre stood
several arm-chairs covered in bro wn silk. The sofa stood along the
left-hand wall, with a landscape painting in a heavy gilt frame
hanging above it. The wall-paper too was dark in tone. There
was an alcove filled with potted palms.

A minute passed, then Frau von Rinnlingen opened the por-
tieres on the right and approached him noiselessly over the thick
brown carpet. She wore a simply cut frock of red and black plaid.
A ray of light, with motes dancing in it, streamed from the alcove
and fell upon her heavy red hair so that it shone like gold. She
kept her strange eyes fixed upon him with a searching gaze and
as usual stuck out her under lip.

"Good morning, Frau Commandant," began little Herr Friedemann,
and looked up at her, for he came only as high as her chest.
"I wished to pay you my respects too. When my sisters did so I
was unfortunately out...I regretted sincerely..."

He had no idea at all what else he should say; and there she
stood and gazed ruthlessly at him as though she would force him
to go on. The blood rushed to his head. "She sees through me,"
he thought, "she will torture and despise me. Her eyes keep
flickering....."

But at last she said, in a very high, clear voice:

"It is kind of you to have come. I have also been sorry not to
see you before. Will you please sit down?"

She took her seat close beside him, leaned back, and put her arm
along the arm of the chair. He sat bent over, holding his hat
between his knees. She went on:

"Did you know that your sisters were here a quarter of an hour
ago? They told me you were ill."

"Yes," he answered, "I did not feel well enough to go out, I
thought I should not be able to. That is why I am late."

"You do not look very well even now," said she tranquilly, not
shifting her gaze. "You are pale and your eyes are inflamed. You
are not very strong, perhaps?"

"Oh;" said Herr Friedemann, stammering, "I've not much to
complain of, as a rule."

"I am ailing a good deal too," she went on, still not turning her
eyes from him, "but nobody notices it. I am nervous, and some-
times I have the strangest feelings."

She paused, lowered her chin to her breast, and looked up ex-
pectantly at him. He made no reply, simply sat with his dreamy
gaze directed upon her. How strangely she spoke, and how her
clear and thrilling voice affected him! His heart beat more quietly
and he felt as though he were in a dream. She began again:

"I am not wrong in thinking that you left the opera last night
before it was over?"

"Yes, madam."

"I was sorry to see that. You listened like a music-lover--
though the performance was only tolerable. You are fond of
music, I am sure. Do you play the piano?"

"I play the violin, a little," said Herr Friedemann. "That is,
really not very much--"

"You play the violin?" she asked, and looked past him con-
sideringly. "But we might play together," she suddenly said. "I
can accompany a little. It would be a pleasure to find somebody
here--would you come?"

"I am quite at your service--with pleasure," said he, stiffly.
He was still as though in a dream. A pause ensued. Then suddenly
her expression changed. He saw it alter for one of cruel, though
hardly perceptible mockery, and again she fixed him with that
same searching, uncannily flickering gaze. His face burned, he
knew not where to turn; drawing his head down between his
shoulders he stared confusedly at the carpet, while there shot
through him once more that strangely sweet and torturing sense
of impotent rage.

He made a desperate effort and raised his eyes. She was looking
over his head at the door. With the utmost difficulty he fetched
out a few words:

"And you are so far not too dissatisfied with your stay in our
city?"

"Oh, no," said Frau Rinnlingen indifferently. "No, certainly
not; why should I not be satisfied? To be sure, I feel a little
hampered, as though everybody's eyes were upon me, but--oh,
before I forget it," she went on quickly, "we are entertaining a
few people next week, a small, informal company. A little music,
perhaps, and conversation. ...There is a charming garden at the
back, it runs dowm to the river. You and your sisters will be
receiving an invitation in due course, but perhaps I may ask you
now to give us the pleasure of your company?"

Herr Friedemann was just expressing his gratitude for the invi-
tation when the door-knob was seized energetically from without
and the Commandant entered. They both rose and Frau von
Rinnlingen introduced the two men to each other. Her husband
bowed to them both with equal courtesy. His bronze face glis-
tened with the heat.

He drew off his gloves, addressing Herr Friedemann in a power-
ful, rather sharp-edged voice. The latter looked up at him with
large vacant eyes and had the feeling that he would presently be
clapped benevolently on the shoulder. Heels together, inclining
from the waist, the Commandant turned to his wife and asked,
in a much gentler tone:

"Have you asked Herr Friedemann if he will give us the pleasure
of his company at our little party, my love? If you are willing I
should like to fix the date for next week and I hope that the
weather will remain fine so that we can enjoy ourselves in the
garden."

"Just as you say," answered Frau von Rinnlingen, and gazed
past him.

Two minutes later Herr Friedemann got up to go. At the door
he turned and bowed to her once more, meeting her expression-
less gaze still fixed upon him.


He went away, but he did not go back to the town; uncon-
sciously he struck into a path that led away from the avenue
towards the old ruined fort by the river, among well-kept lawns
and shady avenues with benches.

He walked quickly and absently, with bent head. He felt in-
tolerably hot, as though aware of flames leaping and sinking
within him, and his head throbbed with fatigue.

It was as though her gaze still rested on him--not vacantly as
it had at the end, but with that flickering cruelty which went with
the strange still way she spoke. Did it give her pleasure to put him
beside himself, to see him helpless? Looking through and through
him like that, could she not feel a little pity?

He had gone along the river-bank under the moss-grown wall;
he sat down on a bench within a half-circle of blossoming jasmine.
The sweet, heavy scent was all about him, the sun brooded upon
the dimpling water.

He was weary, he was worn out; and yet within him all was
tumult and anguish. Were it not better to take one last look and
then to go down into that quiet water; after a brief struggle to be
free and safe and at peace? Ah, peace, peace--that was what he
wanted! Not peace in an empty and soundless void, but a gentle,
sunlit peace, full of good, of tranquil thoughts.

All his tender love of life thrilled through him in that moment,
all his profound yearning for his vanished "happiness." But then
he looked about him into the silent, endlessly indifferent peace of
nature, saw how the river went its own way in the sun, how the
grasses quivered and the flowers stood up where they blossomed,
only to fade and be blown away, saw how all that was bent sub-
missively to the will of life; and there came over him all at once
that sense of acquaintance and understanding with the inevitable
which can make those who know it superior to the blows of fate.

He remembered the afternoon of his thirtieth birthday and the
peaceful happiness with which he, untroubled by fears or hopes,
had looked forward to what was left of his life. He had seen no
light and no shadow there, only a mild twilight radiance gently
declining into the dark. With what a calm and superior smile had
he contemplated the years still to come--how long ago was that?

Then this woman had come, she had to come, it was his fate
that she should, for she herself was his fate and she alone. He had
known it from the first moment. She had come--and though he
had tried his best to defend his peace, her coming had roused in
him all those forces which from his youth up he had sought to
suppress, feeling, as he did, that they spelled torture and destruc-
tion. They had seized upon him with frightful, irresistible power
and flung him to the earth.

They were his destruction, well he knew it. But why struggle,
then, and why torture himself? Let everything take its course. He
would go his appointed way, closing his eyes before the yawning
void, bowing to his fate, bowing to the overwhelming, anguish-
ingly sweet, irresistible power.

The water glittered, the jasmine gave out its strong, pungent
scent, the birds chattered in the tree-tops that gave glimpses
among them of a heavy, velvety-blue sky. Little hump-backed
Herr Friedemann sat long upon his bench; he sat bent over, hold-
ing his head in his hands.


Everybody agreed that the Rinnlingens entertained very well.
Some thirty guests sat in the spacious dining-room, at the long,
prettily decorated table, and the butler and two hired waiters
were already handing round the ices. Dishes clattered, glasses
rang, there was a warm aroma of food and perfumes. Here were
comfortable merchants with their wives and daughters; most of
the officers of the garrison; a few professional men, lawyers and
the popular old family doctor--in short, all the best society.

A nephew of the Commandant, on a visit, a student of mathe-
matics, sat deep in conversation with Fraulein Hagenstrom, whose
place was directly opposite Herr Friedemann's, at the lower end
of the table. Johannes Friedemann sat there on a rich velvet
cushion, beside the unbeautiful wife of the Colonial Director and
not far off Frau von Rinnlingen, who had been escorted to table
by Consul Stephens. It was astonishing, the change which had
taken place in little Herr Friedemann in these few days. Perhaps
the incandescent lighting in the room was partly to blame; but his
cheeks looked sunken, he made a more crippled impression even
than usual, and his inflamed eyes, with their dark rings, glowed
with an inexpressibly tragic light. He drank a great deal of wine
and now and then addressed a remark to his neighbour.

Frau von Rinnlingcn had not so far spoken to him at all; but
now she leaned over and called out:

"I have been expecting you in vain these days, you and your
fiddle."

He looked vacantly at her for a while before he replied. She
wore a light-coloured frock with a low neck that left the white
throat bare; a Marechal Niel rose in full bloom was fastened in her
shining hair. Her cheeks were a little flushed, but the same bluish
shadows lurked in the corners of her eyes.

Herr Friedemann looked at his plate and forced himself to make
some sort of reply; after which the school superintendent's wife
asked him if he did not love Beethoven and he had to answer that
too. But at this point the Commandant, sitting at the head of the
table, caught his wife's eye, tapped on his glass and said:

"Ladies and gentlemen, I suggest that we drink our coffee in
the next room. It must be fairly decent out in the garden too, and
whoever wants a little fresh air, I am for him."

Lieutenant von Deidesheim made a tactful little joke to cover
the ensuing pause, and the table rose in the midst of laughter.
Herr Friedemann and his partner were among the last to quit the
room; he escorted her through the "old German" smoking-room
to the dim and pleasant living-room, where he took his leave.

He was dressed with great care: his evening clothes were irre-
proachable, his shirt was dazzlingly white, his slender, well-shaped
feet were encased in patent-leather pumps, which now and then
betrayed the fact that he wore red silk stockings.

He looked out into the corridor and saw a good many people
descending the steps into the garden. But he took up a position
at the door of the smoking-room, with his cigar and coffee, where
he could see into the living-room.

Some of the men stood talking in this room, and at the right
of the door a little knot had formed round a small table, the centre
of which was the mathematics student, who was eagerly talking.
He had made the assertion that one could draw through a given
point more than one parallel to a straight line; Frau Hagenstrom
had cried that this was impossible, and he had gone on to prove it
so conclusively that his hearers were constrained to behave as
though they understood.

At the rear of the room, on the sofa beside the red-shaded lamp,
Gerda von Rinnlingen sat in conversation with young Fraulein
Stephens. She leaned back among the yellow silk cushions with
one knee slung over the other, slowly smoking a cigarette, breath-
ing out the smoke through her nose and sticking out her lower
lip. Fraulein Stephens sat stiff as a graven image beside her, an-
swering her questions with an assiduous smile.

Nobody was looking at little Herr Friedemann, so nobody saw
that his large eyes were constantly directed upon Frau von Rinn-
lingen. He sat rather droopingly and looked at her. There was
no passion in his gaze nor scarcely any pain. But there was some-
thing dull and heavy there, a dead weight of impotent, involuntary
adoration.

Some ten minutes went by. Then as though she had been
secretly watching him the whole time, Frau von Rinnlingen ap-
proached and paused in front of him. He got up as he heard her
say:

"Would you care to go into the garden with me, Herr Frie-
demann?"

He answered:

"With pleasure, madam."


"You have never seen our garden?" she asked him as they
went down the steps. "It is fairly large. I hope that there are not
too many people in it; I should like to get a breath of fresh air.
I got a headache during supper; perhaps the red wine was too
strong for me. Let us go this way." They passed through a glass
door, the vestibule, and a cool little courtyard, whence they
gained the open air by descending a couple more steps.

The scent of all the flower-beds rose into the wonderful, warm,
starry night. The garden lay in full moonlight and the guests were
strolling up and down the white gravel paths, smoking and talking
as they went. A group had gathered round the old fountain,
where the much-loved old doctor was making them laugh by
sailing paper boats.

With a little nod Frau von Rinnlingen passed them by, and
pointed ahead of her, where the fragrant and well-cared-for gar-
den blended into the darker park.

"Shall we go down this middle path?" asked she. At the begin-
ning of it stood two low, squat obelisks.

In the vista at the end of the chestnut alley they could see the
river shining green and bright in the moonlight. All about them
was darkness and coolness. Here and there side paths branched
off, all of them probably curving down to the river. For a long
time there was not a sound.

"Down by the water," she said, "there is a pretty spot where
I often sit. We could stop and talk a little. See the stars glittering
here and there through the trees."

He did not answer, gazing, as they approached it, at the river's
shimmering green surface. You could see the other bank and the
park along the city wall. They left the alley and came out on the
grassy slope down to the river, and she said:

"Here is our place, a little to the right, and there is no one
there."

The bench stood facing the water, some six paces away, with
its back to the trees. It was warmer here in the open. Crickets
chirped among the grass, which at the river's edge gave way to
sparse reeds. The moonlit water gave off a soft light.

For a while they both looked in silence. Then he heard her
voice; it thrilled him to recognize the same low, gentle, pensive
tone of a week ago, which now as then moved him so strangely:

"How long have you had your infirmity, Herr Friedemann?
Were you born so?"

He swallowed before he replied, for his throat felt as though
he were choking. Then he said, politely and gently:

"No, gnadige Frau. It comes from their having let me fall, when
I was an infant."

"And how old are you now?" she asked again.

"Thirty years old."

"Thirty years old," she repeated. "And these thirty years were
not happy ones?"

Little Herr Friedemann shook his head, his lips quivered.

"No," he said, "that was all lies and my imagination."

"Then you have thought that you were happy?" she asked.

"I have tried to be," he replied, and she responded;

"That was brave of you."

A minute passed. The crickets chirped and behind them the
boughs rustled lightly.

"I understand a good deal about unhappiness," she told him.
"These summer nights by the water are the best thing for it."

He made no direct answer, but gestured feebly across the water,
at the opposite bank, lying peaceful in the darkness.

"I was sitting over there not long ago," he said.

"When you came from me?" she asked. He only nodded.

Then suddenly he started up from his seat, trembling all over;
he sobbed and gave vent to a sound, a wail which yet seemed like
a release from strain, and sank slowly to the ground before her.
He had touched her hand with his as it lay beside him on the
bench, and clung to it now, seizing the other as he knelt before
her, this little cripple, trembling and shuddering; he buried his
face in her lap and stammered between his gasps in a voice which
was scarcely human:

"You know, you understand...let me...I can no longer...my God,
oh, my God!"

She did not repulse him, neither did she bend her face towards
him. She sat erect, leaning a little away, and her close-set eyes,
wherein the liquid shimmer of the water seemed to be mirrored,
stared beyond him into space.

Then she gave him an abrupt push and uttered a short, scornful
laugh. She tore her hands from his burning fingers, clutched his
arm, and flung him sidewise upon the ground. Then she sprang
up and vanished down the wooded avenue.

He lay there with his face in the grass, stunned, unmanned,
shudders coursing swiftly through his frame. He pulled himself
together, got up somehow, took two steps, and fell again, close
to the water. What were his sensations at this moment? Perhaps
he was feeling that same luxury of hate which he had felt before
when she had humiliated him with her glance, degenerated now,
when he lay before her on the ground and she had treated him like
a dog, into an insane rage which must at all costs find expression
even against himself--a disgust, perhaps of himself, which filled
him with a thirst to destroy himself, to tear himself to pieces, to
blot himself utterly out.

On his belly he diagged his body a little further, lifted its upper
part, and let it fall into the water. He did not raise his head nor.
move his legs, which still lay on the bank.

The crickets stopped chirping a moment at the noise of the
little splash. Then they went on as before, the boughs lightly
rustled, and down the long alley came the faint sound of laughter.


1897



DISILLUSIONMENT



I CONFESS that I was completely bewildered by the conversation
which I had with this extraordinary man. I am afraid that I am
even yet hardly in a state to report it in such a way that it will
affect others as it did me. Very likely the effect was largely due
to the candour and friendliness with which an entire stranger laid
himself open to me.

It was some two months ago, on an autumnal afternoon, that I
first noticed my stranger on the Piazza di San Marco. Only a few
people were abroad; but on the wide square the standards flapped
in the light sea-breeze in front of that sumptuous marvel of colour
and line which stood out with luminous enchantment against a
tender pale-blue sky. Directly before the centre portal a young
girl stood strewing corn for a host of pigeons at ner feet, while
more and more swooped down in clouds from all sides. An in-
comparably blithe and festive sight.

I met him on the square and I have him in perfect clarity before
my eye as I write. He was rather under middle height and a little
stooped, walking briskly and holding his cane in his hands behind
his back. He wore a stiff black hat, a light summer overcoat, and
dark striped trousers. For some reason I mistook him for an Eng-
lishman. He might have been thirty years old, he might have been
fifty. His face was smooth-shaven, with a thickish nose and tired
grey eyes; round his mouth played constantly an inexplicable and
somewhat simple smile. But from time to time he would look
searchinglv about him, then stare upon the ground, mutter a few
words to himself, give his head a shake and fall to smiling again.
In this fashion he marched perseveringlv up and down the square.

After that first time I noticed him daily; for he seemed to have
no other business than to pace up and down, thirty, forty, or fifty
times, in good weather and bad, always alone and always with that
extraordinary bearing of his.

On the evening which I mean to describe there had been a con-
cert by a military band. I was sitting at one of the little tables
which spread out into the piazza from Florian's cafe; and when
after the concert the concourse of people bad begun to disperse,
my unknown, with his accustomed absent smile, sat down in a
seat left vacant near me.

The evening drew on, the scene grew quieter and quieter, soon
all the tables were empty. Hardly any strollers were left, the
majestic square was wrapped in peace, the sky above it thick with
stars; a great half-moon hung above the splendid spectacular
facade of San Marco.

I had been reading my paper, with my back to my neighbour,
and was about to surrender the field to him when I was obliged
instead to turn in his direction. For whereas I had not heard a
single sound, he now suddenly began to speak.

"You are in Venice for the first time, sir?" he asked, in bad
French. When I essayed to answer in English he went on in good
German, speaking in a low, husky voice and coughing often to
clear it.

"You are seeing all this for the first time? Does it come up to
your expectations? Surpasses them, eh? You did not picture it as
finer than the reality? You mean it? You wouId not say so in
order to seem happy and enviable? Ah!" He leaned back and
looked at me, blinking rapidly with a quite inexplicable expression.

The ensuing pause lasted for some time. I did not know how to
go on with this singular conversation and once more was about
to depart when he hastily leaned towards me.

"Do you know, my dear sir, what disillusionment is?" he asked
in low, urgent tones, both hands leaning on his stick. "Not a
miscarriage in small, unimportant matters, but the great and gen-
eral disappointment which everything, all of life, has in store? No,
of course, you do not know. But from my youth up I have carried
it about with me; it has made me lonely, unhappy, and a bit queer,
I do not deny that.

"You could not, of course, understand what I mean, all at once.
But you might; I beg of you to listen to me for a few minutes.
For if it can be told at all it can be told without many words.

"I may begin by .saying that I grew up in a clergyman's family,
in quite a small town. There reigned in our home a punctilious
cleanliness and the pathetic optimism of the scholarly atmosphere.
We breathed a strange atmosphere, compact of pulpit rhetoric, of
large words for good and evil, beautiful and base, which I bitterly
hate, since perhaps they are to blame for all my .sufferings.

"For me life consisted utterly of those large words; for I knew
no more of it than the infinite, insubstantial emotions which they
called up in me. From man I expected divine virtue or hair-raising
'wickedness; from life either ravishing loveliness or else consum-
mate horror; and I was full of avidity for all that and of a pro-
found, tormented yearning for a larger reality, for experience of
no matter what kind, let it be glorious and intoxicating bliss or
unspeakable, undreamed-of anguish.

"I remember, sir, with painful clearness the first disappointment
of my life; and I would beg you to observe that it had not at all
to do with the miscarriage of some cherished hope, but with an
unfortunate occurrence. There was a fire at night in my parents'
house, when I was hardly more than a child. It had spread insidi-
ously until the whole small storey was in flames up to my chamber
door, and the stairs would soon have been on fire as well. I dis-
covered it first, and I remember that I went rushing through the
house shouting over and over: 'Fire, fire!' I know exactly what I
said and what feeling underlay the words, though at the time it
could scarcely have come to the surface of my consciousness. 'So
this,' I thought, 'is a fire. This is what it is like to have the house
on fire. Is this all there is to it?'

"Goodness knows it was serious enough. The whole house
burned down, the family was only saved with difficulty, and I got
some burns. And it would be wrong to say that my fancy could
have painted anything much worse than the actual burning of my
parents' house. Yet some vague, formless idea of an event even
more frightful must have existed somewhere within me, by com-
parison with which the reality seemed flat. This fire was the first
great event in my life. It left me defrauded of my hope of fear-
fulness.

"Do not fear lest I go on to recount my disappointments to you
in detail. Enough to tell you that I zealously fed my magnificent
expectations of life with the matter of a thousand books and the
works of all the poets. Ah, how I have learned to hate them, those
poets who chalked up their large words on all the walls of life--
because they had no power to write them on the sky with pencils
dipped in Vesuvius! I came to think of every large word as a lie
or a mockery.

"Ecstatic poets have said that speech is poor: 'Ah, how poor
are words,' so they sing. But no, sir. Speech, it seems to me, is rich,
is extravagantly rich compared with the poverty and limitations
of life. Pain has its limits; physical pain in unconsciousness and
mental in torpor; it is not different with joy. Our human need for
communication has found itself a way to create sounds which lie
beyond these limits.

"Is the fault mine? Is it down my spine alone that certain words
can run so as to awaken in me intuitions of sensations which do
not exist?

"I went out into that supposedly so wonderful life, craving
just one, one single experience which should correspond to my
great expectations. God help me, I have never had it. I have roved
the globe over, seen all the best-praised sights, all the works of art
upon which have been lavished the most extravagant words. I
have stood in front of these and said to myself: 'It is beautiful.
And yet--is that all? Is it no more beautiful than that?'

"I have no sense of actualities. Perhaps that is the trouble. Once,
somewhere in the world, I stood by a deep, narrow gorge in the
mountains. Bare rock went up perpendicular on either side, and
far below the water roared past. I looked down and thought to
myself: 'What if I were to fall?' But I knew myself well enough
to answer: 'If that were to happen you would say to yourself
as you fell: "Now you are falling, you are actually falling. Well,
and what of it?"'

"You may believe me that I do not speak without experience of
life. Years ago I fell in love with a girl, a charming, gentle crea-
ture, whom it would have been my joy to protect and cherish. But
she loved me not, which was not surprising, and she married an-
other. What other experience can be so painful as this? What tor-
tures are greater than the dry agonies of baffled lust? Many a
night I lay wide-eyed and wakeful; yet my greatest torture resided
in the thought: 'So this is the greatest pain we can suffer. Well,
and what then--is this all?'

"Shall I go on to tell you of my happiness? For I have had my
happiness as well and it too has been a disappointment. No, I need
not go on; for no heaping up of bald examples can make clearer
to you that it is life in general, life in its dull, uninteresting, average
course which has disappointed me--disappointed, disappointed!

"What is man? asks young Werther--man, the glorious half-god?
Do not his powers fail him just where he needs them most? Whe-
ther he soars upwards in joy or sinks down in anguish, is he not
always brought back to bald, cold consciousness precisely at
the point where he seeks to lose himself in the fullness of the
infinite?

"Often I have thought of the day when I gazed for the first
lime at the sea. The sea is vast, the sea is wide, my eyes roved far
and wide and longed to be free. But there was the horizon. Why
a horizon, when I wanted the infinite from life?

"It may be narrower, my horizon, than that of other men, I have
said that I lack a sense of actualities--perhaps it is that I have
too much. Perhaps I am too soon full, perhaps I am too soon done
with things. Am I acquainted in too aaulterated a form with both
joy and pain?

"I do not believe it; and least of all do I believe in those whose
views of life are based on the great words of the poets--it is all
lies and poltroonery. And you may have observed, my dear sir,
that there are human beings so vain and so greedy of the admira-
tion and envy of others that they pretend to have experienced
the heights of happiness but never the depths of pain?

"It is dark and you have almost ceased to listen to me; so I
can the more easily confess that I too have tried to be like these
men and make myself appear happy in my own and others' eyes.
But it is some years since that the bubble of this vanity was
pricked. Now I am alone, unhappy, and a little queer, I do not
deny it.

"It is my favourite occupation to gaze at the starry heavens
at night--that being the best way to turn my eyes away from
earth and from life. And perhaps it may be pardoned in me that I
still cling to my distant hopes? That I dream of a freer life, where
the actuality of my fondest anticipations is revealed to be without
any torturing residue of disillusionment? Of a life where there are
no more horizons?

"So I dream and wait for death. Ah, how well I know it al-
ready, death, that last disappointment! At my last moment I shall
be saying to myself: ‘So this is the great experience--well, and
what of it? What is it after all?'

"But it has grown cold here on the piazza, sir--that I can still
feel--ha ha! I have the honour to bid you a very good night."

1896



THE DILETTANTE



It can all be summed up, beginning, middle, and end--yes, and
fitting valediction too, perhaps--in the one word: "disgust." The
disgust which I now feel for everything and for life as a whole;
the disgust that chokes me, that shatters me, that hounds me out
and pulls me down, and that one day may give me strength to
break the whole fantastic and ridiculous situation across my knee
and finish with it once and for all. I may go on for another month
or so, perhaps for six months or a year; eat and drink and fill my
days somehow or other. Outwardly my life may proceed as peace-
fully, regularly, and mechanically as it has been doing all this
winter, in frightful contrast to the process of dry rot and dissolu-
tion going on within. It would seem that the more placid, de-
tached, and solitary a man's outer life, the more strenuous and
violent his inner experiences are bound to be. It comes to the
same thing: if you take care not to be a man of action, if you seek
peace in solitude, you will find that life's vicissitudes fall upon
you from within and it is upon that stage you must prove yourself
a hero or a fool.

I have bought this new note-book in order to set down my
story in it--but to what end, after all? Perhaps just to fill in the
time? Out of interest in the psychological, and to soothe myself
with the conviction that it all had to be? There is such consola-
tion in the inevitable! Or perhaps in order to give myself a tem-
porary illusion of superiority and therewith a certain indifference
to fate? For even indifference, as I know full well, might be a sort
of happiness.


It lies so far behind me, the little old city with its narrow,
irregular, gabled streets, its Gothic churches and fountains, its
busy, solid, simple citizens, and the big patrician house, hoary with
age, where I grew up!

It stood in the centre of the town and had lasted out four gen-
erations of well-to-do, respected business men and their families.
The motto over the front door was "Ora et labora." You entered
through a large flagged court, with a wooden gallery, painted
white, running round it up above; and mounted the stairs to a
good-sized lobby and a dark little columned hall, whence you
had access, through one of the tall white-enamelled doors, to
the drawing-room, where my mother sat playing the piano.

The room was dull, for thick dark-red curtains half-shrouded
the windows. The white figures of gods and goddesses on the
wall hangings stood out plastically from their blue background
and seemed as though listening to the deep, heavy first notes of
a Chopin nocturne which was her favourite piece. She always
played it very slowly, as though to enjoy to the full each melan-
choly cadence. The piano was old and its resonance had suffered;
but by using the soft pedal you could give the notes a veiled, dull
silvery sound and so produce quite extraordinary effects.

I would sit on the massive, straight-backed mahogany sofa lis-
tening, and watching my mother as she played. She was small and
fragile and wore as a rule a soft, pale-grey gown. Her narrow
face was not beautiful, it was more like that of a quiet, gentle,
dreamy child, beneath the parted, slightly waved, indefinitely
blond hair. Sitting at the piano, her head a little on one side, she
looked like one of those touching little angels who sit in old pic-
tures at the Madonna's feet and play on their guitars.

When I was little she often used to tell me, in her low, depre-
catory voice, such fairy-tales as nobody else knew; or she would
simply put her hands on my head as it lay in her lap and sit there
motionless, not saying a word. Those, I think, were the happiest,
peacefullest days of my life.--Her hair did not grey, she became
no older; only her figure grew more fragile with the years and her
face thinner, stiller, and more dreaming.

But my father was a tall, broad-shouldered gentleman, in fine
black broadcloth trousers and coat, with a white waistcoat on
which his gold eye-glasses dangled. He wore grey mutton-chop
whiskers, with a firm round chin coming out between them,
smooth-shaven like his upper lip. Between his brows stood per-
manently two horizontal folds. He was a powerful man, of great
influence in public affairs. I have seen men leave his presence,
some with quickened breath and sparkling eyes, others quite
broken and in despair. For it sometimes happened that I, and I
suppose my mother and my two elder sisters as well, were wit-
nesses at such scenes--either because our father wanted to rouse
my ambitions and stimulate me to get on in the world, or else, as
I have since suspected, because he needed an audience. He had
a way of leaning back in his chair, with one hand thrust into thje
opening of his waistcoat, and looking after the favoured or the
disappointed man, which even as a child led me vaguely to such a
conclusion.

I sat in my corner looking at my father and mother, and it was
as though I would choose between them: whether I would spend
my life in deeds of power or in dreamy musing. And always in the
end my eyes would rest upon my mother's quiet face.


Not that I could have been at all like her outwardly, for my
occupations were for the most part quite lively and bustling. One
of them I still remember, which I vastly preferred to any sort of
game with my schoolmates. Even now, at thirty, I still recall it
with a heightened sense of pleasure.

I owned a large and well-equipped puppet theatre, and I would
shut myself in alone with it to perform the most wonderful musi-
cal dramas. My room was in the second storey and had two dark
and grisly-bearded ancestral portraits hanging on the wall. I
would draw the curtains and set a lamp near the theatre, for it
heightened the atmosphere to have artificial light. I, as conductor,
took my place directly in front of the stage, my left hand resting
upon a large round pasteboard box which was the sole visible
orchestral instrument.

The performers would now enter; I had drawn them myself
with pen and ink, cut them out, and fitted them into little wooden
blocks so that they could stand up. There were the most beautiful
ladies, and gentlemen in overcoats and top hats.

"Good evening, ladies and gentlemen," I would say. "Every-
body all right? I got here betimes, for there was still some work
to do. But it is quite time for you to go to your dressing-rooms."

They went behind the stage and soon came back transfigured,
in the gayest and most beautiful costumes, to look through the
peep-hole which I had cut in the curtain and see if there was a
good house. The house was in fact not so bad; and I rang the bell
to let myself know that the performance was about to begin, lifted
my baton, and paused to enjoy the sudden stillness which my
gesture evoked. Another motion called up the dull warning
rumble of the drums with which the overture began--this I
performed with my left hand on the top of the box. Then came
in the horns, clarinets, and flutes; these I reproduced with my own
voice in most inimitable fashion, and so it went on until upon a
powerful crescendo the curtain rose and the play began, in a
setting of gloomy forest or glittering palace hall.

I would mentally sketch out the drama beforehand and then
improvise the details as I went along. The shrilling of the clarinets,
the beating of the drums accompanied singing of great passion
and sweetness; I chanted splendid bombastic verse with more
rhyme than reason; in fact it seldom had any connected meaning,
but rolled magnificently on, as I drummed with my left hand,
performed both song and accompaniment with my own voice,
and directed with my right hand both music and acting down to
the minutest detail. The applause at the end of each act was so
enthusiastic that there were repeated curtain calls, and even the
conductor had sometimes to rise from his seat and bow low in
pride and gratitude.

Truly, when after such a strenuous performance I put my toy
theatre away, all the blood in my body seemed to have risen to
my head and I was blissfully exhausted as is a great artist at the
triumphant close of a production to which he has given all that is
in him. Up to my thirteenth or fourteenth year this was my
favourite occupation.


I recall so very little of my childhood and boyhood in the great
house, where my father conducted his business on the ground
floor, my mother sat dreaming in her easy-chair, and my sisters,
who were two and three years older than I, bustled about in
kitchen and laundry.

I am clear that I was an unusually brisk and lively lad. I was
well born, I was an adept in the art of imitating my schoolmasters,
I knew a thousand little play-acting tricks and had a quite su-
perior use of language--so that it was not hard for me to be popu-
lar and respected among my mates. But lessons were a different
matter; I was too busy taking in the attitudes and gestures of my
teachers to have attention left over for what they were saying,
while at home my head was too full of my verses, my theatre, and
all sorts of airy trifles to be in a state to do any serious work.

"You ought to be ashamed," my father would say, the furrows
in his brow getting deeper as he spoke, when I brought him my
report into the drawing-room after dinner and he perused it with
one hand stuck in his waistcoat. "It does not make very good
reading for me and that's a fact. Will you kindly tell me what you
expect will become of you? You will never get anywhere in life
like this."

Which was depressing; but it did not prevent me from reading
aloud to my parents and sisters after the evening meal a poem
which I had written during the afternoon. My father laughed so
that his pince-nez bounced about all over his waistcoat. "What
sort of fool's tricks are those?" he cried again and again. But my
mother drew me to her and stroked my hair. "It is not bad at all,
my dear," she said. "I find there are some quite pretty lines in it."

Later on, when I was at an older stage, I taught myself a way of
playing the piano. Being attracted by the black keys, I began with
the F-sharp major chords, explored modulations over into other
scales, and by assiduous practice arrived at a certain skill in vari-
ous harmonies without time or tune, but imparting all possible
expressiveness to my mystical billows of sound.

My mother said that my attack displayed a taste for piano, and
she got a teacher for me. The lessons went on for six months, but
I had not sufficient manual dexterity or sense of rhythm to suc-
ceed.

Well, the years passed, and despite my troubles at school I
found life very jolly. In the circle of my relatives and friends I
was high-spirited and popular, being amiable out of sheer pleasure
in playing the amiable part; though at the same time I began in-
stinctively to look down on all these people, finding them arid and
unimaginative.


One afternoon, when I was some eighteen years old and about
to enter the highest class at school, I overheard a little conversa-
tion between my parents. They were sitting together at the round
table in the sitting-room and did not see me dawdling by the
window in the adjacent dining-room, staring at the pale sky above
the gabled roofs. I heard my own name and slipped across to the
half-open white-enamelled folding doors.

My father was leaning back in his chair with his legs crossed
and the financial newspaper in one hand while with the other he
slowly stroked his chin between the mutton-chops. My mother
sat on the sofa with her placid face bent over her embroidery'.
The lamp was on the table between.

My father said; "It is my view that we ought to take him out
of school and apprentice him to some good well-known firm."

"Oh!" answered my mother looking up in dismay. "Such a
gifted child!"

My father was silent for a moment, meticulously brushing a
speck from his coat. Then he lifted his shoulders and put out his
hands, palms up. Said he:

"If you think, my love, that it takes no brains to be a business
man you are much mistaken. And besides, I realize to my regret
that the lad is accomplishing absolutely nothing at school. His
gifts to which you refer are of the dilettante variety--though
let me hasten to add that I by no means underestimate the value
of that sort of thing. He can be very charming when he likes;
he knows how to flatter and amuse his company, and he needs to
please and be successful. Many a man has before now made a for-
tune with this equipment. Possessing it, and in view of his indif-
ference to other fields of endeavour, he is not unadapted to a busi-
ness career in the larger sense."

My father leaned back in some self-satisfaction, took a cigarette
out of his case, and slowly lighted it.

"You are quite right," said my mother, looking about the room
with a saddened face. "Only I have often thought and to some
extent hoped that we might make an artist of him. I suppose it is
true that no importance can be attached to his musical talent,
which has remained undeveloped; but have you noticed that since
he went to that art exhibition he has been doing a little drawing?
It does not seem at all bad to me."

My father blew out smoke from his cigarette, sat erect, and
said curtly:

"That is all stuff and nonsense. Anyhow, we can easily ask
him."

I asked myself. What indeed did I really want? The prospect of
any sort of change was most welcome to me. So in the end I put
on a solemn face and said that I was quite ready to leave school
and become a business man. I was apprenticed to the wholesale
lumber business of Herr Schlievogt, down on the river-bank.


The change was only superficial, of course. I had but the most
moderate interest in the lumber business; I sat in my revolving
chair under the gas burner in the dark, narrow counting-room, as
remote and indifferent as on the bench at school. This time I had
fewer cares--that was the great difference.

Herr Schlievogt was a stout man with a red face and stiff grey
nautical beard; he troubled himself very little about me, being
mostly in the mills, at some distance from the counting-house and
yards. The clerks treated me with respect. I had social relations
with but one of them, a talented and self-satisfied young man of
good family whom I had known when I was at school. His name
was Schilling. He made as much fun of everything in the world
as I did, but he displayed a lively interest in the lumber business
and every day gave utterance to his firm resolve that he would
some day and somehow become a rich man.

As for me, I mechanically performed my necessary tasks and
for the rest spent my time sauntering among the workmen in the
yards, between the stacks of lumber, looking at the river beyond
the high wooden lattice, where now and then a freight train
rolled past, and thinking about some theatre or concert I had
lately attended or some book which I had read.

For I read a great deal, read everything I could lay my hands
on, and my capacity for impressions was great. I had an emotional
grasp of each character created by an author; in each one I
thought to see myself, and identified myself wholly with the at-
mosphere of a book--until it was the turn of a new one to have
its effect upon me.I would sit in my room--with a book on my
knee instead of the toy theatre to occupy me--and look up at
my two ancestral portraits while I savoured the style of the book
in which I was then absorbed, my brain filled with an unproduc-
tive chaos of half-thoughts and fanciful imaginings.

My sisters had married in quick succession. When I was not at
the office I would often go down to the drawing-room, where
my mother sat, now almost always alone. She was a little ailing,
her face had grown even more childlike and placid, and when she
played Chopin to me or I showed her a new sequence of har-
monies which I had discovered, she would ask me whether I was
content and happy in my calling.--And there was no doubt that
I was happy.

I was not much more than twenty, my choice of a career was
still provisional, and the idea was not foreign to me that I need
not always spend my life with Herr Schlievogt or with some big-
ger lumber-dealer. I knew that one day I could free myself, leave
my gabled birthplace, and live somewhere more in accordance
with my tastes: read good and well-written novels, attend the
theatre, make a little music. Was I not happy? Did I not eat
excellently well, go dressed in the best? And as in my schooldays
I realized that there were poor and badly dressed boys who be-
haved with subservience to me and my like, so now I was stimu-
lated by the consciousness that I belonged to the upper classes,
the rich and enviable ones, born to look down with benevolent
contempt upon the unlucky and dissatisfied. Why should I not
be happy? Let things take their course. And there was a certain
charm in the society of these relations and friends. It gave me a
blithe feeling of superiority to smile at their limitations and yet
to gratify my desire to please by behaving towards them with
the extreme of affability. I basked in the sunshine of their some-
what puzzled approbation--puzzled because while they approved,
they vaguely discerned elements of contradiction and extrava-
gance.

A change began to take place in my father. Each day when he
came to table at four o'clock the furrows on his brow seemed to
have got deeper. He no longer thrust his hand imposingly between
his waistcoat buttons, his bearing was depressed and self-conscious.
One day he said to me:

"You are old enough now to share with me the cares which
are undermining my health. And it is even my duty to acquaint
you with them, to prevent you from cherishing false expectations.
You know that I made considerable sacrifices to give your sisters
their marriage portions. And of late the firm has lost a deal
of money as well. I am an old man, and a discouraged one;
I do not feel that things will change much for the better. I
must ask you to realize that you will be flung upon your own
resources."

These things he said some two months before his death. One
day he was found sitting in his arm-chair in the office, waxen-
faced, paralysed, and unable to articulate. A week later the whole
town attended his funeral.

My mother sat by the table in the drawing-room, fragile and
silent, with her eyes mostly closed. My sisters and I hovered about
her; she would nod and smile, but still be motionless and silent,
her hands in her lap and her strange, wide, melancholy gaze di-
rected at one of the white deities on the wall. Gentlemen in frock-
coats would come in to tell her about the progress of the liquida-
tion; she would nod and smile and shut her eyes again.

She played Chopin no more. When she passed her pale, delicate
hand over her smoothly parted hair it would tremble with fatigue
and weakness. Scarcely six months after my father's death she laid
herself down and died, without a murmur, without one struggle
for life.

So it was all over now--and what was there to hold me to the
place? For good or ill, the business of the firm had been liquidated;
I turned out to have fallen heir to some hundred thousand marks,
enough to make me independent. I had no duties and on some
ground or other had been declared unfit for service.

There was no longer any bond between me and those among
whom I had grown up. Their point of view was too one-sided for
me to share it, and on their side they regarded me with more and
more puzzled eyes. Granted that they knew me for what I was,
a perfectly useless human being--as such, indeed, did I know
myself. But I was cynical and fatalistic enough to look on the
bright side of what my father had called my dilettante talents,
self-satisfied enough to want to enjoy life in my own way.

I drew my little competence out of the bank and almost with-
out any formal farewell left my native town to pursue my travels.


I remember as though they were a beautiful, far-away dream
those next three years, in which I surrendered myself greedily to
a thousand new, rich, and varied sensations. How long ago was it
that I spent a New Year's Day amid snow and ice among the
monks at the top of the Simplon Pass? How long since I was
sauntering across Piazza Erbe in Verona? Since I entered the Piazza
di San Pietro from the Borgo San Spirito, trod for the first time
beneath the colonnades, and let my gaze stray abashed into the
distances of that mammoth square? Since I looked down from
Corso Vittorio Emmanuele on the city of Naples, white in the
brilliant light, and saw far off across the bay the charming sil-
houette of Capri, veiled in deep-blue haze? All that was some six
years ago, hardly more.

I lived very carefully within my means, in simple lodgings or
in modest pensions. But what with travelling and the difficulty of
giving up all at once the good bourgeois comforts I was used to,
my expenses were after all not small. I had set apart for my travels
the sum of fifteen thousand marks out of my capital--but I over-
stepped this limit.

For the rest I fared very well among the people with whom
I came into contact: disinterested and often very attractive char-
acters, to whom of course I could not be the object of respect that
I had been in my former surroundings, but from whom, on the
other hand, I need not fear disapproving or questioning looks.

My social gifts sometimes made me genuinely popular--I recall
for instance a scene in Pensione Minelli at Palermo, where there
was a circle of French people of all ages. One evening I impro-
vised for them "a music drama by Richard Wagner" with a
lavishness of tragic gesture, recitative, and rolling harmonies, fin-
ishing amid enormous applause. An old gentleman hurried up to
me; he had scarcely a hair on his head, his sparse white mutton-
chops straggled down across his grey tweed jacket. He seized my
hands, tears in his eyes, and cried:

"But it is amazing! Amazing, my dear sir! I swear to you that
not for thirty years have I been so pricelessly entertained. Permit
me to thank you from the bottom of my heart. But you must,
you certainly must become an actor or a musician!"

Truly, on such an occasion I felt something of the arrogance
of a great painter who draws a caricature on the table-cloth to
amuse his friends.--But after dinner I sat down alone in the salon
and spent a sad and solitary hour trying sustained chords on the
piano in an effort to express the mood evoked in me by the sight
of Palermo.

Leaving Sicily, I had just touched the African coast, then gone
on into Spain. In the country near Madrid, on a gloomy, rainy
winter afternoon, I felt the first time the desire--and the neces-
sity--for a return to Germany. For aside from the fact that I
began to crave a settled and regular life, I saw without any pro-
longed calculation that however carefully I lived I should have
spent twenty thousand marks before my return.

I did not hesitate many days before setting out on the long
journey through France, which was protracted to nearly .six
months by lengthy sojourns in this place and that. I recall with
painful distinctness the summer evening of my arrival at the capital
city in the centre of Germany which even before setting out on
my travels I had selected as my home. Hither I had now come: a
little wiser, equipped with a little experience and knowledge,
and full of childish joy at the prospect of here setting up my rest
and establishing--carefree, independent, and in enjoyment of my
modest means--a life of quiet and contemplation.


The spot was not badly chosen. It is a city of some size, yet not
so bustling as a metropolis, nor marred by a too obtrusive business
life. It has some fine old squares and its atmosphere is not lacking
in either elegance or vivacity. Its suburbs are charming; best of
all I liked the well-laid-out promenade leading up to the Lerchen-
berg, a long ridge against which most of the town is built. From
this point there is an extended view over houses, churches, and
the river winding gently away into the distance. From some posi-
tions, and especially when the band is playing on a summer after-
noon and carriages and pedestrians are moving to and fro, it re-
calls the Pincio.--But I will return to this promenade later on.

It would be hard to overestimate the peculiar pleasure I drew
from the arrangement of the bedroom and sitting-room I had
taken in a busy quarter in the centre of the city. Most of our
family effects had passed into the possession of my sisters, but
enough was left for my needs: adequate and even handsome furni-
ture, my books, and my two ancestral portraits, even the old grand
piano, which my mother had willed to me.

When everything had been placed and the photographs which
I had acquired on my travels were hung on the walls or arranged
on the heavy mahogany writing-desk and the bow-front chest of
drawers, and when ensconced in my new fastness I sat down in
an arm-chair by the window to survey by turns my abode within
and the busy street life outside, my comfort and pleasure were no
small thing. And yet--I shall never forget the moment--besides
my satisfaction and confidence something else stirred in me, a faint
sense of anxiety and unrest, a faint consciousness of being on the
defensive, of rousing myself against some power that threatened
my peace: the slightly depressing thought that I had now for the
first time left behind the temporary and provisional and exchanged
it for the definite and fixed.

I will not deny that these and like sensations repeated themselves
from time to time. But must they not come, now and then, those
afternoon hours in which one sits and looks out into the growing
twilight, perhaps into a slowly falling rain, and becomes prey to
gloomy foreboding? True, my future was secure. I had entrusted
the round sum of eighty thousand marks to the bank, the interest
came to about six hundred marks the quarter--my God, but the
times are bad!--so that I could live decently, buy books, and now
and then visit the theatre or enjoy some lighter kind of diversion.

My days in fact conformed very well to the ideal which I had
always had in view. I got up at about ten, breakfasted, and spent
the rest of the morning at the piano or reading some book or
magazine. Then I strolled up the street to my little restaurant, ate
my dinner, and took a long walk, through the city streets, to a
gallery, the suburbs, or the Lerchcnberg. I came back and re-
sumed the same occupations: read, played the piano, amused my-
self with drawing of a sort, or wrote a letter, slowly and carefully.
Perhaps I attended the theatre or a concert after my evening
meal; if not, I sat in a cafe and read the papers until bedtime. That
was a good day, with a solid and gratifying content, when I had
discovered a motif on the piano which seemed to me new and
pleasing, or when I had carried away from a painting in the gallery
or from the book I had read some fine and abiding impression.

I must say too that my programme was seriously conceived
with the view of giving my days as much ideal content as possible.
I ate modestly, had as a rule only one suit at a time; in short, I
limited my material demands in order to be able to get a good
seat at the opera or concert, to buy the latest books or visit this
or that art exhibition.

But the days went by, they turned into weeks and months--of
boredom? Yes, I confess it. One has not always a book at hand
which will absorb one for hours on end. I might sit all the morn-
ing at the piano and have no success with my improvisations. I
would be seated at the window smoking cigarettes and feel steal-
ing over me a distaste of all the world, myself included. I would
be possessed by fear, spring up and go out of doors, there to
shrug my shoulders and watch with a superior smile the business
men and labourers on the street, who lacked the spiritual and ma-
terial gifts which would fit them for the enjoyment of leisure.


But is a man of seven-and-twenty able seriously to believe--
no matter how likely it is--that his days are now fixed and un-
changeable up to the end? A span of blue sky, the twitter of a
bird, some half-vanished dream of the night before--everything
has power to suffuse his heart with undefined hopes and fill it
with the solemn expectation of some great and nameless joy.--I
dawdled from one day to the next--aimless, dreamy, occupied
with this or that little thing to look forward to, even if it were
only the date of a forthcoming publication, with the lively con-
viction that I was certainly very happy even though now and
again weary of my solitude.

They were not precisely infrequent, those hours in which I was
painfully conscious of my lack of contact with my kind. That I
had none needs no explanation. I was not in touch with society--
neither the first circles nor the second. To introduce myself as a
fetard among the gilded youth, I lacked means for that, God knew
--and on the other hand, bohemia? But I was well brought up, I
wear clean linen and a whole suit, and it does not amuse me to
carry on anarchistic conversations with shabby young people at
tables sticky with absinthe. In short, there was no one sphere to
which I could naturally gravitate, and the chance connections I
made from time to time were few, slight, and superficial--though
this was largely my own fault, for I held back, I know, being inse-
cure myself and unpleasantly aware that I could not make clear
even to a drunken painter exactly who and what I was.

Besides, of course, I had given up society; I had broken with it
when I took the liberty of going my own way regardless of its
claims upon me. So if in order to be happy I needed "people,"
then I had to ask myself whether I should not have been by now
busy and useful making money as a business man in a large way
and becoming the object of respect and envy.

But meanwhile? The fact remained that my philosophic isola-
tion disturbed me far too much. It refused to fit in with my con-
ception of happiness, with the consciousness or conviction that I
was happy--and from this conviction I was utterly unable to
part. That I was not happy, that I was in fact unhappy--certainly
that was unthinkable. And there the matter rested, until the next
time came, when I found myself sitting alone, withdrawn and
remote, alarmingly morose--and, in short, in an intolerable state.

But are happy people morose? I thought of my home life in the
limited circle where I had moved in the pleasing consciousness of
my own talents and parts, sociable, charming, my eyes bright
with fun and mockery and good feeling of a rather condescending
sort; viewed as a little odd and yet quite generally liked. Then I
had been happy, despite Herr Schlievogt and the lumber business,
whereas now--?

But some vastly interesting book would appear, a new French
novel, which I would spend the money to buy and, sitting in my
comfortable arm-chair, would enjoy at my leisure. Three hundred
unexplored pages of charming blague and literary art! Certainly
life was going as I would have it. Was I asking myself whether
I was happy? Such a question is sheer rubbish, nothing else.


So ends another day, undeniably a full one, thank God! Eve-
ning is here, the curtains are drawn, the lamp bums on the writing-
table, it is nearly midnight. I might go to bed, but I remain sprawled
in my arm-chair with idle hands, gazing up at the ceiling in order
to concentrate on the vague gnawing and boring of an indefinite
ache which I know not how to dispel.

I have spent the past hours immersed in a great work of art:
one of those tremendous and ruthless works of genius which rack
and deafen, enrapture and shatter the reader with their decadent
and dilettante splendours. My nerves still quiver, my imagination
is rampant, my mind seethes with strange fancies, with moods
mingled of yearning, religious fervour, triumph, and a mystical
peace. And with all that the compulsion, which forever urges
them upwards and outwards, to display them, to share them, to
"make something of them."

Suppose I were an artist in very truth, capable of giving utter-
ance to my feelings in music, in verse, in sculpture--or best of all,
to be honest, in all of them at once? It is true that I can do a little
of everything. For instance, I can sit at my piano in my quiet little
room and express the fullness of my feelings, to my heart's con-
tent-ought that not to be enough? Of course, if I needed
"people" in order to be happy, then I could understand. But
supposing that I set store by success, by recognition, praise, fame,
envy, love? My God, when I recall that scene at Palermo I have
to admit to myself that something like that at this moment would
be a great encouragement to me now!

If I am honest with myself I cannot help admitting the sophisti-
cal and ridiculous distinction between the two kinds of happiness,
inward and outward. Outward happiness--of what does it con-
sist? There are men, the favourites of the gods, it would seem,
whose happiness is genius and their genius happiness; children
of light, who move easily through life with the reflection and
image of the sun in their eyes; easy, charming, amiable, while all
the world surrounds them with praise, admiration, envy, and love
--for even envy is powerless to hate them. And they mingle in
the world like children, capricious, arrogant, spoiled, friendly as
the sunshine, as certain of their genius and their joy as though it
were impossible things should be otherwise.

As for me, weak though I may be, I confess that I should like
to be like them. Rightly or wrongly I am possessed with the feel-
ing that I once belonged among them--but what matter? For
when I am honest with myself I know that the real point is what
one thinks of oneself, to what one gives oneself, to what one feels
strong enough to give oneself!

Perhaps the truth is that I resigned my claim to this "outward
happiness" when I withdrew myself from the demands of society
and arranged my life to do without people. But of my inward
satisfaction there is no doubt at all--it cannot, it must not be
doubted; for I repeat, with the emphasis of desperation, that
happy I must and will be. For I conceive too profoundly of hap-
piness as a virtue, as genius, refinement, charm; and of unhappi-
ness as something ugly, mole-like, contemptible--in a word,
absurd--to be able to be unhappy and still preserve my self-
respect.

I could not permit myself to be unhappy, could not stand the
sight of myself in such a role. I should have to hide in the dark
like a bat or an owl and gaze with envy at the children of light.
I should have to hate them with a hatred which would be nothing
but a festered love--and I should have to despise myself!

Hide in the dark! Ah, there comes to my mind all that I have
been thinking and feeling these many months about my philo-
sophic isolation--and my fit takes me again, my familiar, my too-
much-feared fear! I am conscious of anger against some force
which threatens me.

Certainly I found consolations, ameliorations, oblivion for the
time and for another time and yet another. But my fear always
returned, returned a thousand times in the course of the months
and the years.

There are autumn days that are like a miracle. Summer is past,
the trees are yellow and brown, all day the wind whistles round
the corners, and turbid water fills all the gutters. You have come
to terms with the time of year; you have come home, so to speak,
to sit by the stove and let the winter go over your head. Then one
morning you wake to see with unbelieving eyes a narrow strip of
luminous blue shine through your bedroom curtains. You spring
astonished out of bed and open the window, a tremulous wave of
sunshine streams towards you, while through all the street noises
you hear the blithe twitter of a bird. It is as though the fresh light
atmosphere of an early October day were to breathe the ineffably
sweet and spicy air which belongs to the promiseful winds of
May. It is spring--obviously, despite the calendar, a day in spring.
You fling on your clothes to hurry through the streets and into
the country, out under the open sky.

Now, such an unhoped-for blessing of a day there was, some
four months ago--we are now in the month of February. And on
that day I saw a lovely sight. I had got up before nine, in a bright
and joyful mood, possessed by vague hopes of change, of unex-
pected and happy events. I took the road to the Lerchenberg,
mounting the right side of the hill and following along the ridge
on the main road, close to the low stone parapet, in order to keep
in sight all the way--it takes perhaps hair an hour--the view over
the slightly terraced city on the slope below, the river winding
and glittering in the sun, and the green hilly landscape dim in the
distance.

Hardly anyone was up here. The benches were empty, here
and there among the trees a white statue looked out; a faded leaf
straggled down. Watching the bright panorama as I walked, I
went on undisturbed until I had reached the end of the ridge,
where my road slanted down among old chestnut trees. Then I
heard the ringing of horses' hoofs and the rolling of a wagon com-
ing on at a lively trot. It would pass me at about the middle of the
descent, so I moved to one side and stood still.

It was a small, light, two-wheeled cart drawn by two large,
briskly snorting, glossy light bays. A young lady of nineteen or
twenty years held the reins, seated beside a dignified elderly
gentleman with bushy white eyebrows and moustaches brushed
up a la russe. A servant in plain black and silver livery adorned the
seat behind.

The pace of the horses had been slowed down at the top of the
descent, which seemed to have made one of them nervous; it
swung out sidewise from the shaft, tucked down its head, and
braced its forelegs, trembling. The old gentleman leaned over to
help his companion, drawing in one rein with his elegantly gloved
hand. The driving seemed to have been turned over to her only
temporarily and half as a game; at least she seemed to do it with
a childish air of mingled importance and inexperience. She made
a vexed little motion of the head as she tried to quiet the shying
and stumbling animal.

She was slender and brunette. Her hair was gathered to a firm
knot in the back of her neck, but lay loose and soft on brow and
temples so that I could see the single bright brown strands; atop
it perched a round dark straw hat trimmed with a ribbon bow.
For the rest she wore a short dark-blue jacket and a simple skirt
of light-grey cloth. The brunette skin of her finely formed oval
face looked freshened and rosy in the morning air; the most at-
tractive features in it were the long, narrow eyes, whose scarcely
visible iris was a shining black, above which arched brows so even
that they looked as though they were drawn with a pen. The nose
was perhaps a little long and the mouth might have been smaller,
though the lips were clear-cut and fine. It was charming to see the
gleaming white well-spaced teeth of her upper jaw, which, in her
efforts to control the struggling horse, she pressed hard upon
her lower lip, lifting her chin, which was almost as round as a
child's.

It would not be true to say that this face possessed any striking
or exceptional beauty. What it had was youth, the charm of gaiety
and freshness, polished, as it were, refined and heightened by ease,
well-being, and luxurious living-conditions. Certainly those bright
narrow eyes, now looking in displeasure at the refractory horse,
would assume next minute their accustomed expression of happy
security. The sleeves of her jacket, which were wide at the shoul-
ders, came close round the slender wrists and she had an enchant-
ingly dainty and elegant way of holding the reins in her slim
ungloved white hands.

I stood by the edge of the path unnoted as the cart drove past,
and walked slowly on when the horses quickened their pace again
and took it out of sight. I felt pleasure and admiration, but at the
same time a strange and poignant pain--was it envy, love, self-
contempt? I did not dare to think.

The image in my mind as I write is that of a beggar, a poor
wretch standing at a jeweller's window and staring at a costly
jewel within. The man will not even feel any conscious desire to
possess the stone, the bare idea would make him laugh at his
own absurdity.

It came about quite by chance that I saw this same young lady
again, only a week later, at the opera, during a performance of
Gounod's Faust. Hardly had I entered the brightly lighted audi-
torium to betake myself to my seat in the stalls when I became
aware of her seated at the old gentleman's side in a proscenium
box on the other side of the stage. To my surprise I felt a little
startled and confused, and in consequence perhaps averted my
eyes, letting them rove over the other tiers and boxes. It was only
when the overture had begun that I summoned resolution to
look at the pair more closely.

The old gentleman wore a buttoned-up frock-coat and a black
tie. He leaned back in his seat with dignified calm, one of his
brown-gloved hands resting on the ledge in front of him while
the other slowly stroked his beard or the close-cropped grey hair.
The young girl--undoubtedly his daughter--leaned forward
with lively interest, clasping her fan with both hands and resting
them on the velvet upholstery of the ledge. Now and then with
a quick gesture she tossed back the bright, soft brown hair from
her brow and temples.

She wore a light-coloured silk blouse with a bunch of violets
in her girdle. In the bright light her narrow eyes seemed to sparkle
even more than before; and the position of the lips and mouth
which I had noticed proved to be habitual with her; for she con-
stantly set her even, shining, well-spaced white teeth on her under
lip and drew the chin upwards a little. This innocent little face,
quite devoid of coquetry, the detached and merrily roving glance,
the delicate white throat, confined only by a ribbon the colour
of her blouse, the gesture with which she called the old gentle-
man's attention to something in the stalls, on the stage, or in a box
--all this gave the impression of an unspeakably refined and
charming child, though it had nothing touching about it and did
not arouse any of those emotions of pity which we sometimes feel
for children. It was childlike in an elevated, tempered, and supe-
rior way that rested upon a security born of physical well-being
and good breeding. Her evident high spirits did not have their
source in pride, but in an inward and unconscious poise.

Gounod's music, spirited and sentimental by turns, seemed not
a bad accompaniment to this young lady's appearance. I listened
without looking at the stage, lost in a mild and pensive mood
which without the music might have been more painful than it
was. But after the first act there disappeared from his place in the
stalls a gentleman of between twenty-five and thirty years who
presently with a very easy bow appeared in the box on which my
eye was fastened. The old man put out his hand at once, the young
lady gave him hers with a gay nod, and he carried it respectfully
to his lips as they invited him to sit down.

I was quite ready to admit that this gentleman's shirt-front was
the most incomparable I had ever had the pleasure of beholding.
It was fully exposed, for the waistcoat was the narrowest of black
strips; his dress coat was not fastened save by a single button
which came below his middle, and it was cut out from the shoul-
ders in a sweeping curve. A stand-up collar with turned-over
points met the shirt-front beneath a wide black tie, and his studs
were two large square black buttons, standing out on the ad-
mirably starched, dazzlingly white expanse of shirt, which how-
ever did not lack flexibility, for it had a pleasing little concavity
in the neighbourhood of the waist and swelled out again just as
pleasingly and glossily below.

Of course, this shirt-front was what took the eye; but there was
a head atop, entirely round and covered with close-cropped very
blond hair and boasting such adornments as a pair of eye-glasses
without rims or cord, a rather weedy, waving blond moustache,
and a host of little duelling scars running up to the temple on one
cheek. For the rest the gentleman was faultlessly built and moved
with assurance.

In the course of the evening--for he remained in the box--I
noted two attitudes characteristic of him. If the conversation lan-
guished he sat leaning jauntily back with one leg cocked over the
other and his opera-glasses on his knee, bent his head and stuck
out his whole mouth as far as it would go, to plunge into ab-
sorbed contemplation of his moustache, quite hypnotized, it would
seem, and turning the while his head slowly to and fro. On the
other hand, taken up in a conversation with the young lady, he
would, to be sure, respectfully alter the position of his legs; then
leaning even further back and seizing his chair with both hands,
he would elevate his chin as high as possible and smile down upon
his young neighbour with his mouth wide open, assuming an
amiable and slightly superior air. What wonderfully happy self-
confldence such a young man must rejoice in!

In all seriousness, I do not undervalue the possession. Upon
none of his motions, however airily audacious, did the faintest
self-consciousness ensue--he was buoyed up by his own self-
respect. And why not? It was plain that he had made his way--
not necessarily by pushing--and was on the straight road to a
plain and profitable goal. He dwelt in the shade of good under-
standing with all the world and in the sunshine of general appro-
bation. And so he sat there chatting with a young girl for whose
pure and priceless charms he probably had an eye--and if he had
he need feel no hesitation in asking for her hand. Certainly I have
no desire to utter one contemptuous word in the direction of this
young gentleman.

But as for me? I sat far off in the darkness below, sulkily ob-
serving that priceless and unobtainable young creature as she
laughed and prattled happily with this unworthy male. Shut out,
unregarded, disqualified, unknown, hors ligne--declasse, pariah,
a pitiable object even to myself!

I stopped on till the end and came on the three in the cloak-
room, where they lingered a little getting their furs, chatting with
this or that acquaintance, here a lady, there an officer. When they
left, the young gentleman accompanied the young lady and her
father, and I followed at a little remove through the vestibule.

It was not raining, there were a few stars in the sky, they did not
take a cab. Talking easily, the three passed on ahead and I fol-
lowed, timid, oppressed, tortured by my poignant, mocking, miser-
able feelings.--They had not far to go; not more than one turn-
ing and they stopped in front of a stately house with a plain
facade, and father and daughter disappeared after a cordial leave-
taking from their companion, who walked off with a brisk tread.

On the heavy, carved house-door was a plate with the name:
Justizrat Rainer.


I am determined to see these notes to a finish, though my in-
ward resistance is so great that I am tempted every minute to
spring up and escape. I have dug and burrowed into this mess until
I am perfectly exhausted. I am sick to death of it all.

Not quite three months since, I read in the paper that a charity
bazaar was to be held in the Rathaus under the auspices of the best
society in the city. I read the announcement attentively and made
up my mind to go. "She will be there," I thought; "perhaps she
will have a stall, and nothing can prevent my speaking to her.
After all I am a man of good birth and breeding, and if I like this
Fraulein Rainer I am just as well qualified as the man with the
shirt-front to address her and exchange a few light words."

It was a windy, rainy afternoon when I betook myself to the
Rathaus, before whose doors was a press of carriages and people.
I made my way into the building, paid the entrance fee, left my
hat and coat, and with some difficulty gained the broad and
crowded staircase up to the first floor and so into the hall. I was
greeted by a waft or heavy scent--wine, food, perfume, and pine
needles--and a confused hurly-burly of laughter, talk, cries, and
ringing gongs.

The immensely high and large space was gaily adorned with
flags and garlands; along the walls and down the middle were the
stalls, both open and closed, fantastically arrayed gentlemen acting
as barkers in front of the latter and shouting at the top of their
lungs. Ladies, likewise in costume, were everywhere selling flow-
ers, embroideries, tobacco, and various refreshments. On the stage
at the upper end, decorated with potted plants, a noisy band was
in action, while a compact procession of people moved slowly
forwards in the narrow lanes between the rows of stalls.

A little confused by the noise of the music, the barkers, and
the grab-bags, I joined the procession, and in no time at all,
scarcely four paces from the entrance, I found her whom I
sought. She was selling wine and lemonade and wore the bright-
coloured skirt, the square white head-dress and short stays of the
Albanian peasant costume, her tender arms bare to the elbow. She
was looking rather flushed, leaning back against her serving-table,
playing with her gaudy fan and talking with a group of gentle-
men round the stall. Among them I saw at the first glance a well-
known face--my gentleman of the shirt-front stood beside her at
the table with four fingers of each hand thrust in the side pockets
of his jacket.

I pushed my way over, meaning to approach her when she was
less surrounded. This was a test: we should see whether I still had
in me some remnant of the blithe self-assurance and conscious
ability of yore, or whether my present moroseness and pessimism
were only too well justified. What was it ailed me? Why did the
sight of this girl--I confess it--make my cheeks burn with the
same old mingled feelings of envy, yearning, chagrin, and bitter
exasperation? A little straightforwardness, in the devil's name, a
little gaiety and self-confidence, as befits a talented and happy
man!With nervous eagerness I summoned the apt word, the light
Italian phrase with which I meant to address her.

It took some time for me to make the circuit of the hall in that
slowly moving stream of people; and when once more I stood in
front of her booth all the gentlemen save one had gone. He of the
shirt-front still leaned against her table, discoursing blithely with
the fair vendeuse. I would take the liberty of interrupting their
conversation. And turning quickly, I edged myself out of the
stream and stood before her stall.

What happened? Ah, nothing at all, or hardly anything. The
conversation broke off, the young man stepped aside and, holding
his rimless, ribbonless pince-nez with all five fingers, stared at me
through them and it, while the young lady swept me with a calm
and questioning gaze--from my suit down to my boots. My suit
was by no means new and my boots were muddy, as I was well
aware. I was hot too, and very likely my hair was ruffled. I was
not cool, I was not unconcerned, I was not equal to the occasion.
Here was I, a stranger, not one of the elect, intruding and making
myself absurd; hatred and helpless hapless misery prevented me
from looking at her at all, and in desperation I carried through
my stout resolve by saying gruffly, with a scowl and in a hoarse
Voice:

"I'd like a glass of wine."

What matter whether she really did, as I thought, cast a quick
mocking glance at her companion? We stood all three in silence as
she gave me the wine; without raising my eyes, red and distraught
with pain and fury, a wretched and ridiculous figure, I stood be-
tween the two, drank a few sips, laid the money on the table, and
rushed out of the hall.

Since that moment it is all up with me; it added but little to my
bitter cup when a few days later I read in the paper that Herr
Justizrat Rainer had the honour to announce his daughter Anna's
engagement to Herr Dr. Alfred Witznagel.


Since that moment it is all up with me. My last remaining shreds
of happiness and self-confidence have been blown to the winds,
I can do no more. Yes, I am unhappy; I freely admit it, I seem a
lamentable and absurd figure even to myself. And that I cannot
bear. I shall make an end of it. Today, or tomorrow, or some time,
I will shoot myself.

My first impulse, my first instinct, was a shrewd one: I would
make copy of the situation, I would contribute my pathetic sick-
ness to swell the literature of unhappy love. But that was all folly.
One does not die of an unhappy love-affair. One revels in it. It is
not such a bad pose. But what is destroying me is that hope has
been destroyed with the destruction of all pleasure in myself.

Was I--if I might ask the question--was I in love with this
girl? Possibly....But how--and why? Such love, if it existed,
was a monstrosity born of a vanity which had long since become
irritable and morbid, rasped into torment at sight of an unattain-
able prize. Love was the mere pretext, escape, and hope of sal-
vation for my feelings of envy, hatred, and self-contempt.

Yes, it was all superficial. And had not my father once called me
a dilettante?

No, I had not been justified, I less than most people, in keeping
aloof and ignoring society--I, who am too vain to support her
indifference or contempt, who cannot do without her and her ap-
plause. But here was not a matter of justification, rather one of
necessity; and was it just my impractical dilettantism that made me
useless for society. Ah, well, it was precisely my dilettantism that
was killing me!

Indifference, I know, would be a sort of happiness. But I cannot
be indifferent to myself, I am not in a position to look at myself
with other eyes than those of "people"--and all innocent as I
am, I am being destroyed by my bad conscience. But is a bad con-
science ever anything but a festering vanity?

Thereis only one kind of unhappiness: to suffer the loss of
pleasure in oneself. No longer to be pleasant to oneself--that is
the worst that can happen; and I have known it for such a long
time! All else is the play of life, it enriches life; any other kind of
suffering can leave one perfectly satisfied with oneself, one can
get on quite well with it. It is the conflict in oneself, the suffering
with a bad conscience, the struggle with one's vanity--it is these
make you a pitiable and disgusting spectacle.

An old acquaintance of mine turned up, a man named Schilling,
in whose company I had once served society by working in Herr
Schlievogt's lumber-yard. He was in the city on business and
came to see me: a cynical individual with his hands in his trouser
pockets, black-rimmed pince-nez, and a convincingly tolerant
shoulder-shrug. He arrived one evening and said: "I am stopping
for a few days." We went to a wine-house.

He met me as though I were still the happy and self-satisfied
individual he had known; and in the belief that he was merely
confirming my own conviction he said:

"My God, young fellow, but you have done yourself well here!
Independent, eh? And you are right too, deuce take me if you
aren't. Man lives but once, as they say, and that's all there is to it.
You are the cleverer of us two, I must say. But you were always a
bit of a genius." And went on just as of yore, wholeheartedly
recognizing my claims to superiority and being agreeable without
suspecting for a moment that I on my side was afraid of his
opinion.

I struggled desperately to retain his high opinion of me, to ap-
pear happy and self-satisfied. All in vain. I had not the backbone,
the courage, or the countenance; I was languid and ill at ease, I
betrayed my insecurity--and with astonishing quickness he
grasped the situation. He had been perfectly ready to grant my
superiority--but it was frightful to see how he saw through me,
was first astonished, then impatient, then cooled off and betrayed
his contempt and disgust with every word he spoke. He left me
early and next day I received a curt note saying that after all he
found he was obliged to go away.

It is a fact that everybody is much too preoccupied with him-
self to form a serious opinion about another person. The world
displays a readiness, born of indolence, to pay a man whatever
degree of respect he himself demands. Be as you will, live as you
like--but be bold about it, display a good conscience and nobody
will be moral enough to condemn you. But once suffer yourself to
become split, forfeit your own self-esteem, betray that you despise
yourself, and your view will be blindly accepted by all and sun-
dry. As for me, I am a lost soul.


I cease to write, fling the pen from me--full of disgust, full of
disgust! I will make an end of it--alas, that is an attitude too heroic
for a dilettante. In the end I shall go on living, eating, sleeping;
I shall gradually get used to the idea that I am dull, that I cut a
wretched and ridiculous figure.

Good God, who would have thought, who could have thought,
that such is the doom which overtakes the man born a dilettante!



TOBIAS MINDERNICKEL



One of the streets running steeply up from the docks to the mid-
dle town was named Grey's Road. At about the middle of it, on
the right, stood Number 47, a narrow, dingy-looking building no
different from its neighbours. On the ground floor was a chan-
dler's shop where you could buy overshoes and castor oil. Cross-
ing the entry along a courtyard full of cats and mounting the
mean and shabby, musty-smelling stair, you arrived at the upper
storeys. In the first, on the left, lived a cabinet-maker; on the right
a midwife. In the second, on the left a cobbler, on the right a lady
who began to sing loudly whenever she heard steps on the stair.
In the third on the left, nobody; but on the right a man named
Mindernickel--and Tobias to boot. There was a story about this
man; I tell it, because it is both puzzling and sinister, to an ex-
traordinary degree.

Mindernickcl's exterior was odd, striking, and provoking to
laughter. When he took a walk, his meagre form moving up the
street supported by a cane, he would be dressed in black from
head to heels. He wore a shabby old-fashioned top hat with a
curved brim, a frock-coat shining with age, and equally shabby
trousers, fringed round the bottoms and so short that you could
see the elastic sides to his boots. True, these garments were all
most carefully brushed. His scrawny neck seemed longer because
it rose out of a low turn-down collar. His hair had gone grey and
he wore it brushed down smooth on the temples. His wide hat-
brim shaded a smooth-shaven sallow face with sunken cheeks,
red-rimmed eyes which were usually directed at the floor, and
two deep, fretful furrows running from the nose to the drooping
corners of the mouth.

Mindernickel seldom left his house--and this for a very good
reason. For whenever he appeared in the street a mob of children
would collect and sally behind him, laughing, mocking, singing--
"Ho, ho, Tobias!" they would cry, tugging at his coat-tails,
while people came to their doors to laugh. He made no defence;
glancing timidly round, with shoulders drawn up and head stuck
out, he continued on his way, like a man hurrying through a
driving rain without an umbrella. Even while they were laughing
in his face he would bow politely and humbly to people as he
passed. Further on, when the children had stopped behind and he
was not known, and scarcely noted, his manner did not change.
He still hurried on, still stooped, as though a thousand mocking
eyes were on him. If it chanced that he lifted his timid, irresolute
gaze from the ground, you would see that, strangely enough, he
was not able to fix it steadily upon anyone or anything. It may
sound strange, but there seemed to be missing in him the natural
superiority with which the normal, perceptive individual looks
out upon the phenomenal world. He seemed to measure himself
against each phenomenon,.. and find himself wanting; his gaze
shifted and fell, it grovelled before men and things.

What was the matter with this man, who was always alone and
unhappy even beyond the common lot? His clothing belonged to
the middle class; a certain slow gesture he had, of his hand across
his chin, betrayed that he was not of the common people among
whom he lived. How had fate been playing with him? God only
knows. His face looked as though life had hit him between the
eyes, with a scornful laugh. On the other hand, perhaps it was a
question of no cruel blow but simply that he was not up to it.
The painful shrinking and humility expressed in his whole figure
did indeed suggest that nature had denied him the measure of
strength, equilibrium, and backbone which a man requires if he
is to live with his head erect.

When he had taken a turn up into the town and come back to
Grey's Road, where the children welcomed him with lusty bawl-
ings, he went into the house and up the stuffy stair into his own
bare room. It had but one piece of furniture worthy the name, a
solid Empire chest of drawers with brass handles, a thing of dig-
nity and beauty. The view from the window was hopelessly cut
off by the heavy side wall of the next house; a flower-pot full of
earth stood on the ledge, but there was nothing growing in it.
Tobias Mindemickel went up to it sometimes and smelled at the
earth. Next to this room was a dark little bedchamber. Tobias on
coming in would lay hat and stick on the table, sit down on the
dusty green-covered sofa, prop his chin with his hand, and stare
at the floor with his eyebrows raised. He seemed to have nothing
else to do.

As for Tobias Mindemickel's character, it is hard to judge of
that. Some favourable light seems to be cast by the following
episode. One day this strange man left his house and was pounced
upon by a troop of children who followed him with laughter and
jeers. One of them, a lad of ten years, tripped over another child's
foot and fell so heavily to the pavement that blood burst from his
nose and ran from his forehead. He lay there and wept. Tobias
turned at once, went up to the lad, and began to console him in a
mild and quavering voice. "You poor child," said he, "have you
hurt yourself? You are bleeding--look how the blood is running
down from his forehead. Yes, yes, you do look miserable, you
weep because it hurts you so. I pity you. Of course, you did it
yourself, but I will tie my handkerchief round your head. There,
there! Now pull yourself together and get up." And actually with
the words he bound his own handkerchief round the bruise and
helped the lad to his feet. Then he went away. But he looked a
different man. He held himself erect and stepped out firmly, draw-
ing longer breaths under his narrow coat. His eyes looked larger
and brighter, he looked squarely at people and things, while an
expression of joy so strong as to be almost painful tightened the
corners of his mouth.

After this for a while there was less tendency to jeer at him
among the denizens of Grey's Road. But they forgot his astonish-
ing behaviour with the lapse of time, and once more the cruel
cries resounded from dozens of lusty throats behind the bent and
infirm man: "Ho, ho, Tobias!"


One sunny morning at eleven o'clock Mindernickel left the
house and betook himself through the town to the Lerchenberg,
a long ridge which constitutes the afternoon walk of good society.
Today the spring weather was so fine that even in the forenoon
there were some carriages as well as pedestrians moving about.
On the main road, under a tree, stood a man with a young hound
on a leash, exhibiting it for sale. It was a muscular little animal
about four months old, with black ears and black rings round its
eyes.

Tobias at a distance of ten paces noticed this; he stood still,
rubbed his chin with his hand, and considered the man, and the
hound alertly wagging its tail. He went forward, circling three
times round the tree, with the crook of his stick pressed against
his lips. Then he stepped up to the man, and keeping his eye fixed
on the dog, he said in a low, hurried tone: "What are you asking
for the dog?"

"Ten marks," answered the man.

Tobias kept still a moment, then he said with some hesitation:
"Ten marks?"

"Yes," said the man.

Tobias drew a black leather purse from his pocket, took out a
note for five marks, one three-mark and one two-mark piece, and
quickly handed them to the man. Then he seized the leash, and
two or three people who had been watching the bargain laughed
to see him as he gave a quick, frightened look about him and, with
his shoulders stooped, dragged away the whimpering and protest-
ing beast. It struggled the whole of the way, bracing its forefeet
and looking up pathetically in its new master's face. But Tobias
pulled, in silence, with energy and succeeded in getting through
the town.

An outcry arose among the urchins of Grey's Road when
Tobias appeared with the dog. He lifted it in his arms, while they
danced round, pulling at his coat and jeering; carried it up the
stair and bore it into his own room, where he set it on the floor,
still whimpering. Stooping over and patting it with kindly con-
descension he told it:

"There, there, little man, you need not be afraid of me; that is
quite unnecessary."

He took a plate of cooked meat and potatoes out of a drawer
and tossed the dog a part of it, whereat it ceased to whine and ate
the food with loud relish, wagging its tail.

"And I will call you Esau," said Tobias. "Do you understand?
That will be easy for you to remember." Pointing to the floor in
front of him he said, in a tone of command:

"Esau!"

And the dog, probably in the hope of getting more to eat, did
come up to him. Tobias clapped him gently on the flank and said:

"That's right, good doggy, good doggy!"

He stepped back a few paces, pointed to the floor again, and
commanded:

"Esau!"

And thedog sprang to him quite blithely, wagging its tail, and
licked its master's boots.

Tobias repeated the performance with unflagging zest, some
twelve or fourteen times. Then the dog got tired, it wanted to rest
and digest its meal. It lay down, in the sagacious and charming
attitude of a hunting dog, with both long, slender forelegs
stretched before it, close together.

"Once more," said Tobias. "Esau!"

But Esau turned his head aside and stopped where he was.

"Esau!" Tobias's voice was raised, his tone more dictatorial
still. "You've got to come, even if you are tired."

But Esau laid his head on his paws and came not at all.

"Listen to me," said Tobias, and his voice was now low and
threatening; "you'd best obey or you will find out what I do
when I am angry."

But the dog hardly moved his tail.

Then Mindermckel was seized by a mad and extravagant fit
of anger. He clutched his black stick, lifted up Esau by the nape
of the neck, and in a frenzy of rage he beat the yelping animal,
repeating over and over in a horrible, hissing voice:

"What, you do not obey me? You dare to disobey me?"

At last he flung the stick from him, set down the crying animal,
and with his hands upon his back began to pace the room, his
breast heaving, and flinging upon Esau an occasional proud and
angry look. When this had gone on for some time, he stopped in
front of the dog as it lay on its back, moving its fore-paws im-
ploringly. He crossed his arms on his chest and spoke with a
frightful hardness and coldness of look and tone--like Napoleon,
when he stood before a company that had lost its standard in
battle:

"May I ask you what you think of your conduct?"

And the dog, delighted at this condescension, crawled closer,
nestled against its master's leg, and looked up at him bright-
eyed.

For a while Tobias gazed at the humble creature with silent
contempt. Then as the touching warmth of Esau's body com-
municated itself to his leg he lifted Esau up.

"Well, I will have pity on you," he said. But when the good
beast essayed to lick his face his voice suddenly broke with melan-
choly emotion. He pressed the dog passionately to his breast, his
eyes filling with tears, unable to go on. Chokingly he said:

"You see, you are my only...my only..." He put Esau to bed, with
great care, on the sofa, supported his own chin with his hand,
and gazed at him with mild eyes, speechlessly.


Tobias Mindernickel left his room now even less often than
before; he had no wish to show himself with Esau in public. He
gave his whole time to the dog, from morning to night; feeding
him, washing his eyes, teaching him commands, scolding him,
and talking to him as though he were human. Esau, alas, did not
always behave to his master's satisfaction. When he lay beside
Tobias on the sofa, dull with lack of air and exercise, and gazed
at him with soft, melancholy eyes, Tobias was pleased. He sat
content and quiet, tenderly stroking Esau's back as he said:

"Poor fellow, how sadly you look at me! Yes, yes, life is sad,
that you will learn before you are much older."

But sometimes Esau was wild, beside himself with the urge to
exercise his hunting instincts; he would dash about the room,
worry a slipper, leap on the chairs, or roll over and over with
sheer excess of spirits. Then Tobias followed his motions from
afar with a helpless, disapproving, wandering air and a hateful,
peevish smile. At last he would brusquely call Esau to him and
say:

"That's enough now, stop dashing about like that--there is
no reason for such high spirits."

Once it even happened that Esau got out of the room and
bounced down the stairs to the street, where he at once began to
chase a cat, to eat dung in the road, and jump up at the children
frantic with joy. But when the distressed Tobias appeared with
his wry face, half the street roared with laughter to see him, and
it was painful to behold the dog bounding away in the other direc-
tion from his master. That day Tobias in his anger beat him for
a long time.


One day, when he had had the dog for some weeks, Tobias took
a loaf of bread out of the chest of drawers and began stooping
over to cut off little pieces with his big bone-handled knife and
let them drop on the floor for Esau to eat. The dog was frantic
with hunger and playfulness; it jumped up at the bread, and the
long-handled knife in the clumsy hands of Tobias ran into its
right shoulder-blade. It fell bleeding to the ground.

In great alarm Tobias flung bread and knife aside and bent over
the injured animal. Then the expression of his face changed, actu-
ally a gleam of relief and happiness passed over it. With the great-
est care he lifted the wounded animal to the sofa--and then with
what inexhaustible care and devotion he began to tend the invalid.
He did not stir all day from its side, he took it to sleep on his own
bed, he washed and bandaged, stroked and caressed and consoled
it with unwearying solicitude.

"Does it hurt so much?" he asked. "Yes, you are suffering a
good deal, my poor friend. But we must be quiet, we must try
to bear it." And the look on his face was one or gentle and melan-
choly happiness.

But as Esau got better and the wound healed, so the spirits of
Tobias sank again. He paid no more attention to the wound, con-
fining his sympathy to words and caresses. But it had gone on well,
Esau's constitution was sound; he began to move about once more.
One day after he had finished off a whole plate of milk and white
bread he seemed quite right again; jumped down from the sofa
to rush about the room, barking joyously, with all his former lack
of restraint. He tugged at the bed-covers, chased a potato round
the room, and rolled over and over in his excitement.

Tobias stood by the flower-pot in the window. His arms stuck
out long and lean from the ragged sleeves and he mechanically
twisted the hair that hung down from his temples. His figure
stood out black and uncanny against the grey wall of the next
building. His face was pale and drawn with suffering and he fol-
lowed Esau's pranks unmoving, with a sidelong, jealous, wicked
look. But suddenly he pulled himself together, approached the
dog, and made it stop jumping about; he took it slowly in his arms.

"Now, poor creature," he began, in a lachrymose tone--but
Esau was not minded to be pitied, his spirits were too high. He
gave a brisk snap at the hand which would have stroked him; he
escaped from the arms to the floor, where he jumped mockingly
aside and ran off, with a joyous bark.

That which now happened was so shocking, so inconceivable,
that I simply cannot tell it in any detail. Tobias Mindernickel
stood leaning a little forward, his arms hanging down; his lips
were compressed, the balls of his eyes vibrated uncannily in their
sockets. Suddenly with a sort of frantic leap, he seized the animal,
a large bright object gleamed in his hand--and then he flung
Esau to the ground with a cut which ran from the right shoulder
deep into the chest. The dog made no sound, he simply fell on
his side, bleeding and quivering.

The next minute he was on the sofa with Tobias kneeling be-
fore him, pressing a cloth on the wound and stammering:

"My poor brute, my poor dog! How sad everything is! How
sad it is for both of us! You suffer--yes, yes, I know. You lie
there so pathetic--but I am with you, I will console you--here
is my best handkerchief--"

But Esau lay there and rattled in his throat. His clouded, ques-
tioning eyes were directed upon his master, with a look of com-
plaining, innocence, and incomprehension--and then he stretched
out his legs a little and died.

But Tobias stood there motionless, as he was. He had laid his
face against Esau's body and he wept bitter tears.


1897



LITTLE LIZZY



There are marriages which the imagination, even the most prac-
tised literary one, cannot conceive. You must just accept them, as
you do in the theatre when you see the ancient and doddering
married to the beautiful and gay, as the given premises on which
the farce is mechanically built up.

Yes, the wife of Jacoby the lawyer was lovely and young, a
woman of unusual charm. Some years--shall we say thirty years?
--ago, she had been christened with the names of Anna, Margarete,
Rosa, Amalie; but the name she went by was always Amra, com-
posed of the initials of her four real ones; it suited to perfection
her somewhat exotic personality. Her soft, heavy hair, which she
wore parted on one side and brushed straight back above her ears
from the narrow temples, had only the darkness of the glossy
chestnut; but her skin displayed the dull, dark sallowness of the
south and clothed a form which southern suns must have ripened.
Her slow, voluptuous indolent presence suggested the harem; each
sensuous, lazy movement of her body strengthened the impression
that with her the head was entirely subordinate to the heart. She
needed only to have looked at you once, with her artless brown
eyes, lifting her brows in the pathetically narrow forehead, hori-
zontally, in a quaint way she had, for you to be certain of that.
But she herself was not so simple as not to know it too. Quite
simply, she avoided exposing herself, she spoke seldom and little--
and what is there to say against a woman who is both beautiful
and silent? Yes, the word "simple" is probably the last which
should be applied to her. Her glance was artless; but also it had a
kind of luxurious cunning--you could see that she was not dull,
also that she might be a mischief-maker. In profile her nose was
rather too thick; but her full, large mouth was utterly lovely, if
also lacking in any expression save sensuality.

This disturbing phenomenon was the wife of Jacoby the lawyer,
a man of forty. Whoever looked at him was bound to be amazed
at the fact. He was stout, Jacoby the lawyer; but stout is not the
word, he was a perfect colossus of a man! His legs, in their colum-
nar clumsiness and the slate-grey trousers he always wore, re-
minded one of an elephant's. His round, fat-upholstered back was
that of a bear; and over the vast round of his belly his funny little
grey jacket was held by a single button strained so tight that when
it was unbuttoned the jacket came wide open with a pop. Scarcely
anything which could be called a neck united this huge torso with
the little head atop. The head had narrow watery eyes, a squabby
nose, and a wee mouth between cheeks drooping with fullness.
The upper lip and the round head were covered with harsh,
scanty, light-coloured bristles that showed the naked skin, as on
an overfed dog. There was no doubt that Jacoby's fatness was not
of a healthy kind. His gigantic body, tall as well as stout, was not
muscular, but flabby. The blood would sometimes rush to his
puffy face, then ebb away leaving it of a yellowish pallor; the
mouth would be drawn and sour.

Jacoby's practice was a limited one; but he was well-to-do,
partly from his wife's side; and the childless pair lived in a com-
fortable apartment in the Kaiserstrasse and entertained a good
deal. This must have been Frau Amra's taste, for it is unthinkable
that the lawyer could have cared for it; he participated with an
enthusiasm of a peculiarly painful kind. This fat man's character
was the oddest in the world. No human being could have been
politer, more accommodating, more complaisant than he. But you
unconsciously knew that this over-obligingness was somehow
forced, that its true source was an inward insecurity and cow-
ardice--the impression it gave was not very pleasant. A man
who despises himself is a very ugly sight; worse still when vanity
combines with his cowardice to make him wish to please. This
was the case, I should say, with Jacoby: his obsequiousness was
almost crawling, it went beyond the bounds of personal decency.
He was quite capable of saying to a lady as he escorted her to
table: "My dear lady, I am a disgusting creature, but will you do
me the honour?" No humour would be mingled with the remark;
it was simply cloying, bitter, self-tortured--in a word, disgusting,
as he said.

The following once actually happened: the lawyer was taking
a walk, and a clumsy porter with a hand-cart ran over his foot.
Too late the man stopped his cart and turned round--whereupon
Jacoby, quite pale and dazed, his cheeks shaking up and down,
took off his hat and stuttered: "I b-beg your pardon." A thing
like that is infuriating. But this extraordinary colossus seemed per-
petually to suffer from a plague of conscience. When he took a
walk with his wife on the Lerchenberg, the Corso of the little city.
he would roll his eyes round at Amra, walking with her wonder-
ful elastic gait at his side, and bow so anxiously, diligently, and
zealously in all directions that he seemed to be begging pardon of
all the lieutenants they met for being in unworthy possession of
such a beautiful wife. His mouth had a pathetically ingratiating
expression, as though he wanted to disarm their scorn.


I have already hinted that the reason why Amra married Jacoby
is unfathomable. As for him, he was in love with her; ardently, as
people of his physical make-up seldom are, and with such anxious
humility as fitted the rest of his character. Sometimes, late in the
evening, he would enter their large sleeping-chamber with its high
windows and flowered hangings--softly, so softly that there was
no sound, only the slow shaking of floor and furniture. He
would come up to Amra's massive bed, where she already lay,
kneel down, and with infinite caution take her hand. She would
lift her brows in a level line, in the quaint way she had, and look
at her husband, abject before her in the dim light, with a look of
malice and sensuality combined. With his puffy, trembling hands
he would softly stroke back the sleeve and press his tragic fat
face into the soft brown flesh of her wrist, where little blue veins
stood out. And he would speak to her, in a shaking, half-smoth-
ered voice, as a sensible man in everyday life never speaks:

"Amra, my dear Amra! I am not disturbing you? You were not
asleep yet? Dear God! I have been thinking all day how beautiful
you are and how much I love you. I beg you to listen, for it is so
very hard to express what I feel: I love you so much that some-
times my heart contracts and I do not know where to turn. I love
you beyond my strength.You do not understand that, I know;
but you believe it, and you must say, just one single time, that you
are a little grateful to me. For, you see, such a love as mine to you
is precious, it has its value in this life of ours. And that you will
never betray or deceive me, even if you cannot love me, just out
of gratitude for this love. I have come to you to beg you, as
seriously, as fervently as I can..." here the lawyer's speech
would be dissolved in sobs, in low, bitter weeping, as he knelt.
Amra would feel moved; she would stroke her husband's bristles
and say over and over, in the soothing, contemptuous singsong
one uses to a dog who comes to lick one's feet: "Yes, yes, good
doggy, good doggy!"

And this behaviour of Amra's was certainly not that of a moral
woman. For to relieve my mind of the truth which I have so far
withheld, she did already deceive her husband; she betrayed him
for the embraces of a gentleman named Alfred Lautner, a gifted
young musician, who at twenty-seven had made himself a small
reputation with amusing little compositions. He was a slim young
chap with a provocative face, a flowing blond mane, and a sunny
smile in his eyes, of which he was quite aware. He belonged to
the present-day race of small artists, who do not demand the ut-
most of themselves, whose first requirement is to be jolly and
happy, who employ their pleasing little talents to heighten their
personal charms. It pleases them to play in society the role of
the naive genius. Consciously childlike, entirely unmoral and un-
scrupulous, merry and self-satisfied as they are, and healthy
enough to enjoy even their disorders, they are agreeable even in
their vanity, so long as that has not been wounded. But woe to
these wretched little poseurs when serious misfortune befalls them,
with which there is no coquetting, and when they can no longer
be pleasant in their own eyes. They will not know how to be
wretched decently and in order, they do not know how to attack
the problem of suffering. They will be destroyed. All that is a
story in itself. But Herr Alfred Lautner wrote prettv things,
mostly waltzes and mazurkas. They would have been rather too
gay and popular to be considered music as I understand it, if each
of them had not contained a passage of some originality, a modula-
tion, a harmonic phrasing, some sort of bold effect that betrayed
wit and invention, which was evidently the point of the whole
and which made it interesting to genuine musicians. Often these
two single measures would have a strange plaintive, melancholy
tone which would come out abruptly in the midst of a piece of
dance-music and as suddenly be gone.

Amra Jacoby was on fire with guilty passion for this young
man, and as for him he had not enough moral fibre to resist her
seductions. They met here, they met there, and for some years
an immoral relation had subsisted between them, known to the
whole town, who laughed at it behind the lawyer's back. But
what did he think? Amra was not sensitive enough to betray her-
self on account of a guilty conscience, so we must take it as certain
that, however heavy the lawyer's heart, he could cherish no defi-
nite suspicions.


Spring had come, rejoicing all hearts; and Amra conceived the
most charming idea.

"Christian," said she--Jacoby's name was Christian--"let us
give a party, a beer party to celebrate the new beer--of course
quite simply, but let's have a lot of people."

"Certainly," said the lawyer, "but could we not have it a little
later?"

To which Amra made no reply, having passed on to the con-
sideration of details.

"It will be so large that we cannot have it here, we must hire
a place, some sort or outdoor restaurant where there is plenty of
room and fresh air. You see that, of course. The place I am think-
ing of is Wendelin's big hall at the foot of the Lerchenberg. The
hall is independent of the restaurant and brewery, connected by
a passage only. We can decorate it for the occasion and set up
long tables, drink our bock, and dance--we must have music and
even perhaps some sort of entertainment. There is a little stage,
as I happen to know, that makes it very suitable. It will be a very
original party and no end of fun."

The lawyer's face had gone a pale yellow as she spoke, and the
corners of his mouth went down. He said:

"My dear Amra! How delightful it will be! I can leave it all to
you, you are so clever. Make any arrangements you like."

And Amra made her arrangements. She took counsel of various
ladies and gentlemen, she went in person to hire the hall, she even
formed a committee of people who were invited or who volun-
teered to co-operate in the entertainment. These were exclusively
men, except lor the wife of Herr Hildebrandt, an actor at the
Hoftheater, who was herself a singer. Then there was Herr Hilde-
brandt, an Assessor Witznagel, a young painter, Alfred Lautner
the musician, and some students brought in by Herr Witznagel,
who were to do Negro dances.

A week after Amra had made her plan, this committee met in
Amra's drawing-room in the Kaiserstrasse--a small, crowded,
overheated room, with a heavy carpet, a sofa with quantities of
cushions, a fan palm, English leather chairs, and a splay-legged
mahogany table with a velvet cover, upon which rested several
large illustrated morocco-bound volumes. There was a fireplace
too, with a small fire still burning, and on the marble chimney-top
were plates of dainty sandwiches, glasses, and two decanters of
sherry. Amra reclined in one corner of the sofa under the fan
palm, with her legs crossed. She had the beauty of a warm summer
night. A thin blouse of light-coloured silk covered her bosom, but
her skirt was of heavy dark stuff embroidered with large flowers.
Sometimes she put up one hand to brush back the chestnut hair
from her narrow forehead. Frau Hildebrandt sat beside her on
the sofa; she had red hair and wore riding clothes. Opposite the
two all the gentlemen formed a semicircle--among them Jacoby
himself, in the lowest chair he could find. He looked unutterably
wretched, kept drawing a long breath and swallowing as though
struggling against increasing nausea. Herr Alfred Lautner was in
tennis clothes--he would not take a chair, but leaned decoratively
against the chimney-piece, saying merrily that he could not sit
still so long.

Herr Hildebrandt talked sonorously about English songs. He
was a most respectable gentleman, in a black suit, with a Roman
head and an assured manner--in short a proper actor for a court
theatre, cultured, knowledgeable, and with enlightened tastes. He
liked to hold forth in condemnation of Ibsen, Zola, and Tolstoi,
all of whom had the same objectionable aims.But today he was
benignly interested in the small affair under discussion.

"Do you know that priceless song 'That's Maria!'?" he asked.
"Perhaps it is a little racy--but very effective. And then" so-
and-so--he suggested other songs, upon which they came to an
agreement and Frau Hildebrandt said that she would sing them.
The young painter, who had sloping shoulders and a very blond
beard, was to give a burlesque conjuring turn. Herr Hildebrandt
offered to impersonate various famous characters. In short, every-
thing was developing nicely, the programme was apparently ar-
ranged, when Assessor Witznagel, who had command of fluent
gesture and a good many duelling scars, suddenly took the word.

"All very well, ladies and gentlemen, it looks like being most
amusing. But if I may say so, it still lacks something; it wants some
kind of high spot, a climax as it were, something a bit startling,
perhaps, to round the thing off. I leave it to you, I have nothing
particular in mind, I only think...

"That is true enough!" Alfred Lautner's tenor voice came
from the chimney-piecc where he leaned. "Witznagel is right.
We need a climax. Let us put our heads together!" He settled
his red belt and looked engagingly about him.

"Well, if we do not consider the famous characters as the high
spot," said Herr Hildebrandt. Everybody agreed with the Asses-
sor. Something piquant was wanted for the principal number.
Even Jacoby nodded, and murmured: "Yes, yes, something jolly
and striking....They all reflected.

At the end of a minute's pause, which was broken only by
stifled exclamations, an extraordinary thing happened. Amra was
sitting reclined among the cushions, gnawing as busily as a mouse
at the pointed nail of her little finger. She had a very odd look on
her face: a vacant, almost an irresponsible smile, which betrayed
a sensuality both tormented and cruel. Her eyes, very bright and
wide, turned slowly to the chimney-piece, where for a second
they met the musician's. Then suddenly she jerked her whole
body to one side as she sat, in the direction of her husband. With
both hands in her lap she stared into his face with an avid and
clinging gaze, her own growing visibly paler, and said in her rich,
slow voice:

"Christian, suppose you come on at the end as a chanteuse in
a red satin baby frock, and do a dance."

The effect of these few words was tremendous. The young
painter essayed to laugh good-humouredly; Herr Hildebrandt,
stony-faced, brushed a crumb from his sleeve; his wife coloured
up, a rare thing for her; the students coughed and used their
handkerchiefs loudly; and Herr Assessor Witznagel simply left
the field and got himself a sandwich. The lawyer sat huddled on
his little chair, yellow in the face, with a terrified smile. He looked
all round the circle, and stammered:

"But, my God...I--I--I am not up to--not that I--I beg pardon,
but..."

Alfred Lautner had lost his insouciant expression; he even
seemed to have reddened a little, and he thrust out his neck to
peer searchingly into Amra's face. He looked puzzled and upset.

But she, Amra, holding the same persuasive pose, went on with
the same impressiveness:

"And you must sing, too, Christian, a song which Herr Lautner
shall compose, and he can accompany you on the piano. We
could not have a better or more effective climax."

There was a pause, an oppressive pause. Then this extraor-
dinary thing happened, that Herr Lautner, as it were seized upon
and carried away by his excitement, took a step forward and his
voice fairly trembled with enthusiasm as he said:

"Herr Jacoby, that is a priceless idea, and I am more than ready
to compose something. You must have a dance and song, anything
else is unthinkable as a wind-up to our affair. You will see, it will
be the best thing I have ever written or ever shall write. In a red
satin baby frock. Oh, your wife is an artist, only an artist could
have hit upon the idea! Do say yes, I beg of you. I will do my
part, you will see, it will be an achievement."

Here the circle broke up and the meeting became lively. Out
of politeness, or out of malice, the company began to storm the
lawyer with entreaties--Frau Hildebrandt went so far as to say,
quite loudly, in her Brunnhilde voice:

"Herr Jacoby, after all, you are such a jolly and entertaining
man!"

But the lawyer had pulled himself together and spoke, a little
yellow, but with a strong effort at resolution:

"But listen to me, ladies and gentlemen--what can I say to
you? It isn't my line, believe me. I have no comic gift, and be-
sides...in short, no, it is quite impossible, alas!"

He stuck obstinately to his refusal, and Amra no longer in-
sisted, but sat still with her absent look. Herr Lautner was silent
too, staring in deep abstraction at a pattern in the rug. Herr Hilde-
brandt changed the subject, and presently the committee meeting
broke up without coming to a final decision about the "climax."

On the evening of the same day Amra had gone to bed and was
lying there with her eyes wide open; her husband came lumbering
into the bedroom, drew a chair up beside the bed, dropped into it,
and said, in a low, hesitating voice:

"Listen, Amra; to be quite frank, I am feeling very disturbed.
I refused them today--I did not mean to be offensive--goodness
knows I did not mean that. Or do you seriously feel that--I beg
you to tell me."

Amra was silent for a moment, while her brows rose slowly. Then
she shrugged her shoulders and said:

"I do not know, my dear friend, how to answer you. You be-
haved in a way I should not have expected from you. You were
unfriendly, you refused to support our enterprise in a way which
they flatteringly considered to be indispensable to it. To put it
mildly, you disappointed everybody and upset the whole com-
pany with your rude lack of compliance. Whereas it was your
duty as host--"

The lawyer hung his head and sighed heavily. He said:

"Believe me, Amra, I had no intention to be disobliging. I do
not like to offend anybody; if I have behaved badly I am ready
to make amends. It is only a joke, after all, an innocent little
dressing-up--why not? I will not upset the whole affair, I am
ready to..."

The following afternoon Amra went out again to "make prepa-
rations." She drove to Number 78 Holzstrasse and went up to the
second storey, where she had an appointment. And when she lay
relaxed by the expression of her love she pressed her lover's head
passionately to her breast and whispered:

"Write it for four hands. We will accompany him together
while he sings and dances. I will see to the costume myself."
And an extraordinary shiver, a suppressed and spasmodic burst
of laughter went through the limbs of both.


For anyone who wants to give a large party out of doors Herr
Wendelins place on the slope of the Lerchenberg is to be recom,
mended. You enter it from the pretty suburban street through a
tall trellised gateway and pass mto the parklike garden, in the
centre of which stands a large hall, connected only by a narrow
passage with restaurant, kitchen, and brewery. It is a large,
brightly painted wooden hall, in an amusing mixture of Chinese
and Renaissance styles. It has folding doors which stand open in
good weather to admit the woodland air, and it will hold a great
many people.

On this evening as the carriages rolled up they were greeted
from afar by the gleam of coloured lights. The whole gateway,
the trees, and the hall itself were set thick with lanterns, while the
interior made an entrancing sight. Heavy garlands were draped
across the ceiling and studded with paper lanterns. Hosts of elec-
tric lights hung among the decorations of the walls, which con-
sisted of pine boughs, flags, and artificial flowers; the whole hall
was brilliantly lighted. The stage had foliage plants grouped on
either side, and a red curtain with a painted design of a presiding
genius hovering in the air. A long row of decorated tables ran
almost the whole length of the hall. And at these tables the guests
of Attorney Jacoby were doing themselves well on cold roast veal
and bock beer. There were certainly more than a hundred and
fifty people: officers, lawyers, business men, artists, upper officials,
with their wives and daughters. They were quite simply dressed,
in black coats and light spring toilettes, for this was a jolly, in-
formal occasion. The gentlemen carried their mugs in person to
the big casks against one of the walls; the spacious, festive, brightly
lighted room was filled with a heavy sweetish atmosphere of
evergreen boughs, flowers, beer, food, and human beings; and
there was a clatter and buzz of laughter and talk--the loud,
simple talk and the high, good-natured, unrestrained, carefree
laughter of the sort of people there assembled.

The attorney sat shapeless and helpless at one end of the table,
near the stage. He drank little and now and then addressed a
laboured remark to his neighbour, Frau Regierungsrat Haver-
mann. He breathed offensively, the corners of his mouth hung
down, he stared fixedly with his bulging watery eyes into the
lively scene, with a sort of melancholy remoteness, as though
there resided in all this noisy merriment something inexpressibly
painful and perplexing.

Large fruit tarts were now being handed round for the com-
pany to cut from; they drank sweet wine with these, and the time
for the speeches arrived. Herr Hildebrandt celebrated the new
brew in a speech almost entirely composed of classical quotations,
even Greek. Herr Witznagel, with florid gestures and ingenious
turns of phrase, toasted the ladies, taking a handful of flowers
from the nearest vase and comparing each flower to some feminine
charm. Amra Jacoby, who sat opposite him in a pale-yellow silk
frock, he called "a lovelier sister of the Marechal Niel."

Then she nodded meaningfully to her husband, brushing back
her hair from her forehead; whereupon the fat man arose and
almost ruined the whole atmosphere by stammering a few words
with painful effort, smiling a repulsive smile. Some half-hearted
bravos rewarded him, then there was an oppressive pause, after
which jollity resumed its sway. All smoking, all a little elevated by
drink, they rose from table and with their own hands and a great
deal of noise removed the tables from the hall to make way for
the dancing.

It was after eleven and high spirits reigned supreme. Some of
the guests streamed out into the brightly lighted garden to get
the fresh air; others stood about the hall in groups, smoking, chat-
ting, drawing beer from the kegs, and drinking it standing. Then
a loud trumpet call sounded from the stage, summoning every-
body to the entertainment. The band arrived and took its place
before the curtains; rows of chairs were put in place and red
programmes distributed on them; the gentlemen ranged them-
selves along the walls. There was an expectant hush.

The band played a noisy overture, and the curtains parted to
reveal a row of Negroes horrifying to behold in their barbaric
costumes and their blood-red lips, gnashing their teeth and emit-
ting savage yells.

Certainly the entertainment was the crowning success of Amra's
party. As it went on, the applause grew more and more enthusi-
astic. Frau Hildebrandt came on in a powdered wig, pounded
with a shepherdess' crook on the floor and sang--in too large a
voice--"That's Maria!" A conjuror in a dress coat covered with
orders performed the most amazing feats; Herr Hildebrandt im-
personated Goethe, Bismarck, and Napoleon in an amazingly life-
ke manner; and a newspaper editor. Dr. Wiesensprung, im-
provised a humorous lecture which had as its theme bock beer
and its social significance. And now the suspense reached its height,
for it was time for the last, the mysterious number which ap-
peared on the programme framed in a laurel wreath and was
entitled: "Little Lizzy. Song and Dance. Music by Alfred
Lautner."

A movement swept through the hall, and people's eyes met as
the band sat down at their instruments and Alfred Lautner came
from the doorway where he had been lounging with a cigarette
between his pouting lips to take his place beside Amra Jacoby
at the piano, which stood in the centre of the stage in front of
the curtains. Herr Lautner's face was flushed and he turned over
his manuscript score nervously; Amra for her part was rather
pale. She leaned one arm on the back of her chair and looked
loweringly at the audience. The bell rang, the pianists played a
few bars of an insignificant accompaniment, the curtains parted,
little Lizzy appeared.

The whole audience stiffened with amazement as that tragic and
bedizened bulk shambled with a sort of bear-dance into view. It
was Jacoby. A wide, shapeless garment of crimson satin, without
folds, fell to his feet; it was cut out above to make a repulsive
display of the fat neck, stippled with white powder. The sleeves
consisted merely of a shoulder puff, but the flabby arms were
covered by long lemon-coloured gloves; on the head perched a
high blond wig with a swaying green feather. And under the wig
was a face, a puffy, pasty, unhappy, and desperately mirthful face,
with cheeks that shook pathetically up and down and little red-
rimmed eyes that strained in anguish towards the floor and saw
nothing else at all. The fat man hoisted himself with effort from
one leg to the other, while with his hands he either held up his
skirts or else weakly raised his index fingers--these two gestures
he had and knew no others. In a choked and gasping voice he
sang; to the accompaniment of the piano.

The lamentable figure exhaled more than ever a cold breath of
anguish. It killed every light-hearted enjoyment and lay like an
oppressive weight upon the assembled audience. Horror was in
the depths of all these spellbound eyes, gazing at this pair at the
piano and at that husband there. The monstrous, unspeakable
scandal lasted five long minutes.

Then came a moment which none of those present will forget
as long as they live. Let us picture to ourselves what happened in
that frightful and frightfully involved little instant or time.

You know of course the absurd little jingle called "Lizzy."
And you remember the lines:

I can polka until I am dizzy,
I can waltz with the best and beyond,
I'm the popular pet, little Lizzy,
Who makes all the menfolks so fond--

which form the trivial and unlovely refrain to three longish
stanzas. Alfred Lautner had composed a new setting to the verses
I have quoted, and it was, as he had said it would be, his master-
piece. He had, that is, brought to its highest pitch his little artifice
of introducing into a fairly vulgar and humorous piece of hack-
work a sudden phrase of genuine creative art. The melody, in
C-sharp major, had been in the first bars rather pretty and per-
fectly banal. At the beginning of the refrain the rhythm became
livelier and dissonances occurred, which by means of the constant
accentuation of a B-natural made one expect a transition into
F-sharp major. These dissonances went on developing until the
word "beyond" and after the "I'm the" a culmination into
F-sharp major should have followed. Instead of which the most
surprising thing happened. That is, through a harsh turn, by
means of an inspiration which was almost a stroke of genius, the
key changed to F-major, and this little interlude which followed,
with the use of both pedals on the long-drawn-out first syllable
of the word "Lizzy," was indescribably, almost gruesomely effec-
tive. It was a complete surprise, an abrupt assault on the nerves,
it shivered down the back, it was a miracle, a revelation, it was like
a curtain suddenly torn away to reveal something nude.

And on the F-major chord Attorney Jacoby stopped dancing.
He stood still, he stood as though rooted to the stage with his
two forefingers lifted, one a little lower than the other. The word
"Lizzy" stuck in his throat, he was dumb; almost at the same
time the accompaniment broke sharp off, and the incredible,
absurd, and ghastly figure stood there frozen, with his head thrust
forward like a steer's, staring with inflamed eyes straight before
him. He stared into the brightly lighted, decorated, crowded hall,
in which, like an exhalation from all these people, the scandal hung
and thickened into visibility. He stared at all these upturned faces,
foreshortened and distorted by the lighting, into these hundreds
of pairs of eyes all directed with the same knowing expression
upon himself and the two at the piano. In a frightful stillness, un-
broken by the smallest sound, his gaze travelled slowly and un-
easily from the pair to the audience, from the audience to the pair,
while his eyes widened more and more. Then knowledge seemed
to flash across his face, like a sudden rush of blood, making it red
as the frock he wore, only to give way to a waxen yellow pallor--
and the fat man collapsed, making the platform creak beneath his
weight.

For another moment the stillness reigned. Then there came
shrieks, hubbub ensued, a few gentlemen took heart to spring
upon the platform, among them a young doctor--and the cur-
tains were drawn together.

Amra Jacoby and Alfred Lautner still sat at the piano. They
had turned a little away from each other, and he, with his head
bent, seemed to be listening to the echo of his F-major chord,
while she, with her birdlike brain, had not yet grasped the situa-
tion, but gazed round her with vacant face.

The young doctor came back presently. He was a little Jewish
gentleman with a serious face and a small pointed beard. Some
people surrounded him at the door with questions--to which he
replied with a shrug of the shoulders and the words:

"All over."


1897



THE WARDROBE



It was cloudy, cool, and half-dark when the Berlin-Rome express
drew in at a middle-sized station on its way. Albrecht van der
Qualen, solitary traveller in a first-class compartment with lace
covers over the plush upholstery, roused himself and sat up. He
felt a flat taste in his mouth, and in his body the none-too-agree-
able sensations produced when the train comes to a stop after a
long journey and we are aware of the cessation of rhythmic
motion and conscious of calls and signals from without. It is like
coming to oneself out of drunkenness or lethargy. Our nerves,
suddenly deprived of the supporting rhythm, feel bewildered and
forlorn. And this the more if we have just roused out of the heavy
sleep one falls into in a train.

Albrecht van der Qualen stretched a little, moved to the win-
dow, and let down the pane. He looked along the train. Men were
busy at the mail van, unloading and loading parcels. The engine
gave out a series of sounds, it snorted and rumbled a bit, standing
still, but only as a horse stands still, lifting its hoof, twitching its
ears, and awaiting impatiently the signal to go on. A tall, stout
woman in a long raincoat, with a face expressive of nothing but
worry, was dragging a hundred-pound suitcase along the train,
propelling it before her with pushes from one knee. She was say-
ing nothing, but looking heated and distressed. Her upper lip
stuck out, with little beads of sweat upon it--altogether she was
a pathetic figure. "You poor dear thing," van der Qualen thought.
"If I could help you, soothe you, take you in--only for the
sake of that upper lip. But each for himself, so things are arranged
in life; and I stand here at this moment perfectly carefree, looking
at you as I might at a beetle that has fallen on its back."

It was half-dark in the station shed. Dawn or twilight--he did
not know. He had slept, who could say whether for two, five, or
twelve hours? He had sometimes slept for twenty-four, or even
more, unbiokenly, an extraordinarily profound sleep. He wore
a half-length dark-brown winter overcoat with a velvet collar.
From his features it was hard to judge his age: one might actually
hesitate between twenty-five and the end of the thirties. He had
a yellowish skin, but his eyes were black like live coals and had
deep shadows round them. These eyes boded nothing good. Sev-
eral doctors, speaking frankly as man to man, had not given him
many more months.--His dark hair was smoothly parted on one
side.

In Berlin--although Berlin had not been the beginning of his
journey--he had climbed into the train just as it was moving off
--incidentally with his red leather hand-bag. He had gone to
sleep and now at waking felt himself so completely absolved from
time that a sense of refreshment streamed through him. He re-
joiced in the knowledge that at the end of the thin gold chain he
wore round his neck there was only a little medallion in his waist-
coat pocket. He did not like to be aware of the hour or of the
day of the week, and moreover he had no truck with the calen-
dars. Some time ago he had lost the habit of knowing the day of
the month or even the month of the year. Everything must be
in the air--so he put it in his mind, and the phrase was compre-
hensive though rather vague. He was seldom or never disturbed in
this programme, as he took pains to keep all upsetting knowledge
at a distance from him. After all, was it not enough for him to
know more or less what season it was? "It is more or less au-
tumn," he thought, gazing out into the damp and gloomy train
shed. "More I do not know. Do I even know where I am?"

His satisfaction at this thought amounted to a thrill of pleasure.
No, he did not know where he was! Was he still in Germany?
Beyond a doubt. In North Germany? That remained to be seen.
While his eyes were still heavy with sleep the window of his
compartment had glided past an illuminated sign; it probably had
the name of the station on it, but not the picture of a single letter
had been transmitted to his brain. In still dazed condition he had
heard the conductor call the name two or three times, but not a
syllable had he grasped. But out there in a twilight of which he
knew not so much as whether it was morning or evening lay a
strange place, an unknown town.--Albrecht van der Qualen took
his felt hat out of the rack, seized his red leather hand-bag, the
strap of which secured a red and white silk and wool plaid into
which was rolled an umbrella with a silver crook--and although
his ticket was labelled Florence, he left the compartment and the
train, walked along the shed, deposited his luggage at the cloak-
room, lighted a cigar, thrust his hands--he carried neither stick
nor umbrella--into his overcoat pockets, and left the station.

Outside in the damp, gloomy, and nearly empty square five or
six hackney coachmen were snapping their whips, and a man with
braided cap and long cloak in which he huddled shivering in-
quired politely: "Hotel Zum braven Mann?" Van der Qualen
thanked him politely and held on his way. The people whom he
met had their coat-collars turned up; he put his up too, nestled
his chin into the velvet, smoked, and went his way, not slowly
and not too fast.

He passed along a low wall and an old gate with two massive
towers; he crossed a bridge with statues on the railings and saw
the water rolling slow and turbid below. A long wooden boat,
ancient and crumbling, came by, sculled by a man with a long
pole in the stern. Van der Qualen stood for a while leaning over
the rail of the bridge. "Here," he said to himself, "is a river; here
is the river. It is nice to think that I call it that because I do not
know its name."--Then he went on.

He walked straight on for a little, on the pavement of a street
which was neither very narrow nor very broad; then he turned
off to the left. It was evening. The electric arc-lights came on,
flickered, glowed, sputtered, and then illuminated the gloom. The
shops were closing. "So we may say that it is in every respect
autumn," thought van der Qualen, proceeding along the wet black
pavement. He wore no galoshes, but his boots were very thick-
soled, durable, and firm, and withal not lacking in elegance.

He held to the left. Men moved past him, they hurried on their
business or coming from it. "And I move with them," he thought,
"and am as alone and as strange as probably no man has ever
been before. I have no business and no goal. I have not even a
stick to lean upon. More remote, freer, more detached, no one
can be, I owe nothing to anybody, nobody owes anything to me.
God has never held out His hand over me. He knows me not at
all. Honest unhappiness without charity is a good thing; a man
can say to himself: I owe God nothing."

He soon came to the edge of the town. Probably he had slanted
across hr at about the middle. He found himself on a broad sub-
urban street with trees and villas, turned to his right, passed three
or four cross-streets almost like village lanes, lighted only by
lanterns, and came to a stop in a somewhat wider one before a
wooden door next to a commonplace house painted a dingy yel-
low, which had nevertheless the striking feature of very convex
and quite opaque plate-glass windows. But on the door was a sign:
"In this house on the third floor there are rooms to let." "Ah!"
he remarked; tossed away the end of his cigar, pssed through the
door along a boarding which formed the dividing line between
two properties, and then turned left through the door of the
house itself. A shabby grey runner ran across the entry. He cov-
ered it in two steps and began to mount the simple wooden stair.

The doors to the several apartments were very modest too; they
had white glass panes with woven wire over them and on some of
them were name-plates. The landings were lighted by oil lamps.
On the third storey, the top one, for the attic came next, were
entrances right and left, simple brown doors without name-plates.
Van der Qualen pulled the brass bell in the middle. It rang, but
there was no sign from within. He knocked left. No answer. He
knocked right. He heard light steps within, very long, like strides,
and the door opened.

A woman stood there, a lady, tall, lean, and old. She wore a cap
with a large pale-lilac bow and an old-fashioned, faded black
gown. She had a sunken birdlike face and on her brow there was
an eruption, a sort of fungus growth. It was rather repulsive.

"Good evening," said van der Qualen. "The rooms?"

The old lady nodded; she nodded and smiled slowly, without
a word, understandingly, and with her beautiful long white hand
made a slow, languid, and elegant gesture towards the next, the
left-hand door. Then she retired and appeared again with a key.
"Look," he thought, standing behind her as she unlocked the door;
"you are like some kind of banshee, a figure out of Hoffmann,
madam." She took the oil lamp from its hook and ushered him in.

It was a small, low-ceiled room with a brown floor. Its walls
were covered with straw-coloured matting. There was a window
at the back in the right-hand wall, shrouded in long, thin white
muslin folds. A white door also on the right led into the next
room. This room was pathetically bare, with staring white walls,
against which three straw chairs, painted pink, stood out like
strawberries from whipped cream. A wardrobe, a washing-stand
with a mirror....The bed, a mammoth mahogany piece, stood
free in the middle of the room.

"Have you any objections?" asked the old woman, and passed
her lovely long, white hand lightly over the fungus growth on her
forehead.--It was as though she had said that by accident be-
cause she could not think for the moment of a more ordinary
phrase. For she added at once: "--so to speak?"

"No, I have no objections," said van der Qualen. "The rooms
are rather cleverly furnished. I will take them. I'd like to have
somebody fetch my luggage from the station, here is the ticket.
You will be kind enough to make up the bed and give me some
water. I'll take the house key now, and the key to the apartment.
... I'd like a couple of towels. I'll wash up and go into the city
for supper and come back later."

He drew a nickel case out of his pocket, took out some soap,
and began to wash his face and hands, looking as he did so through
the convex window-panes far down over the muddy, gas-lit sub-
urban streets, over the arc-lights and the villas.--As he dried his
hands he went over to the wardrobe. It was a square one, var-
nished brown, rather shaky, with a simple curved top. It stood in
the centre of the right-hand wall exactly in the niche of a second
white door, which of course led into the rooms to which the main
and middle door on the landing gave access. "Here is something
in the world that is well arranged," thought van der Qualen. "This
wardrobe fits into the door niche as though it were made for it."
He opened the wardrobe door. It was entirely empty, with sev-
eral rows of hooks in the ceiling; but it proved to have no back,
being closed behind by a piece of rough, common grey burlap,
fastened by nails or tacks at the four corners.

Van der Qualen closed the wardrobe door, took his hat, turned
up the collar of his coat once more, put out the candle, and set
forth. As he went through the front room he thought to hear
mingled with the sound of his own steps a sort of ringing in the
other room: a soft, clear, metallic sound--but perhaps he was
mistaken. As though a gold ring were to fall into a silver basin,
he thought, as he locked the outer door. He went down the steps
and out of the gate and took the way to the town.

In a busy street he entered a lighted restaurant and sat down at
one of the front tables, turning his back to all the world. He ate
a soupe aux fines berbes with croutons, a steak with a poached egg,
a compote and wine, a small piece of green gorgonzola and half a
pear. While he paid and put on his coat he took a few puffs from
a Russian cigarette, then lighted a cigar and went out. He strolled
for a while, found his homeward route into the suburb, and went
leisurely back.

The house with the plate-glass windows lay quite dark and
silent when van der Qualen opened the house door and mounted
the dim stair. He lighted himself with matches as he went, and
opened the left-hand brown door in the third storey. He laid hat
and overcoat on the divan, lighted the lamp on the big writing-
table, and found there his hand-bag as well as the plaid and um-
brella. He unrolled the plaid and got a bottle of cognac, then a
little glass and took a sip now and then as he sat in the arm-chair
finishing his cigar. "How fortunate, after all," thought he, "that
there is cognac in the world." Then he went into the bedroom.
where he lighted the candle on the night-table, put out the light in
the other room, and began to undress. Piece by piece he put down
his good, unobtrusive grey suit on the red chair beside the bed;
but then as he loosened his braces he remembered his hat and
overcoat, which still lay on the couch. He fetched them into the
bedroom and opened the wardrobe....He took a step back-
wards and reached behind him to clutch one of the large dark-
red mahogany balls which ornamented the bedposts. The room,
with its four white walls, from which the three pink chairs stood
out like strawberries from whipped cream, lay in the unstable
light of the candle. But the wardrobe over there was open and it
was not empty. Somebody was standing in it, a creature so lovely
that Albrecht van der Qualen's heart stood still a moment and
then in long, deep, quiet throbs resumed its beating. She was quite
nude and one of her slender arms reached up to crook a forefinger
round one of the hooks in the ceiling of the wardrobe. Long
waves of brown hair rested on the childlike shoulders--they
breathed that charm to which the only answer is a sob. The
candlelight was mirrored in her narrow black eyes. Her mouth
was a little large, but it had an expression as sweet as the lips
of sleep when after long days of pain they kiss our brow. Her
ankles nestled and her slender limbs clung to one another.

Albrecht van der Qualen rubbed one hand over his eyes and
stared...and he saw that down in the right corner the sacking
was loosened from the back of the wardrobe. "What--" said he
... "won't you come in--or how should I put it--out., Have
a little glass of cognac? Half a glass?" But he expected no answer
to this and he got none. Her narrow, shining eyes, so very black
that they seemed bottomless and inexpressive--they were di-
rected upon him, but aimlessly and somewhat blurred, as though
they did not see him.

"Shall I tell you a story?" she said suddenly in a low, husky
voice.

"Tell me a story," he answered. He had sunk down in a sitting
posture on the edge of the bed, his overcoat lay across his knees
with his folded hands resting upon it. His mouth stood a little
open, his eyes half-closed. But the blood pulsated warm and mildly
through his body and there was a gentle singing in his ears. She
had let herself down in the cupboard and embraced a drawn-up
knee with her slender arms, while the other leg stretched out
before her. Her little breasts were pressed together by her upper
arm, and the light gleamed on the skin of her flexed knee. She
talked...talked in a soft voice, while the candle-flame performed
its noiseless dance.

Two walked on the heath and her head lay on his shoulder.
There was a perfume from all growing things, but the evening
mist already rose from the ground. So it began. And often it was
in verse, rhyming in that incomparably sweet and flowing way
that comes to us now and again in the half-slumber of fever. But
it ended badly; a sad ending: the two holding each other indis-
solubly embraced, and while their lips rest on each other, one
stabbing the other above the waist with a broad knife--and not
without good cause. So it ended. And then she stood up with an
infinitely sweet and modest gesture, lifted the grey sacking at the
right-hand corner--and was no more there.


From now on he found her every evening in his wardrobe and
listened to her stories--how many evenings? How many days,
weeks, or months did he remain in this house and in this city?
It would profit nobody to know. Who would care for a miserable
statistic? And we are aware that Albrecht van der Qualen had
been told by several physicians that he had but a few months to
live. She told him stories. They were sad stories, without relief;
but they rested like a sweet burden upon the heart and made it
beat longer and more blissfully. Often he forgot himself.--His
blood swelled up in him, he stretched out his hands to her, and
she did not resist him. But then for several evenings he did not find
her in the wardrobe, and when she came back she did not tell him
anything for several evenings and then by degrees resumed, until
he again forgot himself.

How long it lasted--who knows? Who even knows whether
Albrecht van der Qualen actually awoke on that grey afternoon
and went into the unknown city; whether he did not remain
asleep in his first-class carriage and let the Berlin-Rome express
bear him swiftly over the mountains? Would any of us care to
take the responsibility of giving a definite answer? It is all un-
certain. "Everything must be in the air...


1899



THE WAY TO THE CHURCHYARD



The way to the churchyard ran along beside the highroad, ran
beside it all the way to the end; that is to say, to the churchyard.
On the other side of it were houses, new suburban houses, some
of them still unfinished; after the houses came fields. The high-
road was flanked by trees, gnarled beeches of considerable age,
and half of it was paved and half not. But the way to the church-
yard had a sprinkling of gravel, which made it seem like a pleas-
ant foot-path. Between highroad and path ran a narrow dry ditch,
filled with grass and wild flowers.

It was spring, it was nearly summer. The world was smiling,
God's blue sky was filled with nothing but small, round, dense
little morsels of cloud, tufted all over with funny little dabs of
snowy white. The birds were twittering in the beeches, and a
soft wind blew across the fields.

A wagon from the next village was going along the highroad
towards the town, half on the paved, half on the unpaved part
of the road. The driver's legs were hanging down both sides of the
shaft, he was whistling out of tune. At the end of the wagon,
with its back to the driver, sat a little yellow dog. It had a pointed
muzzle and it gazed with an unspeakably solemn and collected
air back over the way by which it had come. It was a most ad-
mirable little dog, good as gold, a pleasure to contemplate. But
no, it does not belong to the matter in hand, we must pass it by.
--A troop of soldiers came along, from the barracks close at hand;
they marched in their own dust and sang. Another wagon passed,
coming from the town and going to the next village. The driver
was asleep and there was no dog; hence this wagon is devoid of
interest. Two journeymen followed after it, one of them a giant,
the other a hunchback. They walked barefoot, because they were
carrying their boots on their backs; they shouted a good-natured
greeting to the sleeping driver and went their way. Yes, this was
but a moderate traffic, which pursued its ends without complica-
tions or incidents.

On the path to the churchyard walked a single figure, going
slowly, with bent head, and leaning on a black stick. This man was
named Piepsam, Praisegod Piepsam and no other name. I mention
it expressly because of his ensuing most singular behaviour.

He wore black, for he was on his way to visit the graves of
his loved ones. He had on a furry top hat with a wide brim, a
frock-coat shiny with age, trousers both too tight and too short,
and black kid gloves with all the shine rubbed off. His neck, a
long, shrivelled neck with a huge Adam's apple, rose out of a
frayed turn-over collar--yes, this turn-over collar was already
rough at the corners. Sometimes the man raised his head to see
how far away the churchyard still was; and then you got a glimpse
of a strange face, a face, unquestionably, whicn you would not
easily forget.

It was smooth-shaven and pallid. But a knobbly nose stuck out
between the sunken cheeks, and this nose glowed with immod-
erate and unnatural redness and swarmed with little pimples,
unhealthy excrescences which gave it an uneven and fantastic out-
line. The deep glow of the nose stood out against the dead pale-
ness of the face; there was something artificial and improbable
about it, as though he had put it on, like a carnival nose, and was
wearing it as a sort of funereal joke. But it was no joke.--His
mouth was big, with drooping corners, and he held it tightly
compressed. His eyebrows were black, strewn with little white
hairs, and when he glanced up from the ground he lifted them
till they disappeared under the brim of his hat and you got a
good view or the pathetically inflamed and red-rimmed eyes. In
short, this was a face bound in the end to evoke one's pity.

Praisegod Piepsam's appearance was not enlivening, it fitted ill
into the lovely afternoon; even for a man who was visiting the
graves of his dear departed he looked much too depressed. His
inner man, however, could one have seen within him, amply ex-
plained and justified the outward state. Yes, he was a bit depressed,
a bit unhappy, a little hardly treated--is it so hard for happy
people like yourselves to enter into his feelings? But the fact was,
things were not going just a little badly with him, they were
bad in a very high degree.

In the first place, he drank. We shall come on to that later. And
he was a widower, bereft and forsaken of all the world, there was
not a soul on earth to love him. His wife, born Lebzelt, had been
taken from him six months before, when she had presented him
with a child. It was the third child, and it was born dead. The
others were dead too, one of diphtheria, the other of nothing in
particular, save general insufficiency. And as though that were
not enough, he had lost his job, been deprived with contumely
of his position and his daily bread--naturally on account of his
vice, which was stronger than Piepsam.

Once he had been able to resist it, to some extent, though yield-
ing to it by bouts. But when his wife and child were snatched from
him, when he had no work and no position, nothing to support
him, when he stood alone on this earth, then his weakness took
more and more the upper hand. He had been a clerk in the office
of a benefit society, a sort of superior copyist who got ninety
marks a month. But he had been drunken and negligent and after
repeated warnings had finally been discharged.

Certainly this did not improve Piepsam's morale. Indeed he
declined more and more to his fall. Wretchedness, in fact, is de-
structive to our human dignity and self-respect--it does us no
harm to get a little understanding of these matters. For there is
much that is strange about them, not to say thrilling. It does the
man no good to keep on protesting that he is not guilty, for in
most cases he despises himself for his own unhappiness. And self-
contempt and bad conduct stand in the most frightful mutual
relation; they feed each other, they play into each other's hands,
in a way shocking to behold. Thus was it with Piepsam. He drank
because he had no self-respect, and he had no self-respect because
the continual breakdown of his good intentions ate it away. At
home in his wardrobe he kept a bottle with a poisonous-coloured
liquor in it, the name of which I will refrain from mentioning.
Before this wardrobe Praisegod Piepsam had before now gone
literally on his knees, and in his wrestlings had bitten his tongue--
and still in the end capitulated. I do not like even to mention such
things--but after all they arc very instructive.

Now he was taking his way to the churchyard, striking his
black stick before him as he went. The gentle breeze played about
his nose too, but he felt it not. A lost and most miserable human
being, he stared straight ahead of him with lifted brows.--Sud-
denly he heard a noise behind him and listened; it was a little
rustling sound coming on swiftly from the distance. He turned
round and stopped.--A bicycle was approaching at full tilt, its
pneumatic tires crunching the gravel; it slowed down because
Piepsam stood directly in the way.

A young man perched on the saddle, a youth, a blithe and care-
free cyclist. He made no claims to belong to the great and mighty
of this earth--oh, dear me, not at all! He rode a cheapish ma-
chine, of no matter what make, worth perhaps two hundred
marks, at a guess. On it he rode abroad, he came out from the city
and the sun glittered on his pedals as he rode straight into God's
great out-of-doors--hurrah, hurrah! He wore a coloured shirt
with a grey jacket, gaiters, and the sauciest cap in the world, a
perfect joke of a cap, brown checks and a button on top. Under-
neath it a thick sheaf of blond hair stuck out on his forehead. His
eyes were blue lightnings. He came on, like life itself, ringing his
bell. But Piepsam did not budge a hair's breadth out of the way.
He stood there and looked at Life--unbudgeably.

Life hung him an angry glance and went past--whereupon
Piepsam too began to move forwards. When Life got abreast of
him he said slowly, with dour emphasis:

"Number nine thousand seven hundred and seven." He clipped
his lips together and looked unflinchingly at the ground, feeling
Life's angry eye upon him.

Life had turned round, grasping the saddle behind it with one
hand and slowly pedalling.

"What did you say?" asked Life.

"Number nine thousand seven hundred and seven," Piepsam
reiterated. "Oh, nothing. I am going to report you."

"You are going to report me?" asked Life; turned round still
further and rode still slower, so that it had to keep its balance by
straightening the handle-bars.

"Certainly," said Piepsam, some five or six paces away.

"Why?" asked Life, getting off. It stood there in an expectant
attitude.

"You know very well yourself."

"No, I do not know."

"You must know."

"No, I do not know," said Life, "and besides, it interests me
very little, I must say." It turned to its bicycle as though to mount.
Life certainly had a tongue in its head.

"I am going to report you for riding here on the path to the
churchyard instead of our on the highroad," said Piepsam.

"But, my dear sir," said Life with a short impatient laugh, turn-
ing round again, "look at the marks of bicycles all the way along.
Everybody uses this path."

"It makes no difference to me," replied Piepsam. "I am going
to report you all the same."

"Just as you please," said Life, and mounted its machine. It
really mounted at one go, with a single push of the foot, secured
its seat in the saddle, and bent to the task of getting up as much
speed as its temperament required.

"Well, if you go on riding here on the foot-path I will certainly
report you," said Piepsam again, his voice rising and trembling.
But Life paid no attention at all; it went on gathering speed.

If you could have seen Praisegod Piepsam's face at that moment,
it would have shocked you deeply. He compressed his lips so
tightly that his cheeks and even his red-hot nose were drawn out
of shape. His eyebrows were lifted as high as they would go and
he stared after the departing bicycle with a maniac expression.
Suddenly he gave a forwards rush and covered running the small
space between him and Life. He laid hold on the little leather
pocket behind the saddle and held fast with both hands. He clung
to it with lips drawn out of human semblance, and tugged wild-
eyed and speechless, with all his strength, at the moving and wob-
bling machine. It seemed from the appearances in doubt whether
he was seeking with malice aforethought to stop it or whether he
had been struck with the idea of mounting behind Life and riding
with glittering pedals into God's great out-of-doors, hurrah, hur-
rah! No bicycle could stand the weight; it stopped, it leaned over,
it fell.

But now Life became violent. It had come to a stop with one
leg on the ground; it stretched out its right arm and gave Herr
Piepsam such a push in the chest that he staggered several steps
backwards. Then it said, its voice swelling to a threat:

"You are probably drunk, fellow! But if you continue to try
to stop me, my fine lad, I'll just chop you into little bits--do you
understand? I'll tear you limb from limb. Kindly get that through
your head." Then Life turned its back on Herr Piepsam, pulled
its cap furiously down on its brow, and once more mounted its
bicycle. Yes, Life certainly had a tongue in its head. And it
mounted as neatly as before, in one go, settled into the saddle, and
had the machine at once under control. Piepsam saw its back re-
treating faster and faster.

He stood there gasping, staring after Life. And Life did not
fall over, no mishap occurred, no tire burst, no stone lay in the
way. It moved off on its rubber wheels. Then Piepsam began to
shriek and rail; his voice was no longer melancholy at all, you
might call it a roar.

"You are not to go on!" he shouted. "You shall not go on.
You are to ride out on the road and not here on the way to the
churchyard--do you hear? Get off, get off at once! I will report
you, I will enter an action against you. Oh, Lord, oh, God, if you
were to fall off, if you would only fall off, you rascally windbag,
I would stamp on you, I would stamp on your face with my
boots, you damned villain, you--"

Never was seen such a sight. A man raving mad on the way
to the churchyard, a man with his face swollen with roaring, a
man dancing with rage, capering, flinging his arms about, quite
out of control. The bicycle was out of sight by this time, but
still Piepsam stood where he was and raved.

"Stop him, stop him! Ride on the path to the churchyard, will
he? You blackguard! You outrageous puppy, you! You damned
monkey. I'd like to skin you alive, you with the blue eyes, you
silly cur, you windbag, you blockhead, you ignorant ninny! You
get off! Get off this very minute! Won't anybody pitch him off
in the dirt? Riding, eh? On the way to the churchyard! Pull him
down, damned puppy....Oh, if I had hold of you, eh? What
wouldn't I do? Devil scratch your eyes out, you ignorant, ig-
norant, ignorant fool!"

Piepsam went on from this to expressions which cannot be set
down. Foaming at the mouth, he uttered the most shameless ob-
jurgations, while his voice cracked in his throat and his writhings
grew more fantastic. A few children with a fox-terrier and a bas-
ket crossed over from the road; they climbed the ditch, sur-
rounded the shrieking man and peered into his distorted face.
Some labourers at work on the new houses, just about to take
their midday rest, saw that something was going on and joined
the group--there were both men and women among them. But
Piepsam went on, his frenzy grew worse and worse. Blind with
rage, he shook his fist at all four quarters of the heavens, whirled
round on himself, bounded and bent his knees and bobbed up
again in the extremity of his effort to shriek even louder. He did
not stop for breath and where all his words came from was the
greatest wonder. His face was frightfully puffed out, his top hat
sat on the back of his neck, and his shirt hung out of his waistcoat.
By now he had passed on from the particular to the general and
was making remarks which had nothing at all to do with the situa-
tion: references to his own vicious mode of life, and religious allu-
sions which certainly sounded strange in such a voice, mingled as
they were with his dissolute curses.

"Come on, come on, all of you!" he bellowed, "Not only you
and you and you but all the rest of you, with your blue-lightning
eyes and your little caps with buttons. I will shriek the truth in
your ears and it will fill you with everlasting horror....So you
are grinning, so you are shrugging your shoulders? I drink...
well, yes, of course I drink. I am even a drunkard, if you want
to know. What does that signify? It is not yet the last day of all.
The day will come, you good-for-nothing vermin, when God
shall weigh us all in the balance...ah, the Son of Man shall
come in the clouds, you filth, and His justice is not of this world.
He will hurl you into outer darkness, all you light-headed breed,
and there shall be wailing and...

He was now surrounded by a crowd of some size. People were
laughing at him, some were frowning. More hod-carriers and
labourers, men and women, came over from the unfinished build-
ings. A driver got down from his wagon and jumped the ditch,
whip in hand. One man shook Piepsam by the arm, but nothing
came of it. A troop of soldiers marched by, turning to look at the
scene and laughing. The fox-terrier could no longer contain itself;
it braced its forefeet and howled into Piepsam's face with its tail
between its legs.

Then Praisegod Piepsam screamed once more with all his
strength: "Get off, get off at once, you ignorant fool!" He de-
scribed with one arm a wide half-circle--and collapsed. He lay
there, his voice abruptly silenced, a black heap surrounded by the
curious throng. His wide-brimmed hat flew off, bounced once,
and then lay on the ground.

Two masons bent over the motionless Piepsam and considered
his case in the moderate and reasonable tone that working-people
have. One of them then got on his legs and went off at a run. The
other made experiments with the unconscious man. He sprinkled
him with water from a tub, he poured out brandy in the hollow of
his hand and rubbed Piepsam's temples with it. None of these
efforts were crowned with success.

Some little time passed. Then the sound of wheels was heard
and a wagon came along the road. It was an ambulance with a
great red cross on each side, drawn by two charming little horses.
Two men in neat uniforms got down from the box; one went to
the back of the wagon, opened it, and drew out a stretcher; the
other ran over to the path, pushed away the yokels standing round
Piepsam, and with the help of one of them got Herr Kepsam
out of the crowd and into the road. He was laid out on the
stretcher and shoved into the wagon as one shoves a loaf of bread
into the oven. The door clicked shut and the two men climbed
back onto the box. All that went off very efficiently, with but few
and practised motions, as though in a theatre. And then they drove
Praisegod Piepsam away.


190I



TONIO KROGER



The winter sun, poor ghost of itself, hung milky and wan behind
layers of cloud above the huddled roofs of the town. In the gabled
streets it was wet and windy and there came in gusts a sort of soft
hail, not ice, not snow.

School was out. The hosts of the released streamed over the
paved court and out at the wrought-iron gate, where they broke
up and hastened off right and left. Elder pupils held their books in
a strap high on the left shoulder and rowed, right arm against the
wind, towards dinner. Small people trotted gaily off, splashing
the slush with their feet, the tools of learning rattling amain in
their walrus-skin satchels. But one and all pulled off their caps
and cast down their eyes in awe before the Olympian hat and
ambrosial beard of a master moving homewards with measured
stride....

"Ah, there you are at last, Hans," said Tonio Kroger. He had
been waiting a long time in the street and went up with a smile to
the friend he saw coming out of the gate in talk with other boys
and about to go off with them...."What?" said Hans, and looked
at Tonio. "Right-oh! We'll take a little walk, then."

Tonio said nothing and his eyes were clouded. Did Hans forget,
had he only just remembered that they were to take a walk to-
gether today? And he himself had looked forward to it with al-
most incessant joy.

"Well, good-bye, fellows," said Hans Hansen to his comrades.
"I'm taking a walk with Kroger." And the two turned to their
left, while the others sauntered off in the opposite direction.

Hans and Tonio had time to take a walk after school because in
neither of their families was dinner served before four o'clock.
Their fathers were prominent business men, who held public office
and were of consequence in the town. Hans's people had owned
for some generations the big wood-yards down by the river,
where powerful machine-saws hissed and spat and cut up timber;
while Tonio was the son of Consul Kroger, whose grain-sacks
with the firm name in great black letters you might see any day
driven through the streets; his large, old ancestral home was the
finest house in all the town. The two friends had to keep taking
off their hats to their many acquaintances; some folk did not even
wait for the fourteen-year-old lads to speak first, as by rights they
should.

Both of them carried their satchels across their shoulders and
both were well and warmly dressed: Hans in a short sailor jacket,
with the wide blue collar of his sailor suit turned out over shoul-
ders and back, and Tonio in a belted grey overcoat. Hans wore a
Danish sailor cap with black ribbons, beneath which streamed a
shock of straw-coloured hair. He was uncommonly handsome and
well built, broad in the shoulders and narrow in the hips, with keen,
far-apart, steel-blue eyes; while beneath Tonio's round fur cap
was a brunette face with the finely chiselled features of the south;
the dark eyes, with delicate shadows and too heavy lids, looked
dreamily and a little timorously on the world. Tonio's walk was
idle and uneven, whereas the other's slim legs in their black stock-
ings moved with an elastic, rhythmic tread.

Tonio did not speak. He suffered. His rather oblique brows were
drawn together in a frown, his lips were rounded to whistle, he
gazed into space with his head on one side. Posture and manner
were habitual.

Suddenly Hans shoved his arm into Tonio's, with a sideways
look--he knew very well what the trouble was. And Tonio,
though he was silent for the next few steps, felt his heart soften.

"I hadn't forgotten, you see, Tonio," Hans said, gazing at the
pavement, "I only thought it wouldn't come off today because
it was so wet and windy. But I don't mind that at all, and it's jolly
of you to have waited. I thought you had gone home, and I was
cross...."

Everything in Tonio leaped and jumped for joy at the words.

"All right; let's go over the wall," he said with a quaver in his
voice. "Over the Millwall and the Holstenwall, and I'll go as far
as your house with you, Hans. Then I'll have to walk back alone,
but that doesn't matter; next time you can go round my way."

At bottom he was not really convinced by what Hans said; he
quite knew the other attached less importance to this walk than
he did himself. Yet he saw Hans was sorry for his remissness and
willing to be put in a position to ask pardon, a pardon that Tonio
was far indeed from withholding.

The truth was, Tonio loved Hans Hansen, and had already
suffered much on his account. He who loves the more is the in-
ferior and must suffer; in this hard and simple fact his fourteen-
year-old soul had already been instructed by life; and he was so
organized that he received such experiences consciously, wrote
them down as it were inwardly, and even, in a certain way, took
pleasure in them, though without ever letting them mould his
conduct, indeed, or drawing any practical advantage from them.
Being what he was, he found this knowledge far more important
and far more interesting than the sort they made him learn in
school; yes, during his lesson hours in the vaulted Gothic class-
rooms he was mainly occupied in feeling his way about among
these intuitions of his and penetrating them. The process gave
him the same kind of satisfaction as that he felt when he moved
about in his room with his violin--for he played the violin--and
made the tones, brought out as softly as ever he knew how, mingle
with the plashing of the fountain that leaped and danced down
there in the garden beneath the branches of the old walnut tree.

The fountain, the old walnut tree, his fiddle, and away in the
distance the North Sea, within sound of whose summer murmur-
ings he spent his holidays--these were the things he loved, within
these he enfolded his spirit, among these things his inner life took
its course. And they were all things whose names were effective
in verse and occurred pretty frequently in the lines Tonio Kroger
sometimes wrote.

The fact that he had a note-book full of such things, written by
himself, leaked out through his own carelessness and injured him
no little with the masters as well as among his fellows. On the one
hand. Consul Kroger's son found their attitude both cheap and
silly, and despised his schoolmates and his masters as well, and in
his turn (with extraordinary penetration) saw through and dis-
liked their personal weaknesses and bad breeding. But then, on the
other hand, he himself felt his verse-making extravagant and out
of place and to a certain extent agreed with those who considered
it an unpleasing occupation. But that did not enable him to leave
off.

As he wasted his time at home, was slow and absent-minded at
school, and always had bad marks from the masters, he was in the
habit of bringing home pitifully poor reports, which troubled and
angered his father, a tall, fastidiously dressed man, with thought-
ful blue eyes, and always a wild flower in his buttonhole. But for
his mother, she cared nothing about the reports--Tonio's beauti-
ful black-haired mother, whose name was Consuelo, and who was
so absolutely different from the other ladies in the town, because
father had brought her long ago from some place far down on
the map.

Tonio loved his dark, fiery mother, who played the piano and
mandolin so wonderfully, and he was glad his doubtful standing
among men did not distress her. Though at the same time he found
his father's annoyance a more dignified and respectable attitude
and despite his scoldings understood him very well, whereas his
mother's blithe indifference always seemed just a little wanton.
His thoughts at times would run something like this: "It is true
enough that I am what I am and will not and cannot alter: heed-
less, self-willed, with my mind on things nobody else thinks of.
And so it is right they should scold and punish me and not
smother things all up with kisses and music. After all, we are not
gypsies living in a green wagon; we're respectable people, the
family of Consul Kroger." And not seldom he would think:
"Why is it I am different, why do I fight everything, why am I
at odds with the masters and like a stranger among the other boys?
The good scholars, and the solid majority--they don't find the
masters funny, they don't write verses, their thoughts are all about
things that people do think about and can talk about out loud.
How regular and comfortable they must feel, knowing that every-
body knows just where they stand! It must be nice! But what is
the matter with me, and what will be the end of it all?"

These thoughts about himself and his relation to life played an
important part in Tonio's love for Hans Hansen. He loved him in
the first place because he was handsome; but in the next because
he was in every respect his own opposite and foil. Hans Hansen
was a capital scholar, and a jolly chap to boot, who was head at
drill, rode and swam to perfection, and lived in the sunshine of
popularity. The masters were almost tender with him, they called
him Hans and were partial to him in every way; the other pupils
curried favour with him; even grown people stopped him on the
street, twitched the shock of hair beneath his Danish sailor cap, and
said: "Ah, here you are, Hans Hansen, with your pretty blond
hair! Still head of the school? Remember me to your father and
mother, that's a fine lad!"

Such was Hans Hansen; and ever since Tonio Kroger had
known him, from the very minute he set eyes on him, he had
burned inwardly with a heavy, envious longing. "Who else has
blue eyes like yours, or lives in such friendliness and harmony
with all the world? You are always spending your time with
some right and proper occupation. When you have done your
prep you take your riding-lesson, or make things with a fret-saw;
even in the holidays, at the seashore, you row and sail and swim
all the time, while I wander off somewhere and lie down in the
sand and stare at the strange and mysterious changes that whisk
over the face of the sea. And all that is why your eyes are so clear.
To be like you ..."

He made no attempt to be like Hans Hansen, and perhaps hardly
even seriously wanted to. What he did ardently, painfully want
was that just as he was, Hans Hansen should love him; and he
wooed Hans Hansen in his own way, deeply, lingeringly, de-
votedly, with a melancholy that gnawed and burned more ter-
ribly than all the sudden passion one might have expected from
his exotic looks.

And he wooed not in vain. Hans respected Tonio's superior
power of putting certain difficult matters into words; moreover,
he felt the lively presence of an uncommonly strong and tender
feeling for himself; he was grateful for it, and his response gave
Tonio much happiness--though also many pangs of jealousy and
disillusion over his futile efforts to establish a communion of spirit
between them. For the queer thing was that Tonio, who after all
envied Hans Hansen for being what he was, still kept on trying
to draw him over to his own side; though of course he could
succeed in this at most only at moments and superficially....

"I have just been reading something so wonderful and splen-
did..." he said. They were walking and eating together out of
a bag of fruit toffees they had bought at Iverson's sweet-shop in
Mill Street for ten pfennigs. "You must read it, Hans, it is Schil-
ler's Don Carlos...I'll lend it you if you like...."

"Oh, no," said Hans Hansen, "you needn't, Tonio, that's not
anything for me. I'll stick to my horse books. There are wonderful
cuts in them, let me tell you. I'll show them to you when you
come to see me. They are instantaneous photography--the horse
in motion; you can see him trot and canter and jump, in all posi-
tions, that you never can get to see in life, because they happen
so fast...."

"In all positions?" asked Tonio politely. "Yes, that must be
great. But about Don Carlos--it is beyond anything you could
possibly dream of. There are places in it that are so lovely they
make you jump...as though it were an explosion--"

"An explosion?" asked Hans Hansen. "What sort of an ex-
plosion?"

"For instance, the place where the king has been crying because
the marquis betrayed him...but the marquis did it only out of
love for the prince, you see, he sacrifices himself for his sake. And
the word comes out of the cabinet into the antechamber that the
king has been weeping. 'Weeping? The king been weeping?' All
the courtiers are fearfully upset, it goes through and through you,
for the king has always been so frightfully stiff and stern. But it
is so easy to understand why he cried, and I feel sorrier for him
than for the prince and the marquis put together. He is always so
alone, nobody loves him, and then he thinks he has found one
man, and then he betrays him....

Hans Hansen looked sideways into Tonio's face, and something
in it must have won him to the subject, for suddenly he shoved his
arm once more into Tonio's and said:

"How had he betrayed him, Tonio?"

Tonio went on.

"Well," he said, "you see all the letters for Brabant and Flanders--"

"There comes Irwin Immerthal," said Hans.

Tonio stopped talking. If only the earth would open and swal-
low Immerthal up! "Why does he have to come disturbing us?
If he only doesn't go with us all the way and talk about the riding-
lessons!" For Irwin Immerthal had riding-lessons too. He was the
son of the bank president and lived close by, outside the city wall.
He had already been home and left his bag, and now he walked
towards them through the avenue. His legs were crooked and his
eyes like slits.

"'lo, Immerthal," said Hans. "I'm taking a little walk with Kroger....

"I have to go into town on an errand," said Immerthal. "But
I'll walk a little way with you. Are those fruit toffees you've got?
Thanks, I'll have a couple. Tomorrow we have our next lesson,
Hans." He meant the riding-lesson.

"What larks!" said Hans. "I'm going to get the leather gaiters
for a present, because I was top lately in our papers."

"You don't take riding-lessons, I suppose, Kroger?" asked Im-
merthal, and his eyes were only two gleaming cracks.

"No...answered Tonio, uncertainly.

"You ought to ask your father," Hans Hansen remarked, "so
you could have lessons too, Kroger."

"Yes..." said Tonio. He spoke hastily and without interest;
his throat had suddenly contracted, because Hans had called him
by his last name. Hans seemed conscious of it too, for he said by
way of explanation: "I call you Kroger because your first name
is so crazy. Don't mind my saying so, I can't do with it all. Tonio
--why, what sort of name is that? Though of course I know it's
not your fault in the least."

"No, they probably called you that because it sounds so foreign
and sort of something special," said Immerthal, obviously with
intent to say just the right thing.

Tonio's mouth twitched. He pulled himself together and said:

"Yes, it's a silly name--Lord knows I'd rather be called Hein-
rich or Wilhelm. It's all because I'm named after my mother's
brother Antonio. She comes from down there, you know...."

There he stopped and let the others have their say about horses
and saddles. Hans had taken Immerthal's arm; he talked with a
fluency that Don Carlos could never have roused in him....Tonio
felt a mounting desire to weep pricking his nose from time to
time; he had hard work to control the trembling of his lips.

Hans could not stand his name--what was to be done? He him-
self was called Hans, and Immerthal was called Irwin; two good,
sound, familiar names, offensive to nobody. And Tonio was for-
eign and queer. Yes, there was always something queer about him,
whether he would or no, and he was alone, the regular and usual
would none of him; although after all he was no gypsy in a green
wagon, but the son of Consul Kroger, a member of the Kroger
family. But why did Hans call him Tonio as long as they were
alone and then feel ashamed as soon as anybody else was by? Just
now he had won him over, they had been close together, he was
sure. "How had be betrayed him, Tonio?" Hans asked, and took
his arm. But he had breathed easier directly Immerthal came up,
he had dropped him like a shot, even gratuitously taunted him
with his outlandish name. How it hurt to have to see through all
this!...Hans Hansen did like him a little, when they were alone,
that he knew. But let a third person come, he was ashamed,
and offered up his friend. And again he was alone. He thought
of King Philip. The king had wept....

"Goodness, I have to go," said Irwin Immerthal. "Good-bye,
and thanks for the toffee." He jumped upon a bench that stood
by the way, ran along it with his crooked legs, jumped down, and
trotted off.

"I like Immerthal," said Hans, with emphasis. He had a spoilt
and arbitrary way of announcing his likes and dislikes, as though
graciously pleased to confer them like an order on this person and
that....He went on talking about the riding-lessons where he
had left off. Anyhow, it was not very much farther to his house;
the walk over the walls was not a long one. They held their caps
and bent their heads before the strong, damp wind that rattled
and groaned in the leafless trees. And Hans Hansen went on talk-
ing, Tonio throwing in a forced yes or no from time to time.
Hans talked eagerly, had taken his arm again; but the contact gave.
Tonio no pleasure. The nearness was only apparent, not real; it
meant nothing....

They struck away from the walls close to the station, where
they saw a train puff busily past, idly counted the coaches, and
waved to the man who was perched on top of the last one bundled
in a leather coat. They stopped in front or the Hansen villa on the
Lindenplatz, and Hans went into detail about what fun it was to
stand on the bottom rail of the garden gate and let it swing on its
creaking hinges. After that they said good-bye.

"I must go in now," said Hans. "Good-bye, Tonio. Next time
I'll take you home, see if I don't."

"Good-bye, Hans," said Tonio. "It was a nice walk."

They put out their hands, all wet and rusty from the garden
gate. But as Hans looked into Tonio's eyes, he bethought himself,
a look of remorse came over his charming face.

"And I'll read Don Carlos pretty soon, too," he said quickly.
"That bit about the king in his cabinet must be nuts." Then he
took his bag under his arm and ran off through the front garden.
Before he disappeared he turned and nodded once more.

And Tonio went off as though on wings. The wind was at his
back; but it was not the wind alone that bore him along so lightly.

Hans would read Don Carlos, and then they would have some-
thing to talk about, and neither Irwin Immerthal nor another
could join in. How well they understood each other! Perhaps--
who knew?--some day he might even get Hans to write poetry!
....No, no, that he did not ask. Hans must not become like
Tonio, he must stop just as he was, so strong and bright, every-
body loved him as he was, and Tonio most of all. But it would do
him no harm to read Don Carlos....Tonio passed under the
squat old city gate, along by the harbour, and up the steep, wet,
windy, gabled street to his parents' house. His heart beat richly:
longing was awake in it, and a gentle envy; a faint contempt, and
no little innocent bliss.


Ingeborg Holm, blonde little Inge, the daughter of Dr. Holm,
who lived on Market Square opposite the tall old Gothic fountain
with its manifold spires--she it was Tonio Kroger loved when
he was sixteen years old.

Strange how things come about! He had seen her a thousand
times; then one evening he saw her again; saw her in a certain
light, talking with a friend in a certain saucy way, laughing and
tossing her head; saw her lift her arm and smooth her back hair
with her schoolgirl hand, that was by no means particularly fine
or slender, in such a way that the thin white sleeve slipped down
from her elbow; heard her speak a word or two, a quite indifferent
phrase, but with a certain intonation, with a warm ring in her
voice; and his heart throbbed with ecstasy, far stronger than that
he had once felt when he looked at Hans Hansen long ago, when
he was still a little, stupid boy.

That evening he carried away her picture in his eye: the thick
blond plait, the longish, laughing blue eyes, the saddle of pale
freckles across the nose. He could not go to sleep for hearing that
ring in her voice; he tried in a whisper to imitate the tone in which
she had uttered the commonplace phrase, and felt a shiver run
through and through him. He knew by experience that this was
love. And he was accurately aware that love would surely bring
him much pain, affliction, and sadness, that it would certainly de-
stroy his peace, filling his heart to overflowing with melodies
which would be no good to him because he would never have the
time or tranquillity to give them permanent form. Yet he received
this love with joy, surrendered himself to it, and cherished it with
all the strength of his being; for he knew that love made one vital
and rich, and he longed to be vital and rich, far more than he did
to work tranquilly on anything to give it permanent form.

Tonio Kroger fell in love with merry Ingeborg Holm in Frau
Consul Hustede's drawing-room on the evening when it was emp-
tied of furniture for the weekly dancing-class. It was a private
class, attended only by members of the first families; it met by
turns in the various parental houses to receive instruction from
Knaak, the dancing-master, who came from Hamburg expressly
for the purpose.

Francois Knaak was his name, and what a man he was! "J'ai
l'honneur de me vous representer," he would say, "mon nom est
Knaak....This is nor said during the bowing, but after you
have finished and are standing up straight again. In a low voice,
but distinctly. Of course one does not need to introduce oneself
in French every day in the week, but if you can do it correctly
and faultlessly in French you are not likely to make a mistake
when you do it in German." How marvellously the silky black
frock-coat fitted his chubby hips! His trouser-legs fell down in
soft folds upon his patent-leather pumps with their wide satin
bows, and his brown eyes glanced about him with languid pleasure
in their own beauty.

All this excess of self-confidence and good form was positively
overpowering. He went trippingly--and nobody tripped like
him, so elastically, so weavingly, rockingly, royally--up to the
mistress of the house, made a bow, waited for a hand to be put
forth. This vouchsafed, he gave murmurous voice to his gratitude,
Stepped buoyantly back, turned on his left foot, swiftly drawing
the right one backwards on its toe-tip, and moved away, with his
hips shaking.

When you took leave of a company you must go backwards
out at the door; when you fetched a chair, you were not to shove
it along the floor or clutch it by one leg; but gently, by the back,
and set it down without a sound. When you stood, you were not
to fold your hands on your tummy or seek with your tongue the
corners of your mouth. If you did, Herr Knaak had a way of
showing you how it looked that filled you with disgust for that
particular gesture all the rest of your life.

This was deportment. As for dancing, Herr Knaak was, if pos-
sible, even more of a master at that. The salon was emptied of
furniture and lighted by a gas-chandelier in the middle of the ceil-
ing and candles on the mantel-shelf. The floor was strewn with
talc, and the pupils stood about in a dumb semicircle. But in the
next room, behind the portieres, mothers and aunts sat on plush-
upholstered chairs and watched Herr Knaak through their lor-
gnettes, as in little springs and hops, curtsying slightly, the hem
of his frock-coat held up on each side by two fingers, he demon-
strated the single steps of the mazurka. When he wanted to dazzle
his audience completely he would suddenly and unexpectedly
spring from the ground, whirling his two legs about each other
with bewildering swiftness in the air, as it were trilling with them,
and then, with a subdued bump, which nevertheless shook every-
thing within him to its depths, returned to earth.

"What an unmentionable monkey!" thought Tonio Kroger to
himself. But he saw the absorbed smile on jolly little Inge's face
as she followed Herr Knaak's movements; and that, though not
that alone, roused in him something like admiration of all this
wonderfully controlled corporeality. How tranquil, how imper-
turbable was Herr Knaak's gaze! His eyes did not plumb the depth
of things to the place where life becomes complex and melan-
choly; they knew nothing save that they were beautiful brown
eyes. But that was just why his bearing was so proud. To be
able to walk like that, one must be stupid; then one was loved,
then one was lovable. He could so well understand how it was
that Inge, blonde, sweet little Inge, looked at Herr Knaak as she
did. But would never a girl look at him like that?

Oh, yes, there would, and did. For instance, Magdalena Vermehren.
Attorney Vermehren's daughter, with the gentle mouth and the
great, dark, brilliant eyes, so serious and adoring. She often fell
down in the dance; but when it was "ladies' choice" she came
up to him; she knew he wrote verses and twice she had asked
him to show them to her. She often sat at a distance, with droop-
ing head, and gazed at him. He did not care. It was Inge he loved,
blonde, jolly Inge, who most assuredly despised him for his poetic
effusions...he looked at her, looked at her narrow blue eyes
full of fun and mockery, and felt an envious longing; to be shut
away from her like this, to be forever strange--he felt it in his
breast, like a heavy, burning weight.

"First couple en avant," said Herr Knaak; and no words can
tell how marvellously he pronounced the nasal. They were to
practise the quadrille, and to Tonio Kroger's profound alarm he
found himself in the same set with Inge Holm. He avoided her
where he could, yet somehow was forever near her; kept his eyes
away from her person and yet found his gaze ever on her. There
she came, tripping up hand-in-hand with red-headed Ferdinand
Matthicssen; she flung back her braid, drew a deep breath, and
took her place opposite Tonio. Herr Heinzelmann, at the piano,
laid bony hands upon the keys, Herr Knaak waved his arm, the
quadrille began.

She moved to and fro before his eyes, forwards and back, pac-
ing and swinging; he seemed to catch a fragrance from her hair
or the folds of her thin white frock, and his eyes grew sadder and
sadder. "I love you, dear, sweet Inge," he said to himself, and
put into his words all the pain he felt to see her so intent upon
the dance with not a thought of him. Some lines of an exquisite
poem by Storm came into his mind: "I would sleep, but thou
must dance." It seemed against all sense, and most depressing, that
he must be dancing when he was in love....

"First couple en avant," said Herr Knaak; it was the next figure.
"Compliment! Moulinet des dames! Tour de main!" and he swal-
lowed the silent e in the "de," with quite indescribable ease and
grace.

"Second couple en avant!" This was Tonio Kroger and his
partner. "Compliment!" And Tonio Kroger bowed. "Moulinet
des dames! And Tonio Kroger, with bent head and gloomy
brows, laid his hand on those of the four ladies, on Ingeborg
Holm's hand, and danced the moulinet.

Roundabout rose a tittering and laughing. Herr Knaak took a
ballet pose conventionally expressive of horror. "Oh, dear! Oh,
dear!" he cried. "Stop! Stop! Kroger among the ladies! En
arriere, Fraulein Kroger, step back, fi donc! Everybody else un-
derstood it but you. Shoo! Get out! Get away!" He drew out
his yellow silk handkerchief and flapped Tonio Kroger back to
his place.

Everyone laughed, the girls and the boys and the ladies beyond
the portieres; Herr Knaak had made something too utterly funny
out of the little episode, it was as amusing as a play. But Herr
Heinzelmann at the piano sat and waited, with a dry, business-like
air, for a sign to go on; he was hardened against Herr Knaak's.
effects.

Then the quadrille went on. And the intermission followed.
The parlourmaid came clinking in with a tray of wine-jelly
glasses, the cook followed in her wake with a load of plum-cake.
But Tonio Kroger stole away. He stole out into the corridor and
stood there, his hands behind his back, in front of a window with
the blind down. He never thought that one could not see through
the blind and that it was absurd to stand there as though one were
looking out.

For he was looking within, into himself, the theatre of so much
pain and longing. Why, why was he here? Why was he not sitting
by the window in his own room, reading Storm's Immensee and
lifting his eyes to the twilight garden outside, where the old
walnut tree moaned? That was the place for him! Others might
dance, others bend their fresh and lively minds upon the pleasure
in hand!...But no, no, after all, his place was here, where he
could feel near Inge, even although he stood lonely and aloof,
seeking to distinguish the warm notes of her voice amid the buzz-
ing, clattering, and laughter within. Oh, lovely Inge, blonde
Inge of the narrow, laughing blue eyes! So lovely and laughing as
you are one can only be if one does not read Immensee and never
tries to write things like it. And that was just the tragedy!

Ah, she must come! She must notice where he had gone, must
feel how he suffered! She must slip out to him, even pity must
bring her, to lay her hand on his shoulder and say: "Do come
back to us, ah, don't be sad--I love you, Tonio." He listened
behind him and waited in frantic suspense. But not in the least.
Such things did not happen on this earth.

Had she laughed at him too like all the others? Yes, she had,
however gladly he would have denied it for both their sakes. And
yet it was only because he had been so taken up with her that he
had danced the moulinet des dames. Suppose he had--what did
that matter? Had not a magazine accepted a poem of his a little
while ago--even though the magazine had failed before his poem
could be printed? The day was coming when he would be famous.
when they would print everything he wrote; and then he would
see if that made any impression on Inge Holm! No, it would make
no impression at afl; that was just it. Magdalena Vermehren, who
was always falling down in the dances, yes, she would be im-
pressed. But never Ingeborg Holm, never blue-eyed, laughing
nge. So what was the good of it?

Tonio Kroger's heart contracted painfully at the thought. To
feel stirring within you the wonderful and melancholy play of
strange forces and to be aware that those others you yearn for
are blithely inaccessible to all that moves you--what a pain is
this! And yet! He stood there aloof and alone, staring hopelessly
at a drawn blind and making, in his distraction, as though he could
look out. But yet he was happy. For he lived. His heart was full;
hotly and sadly it beat for thee, Ingeborg Holm, and his soul
embraced thy blonde, simple, pert, commonplace little personality
in blissful self-abnegation.

Often after that he stood thus, with burning cheeks, in lonely
corners, whither the sound of the music, the tinkling of glasses
and fragrance of flowers came but faintly, and tried to distinguish
the ringing tones of thy voice amid the distant happy din; stood
suffering for thee--and still was happy! Often it angered him to
think that he might talk with Magdalena Vermehren, who always
fell down in the dance. She understood him, she laughed or was
serious in the right places; while Inge the fair, let him sit never
so near her, seemed remote and estranged, his speech not being
her speech. And still--he was happy. For happiness, he told him-
self, is not in being loved--which is a satisfaction of the vanity
and mingled with disgust. Happiness is in loving, and perhaps in
snatching fugitive little approaches to the beloved object. And he
took inward note of this thought, wrote it down in his mind; fol-
lowed out all its implications and felt it to the depths of his soul.

"Faithfulness," thought Tonio Kroger. "Yes, I will be faithful,
I will love thee, Ingeborg, as long as I live!"He said this in the
honesty of his intentions. And yet a still small voice whispered
misgivings in his ear: after all, he had forgotten Hans Hansen
utterly, even though he saw him every day! And the hateful, the
pitiable fact was that this still, small, rather spiteful voice was
right: time passed and the day came when Tonio Kroger was no
longer so unconditionally ready as once he had been to die for
the lively Inge, because he felt in himself desires and powers to
accomplish in his own way a host of wonderful things in this
world.

And he circled with watchful eye the sacrificial altar, where
flickered the pure, chaste flame of his love; knelt before it and
tended and cherished it in every way, because he so wanted to be
faithful. And in a little while, unobservably, without sensation or
sdr, it went out after all.

But Tonio Kroger still stood before the cold altar, full of regret
and dismay at the fact that faithfulness was impossible upon this
earth. Then he shrugged his shoulders and went his way.

He went the way that go he must, a little idly, a little irregu-
larly, whistling to himself, gazing into space with his head on one
side; and if he went wrong it was because for some people there
is no such thing as a right way. Asked what in the world he meant
to become, he gave various answers, for he was used to say (and
had even already written it) that he bore within himself the pos-
sibility of a thousand ways of life, together with the private con-
viction that they were all sheer impossibilities.

Even before he left the narrow streets of his native city, the
threads that bound him to it had gently loosened. The old I,oger
family gradually declined, and some people quite rightly con-
sidered Tonio Kroger's own existence and way of life as one of
the signs of decay. His father's mother, the head of the family,
had died, and not long after his own father followed, the tall,
thoughtful, carefully dressed gentleman with the field-flower in
his buttonhole. The great Kroger house, with all its stately tradi-
tion, came up for sale, and the firm was dissolved. Tonio's mother,
his beautiful, fiery mother, who played the piano and mandolin
so wonderfully and to whom nothing mattered at all, she married
again after a year's time; married a musician, moreover, a virtuoso
with an Italian name, and went away with him into remote blue
distances. Tonio Kroger found this a little irregular, but who was
he to call her to order, who wrote poetry himself and could not
even give an answer when asked what he meant to do in life?

And so he left his native town and its tortuous, gabled streets
with the damp wind whistling through them; left the fountain in
the garden and the ancient walnut tree , familiar friends of his
youth; left the sea too, that he loved so much, and felt no pain to
go. For he was grown up and sensible and had come to realize how
things stood with him; he looked down on the lowly and vulgar
life he had led so long in these surroundings.

He surrendered utterly to the power that to him seemed the
highest on earth, to whose service he felt called, which promised
him elevation and honours: the power of intellect, the power of
the Word, that lords it with a smile over the unconscious and
inarticulate. To this power he surrendered with all the passion of
youth, and it rewarded him with all it had to give, taking from
him inexorably, in return, all that it is wont to take.

It sharpened his eyes and made him see through the large words
which puff out the bosoms of mankind; it opened for him men's
souls and his own, made him clairvoyant, showed him the inward-
ness of the world and the ultimate behind men's words and deeds.
And all that he saw could be put in two words: the comedy and
the tragedy of life.

And then, with knowledge, its torment and its arrogance, came
solitude; because he could not endure the blithe and innocent with
their darkened understanding, while they in turn were troubled
by the sign on his brow. But his love of the word kept growing
sweeter and sweeter, and his love of form; for he used to say (and
had already said it in writing) that knowledge of the soul would
unfailingly make us melancholy if the pleasures of expression did
not keep us alert and of good cheer.

He lived in large cities and in the south, promising himself a
luxuriant ripening of his art by southern suns; perhaps it was the
blood of his mother's race that drew him thither. But his heart
being dead and loveless, he fell into adventures of the flesh, de-
scended into the depths of lust and searing sin, and suffered un-
speakably thereby. It might have been his father in him, that tall,
thoughtful, fastidiously dressed man with the wild flower in his
buttonhole, that made him suffer so down there in the south; now
and again he would feel a faint, yearning memory of a certain joy
that was of the soul; once it had been his own, but now, in all
his joys, he could not find it again.

Then he would be seized with disgust and hatred of the senses;
pant after purity and seemly peace, while still he breathed the air
of art, the tepid, sweet air of permanent spring, heavy with fra-
grance where it breeds and brews and burgeons in the mysterious
bliss of creation. So for all result he was flung to and fro forever
between two crass extremes: between icy intellect and scorching
sense, and what with his pangs of conscience led an exhausting
life, rare, extraordinary, excessive, which at bottom he, Tonio
Kroger, despised. "What a labyrinth!" he sometimes thought.
"How could I possibly have got into all these fantastic adven-
tures? As though I had a wagonful of travelling gypsies for my
ancestors!"

But as his health suffered from these excesses, so his artistry was
sharpened; it grew fastidious, precious, raffine, morbidly sensitive
in questions of tact and taste, rasped by the banal. His first appear-
ance in print elicited much applause; there was joy among the
elect, for it was a good and workmanlike performance, full of
humour and acquaintance with pain. In no long time his name--
the same by which his masters had reproached him, the same he
had signed to his earliest verses on the walnut tree and the foun-
tain and the sea, those syllables compact of the north and the
south, that good middle-class name with the exotic twist to it--
became a synonym for excellence; for the painful thoroughness
of the experiences he had gone through, combined with a tenacious
ambition and a persistent industry, joined battle with the irritable
fastidiousness of his taste and under grinding torments issued in
work of a quality quite uncommon.

He worked, not like a man who works that he may live; but as
one who is bent on doing nothing but work; having no regard for
himself as a human being but only as a creator; moving about
grey and unobtrusive among his fellows like an actor without his
make-up, who counts for nothing as soon as he stops representing
something else. He worked withdrawn out of sight and sound of
the small fry, for whom he felt nothing but contempt, because to
them a talent was a social asset like another; who, whether they
were poor or not, went about ostentatiously shabby or else
flaunted startling cravats, all the time taking jolly good care to
amuse themselves, to be artistic and charming without the smallest
notion of the fact that good work only comes out under pressure
of a bad life; that he who lives does not work; that one must die
to life in order to be utterly a creator.

"Shall I disturb you?" asked Tonio Kroger on the threshold
of the atelier. He held his hat in his hand and bowed with some
ceremony, although Lisabeta Ivanovna was a good friend of his,
to whom he told all his troubles.

"Mercy on you, Tonio Kroger! Don't be so formal," answered
she, with her lilting intonation. "Everybody knows you were
taught good manners in your nursery." She transferred her brush
to her left hand, that held the palette, reached him her right, and
looked him in the face, smiling and shaking her head.

"Yes, but you are working," he said. "Let's see. Oh, you've
been getting on," and he looked at the colour-sketches leaning
against chairs at both sides of the easel and from them to the large
canvas covered with a square linen mesh, where the first patches
of colour were beginning to appear among the confused and
schematic lines of the charcoal sketch.

This was in Munich, in a back building in Schellingstrasse,
several storeys up. Beyond the wide window facing the north
were blue sky, sunshine, birds twittering; the young sweet breath
of spring streaming through an open pane mingled with the smells
of paint and fixative. The afternoon light, bright golden, flooded
the spacious emptiness of the atelier; it made no secret of the bad
flooring or the rough table under the window, covered with little
bottles, tubes, and brushes; it illumined the unframed studies on
the unpapered walls, the torn silk screen that shut off a charmingly
furnished little living-corner near the door; it shone upon the
inchoate work on the easel, upon the artist and the poet there
before it.

She was about the same age as himself--slightly past thirty. She
sat there on a low stool, in her dark-blue apron, and leant her chin
in her hand.Her brown hair, compactly dressed, already a little
grey at the sides, was parted in the middle and waved over the
temples, framing a sensitive, sympathetic, dark-skinned face,
which was Slavic in its facial structure, with flat nose, strongly
accentuated cheek-bones, and little bright black eyes. She sat
there measuring her work with her head on one side and her eyes
screwed up; her features were drawn with a look of misgiving,
almost of vexation.

He stood beside her, his right hand on his hip, with the other
furiously twirling his brown moustache. His dress, reserved in cut
and a soothing shade of grey, was punctilious and dignified to the
last degree. He was whistling softly to himself, in the way he had,
and his slanting brows were gathered in a frown. The dark-brown
hair was parted with severe correctness, but the laboured forehead
beneath showed a nervous twitching, and the chiselled southern
features were sharpened as though they had been gone over again
with a graver's tool. And yet the mouth--how gently curved it
was, the chin how softly formed!...After a little he drew his hand
across his brow and eyes and turned away.

"I ought not to have come," he said.

"And why not, Tonio Kroger?"

"I've just got up from my desk, Lisabeta, and inside my head
it looks just the way it does on this canvas. A scaffolding, a faint
first draft smeared with corrections and a few splotches of colour;
yes, and I come up here and see the same thing. And the same con-
flict and contradiction in the air," he went on, sniffing, "that has
been torturing me at home. It's extraordinary. If you are possessed
by an idea, you find it expressed everywhere, you even smell it.
Fixative and the breath of spring; art and--what? Don't say
nature, Lisabeta, 'nature' isn't exhausting. Ah, no, I ought to have
gone for a walk, though it's doubtful if it would have made me
feel better. Five minutes ago, not far from here, I met a man I
know, Adalbert, the novelist. 'God damn the spring!' says he in
the aggressive way he has. 'It is and always has been the most
ghastly time of the year. Can you get hold of a single sensible idea,
Kroger. Can you sit still and work out even the smallest effect,
when your blood tickles till it's positively indecent and you are
teased by a whole host of irrelevant sensations that when you look
at them turn out to be unworkable trash? For my part, I am going
to a cafe. A cafe is neutral territory, the change of the seasons
doesn't affect it; it represents, so to speak, the detached and ele-
vated sphere of the literary man, in which one is only capable of
refined ideas.' And he went into the cafe...and perhaps I ought
to have gone with him."

Lisabeta was highly entertained.

"I like that, Tonio Kroger. That part about the indecent tick-
ling is good. And he is right too, in a way, for spring is really not
very conducive to work. But now listen. Spring or no spring, I
will just finish this little place--work out this little effect, as your
friend Adalbert would say. Then we'll go into the 'salon' and
have tea, and you can talk yourself out, for I can perfectly well
see you are too full for utterance. Will you just compose yourself
somewhere--on that chest, for instance, if you are not afraid for
your aristocratic garments--"

"Oh, leave my clothes alone, Lisabeta Ivanovna! Do you want
me to go about in a ragged velveteen jacket or a red waistcoat?
Every artist is as bohemian as the deuce, inside! Let him at least
wear proper clothes and behave outwardly like a respectable be-
ing. No, I am not too full for utterance," he said as he watched
her mixing her paints. "I've told you, it is only that I have a prob-
lem and a conflict, that sticks in my mind and disturbs me at my
work....Yes, what was it we were just saying? We were talk-
ing about Adalbert, the novelist, that stout and forthright man.
‘Spring is the most ghastly time of the year,' says he, and goes
into a cafe. A man has to know what he needs, eh? Well, you see
he's not the only one; the spring makes me nervous, too; I get
dazed with the triflingness and sacredness of the memories and
feelings it evokes; only that I don't succeed in looking down on
it; for the truth is it makes me ashamed; I quail before its sheer
naturalness and triumphant youth. And I don't know whether I
should envy Adalbert or despise him for his ignorance....

"Yes, it is true; spring is a bad time for work; and why? Be-
cause we are feeling too much. Nobody but a beginner imagines
that he who creates must feel. Every real and genuine artist smiles
at such naive blunders as that. A melancholy enough smile, per-
haps, but still a smile. For what an artist talks about is never the
main point; it is the raw material, in and for itself indifferent, out
of which, with bland and serene mastery, he creates the work of
art. If you care too much about what you have to say, if your
heart is too much in it, you can be pretty sure of making a mess.
You get pathetic, you wax sentimental; something dull and dod-
dering, without roots or outlines, with no sense of humour--
something tiresome and banal grows under your hand, and you
get nothing out of it but apathy in your audience and disappoint-
ment and misery in yourself. For so it is, Lisabeta; feeling, warm,
heartfelt feeling, is always banal and futile; only the irritations
and icy ecstasies of the artist's corrupted nervous system are artis-
tic. The artist must be unhuman, extra-human; he must stand in
a queer aloof relationship to our humanity; only so is he in a posi-
tion, I ought to say only so would he be tempted, to represent it,
to present it, to portray it to good effect. The very gift of style,
of form and expression, is nothing else than this cool and fastidious
attitude towards humanity; you might say there has to be this
impoverishment and devastation as a preliminary condition. For
sound natural feeling, say what you like, has no taste. It is all up
with the artist as soon as he becomes a man and begins to feel.
Adalbert knows that; that's why he betook himself to the cafe,
the neutral territory--God help him!"

"Yes, God help him, Batuschka," said Lisabeta, as she washed
her hands in a tin basin. "You don't need to follow his example."

"No, Lisabeta, I am not going to; and the only reason is that
I am now and again in a position to feel a little ashamed of the
springtime of my art. You see sometimes I get letters from stran-
gers, full of praise and thanks and admiration from people whose
feelings I have touched. I read them and feel touched myself at
these warm if ungainly emotions I have called up; a sort of pity
steals over me at this naive enthusiasm; and I positively blush at
the thought of how these good people would freeze up if they
were to get a look behind the scenes. What they, in their inno-
cence, cannot comprehend is that a properly constituted, healthy,
decent man never writes, acts, or composes--all of which does
not hinder me from using his admiration for my genius to goad
myself on; nor from taking it in deadly earnest and aping the airs
or a great man. Oh, don't talk to me, Lisabeta. I tell you I am sick
to death of depicting humanity without having any part or lot
in it....Is an artist a male, anyhow? Ask the females! It seems
to me we artists are all of us something like those unsexed papal
singers...we sing like angels; but--"

"Shame on you, Tonio Kroger. But come to tea. The water
is just on the boil, and here are some papyros. You were talking
about singing soprano, do go on. But really you ought to be
ashamed of yourself. If I did not know your passionate devotion
to your calling and how proud you are of it--"

"Don't talk about 'calling,' Lisabeta Ivanovna. Literature is not
a calling, it is a curse, believe me! When does one begin to feel
the curse? Early, horribly early. At a time when one ought by
rights still to be living in peace and harmony with God and the
world. It begins by your feeling yourself set apart, in a curious
sort of opposition to the nice, regular people; there is a gulf of
ironic sensibility, of knowledge, scepticism, disagreement, be-
tween you and the others; it grows deeper and deeper, you realize
that you are alone; and from then on any rapprochement is sim-
ply hopeless! What a fate! That is, if you still have enough heart,
enough warmth of affections, to feel how frightful it is!...Your
self-consciousness is kindled, because you among thousands
feel the sign on your brow and know that everyone else sees it.
I once knew an actor, a man of genius, who had to struggle with
a morbid self-consciousness and instability. When he had no role
to play, nothing to represent, this man, consummate artist but im-
poverished human being, was overcome by an exaggerated con-
sciousness of his ego. A genuine artist--not one who has taken
up art as a profession like another, but artist foreordained and
damned--you can pick out, without boasting very sharp percep-
tions, out of a group of men. The sense of being set apart and
not belonging, of being known and observed, something both regal
and incongruous shows in his face. You might see something of
the same sort on the features of a prince walking through a
crowd in ordinary clothes. But no civilian clothes are any good
here, Lisabeta. You can disguise yourself, you can dress up like an
attache or a lieutenant of the guard on leave; you hardly need to
give a glance or speak a word before everyone knows you are not
a human being, but something else: something queer, different,
inimical.

"But what is it, to be an artist? Nothing shows up the general
human dislike of thinking, and man's innate craving to be com-
fortable, better than his attitude to this question. When these
worthy people are affected by a work of art, they say humbly
that that sort of thing is a 'gift.' And because in their innocence
they assume that beautiful and uplifting results must have beauti-
ful and uplifting causes, they never dream that the 'gift' in ques-
tion is a very dubious affair and rests upon extremely sinister
foundations. Everybody knows that artists are 'sensitive' and
easily wounded; just as everybody knows that ordinary people,
with a normal bump of self-confidence, are not. Now you see,
Lisabeta, I cherish at the bottom of my soul all the scorn and
suspicion of the artist gentry--translated into terms of the intel-
lectual--that my upright old forbears there on the Baltic would
have felt for any juggler or mountebank that entered their houses.
Listen to this. I know a banker, grey-haired business man, who has
a gift for writing stories. He employs this gift in his idle hours,
and some of his stories are of the first rank. But despite--I say
despite--this excellent gift his withers are by no means unwrung:
on the contrary, he has had to serve a prison sentence, on anything
but trifling grounds. Yes, it was actually first in prison that he
became conscious of his gift, and his experiences as a convict are
the main theme in all his works. One might be rash enough to
conclude that a man has to be at home in some kind of jail in order
to become a poet. But can you escape the suspicion that the source
and essence of his being an artist had less to do with his life in
prison than they had with the reasons that brought him there? A
banker who writes--that is a rarity, isn't it? But a banker who
isn't a criminal, who is irreproachably respectable, and yet writes
--he doesn't exist. Yes, you are laughing, and yet I am more than
half serious. No problem, none in the world, is more tormenting
than this of the artist and his human aspect. Take the most miracu-
lous case of all, take the most typical and therefore the most
powerful of artists, take such a morbid and profoundly equivocal
work as Tristan and Isolde, and look at tne effect it has on a
healthy young man of thoroughly normal feelings. Exaltation,
encouragement, warm, downright enthusiasm, perhaps incitement
to 'artistic' creation of his own. Poor young dillettante! In us
artists it looks fundamentally different from what he wots of, with
his 'warm heart' and 'honest enthusiasm.' I've seen women and
youths go mad over artists...and I knew about them...! The origin,
the accompanying phenomena, and the conditions of the artist
life--good Lord, what I haven't observed about them, over and
over!"

"Observed, Tonio Kroger? If I may ask, only 'observed'?"

He was silent, knitting his oblique brown brows and whistling
softly to himself.

"Let me have your cup, Tonio. The tea is weak. And take
another cigarette. Now, you perfectly know that you are
looking at things as they do not necessarily have to be looked
at...."

"That is Horatio's answer, dear Lisabeta. ‘'Twere to consider
too curiously, to consider so.'"

"I mean, Tonio Kroger, that one can consider them just exactly
as well from another side. I am only a silly painting female, and
if I can contradict you at all, if I can defend your own profession
a little against you, it is not by saying anything new, but simply
by reminding you of some things you very well know yourself:
of the purifying and healing influence of letters, the subduing of
the passions by knowledge and eloquence; literature as the guide to
understanding, forgiveness, and love, the redeeming power of the
word, literary art as the noblest manifestation of the human mind,
the poet as the most highly developed of human beings, the poet
as saint. Is it to consider things not curiously enough, to consider
them so?"

"You may talk like that, Lisabeta Ivanovna, you have a perfect
right. And with reference to Russian literature, and the works of
your poets, one can really worship them; they really come close
to being that elevated literature you are talking about. But I am
not ignoring your objections, they are part of the things I have
in my mind today....Look at me, Lisabeta. I don't look any too
cheerful, do I? A little old and tired and pinched, eh? Well, now
to come back to the 'knowledge.' Can't you imagine a man, born
orthodox, mild-mannered, well-meaning, a bit sentimental, just
simply over-stimulated by his psychological clairvoyance, and
going to the dogs? Not to let the sadness of the world unman you;
to read, mark, learn, and put to account even the most torturing
things and to be of perpetual good cheer, in the sublime conscious-
ness of moral superiority over the horrible invention of existence
--yes, thank you! But despite all the joys of expression once in a
while the thing gets on your nerves. 'Tout comprendre c'est tout
pardonner' I don't know about that. There is something I call
being sick of knowledge, Lisabeta: when it is enough for you to
see through a thing in order to be sick to death of it, and not in the
least in a forgiving mood. Such was the case of Hamlet the Dane,
that typical literary man. He knew what it meant to be called to
knowledge without being born to it. To see things clear, if even
through your tears, to recognize, notice, observe--and have to
put it all down with a smile, at the very moment when hands are
clinging, and lips meeting, and the human gaze is blinded with
feeling--it is infamous, Lisabeta, it is indecent, outrageous--but
what good does it do to be outraged?

"Then another and no less charming side of the thing, of
course, is your ennui, your indifferent and ironic attitude towards
truth. It is a fact that there is no society in the world so dumb
and hopeless as a circle of literary people who are hounded to
death as it is. All knowledge is old and tedious to them. Utter
some truth that it gave you considerable youthful joy to conquer
and possess--and they will all chortle at you for your naivete.
Oh, yes, Lisabeta, literature is a wearing job. In human society, I
do assure you, a reserved and sceptical man can be taken for
stupid, whereas he is really only arrogant and perhaps lacks cour-
age. So much for 'knowledge.' Now for the 'Word.' It isn't so
much a matter of the 'redeeming power' as it is of putting your
emotions on ice and serving them up chilled! Honestly, don't you
think there's a good deal of cool cheek in the prompt and super-
ficial way a writer can get rid of his feelings by turning them into
literature? If your heart is too full, if you are overpowered with
the emotions of some sweet or exalted moment--nothing simpler!
Go to the literary man, he will put it all straight for you instanter.
He will analyse and formulate your affair, label it and express it
and discuss it and polish it off and make you indifferent to it for
time and eternity--and not charge you a farthing. You will go
home quite relieved, cooled off, enlightened; and wonder what
it was all about and why you were so mightily moved. And will
you seriously enter the lists in behalf of this vain and frigid charla-
tan? What is uttered, so runs this credo, is finished and done with.
If the whole world could be expressed, it would be saved, finished
and done....Well and good. But I am not a nihilist--"

"You are not a--" said Lisabeta....She was lifting a tea-
spoonful of tea to her mouth and paused in the act to stare at him.

"Come, come, Lisabeta, what's the matter? I say I am not a
nihilist, with respect, that is, to lively feeling. You see, the literary
man does not understand that life may go on living, unashamed,
even after it has been expressed and therewith finished. No matter
how much it has been redeemed by becoming literature, it keeps
right on sinning--for all action is sin in the mind's eye--

"I'm nearly done, Lisabeta. Please listen. I love life--this is an
admission. I present it to you, you may have it. I have never made
it to anyone else. People say--people have even written and
printed--that I hate life, or fear or despise or abominate it. I liked
to hear this, it has always flattered me; but that does not make it
true. I love life. You smile; and I know why, Lisabeta. But I im-
plore you not to take what I am saying for literature. Don't think
of Caesar Borgia or any drunken philosophy that has him for a
standard-bearer. He is nothing to me, your Caesar Borgia. I have
no opinion of him, and I shall never comprehend how one can
honour the extraordinary and daemonic as an ideal. No, life as the
eternal antinomy of mind and art does not represent itself to us
as a vision of savage greatness and ruthless beauty; we who are set
apart and different do not conceive it as, like us, unusual; it is the
normal, respectable, and admirable that is the kingdom of our
longing; life, in all its seductive banality! That man is very far
from being an artist, my dear, whose last and deepest enthusiasm
is the raffine, the eccentric and satanic; who does not know a long-
ing for the innocent, the simple, and the living, for a little friend-
ship, devotion, familiar human happiness--the gnawing, surrep-
titious hankering, Lisabeta, for the bliss of the commonplace....

"A genuine human friend. Believe me, I should be proud and
happy to possess a friend among men. But up to now all the friends
I have had have been daemons, kobolds, impious monsters, and
spectres dumb with excess of knowledge--that is to say, literary
men.

"I may be standing upon some platform, in some hall in front
of people who have come to listen to me. And I find myself look-
ing round among my hearers, I catch myself secretly peering
about the auditorium, and all the while I am thinking who it is
that has come here to listen to me, whose grateful applause is in
my ears, with whom my art is making me one....I do not find
what I seek, Lisabeta, I find the herd. The same old community,
the same old gathering of early Christians, so to speak: people
with fine souls in uncouth bodies, people who are always falling
down in the dance, if you know what I mean; the kind to whom
poetry serves as a sort of mild revenge on life. Always and only
the poor and suffering, never any of the others, the blue-eyed
ones, Lisabeta--they do not need mind....

"And, after all, would it not be a lamentable lack of logic to
want it otherwise? It is against all sense to love life and yet bend
all the powers you have to draw it over to your own side, to the
side of finesse and melancholy and the whole sickly aristocracy of
letters. The kingdom of art increases and that of health and inno-
cence declines on this earth. What there is left of it ought to be
carefully preserved; one ought not to tempt people to read poetry
who would much rather read books about the instantaneous pho-
tography of horses.

"For, after all, what more pitiable sight is there than life led
astray by art? We artists have a consummate contempt for the
dilettante, the man who is leading a living life and yet thinks he
can be an artist too if he gets the chance. I am speaking from per-
sonal experience, I do assure you. Suppose I am in a company in
a good house, with eating and drinking going on, and plenty of
conversation and good feeling; I am glad and grateful to be able
to lose myself among good regular people for a while. Then all
of a sudden--I am thinking of something that actually happened
--an officer gets up, a lieutenant, a stout, good-looking chap,
whom I could never have believed guilty of any conduct unbe-
coming his uniform, and actually in good set terms asks the com-
pany's permission to read some verses of his own composition.
Everybody looks disconcerted, they laugh and tell him to go on,
and he takes them at their word and reads from a sheet of paper
he has up to now been hiding in his coat-tail pocket--something
about love and music, as deeply felt as it is inept. But I ask you:
a lieutenant! A man of the world! He surely did not need to....
Well, the inevitable result is long faces, silence, a little artificial
applause, everybody thoroughly uncomfortable. The first sensa-
tion I am conscious of is guilt--I feel partly responsible for the
disturbance this rash youth has brought upon the company; and
no wonder, for I, as a member of the same guild, am a target for
some of the unfriendly glances. But next minute I realize some-
thing else: this man for whom just now I felt the greatest respect
has suddenly sunk in my eyes. I feel a benevolent pity. Along with
some other brave and good-natured gentlemen I go up and speak
to him. 'Congratulations, Herr Lieutenant,' I say, 'that is a very
pretty talent you have. It was charming.' And I am within an ace
of clapping him on the shoulder. But is that the way one is sup-
posed to feel towards a lieutenant--benevolent?...It was his
own fault. There he stood, suffering embarrassment for the mis-
take of thinking that one may pluck a single leaf from the laurel
tree of art without paying for it with his life. No, there I go with
my colleague, the convict banker--but don't you find, Lisabeta,
that I have quite a Hamlet-like flow of oratory today?"

"Are you done, Tonio Kroger?"

"No. But there won't be any more."

"And quite enough too. Are you expecting a reply?"

"Have you one ready?"

"I should say. I have listened to you faithfully, Tonio, from be-
ginning to end, and I will give you the answer to everything you
have said this afternoon and the solution of the problem that has
been upsetting you. Now: the solution is that you, as you sit
there, are, quite simply, a bourgeois."

"Am I?" he asked a little crestfallen.

"Yes; that hits you hard, it must. So I will soften the judgment
just a little. You are a bourgeois on the wrong path, a bourgeois
manque."

Silence. Then he got up resolutely and took his hat and stick.

"Thank you, Lisabeta Ivanovna; now I can go home in peace.
I am expressed."


Towards autumn Tonio Kroger said to Lisabeta Ivanovna:

"Well, Lisabeta, I think I'll be off. I need a change of air. I must
get away, out into the open."

"Well, well, well, little Father! Does it please your Highness
to go down to Italy again?"

"Oh, get along with your Italy, Lisabeta. I'm fed up with Italy,
I spew it out of my mouth. It's a long time since I imagined I could
belong down there. Art, eh? Blue-velvet sky, ardent wine, the
sweets of sensuality. In short, I don't want it--I decline with
thanks. The whole bellezza business makes me nervous. All those
frightfully animated people down there with their black animal-
like eyes; I don't like them either. These Romance peoples have no
soul in their eyes. No, I'm going to take a trip to Denmark."

"To Denmark?"

"Yes. I'm quite sanguine of the results. I happen never to have
been there, though I lived all my youth so close to it. Still I have
always known and loved the country. I suppose I must have this
northern tendency from my father, for my mother was really
more for the bellezza, in so far, that is, as she cared very much one
way or the other. But just take the books that are written up
there, that clean, meaty, whimsical Scandinavian literature, Lisa-
beta, there's nothing like it, I love it. Or take the Scandinavian
meals, those incomparable meals, which can only be digested in
strong sea air (I don't know whether I can digest them in any sort
of air); I know them from my home too, because we ate that wav
up there. Take even the names, the given names that people rejoice
in up north; we have a good many of them in my part of the
country too: Ingeborg, for instance, isn't it the purest poetry--
like a harp-tone? And then the sea--up there it's the Baltic!...
In a word, I am going, Lisabeta. I want to see the Baltic again and
read the books and hear the names on their native heath; I want to
stand on the terrace at Kronberg, where the ghost appeared to
Hamlet, bringing despair and death to that poor, noble-souled
youth....

"How are you going, Tonio, if I may ask? What route are you
taking?"

"The usual one," he said, shrugging his shoulders, and blushed
perceptibly. "Yes, I shall touch my--my point of departure,
Lisabeta, after thirteen years, and that may turn out rather funny."

She smiled.

"That is what I wanted to hear, Tonio Kroger. Well, be off, then,
in God's name. Be sure to write to me, do you hear? I shall
expect a letter full of your experiences in--Denmark."


And Tonio Kroger travelled north. He travelled in comfort
(for he was wont to say that anyone who suffered inwardly more
than other people had a right to a little outward ease); and he
did not stay until the towers of the little town he had left rose up
in the grey air. Among them he made a short and singular stay.

The dreary afternoon was merging into evening when the train
pulled into the narrow, reeking shed, so marvellously familiar.
The volumes of thick smoke rolled up to the dirty glass roof and
wreathed to and fro there in long tatters, just as they had, long
ago, on the day when Tonio Kroger, with nothing but derision
in his heart, had left his native town.--He arranged to have his
luggage sent to his hotel and walked out of the station.

There were the cabs, those enormously high, enormously wide
black cabs drawn by two horses, standing in a rank. He did not
take one, he only looked at them, as he looked at everything: the
narrow gables, and the pointed towers peering above the roofs
close at hand; the plump, fair, easy-going populace, with their
broad yet rapid speech. And a nervous laugh mounted in him,
mysteriously akin to a sob.--He walked on, slowly, with the
damp wind constantly in his face, across the bridge, with the
mythological statues on the railings, and some distance along
the harbour.

Good Lord, how tiny and close it all seemed! The comical little
gabled streets were climbing up just as of yore from the port to
the town! And on the ruffled waters the smoke-stacks and masts
of the ships dipped gently in the wind and twilight. Should he go
up that next street, leading, he knew, to a certain house? No, to-
morrow. He was too sleepy. His head was heavy from the jour-
ney, and slow, vague trains of thought passed through his mind.

Sometimes in the past thirteen years, when he was suffering
from indigestion, he had dreamed of being back home in the
echoing old house in the steep, narrow street. His father had been
there too, and reproached him bitterly for his dissolute manner of
life, and this, each time, he had found quite as it should be. And
now the present refused to distinguish itself in any way from one
of those tantalizing dream-fabrications in which the dreamer asks
himself if this be delusion or reality and is driven to decide for the
latter, only to wake up after all in the end....He paced through
the half-empty streets with his head inclined against the wind,
moving as though in his sleep in the direction of the hotel, the
first hotel in the town, where he meant to sleep. A bow-legged
man, with a pole at the end of which burned a tiny fire, walked
before him with a rolling, seafaring gait and lighted the gas-lamps.

What was at the bottom of this? What was it burning darkly
beneath the ashes of his fatigue, refusing to burst out into a clear
blaze? Hush, hush, only no talk. Only don't make words! He
would have liked to go on so, for a long time, in the wind, through
the dusky, dreamily familiar streets--but everything was so little
and close together here. You reached your goal at once.

In the upper town there were arc-lamps, just lighted. There was
the hotel with the two black lions in front of it; he had been
afraid of them as a child. And there they were, still looking at
each other as though they were about to sneeze; only they seemed
to have grown much smaller. Tonio Kroger passed between them
into the hotel.

As he came on foot, he was received with no great ceremony.
There was a porter, and a lordly gentleman dressed in black, to do
the honours; the latter, shoving back his cuffs with his little
fingers, measured him from the crown of his head to the soles of
his boots, obviously with intent to place him, to assign him to his
proper category' socially and hierarchically speaking and then
mete out the suitable degree of courtesy. He seemed not to come
to any clear decision and compromised on a moderate display of
politeness. A mild-mannered waiter with yellow-white side-
whiskers, in a dress suit shiny with age, and rosettes on his sound-
less shoes, led him up two flights into a clean old room furnished
in patriarchal style. Its windows gave on a twilit view of courts
and gables, very mediaeval and picturesque, with the fantastic bulk
of the old church close by. Tonio Kroger stood awhile before
this window; then he sat down on the wide sofa, crossed his arms,
drew down his brows, and whistled to himself.

Lights were brought and his luggage came up. The mild-
mannered waiter laid the hotel register on the table, and Tonio
Kroger, his head on one side, scrawled something on it that might
be taken for a name, a station, and a place of origin. Then he
ordered supper and went on gazing into space from his sofa-
corner. When it stood before him he let it wait long untouched,
then took a few bites and walked up and down an hour in his
room, stopping from time to time and closing his eyes. Then he
very slowly undressed and went to bed. He slept long and had
curiously confused and ardent dreams.

It was broad day when he woke. Hastily he recalled where he
was and got up to draw the curtains; the pale-blue sky, already
with a hint of autumn, was streaked with frayed and tattered
cloud; still, above his native city the sun was shining.

He spent more care than usual upon his toilette, washed and
shaved and made himself fresh and immaculate as though about to
call upon some smart family where a well-dressed and flawless
appearance was de rigueur; and while occupied in this wise he
listened to the anxious beating of his heart.

How bright it was outside! He would have liked better a twi-
light air like yesterday's, instead of passing through the streets
in the broad sunlight, under everybody's eye. Would he meet
people he knew, be stopped and questioned and have to submit
to be asked how he had spent the last thirteen years? No, thank
goodness, he was known to nobody here; even if anybody re-
membered him, it was unlikely he would be recognized--for cer-
tainly he had changed in the meantime! He surveyed himself in
the glass and felt a sudden sense of security behind his mask, be-
hind his work-worn face, that was older than his years....He
sent for breakfast, and after that he went out; he passed under
the disdainful eye of the porter and the gentleman in black,
through the vestibule and between the two lions, and so into the
street.

Where was he going? He scarcely knew. It was the same as
yesterday. Hardly was he in the midst of this long-familiar scene,
this stately conglomeration of gables, turrets, arcades, and foun-
tains, hardly did he feel once more the wind in his face, that strong
current wafting a faint and pungent aroma from far-off dreams,
than the same mistiness laid itself like a veil about his senses....
The muscles of his face relaxed, and he looked at men and things
with a look grown suddenly calm. Perhaps right there, on that
Street corner, he might wake up after all....

Where was he going? It seemed to him the direction he took
had a connection with his sad and strangely rueful dreams of the
night....He went to Market Square, under the vaulted arches
of the Rathaus, where the butchers were weighing out their wares
red-handed, where the tall old Gothic fountain stood with its
manifold spires. He paused in front of a house, a plain narrow
building, like many another, with a fretted baroque gable; stood
there lost in contemplation. He read the plate on the door, his
eyes rested a little while on each of the windows. Then slowly he
turned away.

Where did he go? Towards home. But he took a roundabout
way outside the walls--for he had plenty of time. He went over
the Millwall and over the Holstenwall, clutching his hat, for the
wind was rushing and moaning through the trees. He left the wall
near the station, where he saw a train puffing busily past, idly
counted the coaches, and looked after the man who sat perched
upon the last. In the Lindenplatz he stopped at one of the pretty
villas, peered long into the garden and up at the windows, lastly
conceived the idea of swinging the gate to and fro upon its hinges
till it creaked. Then he looked awhile at his moist, rust-stained
hand and went on, went through the squat old gate, along the
harbour, and up the steep, windy street to his parents' house.

It stood aloof from its neighbours, its gable towering above
them; grey and sombre, as it had stood these three hundred years;
and Tonio Kroger read the pious, half-illegible motto above the
entrance. Then he drew a long breath and went in.

His heart gave a throb of fear, lest his father might come out
of one of the doors on the ground floor, in his office coat, with
the pen behind his ear, and take him to task for his excesses. He
would have found the reproach quite in order; but he got past
unchidden. The inner door was ajar, which appeared to him rep-
rehensible though at the same time he felt as one does in certain
broken dreams, where obstacles melt away of themselves, and
one presses onward in marvellous favour with fortune. The wide
entry, paved with great square flags, echoed to his tread. Opposite
the silent kitchen was the curious projecting structure, or rough
boards, but cleanly varnished, that had been the servants' quar-
ters. It was quite high up and could only be reached by a sort of
ladder from the entry. But the great cupboards and carven presses
were gone. The son of the house climbed the majestic staircase,
with his hand on the white-enamelled, fret-work balustrade. At
each step he lifted his hand, and put it down again with the next
as though testing whether he could call back his ancient familiar-
ity with the stout old railing....But at the landing of the entre-
sol he stopped. For on the entrance door was a white plate; and on
it in black letters he read; "Public Library."

"Public Library?" thought Tonio Kroger. What were either
literature or the public doing here? He knocked...heard a
"Come in," and obeying it with gloomy suspense gazed upon a
scene of most unhappy alteration.

The storey was three rooms deep, and all the doors stood open.
The walls were covered nearly all the way up with long rows of
books in uniform bindings, standing in dark-coloured bookcases.
In each room a poor creature of a man sat writing behind a sort
of counter. The farthest two just turned their heads, but the near-
est got up in haste and, leaning with both hands on the table,
stuck out his head, pursed his lips, lifted his brows, and looked
at the visitor with eagerly blinking eyes.

"I beg pardon," said Tonio Kroger without turning his eyes from
the book-shelves. "I am a stranger here, seeing the sights. So
this is your Public Library? May I examine your collection a
little?"

"Certainly, with pleasure," said the official, blinking still more
violently. "It is open to everybody....Pray look about you.
Should you care for a catalogue?"

"No, thanks," answered Tonio Kroger, "I shall soon find my
way about." And he began to move slowly along the walls, with
the appearance of studying the rows of books. After a while he
took down a volume, opened it, and posted himself at the window.

This was the breakfast-room. They had eaten here in the morn-
ing instead of in the big dining-room upstairs, with its white
statues of gods and goddesses standing out against the blue walls.
....Beyond there had been a bedroom, where his father's mother
had died--only after a long struggle, old as she was, for she had
been of a pleasure-loving nature and clung to life. And his father
too had drawn his last breath in the same room: that tall, correct,
slightly melancholy and pensive gentleman with the wild flower in
his buttonhole....Tonio had sat at the foot of his death-bed,
quite given over to unutterable feelings of love and grief. His
mother had knelt at the bedside, his lovely, fiery mother, dissolved
in hot tears; and after that she had withdrawn with her artist into
the far blue south....And beyond still, the small third room,
likewise full of books and presided over by a shabby man--that
had been for years on end his own. Thither he had come after
school and a walk--like today's; against that wall his table had
stood with the drawer where he had kept his first clumsy, heart-
felt attempts at verse....The walnut tree...a pang went through
him. He gave a sidewise glance out at the window. The garden
lay desolate, but there stood the old walnut tree where it
used to stand, groaning and creaking heavily in the wind. And
Tonio Kroger let his gaze fall upon the book he had in his hands,
an excellent piece of work, and very familiar. He followed the
black lines of print, the paragraphs, the flow of words that flowed
with so much art, mounting in the ardour of creation to a cer-
tain climax and effect and then as artfully breaking off....

"Yes, that was well done," he said; put back the book and
turned away. Then he saw that the functionary still stood bolt-
upright, blinking with a mingled expression of zeal and misgiving.

"A capital collection, I see," said Tonio Kroger. "I have
already quite a good idea of it. Much obliged to you. Good-
bye." He went out; but it was a poor exit, and he felt sure the
official would stand there perturbed and blinking for several
minutes.

He felt no desire for further researches. He had been home.
Strangers were living upstairs in the large rooms behind the pil-
lared hall; the top of the stairs was shut off by a glass door which
used not to be there, and on the door was a plate. He went away,
down the steps, across the echoing corridor, and left his parental
home. He sought a restaurant, sat down in a corner, and brooded
over a heavy, greasy meal. Then he returned to his hotel.

"I am leaving," he said to the fine gentleman in black. "This
afternoon." And he asked for his bill, and for a carriage to take
him down to the harbour where he should take the boat for
Copenhagen. Then he went up to his room and sat there stiff
and still, with his cheek on his hand, looking down on the table
before him with absent eyes. Later he paid his bill and packed his
things. At the appointed hour the carriage was announced and
Tonio Kroger went down in travel array.

At the foot of the stairs the gentleman in black was waiting.

"Beg pardon," he said, shoving back his cuffs with his little
fingers...."Beg pardon, but we must detain you just a moment.
Herr Seehaase, the proprietor, would like to exchange two
words with you. A matter of form....He is back there....If you
will have the goodness to step this way....It is only Herr
Seehaase, the proprietor."

And he ushered Tonio Kroger into the background of the
vestibule....There, in fact, stood Herr Seehaase. Tonio Kroger
recognized him from old time. He was small, fat, and bow-legged.
His shaven side-whisker was white, but he wore the same old low-
cut dress coat and little velvet cap embroidered in green. He was
not alone. Beside him, at a little high desk fastened into the wall,
stood a policeman in a helmet, his gloved right hand resting on a
document in coloured inks; he turned towards Tonio Kroger
with his honest, soldierly face as though he expected Tonio to
sink into the earth at his glance.

Tonio Kroger looked at the two and confined himself to
waiting.

"You came from Munich?" the policeman asked at length in
a heavy, good-natured voice.

Tonio Kroger said he had.

"You are going to Copenhagen?"

"Yes, I am on the way to a Danish seashore resort."

"Seashore resort? Well, you must produce your papers," said
the policeman. He uttered the last word with great satisfaction.

"Papers...?" He had no papers. He drew out his pocket-book
and looked into it; but aside from notes there was nothing
there but some proof-sheets of a story which he had taken along
to finish reading. He hated relations with officials and had never
got himself a passport....

"I am sorry," he said, "but I don't travel with papers."

"Ah!" said the policeman. "And what might be your name?"

Tonio replied.

"Is that a fact?" asked the policeman, suddenly erect, and
expanding his nostrils as wide as he could....

"Yes, that is a fact," answered Tonio Kroger.

"And what are you, anyhow?"

Tonio Kroger gulped and gave the name of his trade in a firm
voice. Herr Seehaase lifted his head and looked him curiously in
the face.

"H'm," said the policeman. "And you give out that you are
not identical with an individdle named"--he said "individdle"
and then, referring to his document in coloured inks, spelled out
an involved, fantastic name which mingled all the sounds of all
the races--Tonio Kroger forgot it next minute--"of unknown
parentage and unspecified means," he went on, "wanted by the
Munich police for various shady transactions, and probably in
flight towards Denmark?"

"Yes, I give out all that, and more," said Tonio Kroger, wrig-
gling his shoulders. The gesture made a certain impression.

"What? Oh, yes, of course," said the policeman. "You say
you can't show any papers--"

Herr Seehaase threw himself into the breach.

"It is only a formality," he said pacifically, "nothing else.
You must bear in mind the official is only doing his duty. If you
could only identify yourself somehow--some document..."

They were all silent. Should he make an end of the business.
by revealing to Herr Seehaase that he was no swindler without
specified means, no gypsy in a green wagon, but the son of the
late Consul Kroger, a member of the Kroger family? No, he felt
no desire to do that. After all, were not these guardians of civic
order within their right? He even agreed with them--up to a
point. He shrugged his shoulders and kept quiet.

"What have you got, then?" asked the policeman. "In your
portfoly, I mean?"

"Here? Nothing. Just a proof-sheet," answered Tonio Kroger.

"Proof-sheet? What's that? Let's see it."

And Tonio Kroger handed over his work. The policeman
spread it out on the shelf and began reading. Herr Seehaase drew
up and shared it with him. Tonio Kroger looked over their
shoulders to see what they read. It was a good moment, a little
effect he had worked out to a perfection. He had a sense of self-
satisfaction.

"You see," he said, "there is my name. I wrote it, and it is
going to be published, you understand."

"All right, that will answer," said Herr Seehaase with decision,
gathered up the sheets and gave them back. "That will have to
answer, Peterson," he repeated crisply, shutting his eyes and
shaking his head as though to see and hear no more. "We must
not keep the gentleman any longer. The carriage is waiting. I
implore you to pardon the little inconvenience, sir. The officer
has only done his duty, but I told him at once he was on the
wrong track...."

"Indeed!" thought Tonio Kroger.

The officer seemed still to have his doubts; he muttered some-
thing else about individdle and document. But Herr Seehaase,
overfowing with regrets, led his guest through the vestibule, ac-
companied him past the two lions to the carriage, and himself,
with many respectful bows, closed the door upon him. And then
the funny, high, wide old cab rolled and rattled and bumped
down the steep, narrow street to the quay.

And such was the manner of Tonio Kroger's visit to his an-
cestral home.


Night fell and the moon swam up with silver gleam as Tonio
Kroger's boat reached the open sea. He stood at the prow wrapped
in his cloak against a mounting wind, and looked beneath into
the dark going and coming of the waves as they hovered and
swayed and came on, to meet with a clap and shoot erratically
away in a bright gush of foam.

He was lulled in a mood of still enchantment. The episode at
the hotel, their wanting to arrest him for a swindler in his own
home, had cast him down a little, even although he found it quite
in order--in a certain way. But after he came on board he had
watched, as he used to do as a boy with his father, the lading of
goods into the deep bowels of the boat, amid shouts of mingled
Danish and Plattdeutsch; not only boxes and bales, but also a
Bengal tiger and a polar bear were lowered in cages with stout
iron bars. They had probably come from Hamburg and were
destined for a Danish menagerie. He had enjoyed these distrac-
tions. And as the boat glided along between flat river-banks he
quite forgot Officer Petersen's inquisition; while all the rest--his
sweet, sad, rueful dreams of the night before, the walk he had
taken, the walnut tree--had welled up again in his soul. The sea
opened out and he saw in the distance the beach where he as a lad
had been let to listen to the ocean's summer dreams; saw the
flashing of the lighthouse tower and the lights of the Kurhaus
where he and his parents had lived....The Baltic! He bent his
head to the strong salt wind; it came sweeping on, it enfolded him,
made him faintly giddy and a little deaf; and in that mild confusion
of the senses all memory of evil, of anguish and error, effort and
exertion of the will, sank away into joyous oblivion and were
gone. The roaring, foaming, flapping, and slapping all about him
came to his ears like the groan and rustle of an old walnut tree,
the creaking of a garden gate....More and more the darkness
came on.

"The stars! Oh, by Lord, look at the stars!" a voice suddenly
said, with a heavy singsong accent that seemed to come out of
the inside of a tun. He recognized it. It belonged to a young
man with red-blond hair who had been Tonio Kroger's neigh-
bour at dinner in the salon. His dress was very simple, his eyes
were red, and he had the moist and chilly look of a person who
has just bathed. With nervous and self-conscious movements he
had taken unto himself an astonishing quantity of lobster omelet.
Now he leaned on the rail beside Tonio Kroger and looked up at
the skies, holding his chin between thumb and forefinger. Beyond
a doubt he was in one of those rare and festal and edifying moods
that cause the barriers between man and man to fall; when the
heart opens even to the stranger, and the mouth utters that which
otherwise it would blush to speak....

"Look, by dear sir, just look at the stars. There they stahd and
glitter; by goodness, the whole sky is full of theb! And I ask
you, when you stahd ahd look up at theb, ahd realize that bany of
theb are a huddred tibes larger thad the earth, how does it bake
you feel? Yes, we have idvehted the telegraph and the telephode
and all the triuphs of our bodem tibes. But whed we look up
there, after all we have to recogdize and uhderstad that we are
worbs, biserable worbs, ahd dothing else. Ab I right, sir, or ab
I wrog? Yes, we are worbs," he answered himself, and nodded
meekly and abjectly in the direction of the firmament.

"Ah, no, he has no literature in his belly," thought Tonio
Kroger. And he recalled something he had lately read, an essay
by a famous French writer on cosmological and psychological
philosophies, a very delightful causerie.

He made some sort of reply to the young man's feeling remarks,
and they went on talking, leaning over the rail, and looking into
the night with its movement and fitful lights. The young man, it
seemed, was a Hamburg merchant on his holiday.

"Y'ought to travel to Copedhagen on the boat, thigks I, and
so here I ab, and so far it's been fide. But they shouldn't have
given us the lobster obelet, sir, for it's going to be storby--the
captain said so hibself--and that's do joke with indigestible food
like that in your stobach...."

Tonio Kroger listed to all this engaging artlessness and was
privately drawn to it.

"Yes," he said, "all the food up here is too heavy. It makes
one lazy and melancholy."

"Belancholy?" repeated the young man, and looked at him,
taken aback. Then he asked, suddenly: "You are a stradger up
here, sir?"

"Yes, I come from a long way off," answered Tonio Kroger
vaguely, waving his arm.

"But you're right," said the youth; "Lord kdows you are
right about the belancholy. I am dearly always belancholy, but
specially on evedings like this when there are stars in the sky."
And he supported his chin again with thumb and forefinger.

"Surely this man writes verses," thought Tonio Kroger; "busi-
ness man's verses, full of deep feeling and single-mindedness."

Evening drew on. The wind had grown so violent as to prevent
them from talking. So they thought they would sleep a bit, and
wished each other good-night.

Tonio Kroger stretched himself out on the narrow cabin bed,
but he found no repose. The strong wind with its sharp tang had
power to rouse him; he was strangely restless with sweet anticipa-
tions. Also he was violently sick with the motion of the ship as
she glided down a steep mountain of wave and her screw vibrated
as in agony, free of the water. He put on all his clothes again and
went up to the deck.

Clouds raced across the moon. The sea danced. It did not come
on in full-bodied, regular waves; but far out in the pale and flicker-
ing light the water was lashed, torn, and tumbled; leaped upward
like great licking flames; hung in jagged and fantastic shapes above
dizzy abysses, where the foam seemed to be tossed by the playful
strength of colossal arms and flung upward in all directions. The
ship had a heavy passage; she lurched and stamped and groaned
through the welter; and far down in her bowels the tiger and the
polar bear voiced their acute discomfort. A man in an oilskin, with
the hood drawn over his head and a lantern strapped to his chest,
went straddling painfully up and down the deck. And at the stern,
leaning far out, stood the young man from Hamburg suffering the
worst. "Lord!" he said, in a hollow, quavering voice, when he
saw Tonio Kroger. "Look at the uproar of the elebents, sir!"
But he could say no more--he was obliged to turn hastily away.

Tonio Kroger clutched at a taut rope and looked abroad into
the arrogance of the elements. His exultation outvied storm and
wave; within himself he chanted a song to the sea, instinct with
love of her: "O thou wild friend of my youth. Once more I
behold thee--" But it got no further, he did not finish it. It was
not fated to receive a final form nor in tranquillity to be welded
to a perfect whole. For his heart was too full....

Long he stood; then stretched himself out on a bench by the
pilot-house and looked up at the sky, where stars were flickering.
He even slept a little. And when the cold foam splashed his face
it seemed in his half-dreams like a caress.

Perpendicular chalk-cliffs, ghostly in the moonlight, came in
sight. They were nearing the island of Moen. Then sleep came
again, broken by salty showers of spray that bit into his face and
made it stiff....When he really roused, it was broad day, fresh
and palest grey, and the sea had gone down. At breakfast he saw
the young man from Hamburg again, who blushed rosy-red for
shame of the poetic indiscretions he had been betrayed into by the
dark, ruffled up his little red-blond moustache with all five fingers,
and called out a brisk and soldierly good-moming--after that he
studiously avoided him.

And Tonio Kroger landed in Denmark. He arrived in Copen-
hagen, gave tips to everybody who laid claim to them, took a
room at a hotel, and roamed the city for three days with an open
guide-book and the air of an intelligent foreigner bent on im-
proving his mind. He looked at the Wng's New Market and the
"Horse" in the middle of it, gazed respectfully up the columns
of the Frauenkirch, stood long before Thorwaldsen's noble and
beautiful statuary, climbed the round tower, visited castles, and
spent two lively evenings in the Tivoli. But all this was not ex-
actly what he saw.

The doors of the houses--so like those in his native town, with
open-work gables of baroque shape--bore names known to him
of old; names that had a tender and precious quality, and withal
in their syllables an accent of plaintive reproach, of repining after
the lost and gone. He walked, he gazed, drawing deep, lingering
draughts of moist sea air; and everywhere he saw eyes as blue,
hair as blond, faces as familiar, as those that had visited his rueful
dreams the night he had spent in his native town. There in the
open street it befell him that a glance, a ringing word, a sudden
laugh would pierce him to his marrow.

He could not stand the bustling city for long. A restlessness,
half memory and half hope, half foolish and half sweet, possessed
him; he was moved to drop this role of ardently inquiring tourist
and lie somewhere, quite quietly, on a beach. So he took ship once
more and travelled under a cloudy sky, over a black water, north-
wards along the coast of Seeland towards Helsingor. Thence he
drove, at once, by carriage, for three-quarters of an hour, along
and above the sea, reaching at length his ultimate goal, the little
white "bath-hotel" with green blinds. It stood surrounded by a
settlement of cottages, and its shingled turret tower looked out
on the beach and the Swedish coast. Here he left the carriage,
took possession of the light room they had ready for him, filled
shelves and presses with his kit, and prepared to stop awhile.


It was well on in September; not many guests were left in
Aalsgaard. Meals were served on the ground floor, in the great
beamed dining-room, whose lofty windows led out upon the
veranda and the sea. The landlady presided, an elderly spinster
with white hair and faded eyes, a faint colour in her cheek and
a feeble twittering voice. She was forever arranging her red hands
to look well upon the table-cloth. There was a short-necked old
gentleman, quite blue in the face, with a grey sailor beard; a fish-
dealer he was, from the capital, and strong at the German. He
seemed entirely congested and inclined to apoplexy; breathed in
short gasps, kept putting his beringed first finger to one nostril,
and snorting violently to get a passage of air through the other.
Notwithstanding, he addressed himself constantly to the whisky-
bottle, which stood at his place at luncheon and dinner, and break-
fast as well. Besides him the company consisted only of three tall
American youths with their governor or tutor, who kept adjust-
ing his glasses in unbroken silence. All day long he played football
with his charges, who had narrow, taciturn faces and reddish-
yellow hair parted in the middle. "Please pass the wurst," said
one. "That's not wurst, it's schinken," said the other, and this
was the extent of their conversation, as the rest of the time they
sat there dumb, drinking hot water.

Tonio Kroger could have wished himself no better table-com-
panions. He revelled in the peace and quiet, listened to the Danish
palatals, the clear and the clouded vowels in which the fish-dealer
and the landlady desultorily conversed; modestly exchanged views
with the fish-dealer on the state of the barometer, and then left
the table to go through the veranda and onto the beach once more,
where he had already spent long, long morning hours.

Sometimes it was still and summery there. The sea lay idle and
smooth, in stripes of blue and russet and bottle-green, played all
across with glittering silvery lights. The seaweed shrivelled in the
sun and the jelly-fish lay steaming. There was a faintly stagnant
smell and a whiff of tar from the fishing-boat against which Tonio
Kroger leaned, so standing that he had before his eyes not the
Swedish coast but the open horizon, and in his face the pure,
fresh breath of the softly breathing sea.

Then grey, stormy days would come. The waves lowered their
heads like bulls and charged against the beach; they ran and
ramped high up the sands and left them strewn with shining wet
sea-grass, driftwood, and mussels. All abroad beneath an overcast
sky extended ranges of billows, and between them foaming val-
leys palely green; but above the spot where the sun hung behind
the cloud a patch like white velvet lay on the sea.

Tonio Kroger stood wrapped in wind and tumult, sunk in the
continual dull, drowsy uproar that he loved. When he turned
away it seemed suddenly warm and silent all about him. But he
was never unconscious of the sea at his back; it called, it lured, it
beckoned him. And he smiled.

He went landward, by lonely meadow-paths, and was swal-
lowed up in the beech-groves that clothed the rolling landscape
near and far. Here he sat down on the moss, against a tree, and
gazed at the strip of water he could see between the trunks. Some-
times the sound of surf came on the wind--a noise like boards
collapsing at a distance. And from the tree-tops over his head a
cawing--hoarse, desolate, forlorn. He held a book on his knee,
but did not read a line. He enjoyed profound forgetfulness, hov-
ered disembodied above space and time; only now and again his
heart would contract with a fugitive pain, a stab of longing and
regret, into whose origin he was too lazy to inquire.

Thus passed some days. He could not have said how many and
had no desire to know. But then came one on which something
happened; happened while the sun stood in the sky and people
were about; and Tonio Kroger, even, felt no vast surprise.

The very opening of the day had been rare and festal. Tonio
Kroger woke early and suddenly from his sleep, with a vague
and exquisite alarm; he seemed to be looking at a miracle, a magic
illumination. His room had a glass door and balcony facing the
sound; a thin white gauze curtain divided it into living- and
sleeping-quarters, both hung with delicately tinted paper and fur-
nished with an airy good taste that gave them a sunny and friendly
look. But now to his sleep-drunken eyes it lay bathed in a serene
and roseate light, an unearthly brightness that gilded walls and
furniture and turned the gauze curtain to radiant pink cloud.
Tonio Kroger did not at once understand. Not until he stood at
the glass door and looked out did he realize that this was the
sunrise.

For several days there had been clouds and rain; but now the
sky was like a piece of pale-blue silk, spanned shimmering above
sea and land, and shot with light from red and golden clouds.
The sun's disk rose in splendour from a crisply glittering sea that
seemed to quiver and burn beneath it. So began the day. In a
joyous daze Tonio Kroger flung on his clothes, and breakfasting
in the veranda before everybody else, swam from the little wooden
bath-house some distance out into the sound, then walked for an
hour along the beach. When he came back, several omnibuses
were before the door, and from the dining-room he could see
people in the parlour next door where the piano was, in the
veranda, and on the terrace in front; quantities of people sitting
at little tables enjoying beer and sandwiches amid lively discourse.
There were whole families, there were old and young, there were
even a few children.

At second breakfast--the table was heavily laden with cold
viands, roast, pickled, and smoked--Tonio Kroger inquired
what was going on.

"Guests," said the fish-dealer. "Tourists and ball-guests from
Helsingor. Lord help us, we shall get no sleep this night! There
will be dancing and music, and I fear me it will keep up till late.
It is a family reunion, a sort of celebration and excursion com-
bined; they all subscribe to it and take advantage of the good
weather. They came by boat and bus and they are having break-
fast. After that they go on with their drive, but at night they
will all come back for a dance here in the hall. Yes, damn it, you'll
see we shan't get a wink of sleep."

"Oh, it will be a pleasant change," said Tonio Kroger.

After that there was nothing more said for some time. The
landlady arranged her red fingers on the cloth, the fish-dealer
blew through his nostril, the Americans drank hot water and made
long faces.

Then all at once a thing came to pass: Hans Hansen and Inge-
borg Holm walked through the room.

Tonio Kroger, pleasantly fatigued after his swim and rapid
walk, was leaning back in his chair and eating smoked salmon on
toast; he sat facing the veranda and the ocean. All at once the door
opened and the two entered hand-in-hand--calmly and unhur-
ried. Ingeborg, blonde Inge, was dressed just as she used to be at
Herr Knaak's dancing-class. The light flowered frock reached
down to her ankles and it had a tulle fichu draped with a pointed
opening that left her soft throat free. Her hat hung by its ribbons
over her arm. She, perhaps, was a little more grown up than she
used to be, and her wonderful plait of hair was wound round
her head; but Hans Hansen was the same as ever. He wore his
sailor overcoat with gilt buttons, and his wide blue sailor collar
lay across his shoulders and back; the sailor cap with its short
ribbons he was dangling carelessly in his hand. Ingeborg's nar-
row eyes were turned away; perhaps she felt shy before the com-
pany at table. But Hans Hansen turned his head straight towards
them, and measured one after another defiantly with his steel-
blue eyes; challengingly, with a sort of contempt. He even
dropped Ingeborg's hand and swung his cap harder than ever,
to show what manner of man he was. Thus the two, against the
silent, blue-dyed sea, measured the length of the room and passed
through the opposite door into the parlour.

This was at half past eleven in the morning. While the guests
of the house were still at table the company in the veranda broke
up and went away by the side door. No one else came into the
dining-room. The guests could hear them laughing and joking as
they got into the omnibuses, which rumbled away one one...."So
they are coming back.," asked Tonio Kroger.

"That they are," said the fish-dealer. "More's the pity. They
have ordered music, let me tell you--and my room is right above
the dining-room."

"Oh, well, it's a pleasant change," repeated Tonio Kroger.
Then he got up and went away.

That day he spent as he had the others, on the beach and in the
wood, holding a book on his knee and blinking in the sun. He had
but one thought; they were coming back to have a dance in the
hall, the fish-dealer had promised they would; and he did nothing
but be glad of this, with a sweet and timorous gladness such as
he had not felt through all these long dead years. Once he hap-
pened, by some chance association, to think of his friend Adal-
bert, the novelist, the man who had known what he wanted and
betaken himself to the cafe to get away from the spring. Tonio
Kroger shrugged his shoulders at the thought of him.

Luncheon was served earlier than usual, also supper, which
they ate in the parlour because the dining-room was being got
ready for the ball, and the whole house flung in disorder for the
occasion. It grew dark; Tonio Kroger sitting in his room heard
on the road and in the house the sounds of approaching festivity.
The picnickers were coming back; from Helsingor, by bicycle
and carriage, new guests were arriving; a fiddle and a nasal clarinet
might be heard practising down in the dining-room. Everything
promised a brilliant ball....

Now the little orchestra struck up a march; he could hear the
notes, faint but lively. The dancing opened with a polonaise.
Tonio Kroger sat for a while and listened. But when he heard
the march-time go over into a waltz he got up and slipped noise-
lessly out of his room.

From his corridor it was possible to go by the side stairs to the
side entrance of the hotel and thence to the veranda without pass-
ing through a room. He took this route, softly and stealthily as
though on forbidden paths, feeling along through the dark, re-
lentlessly drawn by this stupid jigging music, that now came up
to him loud and clear.

The veranda was empty and dim, but the glass door stood open
into the hall, where shone two large oil lamps, furnished with
bright reflectors. Thither he stole on soft feet; and his skin
prickled with the thievish pleasure of standing unseen in the dark
and spying on the dancers there in the brightly lighted room.
Quickly and eagerly he glanced about for the two whom he
sought....

Even though the ball was only half an hour old, the merriment
seemed in full swing; however, the guests had come hither already
warm and merry, after a whole day of carefree, happy companion-
ship. By bending forward a little, Tonio Kroger could see into the
parlour from where he was. Several old gendemen sat there
smoking, drinking, and playing cards; others were with their
wives on the plush-upholstered chairs in the foreground watching
the dance. They sat with their knees apart and their hands rest-
ing on them, puffing out their cheeks with a prosperous air; the
mothers, with bonnets perched on their parted hair, with their
hands folded over their stomachs and their heads on one side,
gazed into the whirl of dancers. A platform had been erected on
the long side of the hall, and on it the musicians were doing their
utmost. There was even a trumpet, that blew with a certain cau-
tion, as though afraid of its own voice, and yet after all kept
breaking and cracking. Couples were dipping and circling about,
others walked arm-in-arm up and down the room. No one wore
ballroom clothes; they were dressed as for an outing in the sum-
mertime: the men in countrified suits which were obviously their
Sunday wear; the girls in light-coloured frocks with bunches of
field-flowers in their bodices. Even a few children were there,
dancing with each other in their own way, even after the music
stopped. There was a long-legged man in a coat with a little
swallow-tail, a provincial lion with an eye-glass and frizzed hair,
a post-office clerk or some such thing; he was like a comic figure
stepped bodily out of a Danish novel; and he seemed to be the
leader and manager of the ball. He was everywhere at once,
bustling, perspiring, officious, utterly absorbed; setting down his
feet, in shiny, pointed, military half-boots, in a very artificial and
involved manner, toes first; waving his arms to issue an order, clap-
ping his hands for the music to begin; here, there, and every-
where, and glancing over his shoulder in pride at his great bow of
office, the streamers of which fluttered grandly in his rear.

Yes, there they were, those two, who had gone by Tonio
Kroger in the broad light of day; he saw them again--with a.
joyful start he recognized them almost at the same moment. Here
was Hans Hansen by the door, quite close; his legs apart, a little
bent over, he was eating with circumspection a large piece of
sponge-cake, holding his hand cupwise under his chin to catch
the crumbs. And there by the wall sat Ingeborg Holm, Inge the
fair; the post-office clerk was just mincing up to her with an
exaggerated bow and asking her to dance. He laid one hand on
his back and gracefully shoved the other into his bosom. But she
was shaking her head in token that she was a little out of breath
and must rest awhile, whereat the post-office clerk sat down by
her side.

Tonio Kroger looked at them both, these two for whom he had
in time past suffered love--at Hans and Ingeborg. They were
Hans and Ingeborg not so much by virtue of individual traits and
similarity of costume as by similarity of race and type. This was
the blond, fair-haired breed of the steel-blue eyes, which stood
to him for the pure, the blithe, the untroubled in life; for a vir-
ginal aloofness that was at once both simple and full of pride.
...He looked at them. Hans Hansen was standing there in his
sailor suit, lively and well built as ever, broad in the shoulders and
narrow in the hips; Ingeborg was laughing and tossing her head
in a certain high-spirited way she had; she carried her hand, a
schoolgirl hand, not at all slender, not at all particularly aristo-
cratic, to the back of her head in a certain manner so that the thin
sleeve fell away from her elbow--and suddenly such a pang of
home-sickness shook his breast that involuntarily he drew farther
back into the darkness lest someone might see his features twitch.

"Had I forgotten you?" he asked. "No, never. Not thee, Hans,
not thee, Inge the fair! It was always you I worked for; when I
heard applause I always stole a look to see if you were there....
Did you read Don Carlos, Hans Hansen, as you promised me at
the garden gate? No, don't read it! I do not ask it any more. What
have you to do with a king who weeps for loneliness? You must
not cloud your clear eyes or make them dreamy and dim by peer-
ing into melancholy poetry....To be like you! To begin again,
to grow up like you, regular like you, simple and normal and
cheerful, in conformity and understanding with God and man,
beloved of the innocent and happy. To take you, Ingeborg Holm,
to wife, and have a son like you, Hans Hansen--to live free from
the curse of knowledge and the torment of creation, live and praise
God in blessed mediocrity! Begin again? But it would do no good.
It would turn out the same--every thing would turn out the
same as it did before. For some go of necessity astray, because for
them there is no such thing as a right path."

The music ceased; there was a pause in which refreshments
were handed round. The post-office assistant tripped about in per-
son with a trayful of herring salad and served the ladies; but before
Ingeborg Holm he even went down on one knee as he passed her
the dish, and she blushed for pleasure.

But now those within began to be aware of a spectator behind
the glass door; some of the flushed and pretty faces turned to
measure him with hostile glances; but he stood his ground. Inge-
borg and Hans looked at him too, at almost the same time, both
with that utter indifference in their eyes that looks so like con-
tempt. And he was conscious too of a gaze resting on him from a
different quarter; turned his head and met with his own the eyes
that had sought him out. A girl stood not far off, with a fine, pale
little face--he had already noticed her. She had not danced much,
she had few partners, and he had seen her sitting there against
the wall, her lips closed in a bitter line. She was standing alone
now too; her dress was a thin light stuff, like the others, but be-
neath the transparent frock her shoulders showed angular and
poor, and the thin neck was thrust down so deep between those
meagre shoulders that as she stood there motionless she might
almost be thought a little deformed. She was holding her hands
in their thin mitts across her flat breast, with the finger-tips
touching; her head was drooped, yet she was looking up at Tonio
Kroger with black swimming eyes. He turned away....

Here, quite close to him, were Ingeborg and Hans. He had sat
down beside her--she was perhaps his sister--and they ate and
drank together surrounded by other rosy-cheeked folk; they
chattered and made merry, called to each other in ringing voices,
and laughed aloud. Why could, he not go up and speak to them?
Make some trivial remark to him or her, to which they might at
least answer with a smile? It would make him happy--he longed
to do it; he would go back more satisfied to his room if he might
feel he had established a little contact with them. He thought out
what he might say; but he had not the courage to say it. Yes, this
too was just as it had been: they would not understand him, they
would listen like strangers to anything he was able to say. For their
speech was not his speech.

It seemed the dance was about to begin again. The leader de-
veloped a comprehensive activity. He dashed hither and thither,
adjuring everybody to get partners; helped the waiters to push
chairs and glasses out of the way, gave orders to the musicians,
even took some awkward people by the shoulders and shoved
them aside....What was coming? They formed squares of
four couples each....A frightful memory brought the colour
to Tonio Kroger's cheeks. They were forming for a quadrille.

The music struck up, the couples bowed and crossed over. The
leader called off; he called off--Heaven save us--in French!
And pronounced the nasals with great distinction. Ingeborg Holm
danced close by, in the set nearest the glass door. She moved to
and fro before him, forwards and back, pacing and turning; he
caught a waft from her hair or the thin stuff of her frock, and it
made him close his eyes with the old, familiar feeling, the fragrance
and bitter-sweet enchantment he had faintly felt in all these days,
that now filled him utterly with irresistible sweetness. And what
was the feeling? Longing, tenderness? Envy? Self-contempt?
...Moulinet des dames! "Did you laugh, Ingeborg the blonde,
did you laugh at me when I disgraced myself by dancing the
moulinet? And would you still laugh today even after I have
become something like a famous man? Yes, that you would, and
you would be right to laugh. Even if I in my own person had
written the nine symphonies and The World as Will and Idea and
painted the Last Judgment, you would still be eternally right to
laugh...As he looked at her he thought of a line of verse once
so familiar to him, now long forgotten: "I would sleep, but thou
must dance." How well he knew it, that melancholy northern
mood it evoked--its heavy inarticulateness. To sleep....To long
to be allowed to live the life of simple feeling, to rest sweetly
and passively in feeling alone, without compulsion to act and
achieve--and yet to be forced to dance, dance the cruel and
perilous sword-dance of art; without even being allowed to forget
the melancholy conflict within oneself; to be forced to dance, the
while one loved....

A sudden wild extravagance had come over the scene. The sets
had broken up, the quadrille was being succeeded by a galop,
and all the couples were leaping and gliding about. They flew
past Tonio Kroger to a maddeningly quick tempo, crossing, ad-
vancing, retreating, with quick, breathless laughter. A couple
came rushing and circling towards Tonio Kroger; the girl had
a pale, refined face and lean, high shoulders. Suddenly, directly
in front of him, they tripped and slipped and stumbled....The
pale girl fell, so hard and violently it almost looked dangerous;
and her partner with her. He must have hurt himself badly, for
he quite forgot her, and, half rising, began to rub his knee and
grimace; while she, quite dazed, it seemed, still lay on the floor.
Then Tonio Kroger came forward, took her gently by the arms,
and lifted her up. She looked dazed, bewildered, wretched; then
suddenly her delicate face flushed pink.

"Tak, O, mange tak!', she said, and gazed up at him with dark,
swimming eyes.

"You should not dance any more, Fraulein," he said gently.
Once more he looked round at them, at Ingeborg and Hans, and
then he went out, left the ball and the veranda and returned to
his own room.

He was exhausted with jealousy, worn out with the gaiety in
which he had had no part. Just the same, just the same as it had
always been. Always with burning cheeks he had stood in his dark
corner and suffered for you, you blond, you living, you happy
ones! And then quite simply gone away. Somebody must come
now! Ingeborg must notice he had gone, must slip after him, lay
a hand on his shoulder and say: "Come back and be happy. I love
you!" But she came not at all. No, such things did not happen.
Yes, all was as it had been, and he too was happy, just as he had
been. For his heart was alive. But between that past and this pres-
ent what had happened to make him become that which he now
was? Icy desolation, solitude: mind, and art, forsooth!

He undressed, lay down, put out the light. Two names he whis-
pered into his pillow, the few chaste northern syllables that meant
for him his true and native way of love, of longing and happiness;
that meant to him life and home, meant simple and heartfelt feel-
ing. He looked back on the years that had passed. He thought of
the dreamy adventures of the senses, nerves, and mind in which he
had been involved; saw himself eaten up with intellect and intro-
spection, ravaged and paralysed by insight, half worn out by the
fevers and frosts of creation, helpless and in anguish of conscience
between two extremes, flung to and fro between austerity and
lust; raffine, impoverished, exhausted by frigid and artificially
heightened ecstasies; erring, forsaken, martyred, and ill--and
sobbed with nostalgia and remorse.

Here in his room it was still and dark. But from below life's
lulling, trivial waltz-rhythm came faintly to his ears.

Tonio Kroger sat up in the north, composing his promised
letter to his friend Lisabeta Ivanovna.

"Dear Lisabeta down there in Arcady, whither I shall shortly
return," he wrote: "Here is something like a letter, but it will
probably disappoint you, for I mean to keep it rather general.
Not that I have nothing to tell; for indeed, in my way, I have
had experiences; for instance, in my native town they were even
going to arrest me...but of that by word of mouth. Sometimes
now I have days when I would rather state things in general
terms than go on telling stories.

"You probably still remember, Lisabeta, that you called me a
bourgeois, a bourgeois manque? You called me that in an hour
when, led on by other confessions I had previously let slip, I con-
fessed to you my love of life, or what I call life. I ask myself if
you were aware how very close you came to the truth, how much
my love of 'life' is one and the same thing as my being a bour-
geois. This journey of mine has given me much occasion to ponder
the subject.

"My father, you know, had the temperament of the north:
solid, reflective, puritanically correct, with a tendency to melan-
cholia. My mother, of indeterminate foreign blood, was beautiful,
sensuous, naive, passionate, and careless at once, and, I think, ir-
regular by instinct. The mixture was no doubt extraordinary and
bore with it extraordinary dangers. The issue of it, a bourgeois
who strayed off into art, a bohemian who feels nostalgic yearn-
ings for respectability, an artist with a bad conscience. For surely
it is my bourgeois conscience makes me see in the artist life, in all
irregularity and all genius, something profoundly suspect, pro-
foundly disreputable; that fills me with this lovelorn faiblesse for
the simple and good, the comfortably normal, the average unen-
dowed respectable human being.

"I stand between two worlds. I am at home in neither, and I
suffer in consequence. You artists call me a bourgeois, and the
bourgeois try to arrest me....I don't know which makes me
feel worse. The bourgeois are stupid; but you adorers of the beau-
tiful, who call me phlegmatic and without aspirations, you ought
to realize that there is a way of being an artist that goes so deep
and is so much a matter of origins and destinies that no longing
seems to it sweeter and more worth knowing than longing after
the bliss of the commonplace.

"I admire those proud, cold beings who adventure upon the
paths of great and daemonic beauty and despise 'mankind'; but
I do not envy them. For if anything is capable of making a poet
of a literary man, it is my bourgeois love of the human, the living
and usual. It is the source of all warmth, goodness, and humour;
I even almost think it is itself that love of which it stands written
that one may speak with the tongues of men and of angels and yet
having it not is as sounding brass and tinkling cymbals.

"The work I have so far done is nothing or not much--as good
as nothing. I will do better, Lisabeta--this is a promise. As I
write, the sea whispers to me and I close my eyes. I am looking
into a world unborn and formless, that needs to be ordered and
shaped; I see into a whirl of shadows of human figures who beckon
to me to weave spells to redeem them: tragic and laughable figures
and some that are both together--and to these I am drawn. But
my deepest and secretest love belongs to the blond and blue-eyed,
the fair and living, the happy, lovely, and commonplace.

"Do not chide this love, Lisabeta; it is good and fruitful. There
is longing in it, and a gentle envy; a touch of contempt and no
little innocent bliss."



TRISTAN



Einfried, the sanatorium. A long, white, rectilinear building with
a side wing, set in a spacious garden pleasingly equipped with
grottoes, bowers, and little bark pavilions. Behind its slate roofs
the mountains tower heavenwards, evergreen, massy, cleft with
wooded ravines.

Now as then Dr. Leander directs the establishment. He wears
a two-pronged black beard as curly and wiry as horsehair stuffing;
his spectacle-lenses are thick, and glitter; he has the look of a man
whom science has cooled and hardened and filled with silent, for-
bearing pessimism. And with this beard, these lenses, this look, and
in his short, reserved, preoccupied way, he holds his patients in
his spell: holds those sufferers who, too weak to be laws unto
themselves, put themselves into his hands that his severity may be
a shield unto them.

As for Fraulein von Osterloh, hers it is to preside with unweary-
ing zeal over the housekeeping. Ah, what activity! How she plies,
now here, now there, now upstairs, now down, from one end of
the building to the other! She is queen in kitchen and storerooms,
she mounts the shelves of the linen-presses, she marshals the do-
mestic staff; she ordains the bill of fare, to the end that the table
shall be economical, hygienic, attractive, appetizing, and all these
in the highest degree; she keeps house diligently, furiously; and
her exceeding capacity conceals a constant reproach to the world
of men, to no one of whom has it yet occurred to lead her to the
altar. But ever on her cheeks there glows, in two round, carmine
spots, the unquenchable hope of one day becoming Frau Dr.
Leander.

Ozone, and stirless, stirless air! Einfried, whatever Dr. Leander's
rivals and detractors may choose to say about it, can be most
warmly recommended for lung patients. And not only these, but
patients of all sorts, gentlemen, ladies, even children, come to stop
here. Dr., Leander's skill is challenged in many different fields.
Sufferers from gastric disorders come, like Frau Magistrate Spatz
--she has ear trouble into the bargain--people with defective
hearts, paralytics, rheumatics, nervous sufferers of all kinds and
degrees. A diabetic general here consumes his daily bread amid
continual grumblings. There are several gentlemen with gaunt,
fleshless faces who fling their legs about in that uncontrollable way
that bodes no good. There is an elderly lady, a Frau Pastor Hoh-
lenrauch, who has brought fourteen children into the world
and is now incapable of a single thought, yet has not thereby
attained to any peace of mind, but must go roving spectre-like all
day long up and down through the house, on the arm of her
private attendant, as she has been doing this year past.

Sometimes a death takes place among the "severe cases," those
who lie in their chambers, never appearing at meals or in the
reception-rooms. When this happens no one knows of it, not even
the person sleeping next door. In the silence of the night the
waxen guest is put away and life at Einfried goes tranquilly on,
with its massage, its electric treatment, douches, baths; with its
exercises, its steaming and inhaling, in rooms especially equipped
with all the triumphs of modern therapeutic.

Yes, a deal happens hereabouts--the institution is in a flourish-
ing way. When new guests arrive, at the entrance to the side wing,
the porter sounds the great gong; when there are departures.
Dr. Leander, together with Fraulein von Osterloh, conducts the
traveller in due form to the waiting carriage. All sorts and kinds
of people have received hospitality at Einfried. Even an author
is here stealing time from God Almighty--a queer sort of man,
with a name like some kind of mineral or precious stone.

Lastly there is, besides Dr. Leander, another physician, who takes
care of the slight cases and the hopeless ones. But he bears the
name of Muller and is not worth mentioning.


At the beginning of January a business man named Kloterjahn
--of the firm of A. C. Kloterjahn & Co.--brought his wife to
Einfried. The porter rang the gong, and Fraulein von Osterloh
received the guests from a distance in the drawing-room on the
ground floor, which, like nearly all the fine old mansion, was
furnished in wonderfully pure Empire style. Dr. Leander ap-
peared straightway. He made his best bow, and a preliminary con-
versation ensued, for the better information of both sides.

Beyond the windows lay the wintry garden, the flower-beds
covered with straw, the grottoes snowed under, the little temples
forlorn. Two porters were dragging in the guests' trunks from
the carriage drawn up before the wrought-iron gate--for there
was no drive up to the house.

"Be careful, Gabriele, doucement, doucement, my angel, keep
your mouth closed," Herr Kloterjahn had said as he led his wife
through the garden; and nobody could look at her without tender-
heartedly echoing the caution--though, to be sure, Herr Kloter-
jahn might quite as well have uttered it all in his own language.

The coachman who had driven the pair from the station to the
sanatorium was an uncouth man, and insensitive; yet he sat with
his tongue between his teeth as the husband lifted down his wife.
The very horses, steaming in the frosty air, seemed to follow the
procedure with their eyeballs rolled back in their heads out of
sheer concern for so much tenderness and fragile charm.

The young wife's trouble was her trachea; it was expressly so
set down in the letter Herr Kloterjahn had sent from the shores
of the Baltic to announce their impending arrival to the director
of Einfried--the trachea, and not the lungs, thank God! But it
is a question whether, if it had been the lungs, the new patient
could have looked any more pure and ethereal, any remoter from
the concerns of this world, than she did now as she leaned back
pale and weary in her chaste white-enamelled arm-chair, beside
her robust husband, and listened to the conversation.

Her beautiful white hands, bare save for the simple wedding-
ring, rested in her lap, among the folds of a dark, heavy cloth skirt;
she wore a close-fitting waist of silver-grey with a stiff collar--
it had an all-over pattern of arabesques in high-pile velvet. But
these warm, heavy materials only served to bring out the un-
speakable delicacy, sweetness, and languor of the little head, to
make it look more than ever touching, exquisite, and unearthly.
Her light-brown hair was drawn smoothly back and gathered in
a knot low in her neck, but near the right temple a single lock
fell loose and curling, not far from the place where an odd little
vein branched across one well-marked eyebrow, pale blue and
sickly amid all that pure, well-nigh transparent spotlessness. That
little blue vein above the eye dominated quite painfully the whole
fine oval of the face. When she spoke, it stood out still more;
yes, even when she smiled--and lent her expression a touch of
strain, if not actually of distress, that stirred vague fear in the
beholder. And yet she spoke, and she smiled: spoke frankly and
pleasantly in her rather husky voice, with a smile in her eyes--
though they again were sometimes a little difficult and showed a
tendency to avoid a direct gaze. And the corners of her eyes, both
sides the base of the slender little nose, were deeply shadowed. She
smiled with her mouth too, her beautiful wide mouth, whose lips
were so pale and yet seemed to flash--perhaps because their con-
tours were so exceedingly pure and well-cut. Sometimes she
cleared her throat, then carried her handkerchief to her mouth
and afterwards looked at it.

"Don't clear your throat like that, Gabriele," said Herr Kloter-
jahn. "You know, darling. Dr. Hinzpeter expressly forbade it,
and what we have to do is to exercise self-control, my angel.
As I said, it is the trachea," he repeated. "Honestly, when it
began, I thought it was the lungs, and it gave me a scare, I do
assure you. But it isn't the lungs--we don't mean to let ourselves
in for that, do we, Gabriele, my love, eh? Ha ha!"

"Surely not," said Dr. Leander, and glittered at her with his
eye-glasses.

Whereupon Herr Kloterjahn ordered coffee, coffee and rolls;
and the speaking way he had of sounding the c far back in his
throat and exploding the b in "butter" must have made any soul
alive hungry to hear it.

His order was filled; and rooms were assigned to him and his
wife, and they took possession with their things.

And Dr. Leander took over the case himself, without calling in
Dr. Muller.


The population of Einfried took unusual interest in the fair new
patient; Herr Kloterjahn, used as he was to see homage paid her,
received it all with great satisfaction. The diabetic general, when
he first saw her, stopped grumbling a minute; the gentlemen with
the fleshless faces smiled and did their best to keep their legs in
order; as for Frau Magistrate Spatz, she made her her oldest friend
on the spot. Yes, she made an impression, this woman who bore
Herr Kloterjahn's name! A writer who had been sojourning a few
weeks in Einfried, a queer sort, he was, with a name like some
precious stone or other, positively coloured up when she passed
him in the corridor, stopped stock-still and stood there as though
rooted to the ground, long after she had disappeared.

Before two days were out, the whole little population knew
her history. She came originally from Bremen, as one could tell by
certain pleasant small twists in her pronunciation; and it had
been in Bremen that, two years gone by, she had bestowed her
hand upon Herr Kloterjahn, a successful business man, and be-
come his life-partner. She had followed him to his native town
on the Baltic coast, where she had presented him, some ten
months before the time of which we write, and under circum-
stances of the greatest difficulty and danger, with a child, a par-
ticularly well-formed and vigorous son and heir. But since that
terrible hour she had never fully recovered her strength--grant-
ing, that is, that she had ever had any. She had not been long up,
still extremely weak, with extremely impoverished vitality, when
one day after coughing she brought up a little blood--oh, not
much, an insignificant quantity in fact; but it would have been
much better to be none at all; and the suspicious thing was, that
the same trifling but disquieting incident recurred after another
short while. Well, of course, there were things to be done, and
Dr. Hinzpeter, the family physician, did them. Complete rest
was ordered, little pieces of ice swallowed; morphine administered
to check the cough, and other medicines to regulate the heart
action. But recovery failed to set in; and while the child, Anton
Kloterjahn, junior, a magnificent specimen of a baby, seized on
his place in life and held it with prodigious energy and ruthless-
ness, a low, unobservable fever seemed to waste the young mother
daily. It was, as we have heard, an affection of the trachea--a
word that in Dr. Hinzpeter's mouth sounded so soothing, so con-
soling, so reassuring, that it raised their spirits to a surprising
degree. But even though it was not the lungs, the doctor presently
found that a milder climate and a stay in a sanatorium were im-
perative if the cure was to be hastened. The reputation enjoyed
by Einfried and its director had done the rest.

Such was the state of affairs; Herr Kloterjahn himself related it
to all and sundry. He talked with a slovenly pronunciation, in a
loud, good-humoured voice, like a man whose digestion is in as
capital order as his pocket-book; shovelling out the words pell-
mell, in the broad accents of the northern coast-dweller; hurtling
some of them forth so that each sound was a little explosion, at
which he laughed as at a successful joke.

He was of medium height, broad, stout, and short-legged; his
face full and red, with watery blue eyes shaded by very fair
lashes; with wide nostrils and humid lips. He wore English side-
whiskers and English clothes, and it enchanted him to discover at
Einfried an entire English family, father, mother, and three pretty
children with their nurse, who were stopping here for the simple
and sufficient reason that they knew not where else to go. With
this family he partook of a good English breakfast every morn-
ing. He set great store by good eating and drinking and proved
to be a connoisseur both of food and wines, entertaining the other
guests with the most exciting accounts of dinners given in his
circle of acquaintance back home, with full descriptions of the
choicer and rarer dishes; in the telling his eyes would narrow
benignly, and his pronunciation take on certain palatal and nasal
sounds, accompanied by smacking noises at the back of his throat.
That he was not fundamentally averse to earthly joys of another
sort was evinced upon an evening when a guest of the cure, an
author by calling, saw him in the corridor trifling in not quite
permissible fashion with a chambermaid--a humorous little pas-
sage at which the author in question made a laughably disgusted
face.

As for Herr Kloterjahn's wife, it was plain to see that she was
devotedly attached to her husband. She followed his words and
movements with a smile: not the rather arrogant toleration the
ailing sometimes bestow upon the well and sound, but the sympa-
thetic participation of a well-disposed invalid in the manifesta-
tions of people who rejoice in the blessing of abounding health.

Herr Kldterjahn did not stop long in Einfried. He had brought
his wife hither, but when a week had gone by and he knew she
was in good hands and well looked after, he did not linger. Duties
equally weighty--his flourishing child, his no less flourishing
business--took him away; they compelled him to go, leaving her
rejoicing in the best of care.

Spinell was the name of that author who had been stopping
some weeks in Einfried--Detlev Spinell was his name, and his
looks were quite out of the common. Imagine a dark man at the
beginning of the thirties, impressively tall, with hair already dis-
tinctly grey at the temples, and a round, white, slightly bloated
face, without a vestige of beard. Not that it was shaven--that
you could have told; it was soft, smooth, boyish, with at most a
downy hair here and there. And the effect was singular. His bright,
doe-like brown eyes had a gentle expression, the nose was thick
and rather too fleshy. Also, Herr Spinell had an upper lip like an
ancient Roman's, swelling and full of pores; large, carious teeth,
and feet of uncommon size. One of the gentlemen with the rebel-
lious legs, a cynic and ribald wit, had christened him "the dissi-
pated baby"; but the epithet was malicious, and not very apt.
Herr Spinell dressed well, in a long black coat and a waistcoat
with coloured spots.

He was unsocial and sought no man's company. Only once in
a while he might be overtaken by an affable, blithe, expansive
mood; and this always happened when he was carried away by
an aesthetic fit at the sight of beauty, the harmony of two colours,
a vase nobly formed, or the range of mountains lighted by the
setting sun. "How beautiful!" he would say, with his head on one
side, his shoulders raised, his hands spread out, his lips and nostrils
curled and distended. "My God! look, how beautiful!" And in
such moments of ardour he was quite capable of flinging his arms
blindly round the neck of anybody, high or low, male or female,
that happened to be near.

On his table, for anybody to see who entered his room, there
always lay the book he had written. It was a novel of medium
length, with a perfectly bewildering drawing on the jacket,
printed on a sort of filter-paper. Each letter of the type looked
like a Gothic cathedral. Fraulein von Osterloh had read it once, in
a spare quarter-hour, and found it "very cultured"--which was
her circumlocution for inhumanly boresome. Its scenes were laid
in fashionable salons, in luxurious boudoirs full of choice objets
d'art, old furniture, gobelins, rare porcelains, priceless stuffs, and
art treasures of all sorts and kinds. On the description of these
things was expended the most loving care; as you read you con-
stantly saw Herr Spinell, with distended nostrils, saying: "How
beautiful! My God! look, how beautiful!" After all, it was
strange he had not written more than this one book; he so ob-
viously adored writing. He spent the greater part of the day
doing it, in his room, and sent an extraordinary number of letters
to the post, two or three nearly every day--and that made it more
striking, even almost funny, that he very seldom received one
in return.

Herr Spinell sat opposite Herr Kloterjahn's wife. At the first
meal of which the new guests partook, he came rather late into
the dining-room, on the ground floor of the side wing, bade good-
day to the company generally in a soft voice, and betook himself
to his own place, whereupon Dr. Leander perfunctorily presented
him to the new-corners. He bowed, and self-consciously began to
eat, using his knife and fork rather affectedly with the large, finely
shaped white hands that came out from his very narrow coat-
sleeves. After a little he grew more at ease and looked tranquilly
first at Herr Kloterjahn and then at his wife, by turns. And in
the course of the meal Herr Kloterjahn addressed to him sundry
queries touching the general situation and climate of Einfried;
his wife, in her charming way, added a word or two, and Herr
Spinell gave courteous answers. His voice was mild, and really
agreeable; but he had a halting way of speaking that almost
amounted to an impediment--as though his teeth got in the way
of his tongue.

After luncheon, when they had gone into the salon. Dr. Le-
ander came up to the new arrivals to wish them Mahlzeit, and
Herr Kloterjahn's wife took occasion to ask about their vis-a-vis.

"What was the gentleman's name?" she asked. "I did not
quite catch it. Spinelli?"

"Spinell, not Spinelli, madame. No, he is not an Italian; he only
comes from Lemberg, I believe."

"And what was it you said? He is an author, or something of the
sort?" asked Herr Kloterjahn. He had his hands in the pockets
of his very easy-fitting English trousers, cocked his head towards
the doctor, and opened his mouth, as some people do, to listen the
better.

"Yes...I really don't know," answered Dr. Leander. "He writes....I
believe he has written a book, some sort of novel. I really don't
know what."

By which Dr. Leander conveyed that he had no great opinion
of the author and declined all responsibility on the score of him.

"But I find that most interesting," said Herr Kloterjahn's wife.
Never before had she met an author face to face.

"Oh, yes," said Dr. Leander obligingly. "I understand he has
a certain amount of reputation," which closed the conversation.

But a little later, when the new guests had retired and Dr.
Leander himself was about to go, Herr Spinell detained him in
talk to put a few questions for his own part.

"What was their name?" he asked. "I did not understand a syllable,
of course."

"Kloterjahn," answered Dr. Leander, turning away,

"What's that?" asked Herr Spinell.

Kloterjahn is their name," said Dr. Leander, and went his
way. He set no great store by the author.


Have we got as far on as where Herr Kloterjahn went home?
Yes, he was back on the shore of the Baltic once more, with his
business and his babe, that ruthless and vigorous little being who
had cost his mother great suffering and a slight weakness of the
trachea; while she herself, the young wife, remained in Einfried
and became the intimate friend of Frau Spatz. Which did not pre-
vent Herr Kloterjahn's wife from being on friendly terms with
the rest of the guests--for instance with Herr Spinell, who, to
the astonishment of everybody, for he had up to now held com-
munion with not a single soul, displayed from the very first an
extraordinary devotion and courtesy, and with whom she enjoyed
talking, whenever she had any time left over from the stem service
of the cure.

He approached her with immense circumspection and rever-
ence, and never spoke save with his voice so carefully subdued
that Frau Spatz, with her bad hearing, seldom or never caught
anything he said. He tiptoed on his great feet up to the arm-chair
in which Herr Kloterjahn's wife leaned, fragilely smiling; stopped
two paces off, with his body bent forward and one leg poised
behind him, and talked in his halting way, as though he had an
impediment in his speech; with ardour, yet prepared to retire
at any moment and vanish at the first sign of fatigue or satiety.
But he did not tire her; she begged him to sit down with her
and the Ratin; she asked him questions and listened with curi-
ous smiles, for he had a way of talking sometimes that was so
odd and amusing, different from anything she had ever heard
before.

"Why are you in Einfried, really?" she asked. "What cure
are you taking, Herr Spinell?"

"Cure? Oh, I'm having myself electrified a bit. Nothing worth
mentioning. I will tell you the real reason why I am here, madame.
It is a feeling for style."

"Ah?" said Herr Klbterjahn's wife; supported her chin on her
hand and turned to him with exaggerated eagerness, as one does
to a child who wants to tell a story.

"Yes, madame. Einfried is perfect Empire. It was once a castle,
a summer residence, I am told. This side wing is a later addition,
but the main building is old and genuine. There are times when I
cannot endure Empire, and then times when I simply must have
it in order to attain any sense of well-being. Obviously, people
feel one way among furniture that is soft and comfortable and
voluptuous, and quite another among the straight lines of these
tables, chairs, and draperies. This brightness and hardness, this
cold, austere simplicity and reserved strength, madame--it has
upon me the ultimate effect of an inward purification and rebirth.
Beyond a doubt, it is morally elevating."

"Yes, that is remarkable," she said. "And when I try I can un-
derstand what you mean."

Whereto he responded that it was not worth her taking any
sort of trouble, and they laughed together. Frau Spatz laughed too
and found it remarkable in her turn, though she did not say she
understood it.

The reception-room was spacious and beautiful. The high, white
folding doors that led to the billiard-room were wide open, and
the gentlemen with the rebellious legs were disporting themselves
within, others as well. On the opposite side of the room a glass
door gave on the broad veranda and the garden. Near the door
stood a piano. At a green-covered folding table the diabetic gen-
eral was playing whist with some other gentlemen. Ladies sat read-
ing or embroidering. The rooms were heated by an iron stove,
but the chimney-piece, in the purest style, had coals pasted over
with red paper to simulate a fire, and chairs were drawn up in-
vitingly.

"You are an early riser, Herr Spinell," said Herr Kloterjahn's
wife. "Two or three times already I have chanced to see you leav-
ing the house at half past seven in the morning."

"An early riser? Ah, with a difference, madame, with a vast
difference. The truth is, I rise early because I am such a late
sleeper."

"You really must explain yourself, Herr Spinell." Frau Spatz
too said she demanded an explanation.

"Well, if one is an early riser, one does not need to get up so
early. Or so it seems to me. The conscience, madame, is a bad busi-
ness. I, and other people like me, work hard all our lives to swindle
our consciences into feeling pleased and satisfied. We are feckless
creatures, and aside from a few good hours we go around weighted
down, sick and sore with the knowledge of our own futility. We
hate the useful; we know it is vulgar and unlovely, and we defend
this position, as a man defends something that is absolutely neces-
sary to his existence. Yet all the while conscience is gnawing at us,
to such an extent that we are simply one wound. Added to that,
our whole inner life, our view of the world, our way of working,
is of a kind--its effect is frightfully unhealthy, undermining, irri-
tating, and this only aggravates the situation. Well, then, there are
certain little counter-irritants, without which we would most cer-
tainly not hold out. A kind of decorum, a hygienic regimen, for
instance, becomes a necessity for some of us. To get up early, to
get up ghastly early, take a cold bath, and go out walking in a
snowstorm--that may give us a sense of self-satisfaction that lasts
as much as an hour. If I were to act out my true character, I should
be lying in bed late into the afternoon. My getting up early is all
hypocrisy, believe me."

"Why do you say that, Herr Spinell? On the contrary, I call
it self-abnegation." Frau Spatz, too, called it self-abnegation.

"Hypocrisy or self-abnegation--call it what you like, madame.
I have such a hideously downright nature--"

"Yes, that's it. Surely you torment yourself far too much."

"Yes, madame, I torment myself a great deal."

The fine weather continued. Rigid and spotless white the region
lay, the mountains, house and garden, in a windless air that was
blinding clear and cast bluish shadows; and above it arched the
spotless pale-blue sky, where myriads of bright particles of glitter-
ing crystals seemed to dance. Herr Kloterjahn's wife felt tolerably
well these days: free of fever, with scarce any cough, and able to
eat without too great distaste. Many days she sat taking her cure
for hours on end in the sunny cold on the terrace. She sat in the
snow, bundled in wraps and furs, and hopefully breathed in the
pure icy air to do her trachea good. Sometimes she saw Herr
Spinell, dressed like herself, and in fur boots that made his feet
a fantastic size, taking an airing in the garden. He walked with ten-
tative tread through the snow, holding his arms in a certain care-
ful pose that was stiff yet not without grace; coming up to the
terrace he would bow very respectfully and mount the first step
or so to exchange a few words with her.

"Today on my morning walk I saw a beautiful woman--good
Lord! how beautiful she was!" he said; laid his head on one side
and spread out his hands.

"Really, Herr Spinell. Do describe her to me."

"That I cannot do. Or, rather, it would not be a fair picture. I
only saw the lady as I glanced at her in passing, I did not actually
see her at all. But that fleeting glimpse was enough to rouse my
fancy and make me carry away a picture so beautiful that--good
Lord! how beautiful it is!"

She laughed. "Is that the way you always look at beautiful
women, Herr Spinell? Just a fleeting glance?"

"Yes, madame; it is a better way than if I were avid of actu-
ality, stared them plump in the face, and carried away with me
only a consciousness of the blemishes they in fact possess."

"'Avid of actuality'--what a strange phrase, a regular literary
phrase, Herr Spinell; no one but an author could have said that.
It impresses me very much, I must say. There is a lot in it that I
dimly understand; there is something free about it, and independ-
ent, that even seems to be looking down on reality though it is so
very respectable--is respectability itself, as you might say. And
it makes me comprehend, too, that there is something else besides
the tangible, something more subtle--"

"I know only one face," he said suddenly, with a strange lift
in his voice, carrying his closed hands to his shoulders as he spoke
and showing his carious teeth in an almost hysterical smile, "I
know only one face of such lofty nobility that the mere thought
of enhancing it through my imagination would be blasphemous;
at which I could wish to look, on which I could wish to dwell,
not minutes and not hours, but my whole life long; losing myself
utterly therein, forgotten to every earthly thought...

"Yes, indeed, Herr Spinell. And yet don't you find Fraulein
von Osterloh has rather prominent ears?"

He replied only by a profound bow; then, standing erect, let
his eyes rest with a look of embarrassment and pain on the strange
little vein that branched pale-blue and sickly across her pure trans-
lucent brow.


An odd sort, a very odd sort. Herr Kloterjahn's wife thought
about him sometimes; for she had much leisure for thought.
Whether it was that the change of air began to lose its effect or
some positively detrimental influence was at work, she began to
go backward, the condition of her trachea left much to be desired,
she had fever not infrequently, felt tired and exhausted, and could
not eat. Dr, Leander most emphatically recommended rest, quiet,
caution, care. So she sat, when indeed she was not forced to lie,
quite motionless, in the society of Frau Spatz, holding some sort
of sewing which she did not sew, and following one or another
train of thought.

Yes, he gave her food for thought, this very odd Herr Spinell;
and the strange thing was she thought not so much about him as
about herself, for he had managed to rouse in her a quite novel
interest in her own personality. One day he had said, in the course
of conversation:

"No, they are positively the most enigmatic facts in nature--
women, I mean. That is a truism, and yet one never ceases to
marvel at it afresh. Take some wonderful creature, a sylph, an
airy wraith, a fairy dream of a thing, and what does she do? Goes
and gives herself to a brawny Hercules at a country fair, or maybe
to a butcher's apprentice. Walks about on his arm, even leans her
head on his shoulder and looks round with an impish smile as if
to say: 'Look on this, if you like, and break your heads over it.'
And we break them."

With this speech Herr Kloterjahn's wife had occupied her
leisure again and again.

Another day, to the wonderment of Frau Spatz, the following
conversation took place:

"May I ask, madame--though you may very likely think me
prying--what your name really is?"

"Why, Herr Spinell, you know my name is Kloterjahn!"

"H'm. Yes, I know that--or, rather, I deny it. I mean your
own name, your maiden name, of course. You will in justice,
madame, admit that anybody who calls you Kloterjahn ought to
be thrashed."

She laughed so hard that the little blue vein stood out alarm-
ingly on her brow and gave the pale sweet face a strained expres-
sion most disquieting to see.

"Oh, no! Not at all, Herr Spinell! Thrashed, indeed! Is the
name Kloterjahn so horrible to you?"

"Yes, madame. I hate the name from the bottom of my heart.
I hated it the first time I heard it. It is the abandonment of ugli-
ness; it is grotesque to make you comply with the custom so far
as to fasten your husband's name upon you; is barbarous and vile."

"Well, and how about Eckhof? Is that any better? Eckhof is
my father's name."

"Ah, you see! Eckhof is quite another thing. There was a great
actor named Eckhof. Eckhof will do nicely. You spoke of your
father--Then is your mother--?"

"Yes, my mother died when I was little."

"Ah! Tell me a little more of yourself, pray. But not if it tires
you. When it tires you, stop, and I will go on talking about Paris,
as I did the other day. But you could speak very softly, or even
whisper--that would be more beautiful still. You were born in
Bremen?" He breathed, rather than uttered, the question with an
expression so awed, so heavy with import, as to suggest that
Bremen was a city like no other on earth, full of hidden beauties
and nameless adventures, and ennobling in some mysterious way
those born within its walls.

"Yes, imagine," said she involuntarily. "I was born in Bremen."

"I was there once," he thoughtfully remarked.

"Goodness me, you have been there, too? Why, Herr Spinell,
it seems to me you must have been everywhere there is between
Spitzbergen and Tunis!"

"Yes, I was there once," he repeated. "A few hours, one eve-
ning. I recall a narrow old street, with a strange, warped-looking
moon above the gabled roofs. Then I was in a cellar that smelled
of wine and mould. It is a poignant memory."

"Really? Where could that have been, I wonder? Yes, in just
such a grey old gabled house I was born, one of the old merchant
houses, with echoing wooden floor and white-painted gallery."

"Then your father is a business man?" he asked hesitatingly.

"Yes, but he is also, and in the first place, an artist."

"Ah! In what way?"

"He plays the violin. But just saying that does not mean much.
It is how he plays, Herr Spinell--it is that that matters! Some-
times I cannot listen to some of the notes without the tears coming
into my eyes and making them burn. Nothing else in the world
makes me reel like that. You won't believe it--"

"But I do. Oh, very much I believe it! Tell me, madame, your
family is old, is it not? Your family has been living for generations
in the old gabled house--living and working and closing their
eyes on time?"

"Yes. Tell me why you ask."

"Because it not infrequently happens that a race with sober,
practical bourgeois traditions will towards the end of its days flare
up in some form of art."

"Is that a fact?"

"Yes."

"It is true, my father is surely more of an artist than some that
call themselves so and get the glory of it. I only play the piano a
little. They have forbidden me now, but at home, in the old days,
I still played. Father and I played together. Yes, I have precious
memories of all those years; and especially of the garden, our
garden, back of the house. It was dreadfully wild and overgrown,
and shut in by crumbling mossy walls. But it was just that gave it
such charm. In the middle was a fountain with a wide border of
sword-lilies. In summer I spent long hours there with my friends.
We all sat round the fountain on little camp-stools--"

"How beautiful!" said Herr Spinell, and flung up his shoulders.
"You sat there and sang?"

"No, we mostly crocheted."

"But still --"

"Yes, we crocheted and chattered, my six friends and I--"

"How beautiful! Good Lord! think of it, how beautiful!" cried
Herr Spinell again, his face quite distorted with emotion.

"Now, what is it you find so particularly beautiful about that,
Herr Spinell?"

"Oh, there being six of them besides you, and your being not
one of the six, but a queen among them...set apart from your
six friends. A little gold crown showed in your hair--quite a
modest, unostentatious little crown, still it was there--"

"Nonsense, there was nothing of the sort."

"Yes, there was; it shone unseen. But if I had been there, stand-
ing among the shrubbery, one of those times, I should have
seen it."

"God knows what you would have seen. But you were not
there. Instead of that, it was my husband who came out of the
shrubbery one day, with my father. I was afraid they had been
listening to our prattle--"

"So it was there, then, madame, that you first met your hus-
band?"

"Yes, there it was I saw him first," she said, in quite a glad,
strong voice; she smiled, and as she did so the little blue vein came
out and gave her face a constrained and anxious expression. "He
was calling on my father on business, you see. Next day he came
to dinner, and three days later he proposed for my hand."

"Really? It all happened as fast as that?"

"Yes. Or, rather, it went a little slower after that. For my father
was not very much inclined to it, you see, and consented on con-
dition that we wait a long time first. He would rather I had
stopped with him, and he had doubts in other ways too. But--"

"But?"

"But I had set my heart on it," she said, smiling; and once more
the little vein dominated her whole face with its look of constraint
and anxiety.

"Ah, so you set your heart on it."

"Yes, and I displayed great strength of purpose, as you see--"

"As I see. Yes."

"So that my father had to give way in the end."

"And so you forsook him and his fiddle and the old house with
the overgrown garden, and the fountain and your six friends, and
clave unto Herr Kloterjahn--"

"'And clave unto'--you have such a strange way of saying
things, Herr Spinell. Positively biblical. Yes, I forsook all that;
nature has arranged things that way."

"Yes, I suppose that is it."

"And it was a question of my happiness --"

"Of course. And happiness came to you?"

"It came, Herr Spinell, in the moment when they brought little
Anton to me, our little Anton, and he screamed so lustily with
his strong little lungs--he is very, very strong and healthy, you
know--"

"This is not the first time, madame, that I have heard you speak
of your little Anton's good health and great strength. He must be
quite uncommonly healthy?"

"That he is. And looks so absurdly like my husband!"

"Ah!...So that was the way of it. And now you are no longer call-
ed by the name of Eckhof, but a different one, and you have
your healthy little Anton, and are troubled with your trachea."

"Yes. And you are a perfectly enigmatic man, Herr Spinell, I
do assure you."

"Yes. God knows you certainly are," said Frau Spatz, who was
present on this occasion.

And that conversation, too, gave Herr Kloterjahn's wife food
for reflection. Idle as it was, it contained much to nourish those
secret thoughts of hers about herself. Was this the baleful in-
fluence which was at work? Her weakness increased and fever
often supervened, a quiet glow in which she rested with a feeling
of mild elevation, to which she yielded in a pensive mood that was
a little affected, self-satisfied, even rather self-righteous. When
she had not to keep her bed, Herr Spinell would approach her
with immense caution, tiptoeing on his great feet; he would pause
two paces off, with his body inclined and one leg behind him, and
speak in a voice that was hushed with awe, as though he would
lift her higher and higher on the tide of his devotion until she
rested on billowy cushions of cloud where no shrill sound nor
any earthly touch might reach her. And when he did this she
would think of the way Herr Kloterjahn said: "Take care, my
angel, keep your mouth closed, Gabriele," a way that made her
feel as though he had struck her roughly though well-meaningly
on the shoulder. Then as fast as she could she would put the
memory away and rest in her weakness and elevation of spirit
upon the clouds which Herr Spinell spread out for her.

One day she abruptly returned to the talk they had had about
her early life. "Is it really true, Herr Spinell," she asked, "that
you would have seen the little gold crown?"

Two weeks had passed since that conversation, yet he knew at
once what she meant, and his voice shook as he assured her that
he would have seen the little crown as she sat among her friends
by the fountain--would have caught its fugitive gleam among
her locks.

A few days later one of the guests chanced to make a polite in-
quiry after the health of little Anton. Herr Kloterjahn's wife gave
a quick glance at Herr Spinell, who was standing near, and an-
swered in a perfunctory voice:

"Thanks, how should he be? He and my husband are quite
well, of course."


There came a day at the end of February, colder, purer, more
brilliant than any that had come before it, and high spirits held
sway at Einfried. The "heart cases" consulted in groups, flushed
of cheek, the diabetic general carolled like a boy out of school.
and the gentlemen of the rebellious legs cast aside all restraint.
And the reason for all these things was that a sleighing party was
in prospect, an excursion in sledges into the mountains, with
cracking whips and sleigh-bells jingling. Dr. Leander had arranged
this diversion for his patients.

The serious cases, of course, had to stop at home. Poor things!
The other guests arranged to keep it from them; it did them good
to practise this much sympathy and consideration. But a few of
those remained at home who might very well have gone. Fraulein
von Osterloh was of course excused, she had too much on her
mind to permit her even to think of going. She was needed at
home, and at home she remained. But the disappointment was
general when Herr Kloterjahn's wife announced her intention of
stopping away. Dr. Leander exhorted her to come and get the
benefit of the fresh air--but in vain. She said she was not up to it,
she had a headache, she felt too weak--they had to resign them-
selves. The cynical gentleman took occasion to say:

"You will see, the dissipated baby will stop at home too."

And he proved to be right, for Herr Spinell gave out that he
intended to "work" that afternoon--he was prone thus to char-
acterize his dubious activities. Anyhow, not a soul regretted his
absence; nor did they take more to heart the news that Frau Magis-
trate Spatz had decided to keep her young friend company at
home--sleighing made her feel sea-sick.

Luncheon on the great day was eaten as early as twelve o'clock,
and immediately thereafter the sledges drew up in front of Ein-
fried. The guests came through the garden in little groups, warmly
wrapped, excited, full of eager anticipation. Herr Kloterjahn's
wife stood with Frau Spatz at the glass door which gave on the
terrace, while Herr Spinell watched the setting-forth from above,
at the window of his room. They saw the little struggles that took
place for the best seats, amid joking and laughter; and Fraulein
von Osterloh, with a fur boa round her neck, running from one
sleigh to the other and shoving baskets of provisions under the
seats; they saw Dr. Leander, with his fur cap pulled low on his
brow, marshalling the whole scene with his spectacle-lenses glit-
tering, to make sure everything was ready. At last he took his own
seat and gave the signal to drive off. The horses started up, a few
of the ladies shrieked and collapsed, the bells jingled, the short-
shafted whips cracked and their long lashes trailed across the
snow; Fraulein von Osterloh stood at the gate waving her hand-
kerchief until the train rounded a curve and disappeared; slowly
the merry tinkling died away. Then she turned and hastened back
through the garden in pursuit of her duties; the two ladies left the
glass door, and almost at the same time Herr Spinell abandoned
his post of observation above.

Quiet reigned at Einfried. The party would not return before
evening. The serious cases lay in their rooms and suffered. Herr
Kloterjahn's wife took a short turn with her friend, then they
went to their respective chambers. Herr Spinell kept to his, occu-
pied in his own way. Towards four o'clock the ladies were served
with half a litre of milk apiece, and Herr Spinell with a light tea.
Soon after, Herr Kloterjahn's wife tapped on the wall between
her room and Frau Spatz's and called:

"Shan't we go down to the salon, Frau Spatz? I have nothing
to do up here."

"In just a minute, my dear," answered she. "I'll just put on my
shoes--if you will wait a minute. I have been lying down."

The salon, naturally, was empty. The ladies took seats by the
fireplace. The Frau Magistrate embroidered flowers on a strip of
canvas; Herr Kloterjahn's wife took a few stitches too, but soon
let her work fall in her lap and, leaning on the arm of her chair,
fell to dreaming. At length she made some remark, hardly worth
the trouble of opening her lips for; the Frau Magistrate asked
what she said, and she had to make the effort of saying it all over
again, which quite wore her out. But just then steps were heard
outside, the door opened, and Herr Spinell came in.

"Shall I be disturbing you?" he asked mildly from the thresh-
old, addressing Herr Kloterjahn's wife and her alone; bending
over her, as it were, from a distance, in the tender, hovering way
he had.

The young wife answered:

"Why should you? The room is free to everybody--and be-
sides, why would it be disturbing us? On the contrary, I am con-
vinced that I am boring Frau Spatz."

He had no ready answer, merely smiled and showed his carious
teeth, then went hesitatingly up to the glass door, the ladies
watching him, and stood with his back to them looking out. Pres-
ently he half turned round, still gazing into the garden, and said:

"The sun has gone in. The sky clouded over without our seeing
it. The dark is coming on already."

"Yes, it is all overcast," replied Herr Kloterjahn's wife. "It
looks as though our sleighing party would have some snow after
all. Yesterday at this hour it was still broad daylight, now it is
already getting dark."

"Well," he said, "after all these brilliant weeks a little dullness
is good for the eyes. The sun shines with the same penetrating
clearness upon the lovely and the commonplace, and I for one am
positively grateful to it for finally going under a cloud."

"Don't you like the sun, Herr Spinell?"

"Well, I am no painter...when there is no sun one becomes
more profound....It is a thick layer of greyish-white cloud.
Perhaps it means thawing weather for tomorrow. But, madame,
let me advise you not to sit there at the back of the room looking
at your embroidery."

"Don't be alarmed; I am not looking at it. But what else is there
to do?"

He had sat down on the piano-stool, resting one arm on the lid
of the instrument.

"Music," he said. "If we could only have a little music here.
The English children sing darky songs, and that is all."

"And yesterday afternoon Fraulein von Osterloh rendered
'Cloister Bells' at top speed," remarked Herr Kloterjahn's wife.

"But you play, madame!" said he, in an imploring tone. He
stood up. "Once you used to play every day with your father."

"Yes, Herr Spinell, in those old days I did. In the time of the
fountain, you know."

"Play to us today," he begged. "Just a few notes--this once.
If you knew how I long for some music--"

‘'But our family physician, as well as Dr. Leander, expressly
forbade it, Herr Spinell."

"But they aren't here--either of them. We are free agents.
Just a few bars --"

"No, Herr Spinell, it would be no use. Goodness knows what
marvels you expect of me--and I have forgotten everything I
knew. Truly. I know scarcely anything by heart."

"Well, then, play that scarcely anything. But there are notes
here too. On top of the piano. No, that is nothing. But here is
some Chopin."

"Chopin?"

"Yes, the Nocturnes. All we have to do is to light the
candles --"

"Pray don't ask me to play, Herr Spinell. I must not. Suppose
it were to be bad for me --"

He was silent; standing there in the light of the two candles,
with his great feet, in his long black tail-coat, with his beardless
face and greying hair. His hands hung down at his sides.

"Then, madame, I will ask no more," he said at length, in a low
voice. "If you are afraid it will do you harm, then we shall leave
the beauty dead and dumb that might have come alive beneath
your fingers. You were not always so sensible; at least not when it
was the opposite question from what it is today, and you had to
decide to take leave of beauty. Then you did not care about your
bodily welfare; you showed a firm and unhesitating resolution
when you left the fountain and laid aside the little gold crown.
Listen," he said, after a pause, and his voice dropped still lower;
"if you sit down and play as you used to play when your father
stood behind you and brought tears to your eyes with the tones
of his violin--who knows but the little gold crown might glim-
mer once more in your hair...."

"Really," said she, with a smile. Her voice happened to break
on the word, it sounded husky and barely audible. She cleared
her throat and went on;

"Are those really Chopin's Nocturnes you have there?"

"Yes, here they are open at the place; everything is ready."

"Well, then, in God's name, I will play one," said she. "But
only one--do you hear? In any case, one will do you, I am sure."

With which she got up, laid aside her work, and went to the
piano. She seated herself on the music-stool, on a few bound vol-
umes, arranged the lights, and turned over the notes. Herr Spinell
had drawn up a chair and sat beside her, like a music-master.

She played the Nocturne in E major, opus 9, number 2. If her
playing had really lost very much then she must originally have
been a consummate artist. The piano was mediocre, but after the
first few notes she learned to control it. She displayed a nervous
feeling for modulations of timbre and a joy in mobility of rhythm
that amounted to the fantastic. Her attack was at once firm and
soft. Under her hands the very last drop of sweetness was wrung
from the melody; the embellishments seemed to cling with slow
grace about her limbs.

She wore the same frock as on the day of her arrival, the dark,
heavy bodice with the velvet arabesques in high relief, that gave
her head and hands such an unearthly fragile look. Her face did
not change as she played, but her lips seemed to become more
clear-cut, the shadows deepened at the corners of her eyes. When
she finished she laid her hands in her lap and went on looking at
the notes. Herr Spinell sat motionless.

She played another Nocturne, and then a third. Then she stood
up, but only to look on the top of the piano for more music.

It occurred to Herr Spinell to look at the black-bound volumes
on the piano-stool. All at once he uttered an incoherent exclama-
tion, his large white hands clutching at one of the books.

"Impossible! No, it cannot be," he said. "But yes, it is. Guess
what this is--what was lying here! Guess what I have in my
hands."

"What?" she asked.

Mutely he showed her the title-page. He was quite pale; he
let the book sink and looked at her, his lips trembling.

"Really? How did that get here? Give it me," was all she said;
set the notes on the piano and after a moment's silence began to
play.

He sat beside her, bent forward, his hands between his knees,
his head bowed. She played the beginning with exaggerated and
tormenting slowness, with painfully long pauses between the single
figures. The Sehnsuchtsmotiv, roving lost and forlorn like a voice
in the night, lifted its trembling question. Then silence, a waiting.
And lo, an answer: the same timorous, lonely note, only clearer,
only tenderer. Silence again. And then, with that marvellous muted
sforzando, like mounting passion, the love-motif came in; reared
and soared and yearned ecstatically upward to its consummation,
sank back, was resolved; the cellos taking up the melody to carry
it on with their deep, heavy notes of rapture and despair.

Not unsuccessfully did the player seek to suggest the orchestral
effects upon the poor instrument at her command. The violin runs
of the great climax rang out with brilliant precision. She played
with a fastidious reverence, lingering on each figure, bringing out
each detail, with the self-forgotten concentration of the priest
who lifts the Host above his head. Here two forces, two beings,
strove towards each other, in transports of joy and pain; here they
embraced and became one in delirious yearning after eternity and
the absolute....The prelude flamed up and died away. She stopped
at the point where the curtains part, and sat speechless, staring
at the keys.

But the boredom of Frau Spatz had by now reached that pitch
where it distorts the countenance of man, makes the eyes protrude
from the head, and lends the features a corpse-like and terrify-
ing aspect. More than that, this music acted on the nerves that
controlled her digestion, producing in her dyspeptic organ-
ism such malaise that she was really afraid she would have an
attack.

"I shall have to go up to my room," she said weakly. "Good-
bye; I will come back soon."

She went out. Twilight was far advanced. Outside the snow fell
thick and soundlessly upon the terrace. The two tapers cast a
flickering, circumscribed light.

"The Second Act," he whispered, and she turned the pages and
began.

What was it dying away in the distance--the ring of a horn?
The rustle of leaves? The rippling of a brook? Silence and night
crept up over grove and house; the power of longing had full
sway, no prayers or warnings could avail against it. The holy
mystery was consummated. The light was quenched; with a
strange clouding of the timbre the death-motif sank down: white-
veiled desire, by passion driven, fluttered towards love as through
the dark it groped to meet her.

Ah, boundless, unquenchable exultation of union in the eternal
beyond! Freed from torturing error, escaped from fettering space
and time, the Thou and the I, the Thine and the Mine at one for-
ever in a sublimity of bliss! The day might part them with de-
luding show; but when night fell, then by the power of the potion
they would see clear. To him who has looked upon the night of
death and known its secret sweets, to him day never can be aught
but vain, nor can he know a longing save for night, eternal, real,
in which he is made one with love.

O night of love, sink downwards and enfold them, grant them
the oblivion they crave, release them from this world of partings
and betrayals. Lo, the last light is quenched. Fancy and thought
alike are lost, merged in the mystic shade that spread its wings of
healing above their madness and despair. "Now, when deceitful
daylight pales, when my raptured eye grows dim, then all that
from which the light of day would shut my sight, seeking to
blind me with false show, to the stanchless torments of my long-
ing soul--then, ah, then, O wonder of fulfilment, even then I am
the world!" Followed Brangana's dark notes of warning, and
then those soaring violins so higher than all reason.

"I cannot understand it all, Herr Spinell. Much of it I only divine.
What does it mean, this 'even then I am the world'?"

He explained, in a few low-toned words.

"Yes, yes. It means that. How is it you can understand it all so
well, yet cannot play it ?"

Strangely enough, he was not proof against this simple ques-
tion. He coloured, twisted his hands together, shrank into his
chair.

"The two things seldom happen together," he wrung from his
lips at last. "No, I cannot play. But go on."

And on they went, into the intoxicated music of the love-mys-
tery. Did love ever die? Tristan's love? The love of thy Isolde,
and of mine? Ah, no, death cannot touch that which can never
die--and what of him could die, save what distracts and tortures
love and severs united lovers? Love joined the two in sweet con-
junction, death was powerless to sever such a bond, save only
when death was given to one with the very life of the other. Their
voices rose in mystic unison, rapt in the wordless hope of that
death-in-love, of endless oneness in the wonder-kingdom of the
night. Sweet night! Eternal night of love! And all-encompassing
land of rapture! Once envisaged or divined, what eye could bear
to open again on desolate dawn? Forfend such fears, most gentle
death! Release these lovers quite from need of waking. Oh,
tumultuous storm of rhythms! Oh, glad chromatic upward surge
of metaphysical perception! How find, how bind this bliss so far
remote from parting's torturing pangs? Ah, gentle glow of long-
ing, soothing and kind, ah, yielding sweet-sublime, ah, raptured
sinking into the twilight of eternity! Thou Isolde, Tristan I, yet
no more Tristan, no more Isolde....

All at once something startling happened. The musician broke
off and peered into the darkness with her hand above her eyes.
Herr Spinell turned round quickly in his chair. The corridor
door had opened, a sinister form appeared, leant on the arm of a
second form. It was a guest of Einfried, one of those who, like
themselves, had been in no state to undertake the sleigh-ride, but
had passed this twilight hour in one of her pathetic, instinctive
rounds of the house. It was that patient who had borne fourteen
children and was no longer capable of a single thought; it was
Frau Pastor Hohlenrauch, on the arm of her nurse. She did not
look up; with groping step she paced the dim background of the
room and vanished by the opposite door, rigid and still, like a lost
and wandering soul. Stillness reigned once more.

"That was Frau Pastor Hohlenrauch," he said.

"Yes, that was poor Frau Hohlenrauch," she answered. Then
she turned over some leaves and played the finale, played Isolde's
song of love and death.

How colourless and clear were her lips, how deep the shadows
lay beneath her eyes! The little pale-blue vein in her transparent
brow showed fearfully plain and prominent. Beneath her flying
fingers the music mounted to its unbelievable climax and was re-
solved in that ruthless, sudden pianissimo which is like having the
ground glide from beneath one's feet, yet like a sinking too into
the very deeps of desire. Followed the immeasurable plenitude of
that vast redemption and fulfilment; it was repeated, swelled into
a deafening, unquenchable tumult of immense appeasement that
wove and welled and seemed about to die away, only to swell
again and weave the Sehnsuchtsmotiv into its harmony; at length
to breathe an outward breath and die, faint on the air, and soar
away. Profound stillness.

They both listened, their heads on one side.

"Those are bells," she said.

"It is the sleighs," he said. "I will go now."

He rose and walked across the room. At the door he halted,
then turned and shifted uneasily from one foot to the other. And
then, some fifteen or twenty paces from her, it came to pass that
he fell upon his knees, both knees, without a sound. His long
black coat spread out on the floor. He held his hands clasped over
his mouth, and his shoulders heaved.

She sat there with hands in her lap, leaning forward, turned
away from the piano, and looked at him. Her face wore a dis-
tressed, uncertain smile, while her eyes searched the dimness at
the back of the room, searched so painfully, so dreamily, she
seemed hardly able to focus her gaze.

The jingling of sleigh-bells came nearer and nearer, there was
the crack of whips, a babel of voices.


The sleighing party had taken place on the twenty-sixth of
February, and was talked of for long afterwards. The next day,
February twenty-seventh, a day of thaw, that set everything to
melting and dripping, splashing and running, Herr Kloterjahn's
wife was in capital health and spirits. On the twenty-eighth she.
brought up a little blood--not much, still it was blood, and ac-
companied by far greater loss of strength than ever before. She
went to bed.

Dr. Leander examined her, stony-faced. He prescribed accord-
ing to the dictates of science--morphia, little pieces of ice, abso-
lute quiet. Next day, on account or pressure of work, he turned
her case over to Dr. Muller, who took it on in humility and
meekness of spirit and according to the letter of his contract--
a quiet, pallid, insignificant little man, whose unadvertised activities
were consecrated to the care of the slight cases and the hopeless
ones.

Dr. Muller presently expressed the view that the separation
between Frau Kloterjahn and her spouse had lasted overlong. It
would be well if Herr Kloterjahn, in case his flourishing business
permitted, were to make another visit to Einfried. One might write
him--or even wire. And surely it would benefit the young
mother's health and spirits if he were to bring young Anton with
him--quite aside from the pleasure it would give the physicians
to behold with their own eyes this so healthy little Anton.

And Herr Kloterjahn came. He got Herr Muller's little wire
and arrived from the Baltic coast. He got out of the carriage,
ordered coffee and rolls, and looked considerably aggrieved.

"My dear sir," he asked, "what is the matter? Why have I
been summoned?"

"Because it is desirable that you should be near your wife,"
Dr. Muller replied.

"Desirable! Desirable! But is it necessary? It is a question of
expense with me--times are poor and railway journeys cost
money. Was it imperative I should take this whole day's journey?
If it were the lungs that are attacked, I should say nothing. But
as it is only the trachea, thank God--"

"Herr Kloterjahn," said Dr. Muller mildly, "in the first place
the trachea is an important organ...." He ought not to have
said "in the first place," because he did not go on to the second.

But there also arrived at Einfried, in Herr Kloterjahn's com-
pany, a full-figured personage arrayed all in red and gold and
plaid, and she it was who carried on her arm Anton Kloterjahn,
junior, that healthy little Anton. Yes, there he was, and nobody
could deny that he was healthy even to excess. Pink and white
and plump and fragrant, in fresh and immaculate attire, he rested
heavily upon the bare red arm of his bebraided body-servant,
consumed huge quantities of milk and chopped beef, shouted and
screamed, and in every way surrendered himself to his instincts.

Our author from the window of his chamber had seen him
arrive. With a peculiar gaze, both veiled and piercing, he fixed
young Anton with his eye as he was carried from the carriage
into the house. He stood there a long time with the same expres-
sion on his face.


Herr Spinell was sitting in his room "at work."

His room was like all the others at Einfried--old-fashioned,
simple, and distinguished. The massive chest of drawers was
mounted with brass lions' heads; the tall mirror on the wall was
not a single surface, but made up of many little panes set in lead.
There was no carpet on the polished blue paved floor, the stiff
legs of the furniture prolonged themselves on it in clear-cut
shadows. A spacious writing-table stood at the window, across
whose panes the author had drawn the folds of a yellow curtain,
in all probability that he might feel more retired.

In the yellow twilight he bent over the table and wrote--wrote
one of those numerous letters which he sent weekly to the
post and to which, quaintly enough, he seldom or never received
an answer. A large, thick quire of paper lay before him, in whose
upper left-hand corner was a curious involved drawing of a land-
scape and the name Detlev Spinell in the very latest thing in let-
tering. He was covering the page with a small, painfully neat, and
punctiliously traced script.

"Sir:" he wrote, "I address the following lines to you be-
cause I cannot help it; because what I have to say so fills and
shakes and tortures me, the words come in such a rush, that I
should choke if I did not take this means to relieve myself."

If the truth were told, this about the rush of words was quite
simply wide of the fact. And God knows what sort of vanity it
was made Herr Spinel! put it down. For his words did not come in
a rush; they came with such pathetic slowness, considering the
man was a writer by trade, you would have drawn the conclusion,
watching him, that a writer is one to whom writing comes harder
than to anybody else.

He held between two finger-tips one of those curious downy
hairs he had on his cheek, and twirled it round and round, whole
quarter-hours at a time, gazing into space and not coming for-
wards by a single line; then wrote a few words, daintily, and
stuck again. Yet so much was true: that what had managed to get
written sounded fluent and vigorous, though the matter was odd
enough, even almost equivocal, and at times impossible to follow.

"I feel," the letter went on, "an imperative necessity to make
you see what I see; to show you through my eyes, illuminated by
the same power of language that clothes them for me, all the
things which have stood before my inner eye for weeks, like an
indelible vision. It is my habit to yield to the impulse which urges
me to put my own experiences into flamingly right and unforget-
table words and to give them to the world. And therefore hear me.

"I will do no more than relate what has been and what is: I will
merely tell a story, a brief, unspeakably touching story, without
comment, blame, or passing of judgment; simply in my own
words. It is the story of Gabriele Eckhof, of the woman whom
you, sir, call your wife--and mark you this: it is your story, it
happened to you, yet it will be I who will for the first time lift
it for you to the level of an experience.

"Do you remember the garden, the old, overgrown garden
behind the grey patrician house? The moss was green in the cran-
nies of its weather-beaten wall, and behind the wall dreams and
neglect held sway. Do you remember the fountain in the centre?
The pale mauve lilies leaned over its crumbling rim, the little
stream prattled softly as it fell upon the riven paving. The sum-
mer day was drawing to its close.

"Seven maidens sat circlewise round the fountain; but the sev-
enth, or rather the first and only one, was not like the others, for
the sinking sun seemed to be weaving a queenly coronal among
her locks. Her eyes were like troubled dreams, and yet her pure
lips wore a smile.

"They were singing. They lifted their little faces to the leaping
streamlet and watched its charming curve droop earthward--
their music hovered round it as it leaped and danced. Perhaps
their slim hands were folded in their laps the while they sang.

Can you, sir, recall the scene? Or did you ever see it? No,
you saw it not. Your eyes were not formed to see it nor your ears
to catch the chaste music of their song. You saw it not, or else
you would have forbade your lungs to breathe, your heart to beat.
You must have turned aside and gone back to your own life, tak-
ing with you what you had seen to preserve it in the depth of
your soul to the end of your earthly life, a sacred and inviolable
relic. But what did you do?

"That scene, sir, was an end and culmination. Why did you come
to spoil it, to give it a sequel, to turn it into the channels of
ugly and commonplace life? It was a peaceful apotheosis and a
moving, bathed in a sunset beauty of decadence, decay, and death.
An ancient stock, too exhausted and refined for life and action,
stood there at the end of its days; its latest manifestations were
those of art: violin notes, full of that melancholy understanding
which is ripeness for death....Did you look into her eyes--
those eyes where tears so often stood, lured by the dying sweet-
ness of the violin? Her six friends may have had souls that be-
longed to life; but hers, the queen's and sister's, death and beauty
had claimed for their own.

"You saw it, that deathly beauty; saw, and coveted. The sight
of that touching purity moved you with no awe or trepidation.
And it was not enough for you to see, you must possess, you
must use, you must desecrate....It was the refinement of a
choice you made--you are a gourmand, sir, a plebeian gourmand,
a peasant with taste.

"Once more let me say that I have no wish to offend you.
What I have just said is not an affront; it is a statement, a simple,
psychological statement of your simple personality--a personality
which for literary purposes is entirely uninteresting. I make the
statement solely because I feel an impulse to clarify for you your
own thoughts and actions; because it is my inevitable task on this
earth to call things by their right names, to make them speak,
to illuminate the unconscious. The world is full of whait I call
the unconscious type, and I cannot endure it; I cannot endure all
these unconscious types! I cannot bear all this dull, uncomprehend-
ing, unperceiving living and behaving, this world of maddening
naivete about me! It tortures me until I am driven irresistibly to
set it all in relief, in the round, to explain, express, and make self-
conscious everything in the world--so far as my powers will
reach--quite unhampered by the result, whether it be for good or
evil, whether it brings consolation and healing or piles grief on
grief.

"You, sir, as I said, are a plebeian gourmand, a peasant with
taste. You stand upon an extremely low evolutionary level; your
own constitution is coarse-fibred. But wealth and a sedentary
habit of life have brought about in you a corruption of the nerv-
ous system, as sudden as it is unhistoric; and this corruption has
been accompanied by a lascivious refinement in your choice of
gratifications. It is altogether possible that the muscles of your
gullet began to contract, as at the sight of some particularly rare
dish, when you conceived the idea of making Gabriele Eckhof
vour own.

"In short, you lead her idle will astray, you beguile her out
of that moss-grown garden into the ugliness of life, you give her
your own vulgar name and make of her a married woman, a
housewife, a mother. You take that deathly beauty--spent, aloof,
flowering in lofty unconcern of the uses of this world--and de-
base it to the service of common things, you sacrifice it to that
stupid, contemptible, clumsy graven image we call 'nature'--and
not the faintest suspicion of the vileness of your conduct visits
your peasant soul.

"Again. What is the result? This being, whose eyes are like
troubled dreams, she bears you a child; and so doing she endows
the new life, a gross continuation of its author's own, with all the
blood, all the physical energy she possesses--and she dies. She
dies, sir! And if she does not go hence with your vulgarity upon
her head; if at the very last she has lifted herself out of the depths
of degradation, and passes in an ecstasy, with the deathly kiss of
beauty on her brow--well, it is I, sir, who have seen to that!
You, meanwhile, were probably spending your time with cham-
bermaids in dark corners.

"But your son, Gabriele Eckhof's son, is alive; he is living and
flourishing. Perhaps he will continue in the way of his father,
become a well-fed, trading, tax-paying citizen; a capable, philistine
pillar of society; in any case, a tone-deaf, normally functioning
individual, responsible, sturdy, and stupid, troubled by not a
doubt.

"Kindly permit me to tell you, sir, that I hate you. I hate you
and your child, as I hate the life of which you are the representa-
tive: cheap, ridiculous, but yet triumphant life, the everlasting
antipodes and deadly enemy of beauty. I cannot say I despise you
--for I am honest. You are stronger than I. I have no armour for
the struggle between us, I have only the Word, avenging weapon
of the weak. Today I have availed myself of this weapon. This
letter is nothing but an act of revenge--you see how honourable
I am--and if any word of mine is sharp and bright and beautiful
enough to strike home, to make you feel the presence of a power
you do not know, to shake even a minute your robust equilibrium,
I shall rejoice indeed.--Detlev Spinell."

And Herr Spinell put this screed into an envelope, applied a
stamp and a many-flourished address, and committed it to the
post.


Herr Kloterjahn knocked on Herr Spinell's door. He carried a
sheet of paper in his hand covered with neat script, and he looked
like a man bent on energetic action. The post office had done its
duty, the letter had taken its appointed way: it had travelled from
Einfried to Einfried and reached the hand for which it was meant.
It was now four o'clock in the afternoon.

Herr Kloterjahn's entry found Herr Spinell sitting on the sofa
reading his own novel with the appalling cover-design. He rose
and gave his caller a surprised and inquiring look, though at the
same time he distinctly flushed.

"Good afternoon," said Herr Kloterjahn. "Pardon the interrupt-
ion. But may I ask if you wrote this?" He held up in his left
hand the sheet inscribed with fine clear characters and struck it
with the back of his right and made it crackle. Then he stuffed
that hand into the pocket of his easy-fitting trousers, put his head
on one side, and opened his mouth, in a way some people have,
to listen.

Herr Spinell, curiously enough, smiled; he smiled engagingly,
with a rather confused, apologetic air. He put his hand to his
head as though trying to recollect himself, and said:

"Ah!--yes, quite right, I took the liberty --"

The fact was, he had given in to his natural man today and
slept nearly up to midday, with the result that he was suffering
from a bad conscience and a heavy head, was nervous and in-
capable of putting up a fight. And the spring air made him
limp and good-for-nothing. So much we must say in extenuation
of the utterly silly figure he cut in the interview which followed.

"Ah? Indeed! Very good!" said Herr Kloterjahn. He dug his
chin into his chest, elevated his brows, stretched his arms, and
indulged in various other antics by way of getting down to busi-
ness after his introductory question. But unfortunately he so much
enjoyed the figure he cut that he rather overshot the mark, and
the rest of the scene hardly lived up to this preliminary panto-
mime. However, Herr Spinell went rather pale.

"Very good!" repeated Herr Kloterjahn. "Then permit me to
give you an answer in person; it strikes me as idiotic to write pages
of letter to a person when you can speak to him any hour of the
day."

"Well, idiotic..." Herr Spinell said, with his apologetic smile. He
sounded almost meek.

"Idiotic!" repeated Herr Kloterjahn, nodding violently in
token of the soundness of his position. "And I should not de-
mean myself to answer this scrawl; to tell the truth, I should have
thrown it away at once if I had not found in it the explanation of
certain changes--however, that is no affair of yours, and has
nothing to do with the thing anyhow. I am a man of action, I have
other things to do than to think about your unspeakable visions."

"I wrote 'indelible vision," said Herr Spinell, drawing himself
up. This was the only moment at which he displayed a little self-
respect.

"Indelible, unspeakable," responded Herr Kloterjahn, referring
to the text. "You write a villainous hand, sir; you would not get
a position in my office, let me tell you. It looks clear enough at
first, but when you come to study it, it is full of shakes and
quavers. But that is your affair, it's no business of mine. What I
have come to say to you is that you are a tomfool--which you
probably know already. Furthermore, you are a cowardly sneak;
I don't suppose I have to give the evidence for that either. My wife
wrote me once that when you meet a woman you don't look her
square in the face, but just give her a side squint, so as to carry
away a good impression, because you are afraid of the reality. I
should probably have heard more of the same sort of stories about
you, only unfortunately she stopped mentioning you. But this is
the kind of thing you are: you talk so much about 'beauty'; you
are all chicken-livered hypocrisy and cant--which is probably at
the bottom of your impudent allusion to out-of-the-way corners
too. That ought to crush me, of course, but it just makes me laugh
--it doesn't do a thing but make me laugh! Understand? Have I
clarified your thoughts and actions for you, you pitiable object,
you? Though of course it is not my invariable calling--"

"'Inevitable' was the word I used," Herr Spinell said; but he
did not insist on the point. He stood there, crestfallen, like a big,
unhappy, chidden, grey-haired schoolboy.

"Invariable or inevitable, whichever you like--anyhow you
are a contemptible cur, and that I tell you. You see me every day
at table, you bow and smirk and say good-morning--and one
fine day you send me a scrawl full of idiotic abuse. Yes, you've a
lot of courage--on paper! And it's not only this ridiculous letter
--you have been intriguing behind my back. I can see that now.
Though you need not flatter yourself it did any good. If you
imagine you put any ideas into my wife's head you never were
more mistaken in your life. And if you think she behaved any dif-
ferent when we came from what she always does, then you just
put the cap onto your own foolishness. She did not kiss the little
chap, that's true, but it was only a precaution, because they have
the idea now that the trouble is with her lungs, and in such cases
you can't tell whether--though that still remains to be proved,
no matter what you say with your 'She dies, sir,' you silly ass!"

Here Herr Klbterjahn paused for breath. He was in a furious
passion; he kept stabbing the air with his right forefinger and
crumpling the sheet of paper in his other hand. His face, between
the blond English mutton-chops, was frightfully red and his dark
brow was rent with swollen veins like lightnings of scorn.

"You hate me," he went on, "and you would despise me if I
were not stronger than you. Yes, you're right there! I've got my
heart in the right place, by God, and you've got yours mostly in
the seat of your trousers. I would most certainly hack you into
bits if it weren't against the law, you and your gabble about
the 'Word,' you skulking fool! But I have no intention of putting
up with your insults; and when I show this part about the vulgar
name to my lawyer at home, you will very likely get a little sur-
prise. My name, sir, is a first-rate name, and I have made it so by
my own efforts. You know better than I do whether anybody
would ever lend you a penny piece on yours, you lazy lout! The
law defends people against the kind you are! You are a common
danger, you are enough to drive a body crazy! But you're left this
time, my master! I don't let individuals like you get the best of me
so fast! I've got my heart in the right place--"

Herr Kloterjahn's excitement had really reached a pitch. He
shrieked, he bellowed, over and over again, that his heart was in
the right place.

"'They were singing.' Exactly. Well, they weren't. They were
knitting. And if I heard what they said, it was about a recipe
for potato pancakes; and when I show my father-in-law that
about the old decayed family you'll probably have a libel suit on
your hands. ‘Did you see the picture?' Yes, of course I saw it;
only I don't see why that should make me hold my breath and
run away. I don't leer at women out of the corner of my eye;
I look at them square, and if I like their looks I go for them. I
have my heart in the right place--"

Somebody knocked. Knocked eight or ten times, quite fast,
one after the other--a sudden, alarming little commotion that
made Herr Kloterjahn pause; and an unsteady voice that kept
tripping over itself in its haste and distress said:

"Herr Kloterjahn, Herr Kloterjahn--oh, is Herr Kloterjahn
there?"

"Stop outside," said Herr Kloterjahn, in a growl...."What's
the matter? I'm busy talking."

"Oh, Herr Kloterjahn," said the quaking, breaking voice,
"you must come! The doctors are there too--oh, it is all so
dreadfully sad--"

He took one step to the door and tore it open. Frau Magistrate
Spatz was standing there. She had her handkerchief before her
mouth, and great egg-shaped tears rolled into it, two by two.

"Herr Kloterjahn," she got out. "It is so frightfully sad....She
has brought up so much blood, such a horrible lot of blood.
...She was sitting up quite quietly in bed and humming a little
snatch of music...and there it came...my God, such a quantity
you never saw...."

"Is she dead?" yelled Herr Kloterjahn. As he spoke he clutched
the Ratin by the arm and pulled her to and fro on the sill. "Not
quite? Not dead; she can see me, can't she? Brought up a little
blood again, from the lung, eh? Yes, I give in, it may be from the
lung. Gabriele!" he suddenly cried out, and his eyes filled with
tears; you could see what a burst of good, warm, honest human
feeling came over him. "Yes, I'm coming," he said, and dragged
the Ratin after him as he went with long strides down the corri-
dor. You could still hear his voice, from quite a distance, sounding
fainter and fainter: "Not quite, eh? From the lung?"


Herr Spinell stood still on the spot where he had stood during
the whole of Herr Kloterjahn's rudely interrupted call and looked
out the open door. At length he took a couple of steps and listened
down the corridor. But all was quiet, so he closed the door and
came back into the room.

He looked at himself awhile in the glass, then he went up to
the writing-table, took a little flask and a glass out of a drawer,
and drank a cognac--for which nobody can blame him. Then he
stretched himself out on the sofa and closed his eyes.

The upper half of the window was down. Outside in the garden
birds were twittering; those dainty, saucy little notes held all the
spring, finely and penetratingly expressed. Herr Spinell spoke
once: "Invariable calling" he said, and moved his head and drew
in the air through his teeth as though his nerves pained him
violently.

Impossible to recover any poise or tranquillity. Crude experi-
ences like this were too much--he was not made for them. By a
sequence of emotions, the analysis of which would lead us too
far afield, Herr Spinell arrived at the decision that it would be well
for him to have a little out-of-doors exercise. He took his hat and
went downstairs.

As he left the house and issued into the mild, fragrant air, he
turned his head and lifted his eyes, slowly, scanning the house
until he reached one of the windows, a curtained window, on
which his gaze rested awhile, fixed and sombre. Then he laid his
hands on his back and moved away across the gravel path. He
moved in deep thought.

The beds were still straw-covered, the trees and bushes bare;
but the snow was gone, the path was only damp in spots. The
large garden with its grottoes, bowers and little pavilions lay in
the splendid colourful afternoon light, strong shadow and rich,
golden sun, and the dark network of branches stood out sharp and
articulate against the bright sky.

It was about that hour of the afternoon when the sun takes
shape, and from being a formless volume of light turns to a visibly
sinking disk, whose milder, more saturated glow the eye can
tolerate. Herr Spinell did not see the sun, the direction the path
took hid it from his view. He walked with bent head and hummed
a strain of music, a short phrase, a figure that mounted wailingly
and complainingly upward--the Sehnsuchtsmotiv....But suddenly,
with a start, a quick, jerky intake of breath, he stopped, as
though rooted to the path, and gazed straight ahead of him, with
brows fiercely gathered, staring eyes, and an expression of horri-
fied repulsion.

The path had curved just here, he was facing the setting sun.
It stood large and slantwise in the sky, crossed by two narrow
strips of gold-rimmed cloud; it set the tree-tops aglow and poured
its red-gold radiance across the garden. And there, erect in the
path, in the midst of the glory, with the sun's mighty aureola
above her head, there confronted him an exuberant figure, all
arrayed in red and gold and plaid. She had one hand on her swell-
ing hip, with the other she moved to and fro the graceful little
perambulator. And in this perambulator sat the child--sat Anton
Kloterjahn, junior, Gabriele Eckhof's fat son.

There he sat among his cushions, in a woolly white jacket and
large white hat, plump-cheeked, well cared for, and magnificent;
and his blithe unerring gaze encountered Herr Spinell's. The
novelist pulled himself together. Was he not a man, had he not
the power to pass this unexpected, sun-kindled apparition there
in the path and continue on his walk? But Anton Kloterjahn
began to laugh and shout--most horrible to see. He squealed, he
crowed with inconceivable delight--it was positively uncanny to
hear him.

God knows what had taken him; perhaps the sight of Herr
Spinell's long, black figure set him off; perhaps an attack of sheer
animal spirits gave rise to his wild outburst of merriment. He had
a bone teething-ring in one hand and a tin rattle in the other; and
these two objects he flung aloft with shoutings, shook them to
and fro, and clashed them together in the air, as though purposely
to frighten Herr Spinell. His eyes were almost shut, his mouth
gaped open till all the rosy gums were displayed; and as he shouted
he rolled his head about in excess of mirth.

Herr Spinell turned round and went thence. Pursued by the
youthful Kloterjahn's joyous screams, he went away across the
gravel, walking stiffly, yet not without grace; his gait was the hes-
itating gait of one who would disguise the fact that, inwardly,
he is running away.


1902



THE HUNGRY



There came the moment when Detlef was struck by the sense
of his own superfluity; as though by chance he let himself be
borne away by the bustling throng and disappeared from the sight
of his two companions without taking leave.

He gave himself to the current which bore him the whole
length of the splendid auditorium; not until he knew that he was
far away from Lily and the little painter did he resist the tide and
stop in his tracks. He was by then near the stage, leaning against
the heavily gilt projecting front of a proscenium box, between a
bearded baroque caryatid with neck bent to his burden and his
female counterpart whose swelling bosoms were thrust out into
the hall. He put on as well as he could the air of a complacent
observer, lifting his glasses now and then to his eyes--but in the
brilliant circle which they swept he avoided one single point.

The fete was at its height. At the back of these swelling boxes
eating and drinking were going on at laden tables, gentlemen in
black and coloured dress suits, with mammoth chrysanthemums
in their buttonholes, bent over the powdered shoulders of fan-
tastically garbed and extravagantly coiffed ladies, talking and
pointing down upon the motley and the bustle in the hall below as
it formed eddies and currents, got choked and streamed on again,
in quick and colourful play.

There were women in flowing robes, with barge-shaped hats
fastened in outlandish curves beneath their chins, leaning on tall
staves, holding long-handled lorgnons to their eyes. The puffed
sleeves of the men came almost to the brims of their grey top hats.
Loud jests mounted to the upper tiers, healths were wafted thither-
wards in brimming glasses of champagne and beer. People pushed
their way up closer to the stage and stood craning their necks to
see the screaming turn then being performed. When the curtains
rustled together, everybody pushed away again amid laughter and
applause. The orchestra blared. The crowd wreathed and saun-
tered in and out and to and fro. The golden-yellow light, far
brighter than day, gave brilliance to every eye; every breast
heaved with quickened breath, idly yet avidly drinking in the in-
toxication of an atmosphere reeking with odours of food and
drink, flowers and scent, dust and overheated human flesh.

The orchestra stopped. People stood where they were, arm in
arm, looking up at the stage, where a new turn was beginning
with a din of sound. Four or five actors in peasant costume were
parodying with clarinets and stringed instruments the chromatic
wrestlings of the Tristan music. Detlef closed his eyes a moment,
the lids burned. His senses were so keen that even this wanton
distortion of the music could not fail to bring home to him poign-
antly that yearning for unity which it supremely expresses. It
evoked in him overv'helmingly the suffocating melancholy of the
lonely man who has lost himself in love and longing for some
light and common child of life.

Lily. His soul, in imploring tenderness, shaped the name; his
gaze, do what he would, turned towards her distant form. Yes,
they were still there, they stood on the spot where he had left
them and as the crowd thinned he would catch glimpses of her
figure, leaning against the wall in her milk-white, silver-trimmed
gown; her head slightly on one side, she talked with the little
artist and looked into his eyes with lingering, mischievous gaze.
And his eyes were just as blue, just as wide apart and unclouded
as her own.

Ah, that prattle of theirs, flowing so blithely from an inexhaustible
fount of simple, artless, unassuming gaiety--how could he share
in it, he, a slow and serious man whose life was. compact of know-
ledge and dreams, of paralysing insight and the inexorable urge to
create! So he had left them, stolen away in a spasm of defiance
and despair, in which there mingled a queer sort of magnanimity;
stolen away and left these two children of life to themselves.
But even at this distance came the strangling jealousy in his
throat with the knowledge that they had smiled with relief at
being freed of his oppressive presence.

Why had he come, why had he come here again? To move,
with his tormented soul, among these carefree throngs, knowing
himself to be with but not of them? Ah, well he knew! Why
then this craving for contact with them? "We lonely ones," so
he had written once in a quiet hour of self-communing, "we iso-
lated dreamers, disinherited of life, who spend our introspective
days remote in an artificial, icy air and spread abroad a cold
breath as from strange regions so soon as we come among living
human beings and they see our brows marked with the sign of
knowledge and of fear; we poor ghosts of life, who are met with
an embarrassed glance and left to ourselves as soon as possible,
that our hollow and knowledgeable eye may not blight all joy...we
all cherish a hidden and unappeased yearning for the harmless,
simple, and real in life; for a little friendly, devoted, familiar human
happiness. That 'life' from which we are shut out--we do not en-
visage it as wild beauty and cruel splendour, it is not as the extra-
ordinary that we crave it, we extraordinary ones. The kingdom of
our longing love is the realm of the pleasant, the normal, and the
respectable, it is life in all its tempting, banal everydayness that
we want...."

He looked over at them again as they stood there talking. The
whole hall rang with shouts of laughter and the whining of the
clarinets, as the passionate, cloying music was being distorted into
shrieking sentimentality. "That is you," he thought. "You are
warm, mad, sweet and lovely life, that which stands in eternal op-
position to the spirit. Think not that it despises you. Think not it
feels one single motion of contempt. Ah, no, we abase ourselves,
we denizens of the profound, mute with our monstrous weight
of knowledge, we stand afar and in our eyes there burns an avid
longing to be like you.

"Do we feel pride stirring? Would we deny that we are lonely?
Does our self-respect make us boast that the motions of the
spirit bring to love a loftier union with life, at all times and in all
places? Ah, but with whom, with what? Always only with our
like, with the suffering and the yearning and the poor--never
with you, you blue-eyed ones who have no need of spirit!"

Now the curtains had fallen again, dancing began afresh. The
band crashed and lilted. Couples turned and glided, wove in and
out upon the polished floor. And Lily danced with the little
painter. How pricelessly her dainty head rose out of the stiff
chalice of her silver-embroidered collar! They moved in a con-
stricted space, with effortless, elastic turnings and pacings. His
face was turned towards hers, they continued to talk and smile
as they moved in obedience to the sweet and trivial measures from
the band.

Suddenly the lonely man felt his spirit reach out to grasp and
form as with hands. "After all, you are mine," he thought, "and
I am above you. Can I not see through your simple souls with a
smile? Do I not observe and perpetuate, half in love and half in
mockery, each naive motion that you make? The sight of your
artless activities arouses in me the forces of the Word, the power
of irony. It makes my heart beat with desire and the lustful
knowledge that I can reshape you as I will and by my art expose
your foolish joys for the world to gape at." But then all his de-
fiance collapsed again quite suddenly, leaving only dull longing
in its wake. Ah, to be not an artist but a man, if only once, if
only on a night like this! If only once to escape the inexorable
doom which rang in his ears: "You may not live, you must cre-
ate; you may not love, you must know." Ah, just once to live, to
love and to give thanks, to feel and know that feeling is all! Just
once to share your life, ye living ones, just once to drink in magic
draughts the bliss of the commonplace!

He shuddered and turned away. As he looked at all these charm-
ing, overheated faces it seemed to him that they peered into his
and then turned away in disgust. He was overpowered by a desire
to void the field, to seek out stillness and darkness--yes, he would
go away, withdraw without a word, as he had withdrawn from
Lily's side; go home and lay his burning, throbbing head upon
a cool pillow. He strode to the exit.

Would she see him go? He was so used to this sensation, this
going away, this silent, proud, despairing withdrawal from a
room, a garden, from any place where society was gathered, with
the secret hope of causing even one pang in the light heart of her
for whom he longed! He paused, looked across at her again; he
implored her in his thoughts. Should he stay, stick it out, should
he remain near her, though separated by the length of the hall,
remain and await some unhoped-for bliss? No, it would all be
vain. There would be no approach, no understanding, no hope.
--"Go out into the darkness, put your head in your hands and
weep, if you can--if in your world of rigid desolation, of ice,
of spirit, and of art there are tears left to shed."--He left the
hall.

He felt a burning, gnawing pain in his breast and at the same
time a wild and senseless expectation. She must see him, must
understand, must come, must follow him, even if only out of pity;
must come half-way and say to him: Stay here, be glad, I love
you. He moved very slowly, although well he knew, was certain
to the point of absurdity, that she would not come at all, that
little laughing, dancing, chattering Lily!

It was two o'clock. The corridors were empty and behind the
long tables in the cloak-room the attendants nodded sleepily. No
one but himself thought of going home. He wrapped himself in
his cloak, took his hat and stick, and left the theatre.

Long rows of carriages stood on the square; lamps illumined
the white mist of the winter night. The horses stood blanketed,
with hanging heads; groups of well-bundled coachmen stamped
the hard snow to warm their feet. Detlef beckoned to one, and
as the man uncovered his horse he waited in the vestibule and let
the cool dry air play about his throbbing temples.

The flat after-taste of the champagne made him want a smoke.
Mechanically he drew out a cigarette and lighted it. But at the
moment when the match went out he saw something strange.
He did not at first understand it and stood there puzzled and
aghast, with hanging arms. He could not get over it, could not
put it out of his mind.

Out of the dark, as his vision recovered from the blindness
caused by the flame from the match, there came a red-bearded,
hollow-cheeked, lawless face, with horribly inflamed, red-rimmed
eyes that scared with sardonic despair and a certain greedy curi-
osity into his own. The owner of this anguished face stood only
two or three paces off, leaning against one of the lamp-posts
which flanked the entrance of the theatre, with fists thrust deep
into his trouser pockets and the collar of his tattered jacket turned
up. His gaze travelled over Detlefs whole figure, from the opera-
glass round the neck, down over the fur coat to the patent-leather
shoes, then back again to search the other's face with that avid
stare. Once the man gave a short, contemptuous snort; then his
body relaxed, he shuddered, his flabby cheeks seemed to grow
even hollower, while the eyelids quivered and closed and the
mouth drooped at the corners with an expression both tragic and
malign.

Detlef stood transfixed. He struggled to understand. He had
a sudden insight as to how he must look as he stood there; his
air of prosperity and well-being as he left the gay gathering, beck-
oned to the coachman, took the cigarette from his silver box. In-
voluntarily he lifted his hand in the act to strike his brow. He
took a step towards the man, he drew breath to speak, to explain
--but what he did was to mount silently into the waiting carriage,
almost forgetting, in his distraction, to give the coachman his
address. He was confounded by the inadequacy of any explana-
tion he might make.

My God, what an error, what a crass misunderstanding! This
starving, outcast man had looked at him with the bitter craving,
the violent scorn that spring from envy and longing. Had he not
put himself there to be looked at, this hungry man? Had not his
shivering body, his tragic and malignant face, been deliberately
calculated to make an impression, to give him, Detlef--as an ar-
rogantly happy human being--one moment of misgiving, of sym-
pathy, of distress? But you mistake, my friend--that was not the
effect they had. "You thought to show me a horrifying warning
out of a strange and frightful world, to arouse my remorse. But
we are brothers.

"Have you a weight here, my friend, a burning weight on your
breast? How well I know it! And why did you come? Why did
you not hug your misery in the shadow instead of taking your
stand under the lighted windows behind which are music and
laughter? Do not I too know the morbid yearning that drove thee
hither, to feed this thy wretchedness, which may just as well be
called love as hate?

"Nothing is strange to me of all the sorrow that moves thee--
and thou thoughtest to shame me! What is mind but the play of
hatred? What art, but yearning in act to create? We are both
at home in the land of the betrayed, the hungering, the lamenting,
the denying; and common to us both are those hours full of be-
traying self-contempt, when we lose ourselves in a shameful love
of life and of mad happiness.

"Wrong, all wrong!"--And as this pity wholly filled him he
felt kindled somewhere deep within an intuition at once painful
and sweet. "Is it only he who errs? Where is the end of error? Is
not all longing on earth an error, this of mine first of all, which
craves the simple and the instinctive, dumb life itself, ignorant of
the enlightenment which comes through mind and art, the release
through the Word? Ah, we are all brothers, we creatures of the
restlessly suffering will, yet we do not recognize ourselves as such.
Another love is needed, another love."

And when at home he sat among his books and pictures, and the
busts ranged along the wall looked down upon him, he felt moved
to utter those gentle words:

"Little children, love one another."


1902



THE INFANT PRODIGY



The infant prodigy entered. The hall became quiet.

It became quiet and then the audience began to clap, because
somewhere at the side a leader of mobs, a born organizer, clapped
first. The audience had heard nothing yet, but they applauded;
for a mighty publicity organization had heralded the prodigy
and people were already hypnotized, whether they knew it or
not.

The prodigy came from behind a splendid screen embroidered
with Empire garlands and great conventionalized flowers, and
climbed nimbly up the steps to the platform, diving into the ap-
plause as into a bath; a little chilly and shivering, but yet as though
into a friendly element. He advanced to the edge of the platform
and smiled as though he were about to be photographed; he made
a shy, charming gesture of greeting, like a little girl.

He was dressed entirely in white silk, which the audience found
enchanting. The little white jacket was fancifully cut, with a sash
underneath it, and even his shoes were made of white silk. But
against the white socks his bare little legs stood out quite brown;
for he was a Greek boy.

He was called Bibi Saccellaphylaccas. And such indeed was his
name. No one knew what Bibi was the pet name for, nobody but
the impresario, and he regarded it as a trade secret. Bibi had
smooth black hair reaching to his shoulders; it was parted on the
side and fastened back from the narrow domed forehead by a
little silk bow. His was the most harmless childish countenance
in the world, with an unfinished nose and guileless mouth. The
area beneath his pitch-black mouselike eyes was already a little
tired and visibly lined. He looked as though he were nine years
old but was really eight and given out for seven. It was hard to tell
whether to believe this or not. Probably everybody knew better
and still believed it, as happens about so many things. The average
man thinks that a little falseness goes with beauty. Where should
we get any excitement out of our daily life if we were not willing
to pretend a bit? And the average man is quite right, in his average
brains!

The prodigy kept on bowing until the applause died down,
then he went up to the grand piano, and the audience cast a last
look at its programmes. First came a Marche solonnelle, then a
Reverie, and then Le Hibou et les moineaux--all by Bibi Saccel-
laphylaccas. The whole programme was by him, they were all
his compositions. He could not score them, of course, but he had
them all in his extraordinary little head and they possessed real
artistic significance, or so it said, seriously and objectively, in the
programme. The programme sounded as though the impresario
had wrested these concessions from his critical nature after a hard
struggle.

The prodigy sat down upon the revolving stool and felt with
his feet for the pedals, which were raised by means of a clever
device so that Bibi could reach them. It was Bibi's own piano, he
took it everywhere with him. It rested upon wooden trestles and
its polish was somewhat marred by the constant transportation--
but all that only made things more interesting.

Bibi put his silk-shod feet on the pedals; then he made an artful
little face, looked straight ahead of him, and lifted his right hand.
It was a brown, childish little hand; but the wrist was strong and
unlike a child's, with well-developed bones.

Bibi made his face for the audience because he was aware that
he had to entertain them a little. But he had his own private enjoy-
ment in the thing too, an enjoyment which he could never convey
to anybody. It was that prickling delight, that secret shudder of
bliss, which ran through him every time he sat at an open piano--
it would always be with him. And here was the keyboard again,
these seven black and white octaves, among which he had so
often lost himself in abysmal and thrilling adventures--and yet
it always looked as clean and untouched as a newly washed black-
board. This was the realm of music that lay before him. It lay
spread out like an inviting ocean, where he might plunge in and
blissfully swim, where he might let himself be borne and carried
away, where he might go under in night and storm, yet keep the
mastery: control, ordain--he held his right hand poised in the
air.

A breathless stillness reigned in the room--the tense moment
before the first note came....How would it begin? It began so.
And Bibi, with his index finger, fetched the first note out of the
piano, a quite unexpectedly powerful first note in the middle
register, like a trumpet blast. Others followed, an introduction de-
veloped--the audience relaxed.

The concert was held in the palatial hall of a fashionable first-
class hotel. The walls were covered with mirrors framed in gilded
arabesques, between frescoes of the rosy and fleshly school. Orna-
mental columns supported a ceiling that displayed a whole uni-
verse of electric bulbs, in clusters darting a brilliance far brighter
than day and filling the whole space with thin, vibrating golden
light. Not a seat was unoccupied, people were standing in the side
aisles and at the back. The front seats cost twelve marks; for the
impresario believed that anything worth having was worth paying
for. And they were occupied by the best society, for it was in
the upper classes, of course, that the greatest enthusiasm was felt.
There were even some children, with their legs hanging down de-
murely from their chairs and their shining eyes staring at their
gifted little white-clad contemporary.

Down in front on the left side sat the prodigy's mother, an
extremely obese woman with a powdered double chin and a
feather on her head. Beside her was the impresario, a man of ori-
ental appearance with large gold buttons on his conspicuous cuffs.
The princess was in the middle of the front row--a wrinkled,
shrivelled little old princess but still a patron of the arts, especially
everything full of sensibility. She sat in a deep, velvet-upholstered
arm-chair, and a Persian carpet was spread before her feet. She
held her hands folded over her grey striped-silk breast, put her
head on one side, and presented a picture of elegant composure as
she sat looking up at the performing prodigy. Next her sat her
lady-in-waiting, in a green striped-silk gown. Being only a lady-
in-waiting she had to sit up very straight in her chair.

Bibi ended in a grand climax. With what power this wee mani-
kin belaboured the keyboard! The audience could scarcely trust
its ears. The march theme, an infectious, swinging tune, broke
out once more, fully harmonized, bold and showy; with every
note Bibi flung himself back from the waist as though he were
marching in a triumphal procession. He ended fortissimo, bent
over, slipped sideways off the stool, and stood with a smile await-
ing the applause.

And the applause burst forth, unanimously, enthusiastically;
the child made his demure little maidenly curtsy and people in
the front seat thought: "Look what slim little hips he has! Clap,
clap! Hurrah, bravo, little chap, Saccophylax or whatever your
name is! Wait, let me take off my gloves--what a little devil of
a chap he is!"

Bibi had to come out three times from behind the screen before
they would stop. Some late-comers entered the hall and moved
about looking for seats. Then the concert continued. Bibi's
Reverie murmured its numbers, consisting almost entirely of
arpeggios, above which a bar of melody rose now and then, weak-
winged. Then came Le Hibou et les moineaux. This piece was
brilliantly successful, it made a strong impression; it was an effec-
tive childhood fantasy, remarkably well envisaged. The bass rep-
resented the owl, sitting morosely rolling his filmy eyes; while in
the treble the impudent, half-frightened sparrows chirped. Bibi
received an ovation when he finished, he was called out four times.
A hotel page with shiny buttons carried up three great laurel
wreaths onto the stage and proffered them from one side while
Bibi nodded and expressed his thanks. Even the princess shared
in the applause, daintily and noiselessly pressing her palms to-
gether.

Ah, the knowing little creature understood how to make people
clap! He stopped behind the screen, they had to wait for him;
lingered a little on the steps of the platform, admired the long
streamers on the wreaths--although actually such things bored
him stiff by now. He bowed with the utmost charm, he gave the
audience plenty of time to rave itself out, because applause is
valuable and must not be cut short. "Le Hibou is my drawing
card," he thought--this expression he had learned from the im-
presario. "Now I will play the fantasy, it is a lot better than Le
Hibou, of course, especially the C-sharp passage. But you idiots
dote on the Hibou, though it is the first and the silliest thing I
wrote," He continued to bow and smile.

Next came a Meditation and then an Etude--the programme
was quite comprehensive. The Meditation was very like the
Reverie--which was nothing against it--and the Etude displayed
all of Bibi's virtuosity, which naturally fell a little short of his
inventiveness. And then the Fantaisie. This was his favourite; he
varied it a little each time, giving himself free rein and sometimes
surprising even himself, on good evenings, by his own inventive-
ness.

He sat and played, so little, so white and shining, against the
great black grand piano, elect and alone, above that confused sea
of faces, above the heavy, insensitive mass soul, upon which he
was labouring to work with his individual, differentiated soul.
His lock of soft black hair with the white silk bow had fallen over
his forehead, his trained and bony little wrists pounded away, the
muscles stood out visibly on his brown childish cheeks.

Sitting there he sometimes had moments of oblivion and soli-
tude, when the gaze of his strange little mouselike eyes with the
big rings beneath them would lose itself and stare through the
painted stage into space that was peopled with strange vague life.
Then out of the corner of his eye he would give a quick look
back into the hall and be once more with his audience.

"Joy and pain, the heights and the depths--that is my Fantaisie
he thought lovingly. "Listen, here is the C-sharp passage."
He lingered over the approach, wondering if they would notice
anything. But no, of course not, how should they? And he cast his
eyes up prettily at the ceiling so that at least they might have
something to look at.

All these people sat there in their regular rows, looking at the
prodigy and thinking all sorts of things in their regular brains.
An old gentleman with a white beard, a seal ring on his finger
and a bulbous swelling on his bald spot, a growth if you like, was
thinking to himself: "Really, one ought to be ashamed." He had
never got any further than "Ah, thou dearest Augustin" on the
piano, and here he sat now, a grey old man, looking on while this
little hop-o'-my-thumb performed miracles. Yes, yes, it is a gift
of God, we must remember that. God grants His gifts, or He
withholds them, and there is no shame in being an ordinary man.
Like with the Christ Child.--Before a child one may kneel with-
out feeling ashamed. Strange that thoughts like these should be so
satisfying--he would even say so sweet, if it was not too silly for
a tough old man like him to use the word. That was how he felt,
anyhow.

Art...the business man with the parrot-nose was thinking.
"Yes, it adds something cheerful to life, a little good white silk
and a little tumty-ti-ti-tum. Really he does not play so badly.
Fully fifty seats, twelve marks apiece, that makes six hundred
marks--and everything else besides. Take off the rent of the hall,
the lighting and the programmes, you must have fully a thousand
marks profit. That is worth while."

That was Chopin he was just playing, thought the piano-teacher,
a lady with a pointed nose; she was of an age when the under-
standing sharpens as the hopes decay. "But not very original
--I will say that afterwards, it sounds well. And his hand position
is entirely amateur. One must be able to lay a coin on tne back
of the hand--I would use a ruler on him."

Then there was a young girl, at that self-conscious and chlo-
rotic time of life when the most ineffable ideas come into the
mind. She was thinking to herself: "What is it he is playing? It
is expressive of passion, yet he is a child. If he kissed me it would
be as though my little brother kissed me--no kiss at all. Is there
such a thing as passion all by itself, without any earthly object.
a sort of child's-play of passion? What nonsense! If I were to say
such things aloud they would just be at me with some more cod-
liver oil. Such is life."

An officer was leaning against a column. He looked on at Bibi's
success and thought: "Yes, you are something and I am some-
thing, each in his own way." So he clapped his heels together and
paid to the prodigy the respect which he felt to be due to all the
powers that be.

Then there was a critic, an elderly man in a shiny black coat
and turned-up trousers splashed with mud. He sat in his free seat
and thought: "Look at him, this young beggar of a Bibi. As an in-
dividual he has still to develop, but as a type he is already quite
complete, the artist par excellence. He has in himself all the ar-
tist's exaltation and his utter worthlessness, his charlatanry and
his sacred fire, his burning contempt and his secret raptures. Of
course I can't write all that, it is too good. Of course, I should
have been an artist myself if I had not seen through the whole
business so clearly."

Then the prodigy stopped playing and a perfect storm arose
in the hall. He had to come out again and again from behind his
screen. The man with the shiny buttons carried up more wreaths:
four laurel wreaths, a lyre made of violets, a bouquet of roses. He
had not arms enough to convey all these tributes, the impresario
himself mounted the stage to help him. He hung a laurel wreath
round Bibi's neck, he tenderly stroked the black hair--and sud-
denly as though overcome he bent down and gave the prodigy a
kiss, a resounding kiss, square on the mouth. And then the storm
became a hurricane. That kiss ran through the room like an elec-
tric shock, it went direct to peoples' marrow and made them
shiver down their backs. They were carried away by a helpless
compulsion of sheer noise. Loud shouts mingled with the hysteri-
cal clapping of hands. Some of Bibi's commonplace little friends
down there waved their handkerchiefs. But the critic thought:
"Of course that kiss had to come--it's a good old gag. Yes,
good Lord, if only one did not see through everything quite so
clearly--"

And so the concert drew to a close. It began at half past seven
and finished at half past eight. The platform was laden with
wreaths and two little pots of flowers stood on the lamp-stands of
the piano. Bibi played as his last number his Rhapsodie grecque,
which turned into the Greek national hymn at the end. His fellow-
countrymen in the audience would gladly have sung it with him
if the company had not been so august. They made up for it with
a powerful noise and hullabaloo, a hot-blooded national demon-
stration. And the aging critic was thinking: "Yes, the hymn had
to come too. They have to exploit every vein--publicity cannot
afford to neglect any means to its end. I think I'll criticize that
as inartistic. But perhaps I am wrong, perhaps that is the most
artistic thing of all. What is the artist? A jack-in-the-box. Criti-
cism is on a higher plane. But I can't say that." And away he went
in his muddy trousers.

After being called out nine or ten times the prodigy did not
come any more from behind the screen but went to his mother
and the impresario down in the hall. The audience stood about
among the chairs and applauded and pressed forward to see Bibi
close at hand. Some of them wanted to see the princess too. Two
dense circles formed, one round the prodigy, the other round the
princess, and you could actually not tell which of them was re-
ceiving more homage. But the court lady was commanded to go
over to Bibi; she smoothed down his silk jacket a bit to make it
look suitable for a court function, led him by the arm to the
princess, and solemnly indicated to him that he was to kiss the
royal hand. "How do you do it, child?" asked the princess. "Does
it come into your head of itself when you sit down?" "Oui,
Madame,, answered Bibi. To himself he thought: "Oh, what a
stupid old princess!" Then he turned round shyly and uncourtier-
like and went back to his family.

Outside in the cloak-room there was a crowd. People held up
their numbers and received with open arms furs, shawls, and
galoshes. Somewhere among her acquaintances the piano-teacher
stood making her critique. "He is not very original," she said
audibly and looked about her.

In front of one of the great mirrors an elegant young lady
was being arrayed in her evening cloak and fur shoes by her
brothers, two lieutenants. She was exquisitely beautiful, with her
steel-blue eyes and her clean-cut, well-bred face. A really noble
dame. When she was ready she stood waiting for her brothers.
"Don't stand so long in front of the glass, Adolf," she said softly
to one of them, who could not tear himself away from the sight
of his simple, good-looking young features. But Lieutenant Adolf
thinks: What cheek! He would "button his overcoat in front of
the glass, just the same. Then they went out on the street where
the arc-lights gleamed cloudily through the white mist. Lieutenant
Adolf struck up a little nigger-dance on the frozen snow to keep
warm, with his hands in his slanting overcoat pockets and his collar
turned up.

A girl with untidy hair and swinging arms, accompanied by a
gloomy-faced youth, came out just behind them. A child! she
thought. A charming child. But in there he was an awe-inspiring
...and aloud in a toneless voice she said: "We are all infant
prodigies, we artists."

"Well, bless my soul!" thought the old gentleman who had
never got further than Augustin on the piano, and whose boil was
now concealed by a top hat. "What does all that mean? She
sounds very oracular." But the gloomy youth understood. He
nodded his head slowly.

Then they were silent and the untidy-haired girl gazed after the
brothers and sister. She rather despised them, but she looked after
them until they had turned the corner.

1903



GLADIUS DEI



Munich was radiant. Above the gay squares and white columned
temples, the classicistic monuments and the baroque churches, the
leaping fountains, the palaces and parks of the Residence there
stretched a sky of luminous blue silk. Well-arranged leafy vistas
laced with sun and shade lay basking in the sunshine of a beautiful
day in early June.

There was a twittering of birds and a blithe holiday spirit in all
the little streets. And in the squares and past the rows of villas
there swelled, rolled, and hummed the leisurely, entertaining
traffic of that easy-going, charming town. Travellers of all nation-
alities drove about in the slow little droshkies, looking right and
left in aimless curiosity at the house-fronts; they mounted and
descended museum stairs. Many windows stood open and music
was heard from within: practising on piano, cello, or violin--
earnest and well-meant amateur efforts; while from the Odeon
came the sound of serious work on several grand pianos.

Young people, the kind that can whistle the Nothung motif,
who fill the pit of the Schauspielhaus every evening, wandered in
and out of the University and Library with literary magazines in
their coat pockets. A court carriage stood before the Academy, the
home of the plastic arts, which spreads its white wings between
the Turkenstrasse and the Siegestor. And colourful groups of
models, picturesque old men, women and children in Albanian
costume, stood or lounged at the top of the balustrade.

Indolent, unhurried sauntering was the mode in all the long
streets of the northern quarter. There life is lived for pleasanter
ends than the driving greed of gain. Young artists with little
round hats on the backs of their heads, flowing cravats and no
canes--carefree bachelors who paid for their lodgings with
colour-sketches--were strolling up and down to let the clear blue
morning play upon their mood, also to look at the little girls,
the pretty, rather plump type, with the brunette bandeaux, the
too large feet, and the unobjectionable morals. Every fifth house
had studio windows blinking in the sun. Sometimes a fine piece
of architecture stood out from a middle-class row, the work of
some imaginative young architect; a wide front with shallow bays
and decorations in a bizarre style very expressive and full of in-
vention. Or the door to some monotonous facade would be
framed in a bold improvisation of flowing lines and sunny colours,
with bacchantes, naiads, and rosy-skinned nudes.

It was always a joy to linger before the windows of the cabinet-
makers and the shops for modern articles de luxe. What a sense
for luxurious nothings and amusing, significant line was displayed
in the shape of everything! Little shops that sold picture-frames,
sculptures, and antiques there were in endless number; in their
windows you might see those busts of Florentine women of the
Renaissance, so full of noble poise and poignant charm. And
the owners of the smallest and meanest of these shops spoke of
Mino da Fiesole and Donatello as though he had received the
rights of reproduction from them personally.

But on the Odeonsplatz, in view of the mighty loggia with the
spacious mosaic pavement before it, diagonally opposite to the
Regent's palace, people were crowding round the large windows
and glass show-cases of the big art-shop owned by M. Bl11then-
zweig. What a glorious display! There were reproductions of
the masterpieces of all the galleries in the world, in costly deco-
rated and tinted frames, the good taste of which was precious in
its very simplicity. There were copies of modern paintings,
works of a joyously sensuous fantasy, in which the antiques
seemed bom again in humorous and realistic guise; bronze nudes
and fragile ornamental glassware; tall, thin earthenware vases with
an iridescent glaze produced by a bath in metal steam; editions
de luxe which were triumphs of modern binding and presswork,
containing the works of the most modish poets, set out with every
possible advantage of sumptuous elegance. Cheek by jowl with
these, the portraits of artists, musicians, philosophers, actors,
writers, displayed to gratify the public taste for personalities.--
In the first window, next the book-shop, a large picture stood on
an easel, with a crowd of people in front of it, a fine sepia photo-
graph in a wide old-gold frame, a very striking reproduction of
the sensation at this year's great international exhibition, to which
public attention is always invited by means of effective and artistic
posters stuck up everywhere on hoardings among concert pro-
grammes and clever advertisements of toilet preparations.

If you looked into the windows of the book-shop your eye
met such titles as Interior Decoration Since the Retiaissance, The
Renaissance in Modem Decorative Art, The Book as Work of
Art, The Decorative Arts, Hunger for Art, and many more. And
you would remember that these thought-provoking pamphlets
were sold and read by the thousand and that discussions on these
subjects were the preoccupation of all the salons.

You might be lucky enough to meet in person one of the
famous fair ones whom less fortunate folk know only through the
medium of art; one of those rich and beautiful women whose
Titian-blond colouring Nature's most sweet and cunning hand
did not lay on, but whose diamond parures and beguiling charms
had received immortality from the hand of some portrait-painter
of genius and whose love-affairs were the talk of the town. These
were the queens of the artist balls at carnival-time. They were
a little painted, a little made up, full of haughty caprices, worthy
of adoration, avid of praise. You might see a carriage rolling up
the Ludwigstrasse, with such a great painter and his mistress
inside. People would be pointing out the sight, standing still to
gaze after the pair. Some of them would curtsy. A little more and
the very policemen would stand at attention.

Art flourished, art swayed the destinies of the town, art stretched
above it her rose-bound sceptre and smiled. On every hand ob-
sequious interest was displayed in her prosperity, on every hand
she was served with industry and devotion. There was a down-
right cult of line, decoration, form, significance, beauty. Munich
was radiant.


A youth was coming down the Schellingstrasse. With the bells
of cyclists ringing about him he strode across the wooden pave-
ment towards the broad facade of the Ludwigskirche. Looking
at him it was as though a shadow passed across the sky, or cast
over the spirit some memory of melancholy hours. Did he not
love the sun which bathed the lovely city in its festal light? Why
did he walk wrapped in his own thoughts, his eyes directed on the
ground?

No one in that tolerant and variety-loving town would have
taken offence at his wearing no hat; but why need the hood of
his ample black cloak have been drawn over his head, shadowing
his low, prominent, and peaked forehead, covering his ears and
framing his haggard cheeks? What pangs of conscience, what
scruples and self-tortures had so availed to hollow out these
cheeks? It is frightful, on such a sunny day, to see care sitting in
the hollows of the human face. His dark brows thickened at the
narrow base of his hooked and prominent nose. His lips were
unpleasantly full, his eyes brown and close-lying. When he lifted
them, diagonal folds appeared on the peaked brow. His gaze ex-
pressed knowledge, limitation, and suffering. Seen in profile his
face was strikingly like an old painting preserved at Florence in
a narrow cloister cell whence once a frigntful and shattering pro-
test issued against life and her triumphs.

Hieronymus walked along the Schellingstrasse with a slow, firm
stride, holding his wide cloak together with both hands from in-
side. Two little girls, two of those pretty, plump little creatures
with the bandeaux, the big feet, and the unobjectionable morals,
strolled towards him arm in arm, on pleasure bent. They poked
each other and laughed, they bent double with laughter, they even
broke into a run and ran away still laughing, at his hood and his
face. But he paid them no heed. With bent head, looking neither
to the right nor to the left, he crossed the Ludwigstrasse and
mounted the church steps.

The great wings of the middle portal stood wide open. From
somewhere within the consecrated twilight, cool, dank, incense-
laden, there came a pale red glow. An old woman with inflamed
eyes rose from a prayer-stool and slipped on crutches through
the columns. Otherwise the church was empty.

Hieronymus sprinkled brow and breast at the stoup, bent the
knee before the high altar, and then paused in the centre nave.
Here in the church his stature seemed to have grown. He stood
upright and immovable; his head was flung up and his great
hooked nose jutted domineeringly above the thick lips. His eyes
no longer sought the ground, but looked straight and boldly into
the distance, at the crucifix on the high altar. Thus he stood awhile,
then retreating he bent the knee again and left the church.

He strode up the Ludwigstrasse, slowly, firmly, with bent head,
in the centre of the wide unpaved road, towards the mighty loggia
with its statues. But arrived at the Odeonsplatz, he looked up, so
that the folds came out on his peaked forehead, and checked his
step, his attention being called to the crowd at the windows of
the big art-shop of M. Bluthenzweig.

People moved from window to window, pointing out to each
other the treasures displayed and exchanging views as they looked
over one another's shoulders. Hieronymus mingled among them
and did as they did, taking in all these things with his eyes, one
by one.

He saw the reproductions of masterpieces from all the galleries
in the world, the priceless frames so precious in their simplicity,
the Renaissance sculpture, the bronze nudes, the exquisitely bound
volumes, the iridescent vases, the portraits of artists, musicians.
philosophers, actors, writers; he looked at everything and turned
a moment of his scrutiny upon each object. Holding his mantle
closely together with both hands from inside, he moved his hood-
covered head in short turns from one thing to the next, gazing
at each awhile with a dull, inimical, and remotely surprised air,
lifting the dark brows which grew so thick at the base or the nose.
At length he stood in front of the last window, which contained
the startling picture. For a while he looked over the shoulders of
people before him and then in his turn reached a position directly
in front of the window.

The large red-brown photograph in the choice old-gold frame
stood on an easel in the centre. It was a Madonna, but an utterly
unconventional one, a work of entirely modern feeling. The figure
of the Holy Mother was revealed as enchantingly feminine and
beautiful. Her great smouldering eyes were rimmed with dark-
ness, and her delicate and strangely smiling lips were half-parted.
Her slender fingers held in a somewhat nervous grasp the hips of
the Child, a nude boy of pronounced, almost primitive leanness.
He was playing with her breast and glancing aside at the beholder
with a wise look in his eyes.

Two other youths stood near Hieronymus, talking about the
picture. They were two young men with books under their arms,
which they had fetched from the Library or were taking thither.
Humanistically educated people, that is, equipped with science
and with art.

"The little chap is in luck, devil take me!" said one.

"He seems to be trying to make one envious," replied the other.
"A bewildering female!"

"A female to drive a man crazy! Gives you funny ideas about the
Immaculate Conception."

"No, she doesn't look exactly immaculate. Have you seen the
original?"

"Of course; I was quite bowled over. She makes an even more
aphrodisiac impression in colour. Especially the eyes."

"The likeness is pretty plain."

"How so?"

"Don't you know the model? Of course he used his little dress-
maker. It is almost a portrait, only with a lot more emphasis on
the corruptible. The girl is more innocent."

"I hope so. Life would be altogether too much of a strain if
there were many like this mater amata."

"The Pinakothek has bought it."

"Really? Well, well! They knew what they were about, anyhow.
The treatment of the flesh and the flow of the linen garment
are really first-class."

"Yes, an incredibly gifted chap."

"Do you know him?"

"A little. He will have a career, that is certain. He has been in-
vited twice by the Prince Regent."

This last was said as they were taking leave of each other.

"Shall I see you this evening at the theatre?" asked the first.
"The Dramatic Club is giving Machiavelli's Mandragola."

"Oh, bravo! That will be great, of course. I had meant to go to
the Variete, but I shall probably choose our stout Niccolo after
all. Good-bye."

They parted, going off to right and left. New people took their
places and looked at the famous picture. But Hieronymus stood
where he was, motionless, with his head thrust out; his hands
clutched convulsively at the mantle as they held it together from
inside. His brows were no longer lifted with that cool and un-
pleasantly surprised expression; they were drawn and darkened;
his cheeks, half-shrouded in the black hood, seemed more sunken
than ever and his thick lips had gone pale. Slowly his head dropped
lower and lower, so that finally his eyes stared upwards at the
work of art, while the nostrils of his great nose dilated.

Thus he remained for perhaps a quarter of an hour. The crowd
about him melted away, but he did not stir from the spot. At last
he turned slowly on the balls of his feet and went hence.


But the picture of the Madonna went with him. Always and
ever, whether in his hard and narrow little room or kneeling in
the cool church, it stood before his outraged soul, with its smoul-
dering, dark-rimmed eyes, its riddlingly smiling lips--stark and
beautiful. And no prayer availed to exorcize it.

But the third night it happened that a command and summons
from on high came to Hieronymus, to intercede and lift his voice
against the frivolity, blasphemy, and arrogance of beauty. In vain
like Moses he protested that he had not the gift of tongues. God's
will remained unshaken; in a loud voice He demanded that the
faint-hearted Hieronymus go forth to sacrifice amid the jeers of
the foe.

And since God would have it so, he set forth one morning and
wended his way to the great art-shop of M. Bluthenzweig. He
wore his hood over his head and held his mantle together in front
from inside with both hands as he went.

The air had grown heavy, the sky was livid and thunder
threatened. Once more crowds were besieging the show-cases at
the art-shop and especially the window where the photograph of
the Madonna stood. Hieronymus cast one brief glance thither;
then he pushed up the latch of the glass door hung with placards
and art magazines. "As God wills," said he, and entered the shop.

A young girl was somewhere at a desk writing in a big book.
She was a pretty brunette thing with bandeaux of hair and big
feet. She came up to him and asked pleasantly what he would like.

"Thank you," said Hieronymus in a low voice and looked her
earnestly in the face, with diagonal wrinkles in his peaked brow.
"I would speak not to you but to the owner of this shop, Herr
Bluthenzweig."

She hesitated a little, turned away, and took up her work once
more. He stood there in the middle of the shop.

Instead of the single specimens in the show-windows there was
here a riot and a heaping-up of luxury, a fullness of colour, line,
form, style, invention, good taste, and beauty. Hieronymus looked
slowly round him, drawing his mantle close with both hands.

There were several people in the shop besides him. At one of
the broad tables running across the room sat a man in a yellow
suit, with a black goat's-beard, looking at a portfolio of French
drawings, over which he now and then emitted a bleating laugh.
He was being waited on by an undernourished and vegetarian
young man, who kept on dragging up fresh portfolios. Diago-
nally opposite the bleating man sat an elegant old dame, examining
art embroideries with a pattern of fabulous flowers in pale tones
standing together on tall perpendicular stalks. An attendant hov-
ered about her too. A leisurely Englishman in a travelling-cap,
with his pipe in his mouth, sat at another table. Cold and smooth-
shaven, of indefinite age, in his good English clothes, he sat ex-
amining bronzes brought to him by M. Bluthenzweig in person.
He was holding up by the head the dainty figure of a nude young
girl, immature and delicately articulated, her hands crossed in
coquettish innocence upon her breast. He studied her thor-
oughly, turning her slowly about. M. Bluthenzweig, a man with
a short, heavy brown beard and bright brown eyes of exactly
the same colour, moved in a semicircle round him, rubbing his
hands, praising the statuette with all the terms his vocabulary
possessed.

"A hundred and fifty marks, sir," he said in English. "Munich
art--very charming, in fact. Simply full of charm, you know.

Grace itself. Really extremely pretty, good, admirable, in fact."
Then he thought of some more and went on: "Highly attractive,
fascinating." Then he began again from the beginning.

His nose lay a little flat on his upper lip, so that he breathed
constantly with a slight sniff into his moustache. Sometimes he did
this as he approached a customer, stooping over as though he were
smelling at him. When Hieronymus entered, M. Bluthenzweig
had examined him cursorily in this way, then devoted himself
again to his Englishman.

The elegant old dame made her selection and left the shop. A
man entered. M. Bluthenzweig sniffed briefly at him as though to
scent out his capacity to buy and left him to the young book-
keeper. The man purchased a faience bust of young Piero de'
Medici, son of Lorenzo, and went out again. The Englishman be-
gan to depart. He had acquired the statuette of the young girl and
left amid bowings from M. Bluthenzweig. Then the art-dealer
turned to Hieronymus and came forward.

"You wanted something?" he said, without any particular
courtesy.

Hieronymus held his cloak together with both hands and looked
the other in the face almost without winking an eyelash. He
parted his big lips slowly and said:

"I have come to you on account of the picture in the window
there, the big photograph, the Madonna." His voice was thick and
without modulation.

"Yes, quite right," said M. Bluthenzweig briskly and began
rubbing his hands. "Seventy marks in the frame. It is unfadable
--a first-class reproduction. Highly attractive and full of charm."

Hieronymus was silent. He nodded his head in the hood and
shrank a little into himself as the dealer spoke. Then he drew him-
self up again and said:

"I would remark to you first of all that I am not in the position
to purchase anything, nor have I the desire. I am sorry to have to
disappoint your expectations. I regret if it upsets you. But in the
first place I am poor and in the second I do not love the things
you sell. No, I cannot buy anything."

"No? Well, then?" asked M. Bluthenzweig, sniffing a good
deal. "Then may I ask--"

"I suppose," Hieronymus went on, "that being what you are
you look down on me because I am not in a position to buy."

"Oh--er--not at all," said M. Bluthenzweig. "Not at all.
Only-"

"And yet I beg you to hear me and give some consideration to
my words."

"Consideration to your words. H'm--? may I ask--"

"You may ask," said Hieronymus, "and I will answer you. I
have come to beg you to remove that picture, the big photo-
graph, the Madonna, out of your window and never display it
again."

M. Bluthenzweig looked awhile dumbly into Hieronymus's
face--as though he expected him to be abashed at the words he
had just uttered. But as this did not happen he gave a violent sniff
and spoke himself:

"Will you be so good as to tell me whether you are here in any
official capacity which authorizes you to dictate to me, or what
does bring you here?"

"Oh, no," replied Hieronymus, "I have neither office nor dig-
nity from the state. I have no power on my side, sir. What brings
me hither is my conscience alone."

M. Bluthenzweig, searching for words, snorted violently into
his moustache. At length he said:

"Your conscience...well, you will kindly understand that I take
not the faintest interest in your conscience." With which he
turned round and moved quickly to his desk at the back of the
shop, where he began to write. Both attendants laughed heartily.
The pretty Fraulein giggled over her account-book. As for the
yellow gentleman with the goat's beard, he was evidently a for-
eigner, for he gave no sign of comprehension but went on study-
ing the French drawings and emitting from time to time his bleat-
ing laugh.

"Just get rid of the man for me," said M. Bluthenzweig shortly
over his shoulder to his assistant. He went on writing. The poorly
paid young vegetarian approached Hieronymus, smothering his
laughter, and the other salesman came up too.

"May we be of service to you in any other way?" the first
asked mildly. Hieronymus fixed him with his glazed and suffering
eyes.

"No," he said, "you cannot. I beg you to take the Madonna
picture out of the window, at once and forever."

"But--why?"

It is the Holy Mother of God," said Hieronymus in a sub-
dued voice.

"Quite. But you have heard that Herr Bluthenzweig is not in-
clined to accede to your request."

"We must bear in mind that it is the Holy Mother of God,"
said Hieronymus again and his head trembled on his neck.

"So we must. But should we not be allowed to exhibit any Ma-
donnas--or paint any?"

"It is not that," said Hieronymus, almost whispering. He drew
himself up and shook his head energetically several times. His
peaked brow under the hood was entirely furrowed with long,
deep cross-folds. "You know very well that it is vice itself that
is painted there--naked sensuality. I was standing near two
simple young people and overheard with my own ears that it led
them astray upon the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception."

"Oh, permit me--that is not the point," said the young sales-
man, smiling. In his leisure hours he was writing a brochure on
the modem movement in art and was well qualified to conduct a
cultured conversation. "The picture is a work of art," he went
on, "and one must measure it by the appropriate standards as
such. It has been very highly praised on all hands. The state has
purchased it."

"I know that the state has purchased it," said Hieronymus. "I
also know that the artist has twice dined with the Prince Regent.
It is common talk--and God knows how people interpret the
fact that a man can become famous by such work as this. What
does such a fact bear witness to? To the blindness of the world,
a blindness inconceivable, if not indeed shamelessly hypocritical.
This picture has its origin in sensual lust and is enjoyed in the
same--is that true or not? Answer me! And you too answer me,
Herr Bluthenzweig!"

A pause ensued. Hieronymus seemed in all seriousness to de-
mand an answer to his question, looking by turns at the staring
attendants and the round back M. Bluthenzweig turned upon him,
with his own piercing and anguishing brown eyes. Silence reigned.
Only the yellow man with the goat's beard, bending over the
French drawings, broke it with his bleating laugh.

"It is true," Hieronymus went on in a hoarse voice that shook
with his profound indignation. "You do not dare deny it. How
then can honour be done to its creator, as though he had endowed
mankind with a new ideal possession? How can one stand before
it and surrender unthinkingly to the base enjoyment which it
purveys, persuading oneself in all seriousness that one is yielding
to a noble and elevated sentiment, highly creditable to the human
race? Is this reckless ignorance or abandoned hypocrisy? My un-
derstanding falters, it is completely at a loss when confronted by
the absurd fact that a man can achieve renown on this earth by the
stupid and shameless exploitation of the animal instincts. Beauty?
What is beauty? What forces are they which use beauty as their
tool today--and upon what does it work? No one can fail to
know this, Herr Bluthenzweig. But who, understanding it clearly,
can fail to feel disgust and pain? It is criminal to play upon the
ignorance of the immature, the lewd, the brazen, and the un-
scrupulous by elevating beauty into an idol to be worshipped, to
give it even more power over those who know not affliction and
have no knowledge of redemption. You are unknown to me, and
you look at me with black looks--yet answer me! Knowledge,
I tell you, is the profoundest torture in the world; but it is the
purgatory without whose purifying pangs no soul can reach sal-
vation. It is not infantile, blasphemous shallowness that can save
us, Herr Bluthenzweig; only knowledge can avail, knowledge in
which the passions of our loathsome flesh die away and are
quenched."

Silence.--The yellow man with the goat's beard gave a sudden
little bleat.

"I think you really must go now," said the underpaid assistant
mildly.

But Hieronymus made no move to do so. Drawn up in his
hooded cape, he stood with blazing eyes in the centre of the shop
and his thick lips poured out condemnation in a voice that was
harsh and rusty and clanking.

"Art, you cry; enjoyment, beauty! Enfold the world in beauty
and endow all things with the noble grace of style!--Profligate,
away! Do you think to wash over with lurid colours the misery
of the world? Do you think with the sounds of feasting and music
to drown out the voice of the tortured earth? Shameless one, you
err! God lets not Himself be mocked, and your impudent deifica-
tion of the glistering surface of things is an abomination in His
eyes. You tell me that I blaspheme art. I say to you that you lie.
I do not blaspheme art. Art is no conscienceless delusion, lending
itself to reinforce the allurements of the fleshly. Art is the holy
torch which turns its light upon all the frightful depths, all the
shameful and woeful abysses of life; art is the godly fire laid to
the world that, being redeemed by pity, it may flame up and dis-
solve altogether with its shames and torments.--Take it out, Herr
Bluthenzweig, take away the work of that famous painter out of
your window--you would do well to burn it with a hot fire and
strew its ashes to the four winds--yes, to all the four winds --"

His harsh voice broke off. He had taken a violent backwards
step, snatched one arm from his black wrappings, and stretched
it passionately forth, gesturing towards the window with a hand
that shook as though palsied. And in this commanding attitude he
paused. His great hooked nose seemed to jut more than ever, his
dark brows were gathered so thick and high that folds crowded
upon the peaked forehead shaded by the hood; a hectic flush
mantled his hollow cheeks.

But at this point M. Bluthenzweig turned round. Perhaps he
was outraged by the idea of burning his seventy-mark reproduc-
tion; perhaps Hieronymus's speech had completely exhausted his
patience. In any case he was a picture of stern and righteous anger.
He pointed with his pen to the door of the shop, gave several short,
excited snorts into his moustache, struggled for words, and ut-
tered with the maximum of energy those which he found:

"My fine fellow, if you don't get out at once I will have my
packer help you--do you understand?"

"Oh, you cannot intimidate me, you cannot drive me away,
you cannot silence my voice!" cried Hieronymus as he clutched
his cloak over his chest with his fists and shook his head doughtily.
"I know that I am single-handed and powerless, but yet I will not
cease until you hear me, Herr Bluthenzweig! Take the picture
out of your window and burn it even today! Ah, burn not it
alone! Burn all these statues and busts, the sight of which plunges
the beholder into sin! Burn these vases and ornaments, these shame-
less revivals of paganism, these elegantly bound volumes of erotic
verse! Burn everything in your shop, Herr Bluthenzweig, for it is
a filthiness in God's sight. Burn it, burn it!" he shrieked, beside
himself, describing a wild, all-embracing circle with his arm.
"The harvest is ripe for the reaper, the measure of the age's
shamelessness is full--but I say unto you --"

"Krauthuber!" Herr Bl11thenzwcig raised his voice and shouted
towards a door at the back of the shop. "Come in here at once!"

And in answer to the summons there appeared upon the scene
a massive overpowering presence, a vast and awe-inspiring, swol-
len human bulk, whose limbs merged into each other like links of
sausage--a gigantic son of the people, malt-nourished and im-
moderate, who weighed in, with puffings, bursting with energy,
from the packing-room. His appearance in the upper reaches of
his form was notable for a fringe of walrus beard; a hide apron
fouled with paste covered his body from the waist down, and his
yellow shirt-sleeves were rolled back from his heroic arms.

"Will you open the door for this gentleman, Krauthuber?"
said M. Bluthenzweig; "and if he should not find the way to it,
just help him into the street."

"Huh," said the man, looking from his enraged employer to
Hieronymus and back with his little elephant eyes. It was a heavy
monosyllable, suggesting reserve force restrained with difficulty.
The floor shook with his tread as he went to the door and
opened it.

Hieronymus had grown very pale. "Burn--" he shouted once
more. He was about to go on when he felt himself turned round
by an irresistible power, by a physical preponderance to which
no resistance was even thinkable. Slowly and inexorably he was
propelled towards the door.

"I am weak," he managed to ejaculate. "My flesh cannot bear
the force...it cannot hold its ground, no...but what does that
prove? Burn--"

He stopped. He found himself outside the art-shop. M. Bl11-
thenzweig's giant packer had let him go with one final shove,
which set him down on the stone threshold of the shop, support-
ing himself with one hand. Behind him the door closed with a
rattle of glass.

He picked himself up. He stood erect, breathing heavily, and
pulled his cloak together with one fist over his breast, letting the
other hang down inside. His hollow cheeks had a grey pallor; the
nostrils of his great hooked nose opened and closed; his ugly lips
were writhen in an expression of hatred and despair and his red-
rimmed eyes wandered over the beautiful square like those of a
man in a frenzy.

He did not see that people were looking at him with amusement
and curiosity. For what he beheld upon the mosaic pavement be-
fore the great loggia were all the vanities of this world: the masked
costumes of the artist balls, the decorations, vases and art objects,
the nude statues, the female busts, the picturesque rebirths of the
pagan age, the portraits of famous beauties by the hands of mas-
ters, the elegantly bound erotic verse, the art brochures--all these
he saw heaped in a pyramid and going up in crackling flames amid
loud exultations from the people enthralled by his own frightful
words. A yellow background of cloud had drawn up over the
Theatinerstrasse, and from it issued wild rumblings; but what he
saw was a burning fiery sword, towering in sulphurous light
above the joyous city.

"Gladius Dei super terram . . ." his thick lips whispered; and
drawing himself still higher in his hooded cloak while the hand
hanging down inside it twitched convulsively, he murmured,
quaking: "cito et velociter!"


1902



FIORENZA



Time: the afternoon of the 8th of April 1492
Place: the Villa Medicca, Careggi, near Florence

Act One

The study of Cardinal Giovanni de' Medici, a private apartment
on the top floor of the villa. Tapestries on the walls; between them
bookshelves are built in, sparsely filled with books and scrolls.
Windows high up in the walls, with deep sills. Entrance centre
back, covered by a tapestry. On the left a table with a heavy bro-
cade cover; on it an ink-pot, pens, and paper. Before it an arm-
chair with a high back. Down stage right a sofa decorated with
the Medici arms; leaning against it a lute. On the right wall a
large painting with a mythological subject. In front of it an
hagere with ornaments.


I

On the sofa sits the young Cardinal Giovanni--seventeen years
old, in red skull-cap and mantle with broad white turn-over col-
lar. He has a charming, whimsical, effeminate face. On a chair
beside him Angelo Poliziano, in a long, dark, flowing robe with
full sleeves, finished at the neck with a narrow white collar. His
shrewd, sensual face, framed in grey curls, with a powerful aqui-
line nose and a mouth with deep folds at the corners, is turned
towards the Cardinal. The latter, being short-sighted, is using a
lorgnon shaped like a pair of scissors. Books lie heaped on the
carpet, some of them open. Poliziano holds a book in his hands.

POLIZIANO:...and at this point, Giovanni, my friend and son
of my great and beloved friend Lorenzo, I come back to the hope,
the justifiable and well-founded wish which the whole wisdom-
loving world, like myself, is looking to you to gratify. Do not
think I forget the respect I owe to your lofty position in the
hierarchy...

GIOVANNI: Pardon me, Messer Angelo! Have you not heard that
Fra Girolamo said of late in the cathedral that in the spiritual
hierarchy the Christian priesthood follows after the lowest of the
angels? (He giggles.)

POLIZIANO: What?...Perhaps...yes, I may have heard it. But no
matter. What I wish to make clear to you is this: that Christ's
vicar on earth, whose tiara in the course of events you will
very likely be called upon to wear, does nothing incompati-
ble with his holy office in carrying out the plan I have in mind,
which is that of all lovers of wisdom. You are aware, Giovanni,
that I refer to the canonization of Plato. He is divine, thus it is but
obeying the dictates of reason to make him a god. Star-gazers have
read in the heavens that the performance of this reasonable and
meritorious act has been reserved to the enlightened dynasty of
the Medicis; not only so, but it is altogether a fitting and logical
thing to do. And as for Christ, He Himself doubtless could but
sanction the canonization of the ancient philosopher. More than
once did the Sibyls explicitly prophesy the coming of Christ; I do
not need to remind my pupil of Virgil's pregnant lines. Plato
himself, as we have on the best authority, spoke of it in no
ambiguous terms; and we read in Porphyrius that the gods recog-
nized the rare piety and religiosity of the Nazarene; they con-
firmed the fact of His immortality and were on the whole favour-
ably disposed towards Him....In short, my dear Giovanni, I
pray that the gods will let me live to see the day which will bring
to fulfilment my oft-expressed hope. That day will be the ulti-
mate fruition of our Platonic studies together. (He sees that the
Cardinal is chuckling to himself.) Might I ask what it is that
amuses you?

GIOVANNI: Nothing, nothing, Messer Angelo--really nothing
at all. I was only reminded of what Fra Girolamo said of late in
the cathedral: "Plato's Symposium is marked by an indecent
pseudo-morality." That is good, isn't it? (Laughs.) I find it a
shrewd observation. All the same...

POLIZIANO (after a pause) : I am grieved, Giovanni, and I think
justifiably. You are inattentive this afternoon, you were extremely
inattentive all the time we were reading. I put it down to the un-
favourable circumstances, and the care which sits heavy upon us
all. Your glorious father is ill, and very ill, there are fears for his
life. But we place our hopes on the costly medicine which the
Jewish doctor from Pavia has administered to him; and, moreover,
it seems to me that philosophy, in our hour of need, should be our
loftiest and most grateful consolation. I might but too well un-
derstand it if the thought of your father should distract you from
your studies. But since I am driven to realize that your mind is
taken up with this absurd and fantastic mendicant friar, this Fra
Girolamo--

GIOVANNI: Whose mind is not taken up with him? Forgive me,
Messer Angelo! Do not be angry--look kindly at me; anger does
not become you. Only the beautiful, the formal, the pellucid
should be the subject of your talk. Do I love you or do I not?
Who knows all your verses, and almost your whole vintage of
Latin hexameters off by heart? Well, then! But this man from
Ferrara--I should like to talk about him a little. You must agree
that after all he is an original and arresting figure. He is the prior
of a mendicant order and as such despicable. These orders are the
object of general mirth and as often as I have been in Rome I have
been told that they are nothing but an embarrassment to the
Church. But when by reason of his own rare gifts one of these
despised Fratri not only overcomes the existing prejudice against
his class but turns it into admiration for his person--

POLIZIANO: Admiration! Who admires him? Not I. Certainly
not I. The rabble honours itself in his image.

GIOVANNI: No, no, no, Messer Angelo--he does not belong to
the rabble. And not only because he comes of an old and highly
respected Ferrarese family. I have heard him more than once in
Santa Maria del Fiore and I assure you that he impressed me as
a many-sided man. I grant you that he lacks culture and elegance
to an astounding degree. But a close view shows that even so he
must be constitutionally sensitive in both mind and body. Often
in the pulpit he has to sit down, so shaken is he by his own passion
--they say that he is so exhausted after every sermon that he has
to go to bed. His voice is marvellously soft, it is only his eyes and
his gestures that sometimes make it seem like crashing thunder.
I will even admit to you--when I am alone, sometimes, I take up
my Venetian mirror and try to imitate the way he hurls his light-
nings against the clergy, (Imitating) "But now I will stretch out
My hand, saith the Lord; I will fall upon thee, thou adulterous,
thou infamous, thou shameless Church! My sword shall fall upon
thy favourites, upon the places of thy shame, thy palaces and thy
harlots, and I will visit My justice upon thee...So it goes--but you
see I cannot do it. I should be a poor hand at preaching repent-
ance. Florence would laugh me to scorn, pert wench that she is!
Even less--though I am a cardinal and shall come to be a pope--
could I foretell events like him, who is but a begging friar, Messer
Angelo. More than a year ago he prophesied the coming deaths
of my father the Magnifico and of the Pope; may God forfend
that this prophecy be fulfilled. But even now so much has come
to pass that the jovial man who with such a pretty wit took the
name of Innocent has been lying for weeks in a stupor so that
the whole court has at times thought him dead; and my father
is so ill that this morning they gave him the sacrament. Anyhow,
that seems to have revived him; he was able to make a joke a-
bout it, although in a very feeble voice. But...

POLIZIANO: Your father overdid during carnival, that is all. There
was great excess at the artist balls, and Lorenzo loves beauty
and pleasure with such a burning love that he is too ready to
forget considerations of health. He plies the cup of love and joy
as though his body were as puissant as his wonderful soul. But
it is not....A child could foretell that some day he would have
to learn his lesson--and you attribute a miracle to this monk of
yours? Fie, Giovanni! Either you are a fool or you want to make
one of me, which is more likely. You would tell me of his visions;
how now and again he sees the heavens open, hears voices, and
beholds a rain of fire, of swords and arrows. I am willing to be-
lieve that this good Brother believes in his own revelations, I will
not laugh at their simplicity. But I hardly think that they would
visit him if he were a little more educated and disciplined, if his
gifts and his learning were not so hopelessly disorderly and
muddled.

GIOVANNI: I am convinced of that, it is perfectly true. All of us
are far too cultured and instructed to see visions; if we did have
them we would not believe in them. But he succeeds where we
fail, Messer Angelo!

POLIZIANO: You cannot talk of success where only the rabble
is won over, and that by flattering its miserable instincts. Other-
wise Florence must blush indeed in the sight of all Italy at the
success of this disgusting monk. I have been once in the Duomo
when he preached, this much-admired Prior of San Marco--and,
by all the Graces, Muses, and Nymphs, I will not go again! I have
always flattered myself that I knew something about eloquence--
but it seems I was mistaken. There was a time in Florence when a
preacher was admired for his choice and measured use of gesture,
word and phrase, his familiarity with the classic authors as dis-
played in apposite quotation; for his pregnant sayings, the clarity
and elegance of his language, the masterly structure of his sen-
tences, and for a voice of pure quality uttering harmonious ca-
dences. But these it seems are all nothing. Real superiority is the
achievement of a sickly boor with eyes like coals of fire, whose
gestures are out of all compass, who sheds tears over the decay of
chastity, cries down culture and the arts, vilifies the poets and
philosophers, quotes exclusively from the Bible, as though the
Latinity of that book were not execrable--and to cap all dares to
inveigh against the life and the government of our great Lorenzo.
(He has risen and strides excitedly up and down the room, the
Cardinal surveying him complacently through his lorgnon.)

GIOVANNI: By the Holy Virgin, Messer Angelo, how splendidly
wroth you are! You look at things with such conviction from a
single point of view--Brother Girolamo himself could not im-
prove upon your single-mindedness. Go on! I listen with the ut-
most enjoyment. Speak even more bitingly, more crushingly.
"Epicureans and swine"--he spoke of "epicureans and swine."
The phrase is in everybody's mouth. He referred to my father's
friends, to Ficino, to Messer Pulci, to the artists, presumably also
to you. (Laughs.)

POLIZIANO: Hearken, my Lord Cardinal--

GIOVANNI: Now, now! What ails you? Do I love you or do I
not? You are as right as you can be....

POLIZIANO: I do not say that I am right, but I say that I despise
this worm for imagining that he thinks he holds the truth in his
hands. One little smile, ye gods! One single sly ironic word! One
subtle sceptical allusion to raise him above the masses and put him
in touch with the cultured among his congregation! Then I could
forgive him all. But nothing, nothing, nothing of the kind. One
dismal indiscriminate condemnation of unbelief, immorality,
blasphemy, vice, luxury, and the lusts of the flesh--

GIOVANNI (shaking with laughter): Vaccae pingues--oh, my
God, did you hear what he said about the fat cows that graze on
the hills of Samaria? He spoke of them when he was expounding
Amos. "These fat cows," said he, "would you hear what they
mean? They mean the courtesans, all the thousands and thousands
of fat courtesans in Italy!" That is good--it is capital. Do not
deny it. It takes imagination to think of a thing like that, it is a
witty figure that sticks in the memory. Vaccce pingues. I shall
never see a fat cow again without thinking of a daughter of joy;
no, nor a priestess of Venus without thinking of a fat cow. I will
tell you a little discovery I have made. In wit, in the humorous
point of view, lies the strongest antidote to fleshly desire. I am not
a hang-dog, am I? I delight in statues, pictures, architecture, verse,
music, and the jest and have no other wish than to live tranquilly
in the enjoyment of these beautiful things; but I assure you that
I not infrequently find the temptations of love an inconvenience.
They destroy my balance, they cloud my happiness, they inflame
me more than is agreeable....Well, yesterday on the Piazza
fat Penthesilea went past my litter, the one that lives by Porta San
Gallo. I looked at her, and actually I did not feel the slightest
temptation. I was simply seized with such a fit of laughter that I
had to draw the curtains. She walked just like a fat cow that
grazes on the hills of Samaria!

POLIZIANO (indulgently): What a child you are, Giovanni, you
with your cows! Donna Penthesilea is a very beautiful woman,
versed in the arts and humanities, who does not at all deserve the
comparison. But I rejoice to hear that you can see the funny side
of your exhorter to penitence.

GIOVANNI: You are wrong there. I take him with all possible
seriousness. One must. He is a famous man. Our beloved Florence
knows well, I should say, how to annihilate with her wit people
who being without talents are so foolhardy as to expose them-
selves. He has made her quake. At least one must grant that in re-
ligious matters he has great gifts and much experience.

POLIZIANO: Much experience! Splendid! When a man has no
knowledge, then his inner experience, his inner light, make up for
everything. He disowns the ancients, he will naught of Crassus or
Hortensius or Cicero. He has not even the degree of Doctor of
Theology and he disdains all the wisdom of the world. He knows,
recognizes, and wants only himself, himself alone; he talks of
himself whatever he may be speaking of--yes, sometimes he deals
with episodes out of his private life and seeks to give them deep
significance--as though anybody of any education or good taste
could attach significance to what happened to this black bat of
a begging monk. A few days ago at Antonio Miscomini the print-
er's I came across a copy of his pamphlet On Love to Jesus Christ
--there have been, absurdly enough, seven editions of it within a
short time. Since our good Frate rejects the glorious dialogue of
Plato, I was curious to see what he himself would have to say
about love. What I read, my friend, was disgusting beyond all
expectation. A perfervid and chaotic mixture of gloomy and
fevered and drunken emotions, forebodings, and introspections
which struggled in vain for clear expression. It made me reel, I
felt actually nauseated. In all seriousness, I can well believe that
this sort of study must be a wearing occupation. I understand his
collapses and his fainting fits. Instead of running away from his
honoured parents and taking refuge in a cloister, to sit between
bare walls and stare into his own murky soul, this idiot ought to
have submitted to teaching and sharpened his own perceptions of
the colour and variety of the glorious material world. Then he
would realize that work is not a castigation and martyrdom but
a joyous thing, and that all that is good is blithely and easily ac-
complished. I wrote my drama Orpheus in a few days; and in face
of the beauty of this world my songs flow from my lips as I
drink, at the festal board--I do not need to go to bed after them.

GIOVANNI: Unless the wine were to blame! Yes, Messer Angelo,
you are the light of the age. Who can equal you? Who sees the
world so beauteous as you do? No one sings as sweetly as you.
No one so sweetly sings the praises of a lovely boy. Perhaps Fra
Girolamo has said to himself that an ambitious man must succeed
by contrast if he wants to compete with you....

POLIZIANO: Are you mocking me?

GIOVANNI: That I cannot tell. You ask too much. I never know
when I am mocking and when I am serious....Who is there?

An usher (luting the portihe at the entrance door) : The Prince
of Mirandola.

GIOVANNI: Pico! Let him come in. Shall he not, Messer Angelo?
He is welcome, is he not? (The usher withdraws.) Come hither,
do not be angry--do I love you, or do I not? You are in the
right, I own myself defeated. Brother Girolamo is a bat--there,
are you content? One must argue a bit, eh? If you had taken his
side I should have abused him with all my strength. Here is Pico.
Good day, Pico!

POLIZIANO: If you were less charming, you rogue, one might
be angry with you!


2

Giovanni Pico della Mirandola enters briskly, leaving his cloak
in the hands of the page and coming gaily forward. He is an ex-
uberant youth, elegantly and capriciously dressed in silken gar-
ments, with long, well-dressed blond locks, a delicate nose, a
feminine mouth, and a double chin.

PICO: How is the Magnifico? Good day, Vannino! Greeting,
Messer Angelo!...Whew! How hot I am! If you love me, signori,
get me a lemonade, cold as the waters of the Cocytus. (The
Cardinal, making a sign to Politian to remain, goes obligingly
to the door and gives the order in person.) By Bacchus, my
tongue is sticking to my teeth! What a warm April! The clock at
San Stephano in Pane said three, and it is as hot as ever. You must
know that I come from Florence, as fast as my horse would carry
me. I dined at your kinsmen's the Tornabuonis, Giovanni, and I
tarried there all too long. The Tornabuonis certainly set a good
table. We had fat French capons, my lad, very tender-fleshed, you
would have appreciated them. Yes, life has its charms. And Lo-
renzo--tell me the truth, how is he since this morning?

POLIZIANO: His condition seems unchanged since you saw him,
my Lord. The Cardinal and I are waiting for the court physician's
report on the effect of the draught of distilled precious stones
which Sor Lazzaro from Pavia has administered. To beguile the
heavy time we have been giving ourselves to our studies--from
which, to be sure, we were distracted by an unworthy subject--
but we have had no fresh report from Messer Pierleoni. Ah, my
gracious Lord, I am beginning to doubt the miraculous efficacy
of this much-lauded draught. He who brewed it forsook Careggi
at once--after receiving, by the bye, a sinfully high fee, and left
it to us to await the result of his ministrations. Would that they
might be manifest! My great, my beloved Master! Did I save you,
fourteen years ago in the cathedral, from the daggers of the
Pazzi, that you might be torn from me by a malignant illness?
Alas, wretch that I am, whither shall I turn if you join the shades?
I am but a vine which twines itself about you, the laurel, and must
pine away when you do. And Florence, what will become of her?
She is your mistress. I see her fading in her widows weeds--

PICO: Messer Angelo, I beseech you! This is a dirge and comes
too soon. Lorenzo lives, the while you sing his death. Your genius
carries you away....Tell me, has Messer Pierleoni yet expressed
himself decisively as to the nature of the illness?

POLIZIANO: No, my Lord. He explains, in phrases which the
lay mind finds hard to grasp, that the marrow of life is attacked by
decay. A horrible thought!

PICO: The marrow of life?

POLIZIANO: And most frightful of all is the inward unrest which
despite his weakness possesses the beloved patient. He refuses to
remain in bed. Today he has had himself carried in a litter into
the garden, into the loggia of the Platonic Academy, into various
rooms in the villa, and finds nowhere rest.

PICO: Strange.--Were you with your father today, Giovanni?

Giov.anni: No, Pico. And, between ourselves, being with him
is become so hard for me that I avoid it all I can. Father is so
changed. He has a way of looking at you--he rolls his eyes first
upwards and then turns them aside, with an agonizing expression;
...You do not know how frightful the proximity of illness and
suffering is to me. I become ill myself. No, it was Father brought
us up to brush calmly aside everything ugly, sad, or painful and
to keep our souls receptive only to the beautiful and the joyous.
It should not surprise him now--

PICO: I understand. But you should seek to overcome your
reluctance....Where is your brother?

GIOVANNI: Piero? How should I know? Riding, fencing (in
an effort to strike a lighter key again), perhaps with a fat cow--

PICO: With a--Ah, ha! Well, well, hark at little Giovanni! I
shall tell my prior that the Cardinal de' Medici no longer quotes
Aristotle but certain sermons....(A servant brings the lemon-
ade and goes out.) But now tell me. tell me! How did Lorenzo
take this latest news?

POLIZIANO: Which news, my Lord?

PICO: Brother Girolamo's latest joke...the scandal in the cathedral.

GIOVANNI and POLIZIANO: In the cathedral?

PICO: He doesn't know? Nor you either? So much the better.
Then I can tell it to you. Let me drink and I will.--That is a
beautiful spoon.

GIOVANNI: Let me see. Yes, it is charming. Ercole the gold-
smith made it. Clever man.

PICO: Lovely, lovely! The golden balls--what delicate foliage!
A very successful piece of work. Ercole? I'll give him an order.
He has taste.

GIOVANNI: The scandal, Pico!

PICO: True. I'll tell you. In the first place, it is about her.

POLIZIANO: Ah, about her....

GIOVANNI: Go on!

PICO: You know she attends the Frate's sermons?

POLIZIANO: I know--without comprehending why.

PICO: Oh, I comprehend it perfectly. In the first place it is
the women who are his most passionate worshippers, and par-
ticularly women who have loved much are the most powerfully
swayed by him--as is only natural. Besides, what do you want,
our Brother has become the fashion. His success goes beyond all
my expectations. And it is increasing steadily among the people
as well as among the aristocracy; even the fat bourgeoisie is be-
ginning to take notice. It is quite the fashion to attend his sermons
--I find it rather fanatical of you, Messer Angelo, if you will for-
give me, to keep aloof as you do. But to the point. The divine
Fiore is less self-willed. She has lately been going with fair regu-
larity to sit at the Frate's feet--which in itself would be a per-
fectly gratifying and even an exhilarating thing. The trouble is
that she does it in such an ostentatious and challenging way. What
she does is to appear in the cathedral nearly a half-hour too late,
when the sermon is in full swing; and even that might pass, for,
after all, she could do it quietly and unobtrusively. But here comes
in the fact that our divinity enjoys making itself felt and is even
more given to the pomp and splendour of a regal progress than
even her great lover Lorenzo himself; she shows much less re-
straint. A whole brilliantly dressed cortege surrounds her litter
and accompanies her ladyship into the middle of the church to
make a way for her through the crowd--which they do with no
great tact. I was present the first time when she made her entrance,
in the middle of the sermon. Her appearance would always at-
tract attention--but in the manner of its doing it made quite a
little commotion. The crowd pushed and shoved, whispered and
pointed, the people who had just been bowing to the lash of the
Frate's frightful prophecies twisted their necks round to enjoy the
proud and revivifying spectacle of this famous, sumptuous, di-
vinely beautiful woman as she advanced with her imperious air.
As for the Frate, I was afraid, at the moment he saw her, he
would lose his poise and the thread of his discourse. The word
he had on his lips took so long to utter, it seemed to be frozen.
He is always pale, but his face took on a waxen pallor, and never
shall I forget the uncanny flicker of his eyes, in which a flame
seemed to leap up, die down, and then blaze up again.

POLIZIANO: You tell the tale well, my lord--it is a veritable
pleasure to listen to the harmonious flow of your periods.

PICO: By Hercules, Messer Angelo, in the present case what I
have to tell is certainly rather more telling than the way it is told
and I would pray you to fix your attention more upon the matter
than upon the manner of the tale.

GIOVANNI: Matter, manner, tale, telling--bravo, Pico, bravo!

PICO: Hear me to the end. Since that day a silent, bitter struggle
has gone on between the divine Fiore and Brother Girolamo. Her
late appearance might seem the first time an aristocratic caprice,
but she has persisted in it so obstinately as to make it obvious that
she seeks to annoy the prior and his congregation. He on his side
took various measures to counteract her late appearance. He
spoke louder and more emphatically to drown out the noise her
retainers made. He lowered his voice to a mysterious whisper to
draw attention upon himself. He paused and let the condemnation
of his silence speak for him until Donna Fiore reached her place
and quiet was restored, when he resumed more violently than
before. The rest of us reap from the situation this advantage, that
when she is there he outdoes himself. Terror and tears accompany
his words; his audience quivers at the punishments he calls down
upon Florence for her luxury and frivolity; after such a sermon
people move about the streets half-dead and speechless. Often
when he talks of the world's extremity and of pity and redemp-
tion the very scribe who takes down his words must break off in
his task overcome by sobbing. The Frate has the art to touch the
conscience with a single word uttered with such uncanny stress
that the throng shudders as one man; it is very interesting to see
this and at the same time feel the shuddering within one's proper
breast. Naturally all this has made people attend the sermons in
greater crowds than ever....Our lovely mistress has not desisted
from her provocative behaviour--and today things came to a
climax, a catastrophe. Brother Girolamo has gone too far; I
would not defend him. He was carried away by his own per-
formance-listen to what happened. Even before dawn the ca-
thedral was full of people who wanted to make sure of a good
place. At sermon hour the crush inside and out was so great that
a pin could not have fallen to the ground. At the very least, ten
thousand people were present; those from outside of Florence
have been reckoned at more than two thousand. From villas and
from the countryside lords and peasants came by night not to miss
the sermon hour--there were even people from Bologna. The
crush between the Duomo and San Marco was frightful. The
authorities had a hard time protecting the Prior from the demon-
strations of the masses who wanted to kiss his hands and feet and
cut pieces from his frock. In Via Larga, near your palace, Gio-
vanni, a woman shrieked out that she had been healed of an issue
of blood by touching the prophet's hem. There was an outcry
that a miracle had happened and the crowd screamed Misericordia.
All the Fathers of San Marco, all the brotherhoods, and all the
world besides were gathered in the Duomo. There were members
of the Signoria and the red-caps of the College of Eight; men and
women of every rank and age, boys clambering on the pillars,
workmen, poets, philosophers. At last Brother Girolamo mounted
the pulpit. His gaze, that strangely fixed and burning gaze, was
directed upon the throng as he began to speak amid a breathless
and oppressive stillness. He spoke to Florence, addressed her with
the thou and in a frightfully slow, quiet voice questioned her
how she spent her days and how her nights. In chastity, in fear of
sensual lusts, in the spirit, in peace? He paused, awaiting an answer.
And this Florence, this thousand-headed host, bends beneath his
intolerable eye that sees through all, guesses all, knows all. "Thou
answerest me not?" he says....He draws up his sickly frame
and cries out in a terrible voice: "Let me tell thee!" Then begins
a pitiless reckoning, a Last Judgment in words, under which the
crowd writhes as under the rod. In his mouth every weakness of
the flesh becomes an intolerable, abominable sin. He names them
all by name, ruthlessly, with dreadful emphasis: vices which till
then have never been mentioned in holy places. And all are guilty,
he declares: Pope, clergy, princes, humanists, poets, artists, and
makers of feasts. He lifts his arms, and lo, a hideous vision, a devil-
ish, alluring picture rises from the maw of revelation: the whore
sitting upon many waters, the woman on the beast! She is arrayed
in purple and scarlet colour and decked with gold and precious
stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand full of abomi-
nations and filthiness of her fornication. And upon her forehead
was a name written. Mystery, Babylon the Great, the Mother
of Harlots. "That woman art thou, Florence, thou shameless wan-
ton and strumpet! Very delicate art thou, arrayed in fine linen,
painted and scented. Thy speech is wit and elegant euphony. Thy
hand rejects any instrument that bears not the mark of beauty,
thine eye rests voluptuously upon costly paintings and the statues
of nude heathen gods. But the Lord hath spewed thee out of His
mouth. Hark! Hearest thou not the voices in the air? Hearest
thou not the wings of destruction? Yea, then, the time hath come.
It is past. Remorse cometh too late. Judgment is at hand. I have
prophesied it unto thee a hundred times, Florence, but in thy
pleasures thou wouldest not hearken to the voice of the poor, wise
monk. Gone are the days of dancing, of pageantry, of obscene
songs....Unhappy one, thou art lost. The frightful darkness falls.
Thunder fills the air. The sword of the Most High flashes down
....Save thyself! Repent! Atone!...Too late! For the Lord looses
His waters over the kingdoms of the earth. The flood carries
away the masks and costumes of thy carnivals, thy books of
Latin and Italian poesy, thine adornments and thy tirings, thy
perfumes and thy veils, thy unchaste paintings, thy heathen
statuary. Seest thou the flames gleaming blood-red? Thou
art overrun with savage armies. Famine stalks grinning through
thy streets. The plague breathes over thee her stinking breath.
...The end cometh, the end cometh! Thou shalt be rooted out,
rooted out amid torments."--No, my friends, I am giving no
proper picture--my words cannot make you see his face, his
gestures, cannot make you hear his voice, cannot bring you under
the domination of his personal daemon. The multitudes groaned
as though on the rack. I saw bearded men spring up in a panic and
take to flight. A desperate, long-drawn wail for mercy was wrung
from the centre of the crowd: "Have pity!" And a deathly still-
ness....And then--his eyes grow dim. At the very moment
of uttermost terror a miracle comes to pass. The annihilating
wrath upon his countenance melts away. In overflowing love he
stretches forth his arms. "The miracle of grace!" he cries. "It
comes to pass! Florence, my city, my people, let me announce it
unto thee, grace is vouchsafed thee if thou dost penance, if thou
renouncest thy infamous revellings, if thou wilt dedicate thyself
as a bride to the King of humility and suffering. Lo, He, He"--
and he lifts the crucifix aloft--"He, Florence, would be thy
King. Wilt thou accept Him? Ye who are tortured by sin and
marked for affliction, ye poor in spirit, ye who know naught of
Cicero and naught of the philosophers, ye who are cast down and
rejected, ailing and wretched. He will lift you up, will comfort,
refresh, and give you cheer. Did not our blessed Thomas Aquinas
declare that the blessed in the heavenly kingdom will look down
and see the sufferings of the damned that their bliss might be
augmented? So shall it be. But the city which chooses Jesus as
its King is blest already in this earthly life. No more shall some
famish while others dwell among beautiful furnishings set upon
floors of mosaic. Jesus will have it and I as His vicar announce
that the price of meat be reduced to a minimum, to a few soldi
the pound; He wills that those who must pay a penance of five
measures of meal to a cloister shall give it to the poor instead.
He wills that the splendid gold vessels and the paintings in the
churches be turned into money and the proceeds distributed
among the people. He wills"--and just at that point, Giovanni,
Messer Angelo, in that moment of universal emotion, contrition,
abasement--just at that moment happened the thing which will
give the Florentines food for talk tor many a month to come.
There was a noise at the entrance, a clatter, a murmuring, a sound
of feet, which echoed and increased. The slanting rays of light
from the windows shone on steel, as the pike-bearers forced their
way into the nave, crying to the startled crowd to make way. And
into the path they opened stepped the divine Fiore with majestic
tread, among her retinue. The great pearl which Lorenzo lately
gave her gleamed like milk on her flawless brow. Her hands were
folded before her, her eyes lowered, yet seeing all, her lips curved
in an incomparable smile; she advanced slowly to her chosen posi-
tion opposite the pulpit. But he, the Ferrarese, broke off his sen-
tence abruptly, leaned in his prophetic wrath far out over the
pulpit, pointing down with arm outstretched straight into her
face: "Behold!" he cried, "turn ye and behold! She comes, she
is here, the harlot with whom kings have dallied on earth, the
mother of abominations, the woman on the beast, the great Baby-
lon!"

POLIZIANO: Terrible! The foul-mouthed wretch!

GIOVANNI: A little severe--but all's one.

PICO: No, no, do not judge, gentlemen! Since, unluckily for
you, you were not present, do not try to form an idea of the
tremendousness of that moment. Bear in mind that whatever he
sees becomes truth and presentness when he utters it. His white
hand stretching out of the dark sleeve of his habit trembled, as he
gazed straight and fixedly into her face, and until he let it fall the
exquisite Fiore was in very truth the apocalyptic woman, the
great Babylon in all its shameless splendour. The crowd, torn to
and fro by conflicting feelings, between damnation and grace,
overwrought and on fire, made no doubt of it at all. Hatred, fear,
and disgust spoke out of the thousand faces turned upon her.
A hoarse groaning sound arose, it seemed to thirst for her blood.
I too was looking at her and I swear to you, in verbo Domini, I
felt my hair rise on my head and cold shivers run down my back.

POLIZIANO: You look for such shivers, admit it, my Lord!

GIOVANNI: And she? And she?

PICO: She stood for perhaps the space of an Ave Maria rooted
to the spot. Then she drew herself up with a furious exclamation,
motioned to her following, and left the church. Rumours flew
about that she had ordered her people to murder him there in the
pulpit, but no one dared to approach. It is said too that a secret
messenger went from her to San Marco after the sermon. Cer-
tainly his frenzy led him seriously astray. I am in no wise defend-
ing him. Whatever provocation she gave, it was not the way to
treat such a woman. To curse her before all the people! Is she a
courtesan, then?

GIOVANNI (with a giggle): Yes!

PICO: By the great Eros, she is the Magnifico's mistress. That is,
I mean, it is not as though she were one of those who must wear
the yellow veil and live in certain streets. A flawless woman! We
know that, though born abroad, she is the natural seed of a noble
Florentine family. But even did we not know this, her brilliant
mind, her diverse gifts, her lofty humanistic culture would daily
and hourly bear witness to her origins. Her terza rimas and son-
nets are ravishing, her lute-playing has moved me to tears. She
knows by heart countless beautiful verses from Virgil, Ovid, and
Horace; and the grace with which she recited that very free story
from the Decamerone the other day after luncheon, in the garden
--I could have worshipped her for it! And if all this be not enough
to assure her of universal admiration, she is the woman to whom
our great Lorenzo's love belongs.

POLIZIANO: You have said it, my Lord. And I, is it I who must
teach you to interpret in the light of this fact the events you have
just described? Your penetration finds out so many things in hea-
ven and on earth, you are the phoenix of the intellect, the savant
of princes, the prince of savants--and you will not see what all
this means? The latest atrocity of this Ferrarese is nothing else
than a new act of hostility, a fresh piece of malice and imperti-
nence against the Magnifico himself and his house. Our divine
mistress has served the monk with no more contempt than he de-
serves; but the unbridled character of his revenge did not follow
the blind dictates of rage, it seized with intent and forethought-
edly the occasion for one of his insidious attacks on the man at
whose feet Florence has for two decades been lying transported,
the man whom even with his own cowardly tongue he names
"the Strong." You are a great man, who could rule a city and
conduct a war, did you not prefer to lead the life of a free lover
of wisdom; I am but a poor poet, possessing naught on earth but
my burning love for the house of the Medici, source of light, of
beauty, and of joy. But this love of mine bids me speak, bids me
snatch you back when in the rashness of youth you approach the
snake lying hidden in the grass. The conspiracy of the Pazzi,
when the beautiful Giuliano was slain in the cathedral and Lorenzo
himself would have suffered the same fate had not some god given
me strength at the last moment to close the door of the sacristy
behind him--that conspiracy was child's-play beside the infernal
machinations which--again in the same place, again in Santa
Maria del Fiore--are on foot against the Medici and their blithe
sway. The cheap successes which this viper has had from laying
bare the meannesses of his character to the masses have simply
turned his head. His zeal for human hearts, his craving to win
souls for his own ends, is daily more and more undisguised. My
Lord, do not fail to understand: his lowering face is set towards
power! And what if it should fall into his hands? Open your eyes
to what is happening and you will shiver with fright to see how
shockingly the number swells of those who throng about this
sorry despot and swallow the perverted and disingenuous mildness
of his doctrine. These pitiful, self-denying, beauty-hating folk
have been christened by more cheerful mortals with the nick-
name "The Weepers"--as one calls the paid mourners at a fu-
neral, you know. But in their self-abasement they have taken the
name as an honour, and it now forms the style of a political party,
opposed to the Medicis, whose head our monk reckons himself to
be. But more: young sons from the first families of the city, a
Gondi, a Salviati, brilliant and elegant youths, darlings of the gods
like yourself, have crawled to this sorcerer's feet and applied
for admission to San Marco as novices. The common folk are kept
stirred up and baited with promises; it has gone so far that some
good-for-nothings have stuck up lampoons in the form of son-
nets against Piero de' Medici at the cathedral and the palace. Oh,
my Lord, what did you do, what are you doing, calling this man
to Florence and paving his way bv your complaisance!

PICO: May we laugh at you a little, Messer Angelo, or will you
take it amiss? If you could only see your own face! Go look at
yourself in the glass! It looks as though you yourself belonged to
the "Weepers," to that very political party of which you speak!
Ha ha! Ye gods! A comic political party! So very important! I
beg you to teach me the nature of our Florentines, I know them
not, I have not studied them. They seem to me an uncommonly
tough and solid folk, and with passions one would best not stir
up. No, no, forgive me but I cannot take all this so seriously. For
so long as my observation holds, Piero has been unloved in Flor-
ence. His brusque and domineering way makes him unpopular
here; but certainly it is a bit too much to suppose a connection
between the lame sonnets against him and Fra Girolamo's ser-
mons. If Andrea Gondi and little Salviati find it the height of
good taste to don the cowl--do you want to prevent them? I
confess that I myself have already toyed with the idea. I believe
we are living in an age free from prejudice. Is it true that here in
Florence I can dress myself as I like, and express my personality
as strikingly as I choose without anybody pointing the finger?
Yes, it is true, true figuratively as well as literally. And if I tired
of sky-blue and purple and preferred the colourless sobriety of the
monk's habit? Why did you not object to the famous Procession
of the Dead, in which after so many high-coloured carnivals we
had corpses rising from their coffins? The effect was that of a
savoury after too much sweet. What did I do when I persuaded
Lorenzo to send for Fra Girolamo to Florence? I made the city
the present of a great man, by Zeus, and I am proud of it! Lorenzo,
I am sure, would be first to thank me. Did he not lately send to
Spoleto to ask that the body of Fra Lippo Lippi be sent to our
cathedral, that yet another might be added to our tombs of illus-
trious dead? When Brother Girolamo is once a dead body, the
Ferrarese and perhaps even the Romans will send us ambassadors
to beg for his ashes. But we will not surrender them. All Italy will
visit the grave of the much-talked-of monk and I shall be able to
say that it was I first discovered and fostered his genius. Yes, my
good sirs, I have won my game. I was far from certain of it--for
who can measure Fiorenza's whims? In that Dominican chapter-
house where I first saw him no one paid him much heed. I sat in
a circle of scholars and savants taking part in the chapter; he held
aloof, among his brethren, so long as the discussion turned on
scholastic matters. But when the question of discipline came up
he suddenly projected himself into it and astounded the whole
chapter by the almost superhuman originality of his words and
point of view. The state of the Church and of public morals all
at once appeared in a glaring and malefic light; I was extraordi-
narily shaken by the glowing enthusiasm and fanatic narrow-
mindedness of his discourse. And I was not alone. Several men
of superior intellect and rank, even princes, wrote to him after-
wards. But I sought his personal acquaintance and only strength-
ened thereby my first impression. Everywhere I went I sang his
praises. But then I moved to Florence and became absorbed in
the stimulating observation of this mobile, cultured, sharp-tongued
people, this restless little community forever seeking after new
things. And in a happy hour I conceived the plan of making my
influence felt to the point of having Brother Girolamo summoned
hither. His reputation was established, my praise had run before
him, he would have the chance to produce his effect. It was a bold
attempt, it involved a certain risk. I said to myself: "This man, in
this city, will either be drowned in laughter and spitted on the
point of a thousand jests--or he will have the greatest success of
the century." Sirs, it is the latter that has happened. I spoke with
my friend the Magnifico; the Magnifico spoke with the Fathers
of San Marco. Brother Girolamo was sent for. He began by in-
structing the novices. But in order to gratify the curiosity of cer-
tain privileged persons he was asked to admit them to the lessons.
The audience increased daily, he made no protest--my faith, he
certainly did not, for he was overwhelmed with requests to
mount the pulpit; connoisseurs, elegant dames, everybody ini-
plored him. He resisted at first, then he gave way. The little
Church of San Marco was full to overflowing, he preached to an
audience overwhelmed. His name was in every mouth. Platonists
and Aristotelians laid by their quarrel for the time to dispute over
these standards of Christian ethics. The monastery church be-
came presently too small for the throngs, and he moved over to
Santa Maria del Fiore. At first it was the cultivated amateur who
came; but now it is the lowly who are on fire, upon whose spirits
he practises with his melancholy gift of prophecy, his profound
judgment of life. The monks elected him prior; and San Marco,
which was no better and no worse then than other cloisters, be-
came a sanctuary of holiness. His writings are read with eagerness.
He is the talk of the town. Next to Lorenzo de' Medici he is the
most famous, the most talked-of, the greatest man in Florence.
And all this I behold with the liveliest satisfaction, in which,
good Messer Angelo, I mean not to allow your misgivings to dis-
turb me.

POLIZIANO: They shall not, my gracious Lord. Florence knows
me too, I believe, as anything but an alarmist. Let us assume that
it was merely envy whispering to me when I spoke--that I grudge
you a pleasure I do not understand and cannot share. For I admit
that I do not in the least grasp what is going on. Often have I
given thanks to the gods that I was born in this time of dawning
and new birth which seems to me as enchanting as the sunrise. The
world wakes and smiles, she draws a full breath and opens her
chalice to the light, she is like a flower new blossoming. All the
dim, hollow-eyed spectres, the cruel and hateful prejudices which
have haunted men for so long a night, melt away to nothing.
Everything is born afresh. A boundless, alluring kingdom of new
studies, long forgotten and undreamed-of, opens out. The labour-
ing earth presents to us fortunate ones all the treasures of antique
beauty. The individual is enlightened and set free to rejoice in his
own personality. Great and ruthless deeds are crowned with glory.
Art, innocent, nude, unfettered, paces through the land, and all
that she touches is ennobled. All human beings are filled with the
intoxication emanating from the divine; they follow their smiling
leader and their jubilation makes a cult of beauty and life. And
then--what happens? What next? A man, too ugly and rigid to
join in the dance of the elements, embittered, churlish, full of ill
will, rises to lodge a protest against our godlike state, and the poi-
son of his zeal is such that the ranks of the joyous thin, the deserters
crowd about him and behave as though what he says is something
vastly new, something unheard-of. And what is it he says? What
is it his whole being exhales? Morality! But morality is the oldest,
the boresomest, the most exposed and exploded idea in the world.
It is ridiculous. Or isn't it? Do you mean it isn't? Speak, my Lord
--what is your answer?

PICO: Nothing. For the moment nothing, Messer Angelo. For
I must savour in silence the after-taste of your exquisite words.
Glorious, glorious, what you said of the times we live in! "Like a
flower new blossoming."...I do beseech you to put it into
verse. I wonder if the ottava...or perhaps Latin hexameters--

GIOVANNI: You must answer, Pico, or own yourself beaten.

PICO: Answer? Willingly. But it seems to me that I have already
inquired whether we live in a time that is free from prejudice or
whether we do not. And if we do, then shall we set limits to our
freedom? Must our free-thinking become a religion and lack of
morals a species of fanaticism? I would repudiate the idea. If
morality has been made impossible, if it has become ridiculous--
well, then! Since in Florence the ridiculous is the greatest danger
of all, then the bravest man is he who does not fear it. He would
startle everybody. And in Florence to startle everybody is going
far towards winning the game. Ah, my friends, sin has lost much
of its charm since we got rid of our consciences! Look about you:
everything is permissible; at least nothing is disgraceful. There is
no atrocity that could make our hair stand on end. Today the
place swarms with atheists and people who assert that Christ per-
formed His miracles by the aid of the stars. But who has dared,
this long time, to make any head against beauty or art? Am I
blaspheming? Pray understand me. I am full of praise for those
who devoted themselves to art when it was the possession of a few,
and morality sat stolidly entrenched on her throne. But since
beauty has been crying aloud in the streets, the price of virtue has
gone up. Let me whisper a little piece of news in your ear, Aiesser
Angelo: morality is possible once more!

GIOVANNI (who has been looking out of the window through
his lorgnon): Wait, Pico! I see some guests down there in the
garden--you simply must say all this to them.

Pico (looking out): Guests? Why, so there are. They are art-
ists, a whole host of them. There is Aldobrandino...and Grif-
one...and the great FRANCESCO ROMANO. Talk to them? Not to
them, my dear Giovanni. It is not for them. But let us go down
all the same. Come, Cardinal--and you too, singer of the glories
of the house of the Medici. Let us enjoy ourselves with the brave
lads.

POLIZIANO: You hear naught, you will hear naught. But I see
sinister things coming to pass.



Act Two

The garden. A view of the palace, behind which the open cam-
pagna, covered vnth cypresses, stone pines, and olive trees, melting
into the grey-green rolling horizon. A wide centre path, with
smaller ones branching right and left, flanked by hermae and potted
plants, runs from the house to the front of the stage, where it
opens into a rondel, with a fountain in a stone basin, where water-
lilies float. Right and left front stand marble benches shaded by
flat bowers of foliage like little canopies.

I

A group of eleven persons appear on the left-hand path and
move forward, in lively conversation. They are the painter and
sculptor Grifone, a fair man who walks with a bent, slouching
gait--he wears a beard and has large bony hands; Francesco
Romano, an impressive figure with a capacious forehead like a
Roman portrait bronze, full, smiling mouth, and black, animal
eyes which rove calmly from side to side; Ghino, blue-eyed, boy-
ish, and sunshiny; Leone, with a round head like a faun's, a pow-
erful nose, little eyes set close together, and a satyr-beard through
which one can see his curling lips; Aldobrandino, a noisy swag-
gering fellow with a red, smirking face; the embroiderer Andre-
uccio, a man already grey and with a gentle, feminine air; Guidan-
tonio, the cabinet-maker; Ercole, the goldsmith; Simonetto, the
architect; Pandolfo and Dioneo, of whom the one makes ara-
besque sculpture and the other portrait busts in wax. With the
exception of Ghino, who is rather a dandy, they are negligently
and comfortably dressed, with headgear of varying sorts, square,
round, and peaked. As they come forwards on the middle path
they are discussing with some excitement, pushing each other out
of the way, approaching their faces to each other, and gesticulat-
ing.

ALDOBRANDINO: We shall see, we shall see the face Lorenzo will
make! I am his friend, I am justified in hoping that he will see me
avenged.

GUIDANTONIO: If I were you I would not make so much noise
about the beating you got.

ALDOBRANDINO: Nobody is talking about a beating, you numb-
skull. It was a buffeting.

GRIFONE: On my soul, you are right, there. The crowd gave
vou such a plenty of buffets that you could drive a donkey to
Rome with them.

ALDOBRANDINO: Shall I pass them on to you, you funny man,
you Jack-of-all-trades? They were buffets--and even had they
been a beating they could not have shaken the honour of a man
like me! The silly mob had been stirred up by that owl of a Fra
Girolamo, an ignoramus who knows as much about artistry as an
ox does about playing the lute. What does he want anyhow? Can
I paint the Madonna looking a ragged old woman as this prayer-
mumbler demands? No, I must have colour, I must have bright-
ness. And since the Holy Virgin will not do me the honour of sit-
ting for me, I must be satisfied if a mortal maiden will serve my
turn.

Leone (delighted): "Serve his turn"--if a maiden will serve
his turn--oh, you sly fellow!

ALDOBRANDINO: You are pleased to be very merry, my dear
Leone. However, everybody knows that your pretty little Lau-
retta, who is sitting as your model for the Magdalena, promptly
bore you a child. But you probably have some charm against
beatings.

GRIFONE: Buffets, buffets! We do not speak of beatings.

LEONE: That is different. I did not take her to sit for the Mag-
dalena and then abuse her for my own pleasure; I keep her for
my pleasure and happen to be using her for a model. That is
very different--the Madonna could take no exception to that.

ALDOBRANDINO: But Brother Girolamo can, you numbskull,
and that's enough, in these days.

ERCOLE: Yes, God keep us, he is so strict, he would give Saint
Dominic himself the strappado for nothing at all. He pretends
to the people that like Moses he has spoken face to face with God;
since then they listen abjectly to him; he can say anything he
likes.

SIMONETTO: That is true. We saw today in the Duomo how
horribly he sat in judgment upon Madonna Fiore.

DIONEO: Where is she? Does anyone know where she is?

PANDOLFO: She is with the Magnifico, telling him the whole
story.

GUIDANTONIO: No, she cannot be in Careggi yet. Before we
came away she was seen in the city.

ALDOBRANDINO: Messer Francesco, you stand there and say
nothing, as your way is, smiling as usual too. But the world knows
that your house is furnished in pagan style, like an ancient Ro-
man's, and that your paintings are a different kind from the
blessed Angelico's.

GRIFONE: You are furious because it was you who received the
beating.

ALDOBRANDINO: Oh, Grifone, not for nothing are you nick-
named Buffone, for you are indeed but a buffoon. You can do
nothing but organize pageants and wait upon princes with your
jests; and so you are annoyed with me because I am a clever
painter. Sew ass's ears on your cap, fool! I go now to the Mag-
nihco.

ANDREUCCIO: No, wait, listen! Lorenzo is very ill; we may not
crowd in on him as we used to, like carnival masks. When we
came, I saw the Cardinal at the window. He made a sign as though
he would come down. We ought to wait.

GHINO (in a loud, clear voice): Listen to me! We must go at
the business all together. The guild of Florentine painters must
lodge a protest against Brother Girolamo with the Council of
Eight. And those of us who belong to Lorenzo's musical club
must combine to demand that the Ferrarese's mouth be stopped.

ALDOBRANDINO: You may do as you like. But I shall appeal to
Lauro alone. He is master, the priest is not. Those scoundrels who
dared to lay their filthy hands on me--he will have their ears cut
off, he will order them trussed up outside the palace .I am his
best friend, he loves me. I came back from Rome expressly be-
cause he was ill. I came back from Rome in eight hours!

GRIFONE: What! In eight hours from Rome?

ALDOBRANDINO: Yes, in seven and a half.

GRIFONE: What, what? And Lauro's best friend? When is he
supposed to have distinguished you thus? And did not I come
back from Bologna and Rimini, where I have work at the court,
on purpose because of his illness?

ALDOBRANDINO: Silence, buffoon! You hate me, I know, you
are my deadly enemy, because you are from Pistoia, and our
subject, whereas I am a Florentine and by birthright your over-
lord.

GRIFONE: What, what? My overlord? You are a braggart. A
beaten braggart!

ALDOBRANDINO: Draw, draw, you empty-headed fool, draw the
sword at your side and defend yourself or I will murder you with
no more ado. I have been mortally insulted and am ready to com-
mit a frightful deed.

ANDREUCCIO: Stop! Keep the peace! Look over there!

LEONE: By Venus! By the Mother of God! It is she--she
comes!

GHINO (rapturously): Let .us salute her! Let us all serve her!


2


A gilded and decorated litter, hung with lanterns and silken
curtains, comes to a stop at the back of the stage. Fiore descends,
casts a glance over her shoulder at the group of artists, and signs
to the bearers to carry it away. She stands still for a moment, then
comes slowly fronts in the attitude Pico has described, with arms
bent at right angles, hands folded before her, slender, straight,
with her head back and her eyes cast down. She has a splendid
and curiously artificial beauty. The impression she gives is of
height, slenderness, symmetry, poise; she is almost masklike. Her
hair is confined in a thin veil, from which it flows down upon her
cheeki in blond, regular curls. The brows above her rather long
eyes have been artificially removed or made invisible, so that the
hairless part above the drooping lids seems drawn upwards with
a searching expression. The skin of her face is taut and as it were
polished, her delicately chiselled lips are closed in an ambiguous
smile. About her long white throat is a fine gold chain. She wears
a gown of stiff brocade, with tight, dark sleeves a little slashed. It
is so cut as to make the abdomen prominent and is open at the
breast to display the laces of her bodice.

THE ARTISTS (pressing towards her with loud homage, some of
them even kneeling and raising their arms in greeting): Hail,
Fiore! Hail to our divine mistress! Hail!

FIORE (still without raising her eyes, with chill authority, so
quietly that all grow still as she speaks): You will lay aside your
weapons.

ALDOBRANDINO: Yes, mistress! We will put them up--see, they
are gone.

FIORE: You call yourselves artists?

GRIFONE: Madama, you know well that we are artists.

FIORE: But it seems you yourselves know it not, since you are
capable of taking something very different so seriously. (Pause.)
A light art, a childish art, that leaves untasked so much blood,
so much virility.

ALDOBRANDINO: Mistress, I have been mortally insulted.

FIORE (scornfully and still very softly): Oh, of course, then,
if you were mortally insulted--

GHINO: You speak very strangely today, madama.

FIORE: Really? Do I confuse you? Do I confound your feeble
brain, poor thing, poor little...Let me see, what is your name?

GHINO (offended): You usually know me.

FIORE: It is true. You are Ghino, the amiable Ghino, the perfect
cavalier, Ghino the dancer, who always smells so sweet. One
hears that even your horse is scented when you ride out. And over
there is Guidantonio, who makes the beautiful chairs. Look, and
there is Leone. Good day, sir. I hope you had a delightful night

ALDOBRANDINO (unable to keep still): Madonna...you too have
been mortally insulted today.

FIORE: I insulted? By whom?

ALDOBRANDINO: Dear and most beautiful lady--this friar....

FIORE: What friar? A real story-book friar? Oh, I know. Did I
not see you today in the cathedral? And you? And you? I went
to amuse myself. You were quite a sight. I saw you go white up
to your eyes.

ALDOBRANDINO: With anger, lady, with anger.

FIORE: Of course. You could not even compress your lips--
you felt quite weak with the strength of your heroism. I saw.

ALDOBRANDINO: The villain! The Jew! The knave--who dared
to slander you--

FIORE: Hark, what a fine flow of words! Before long you will
equal your Frate himself, my stout Aldobrandino. Come, join in,
you others! Do not lag behind. It will mightily relieve you to
rave, for your wrath in the cathedral left you no strength for
deeds.

ALDOBRANDINO: Deeds! By all the gods, madonna, you do ill to
mock us. Just now before you came we were taking counsel how
to put a stop to this abuse. But what can we do? Lorenzo loves
us; but a word from you carries more weight than all our protesta-
tions. If you so willed, the doom of the Ferrarese would be sealed.
They would cut off his tongue that slandered you, batter in his
chest as he deserves--in short, they would kill him.

FIORE (with a sudden outburst of violence): Kill him, then!
(With a swift movement she has drawn a stiletto from her bodice
and holds it out to Aldobrandino.) Do you see this dainty little
weapon? Here at the tip the blade is a little brown....Take it!
The stain is from a powerful potion in which I have dipped it,
One scratch is enough. Take it! Instead of standing there rolling
your eyes. Take it, Ghino the preux chevalier! Or you, Guidan-
tonio, maker of beautiful chairs! Or Francesco the Roman! You
that look like a butcher of antiquity. He is only a feeble priest

ALDOBRANDINO: Madonna, we could not get to him. He stops in
San Marco. And the people love him....And he is guarded when he
goes to the Duomo.

FIORE (looking at him): He is coming here.

THE ARTISTS (together): He is coming here? Who? Who?

FIORE: Brother Girolamo. Here. Today.

ALDOBRANDINO: Brother Girolamo...coming here?

FIORE (puts away the dagger; in a changed voice); I was jesting.
I was having my joke with you. No, it is not true--a fantastic
idea! Brother Girolamo--here!--Let me now take my leave of
you.

ALDOBRANDINO (still a little out of countenance): You are going
to Lorenzo?

FIORE: Lorenzo lies groaning in his bed. It goes very ill with the
great Lorenzo. I feel like walking a little in the garden.

GHINO: And may we not enjoy the delights of your society?

FIORE: All praise to your courtesy. But even at the risk of seem-
ing moody and unsocial in your eyes I would forgo the treasure
of your company. (She withdraws.)


3


GHINO (returning after having escorted her a little way): She
is magnificent, she is divine, she is marvellous beyond all belief!

GUIDANTONIO: Well, she was not too polite about getting rid
of you.

GHINO: That is nothing. Nothing at all. One is in raptures, just
seeing her.

ALDOBRANDINO: One is in raptures if she takes the smallest notice
of one. And if she will not, one struggles even more to win just
a single second of her attention, to lure from her one single smile,
one nod of approval. If we watch ourselves we shall find that we
think of her when we work. It is her beauty that moves us to
create....

THE OTHERS: Yes, yes!

ALDOBRANDINO: Ye gods, how happy must he be to whom she
belongs, before whom she kneels, by whom she was subdued!

ERCOLE: Did you hear how strangely she spoke of Lorenzo?

SiMONETTo: All that she said was strange to hear.

ANDREUCCIO: All that she said seemed to conceal something else.

LEONE: She asked me how I enjoyed last night. That was rather
strong.

ALDOBRANDINO: She may say anything. She says the most im-
pudent things in so charming a way that it is like angels' music.

PANDOLFO: I did not know that she was armed.

DIONEO: a dangerous mistress!

ALDOBRANDINO: She is a bold, mature, and independent woman.
The weapon suits her gloriously.

ANDREUCCIO: Perhaps it was the very tool with which her
father once threatened the Medici, when he was exiled, in Luca
Pitti's time.

LEONE: I did not believe that story. I do not believe that she
is the natural child of any exiled nobleman. When Zeus dethroned
Chronos he robbed him of a member, an important one, and threw
it in the sea. So strangely wed, the sea brought forth--our Lady.

GRIFONE: Not bad! In that case she would be a pretty age!

LEONE: Do you know how old she is? No one knows. If it is
possible for her to age she conceals it well.

GHINO: That is true. They tell wonderful things about her
beauty lotions and potions. They say she stays all day in the
sun, to bleach her hair. They say that she even paints her teeth.

ALDOBRANDINO: Many people say that she uses magic. They
tell it for a fact that she has bewitched Lorenzo, so that he is con-
suming himself with love of her. She boiled the navels of dead
children in oil taken out of the sacramental lamps and gave them
to him to eat.

GRIFONE: Rubbish--I don't believe any of that.

ALDOBRANDINO: You do not believe any further than the end
of your nose, and you are proud of it! It is true, people are en-
lightened enough today not to take everything for gospel truth,
as they used to. But there is such a thing as going too far. I don't
believe in transubstantiation--no, it is a ridiculous doctrine, and
my cousin Pasquino, who is a priest, told me expressly that he
does not believe it either. But that there are witches in Fiesole and
many courtesans resort to magic arts to ensnare men are proven
facts.

LEONE: Proven facts! All women are witches--I know it, I!

ALDOBRANDINO: Believe me, there are miracles in the world,
and if I cared to tell--

GHINO: There is our worshipful Lord Cardinal.


4


Cardinal Giovanni, Pico della Mirandola, and Angelo Poliziano
walk down the centre path from the palace. Poliziano has a peaked
cloth cap on one side of his head, Pico a round head-covering
turned up a little in the back. There are lively greetings; on the
part of the artists a sort of intimate or ironically exaggerated re-
spect. They group themselves easily on the seats at both sides and
on the border of the fountain.

GIOVANNI: Greetings, gentlemen. We find you in weighty con-
verse?

ALDOBRANDINO: Philosophic matters, questions of faith, revered
sir. We were discussing the supernatural.

PICO: About which, I trust, your views accord with the teach-
ings of Holy Church.

ALDOBRANDINO: Absolutely, illustrious sir! In all essentials, per-
fectly. I think I may call myself a pious man. I observe the usages
of religion and always when I finish a painting I burn a candle.
I was at the sermon in the cathedral today. But I got a sorry
reward, my dear sirs, let me tell you that!

GIOVANNI: A sorry reward? How so, Aldobrandino?

ALDOBRANDINO: I will tell you, worshipful sir; I will tell you
and your glorious father, for to that end I came hither. I have been
mishandled.

PonziANo: Mishandled?

GUIDANTONIO: The populace beat him, before the cathedral,
after the sermon.

POLIZIANO: After the sermon? (Reproachfully, to Pico) My
good Lord!

PICO: They beat you, Aldobrandino mio? Come hither. Where
have they struck you? Who has struck you? Tell me all.

ALDOBRANDINO: That will I, sir, and my own innocence will
leap to the eye. Well, I was in the cathedral, where I had man-
aged to get a small space to set my feet. It was frightfully hot in
the press, I could scarce breathe and the sweat poured off me; but
what will not one endure for the glory of God?

PICO: And to satisfy one's curiosity.

ALDOBRANDINO: Of course. I wept a good deal too, though I
could not even see Brother Girolamo from where I was. But
everyone was weeping and it was edifying to the last degree. I
was most shocked at what occurred with Madonna Fiore; and I
had scarce recovered from my surprise when I heard Brother
Girolamo talking about art and pricked up my ears with a venge-
ance. His point of view is strange, it differs from mine in essen-
tials. He said that it is wrong and wicked to paint the blessed
Virgin in sumptuous robes of velvet, silk, and gold, for so he
told us angrily, she wore the garments of the poor. Very good;
but what if the garments of the poor have not the faintest interest
for me? What then? I have the greatest respect for the Holy
Virgin--may she pray for me, poor sinner, before the throne of
God! Amen, amen! But when I am at work I am less concerned
with her than I am that a certain green should look well next a
certain red--you can understand that, my Lord!

PICO: Certainly I can, my Aldobrandino.

ALDOBRANDINO: But he maintains that it is vicious, and a mortal
sin, to paint prostitutes and dissolute women and give them out
as Madonnas and Saint Sebastians as we do today. He demands
that it be punished by torture and death. Well, all Florence knows
that I have just finished a Madonna for which a very beautiful
girl sat to me, who lives with me for my pleasure. Laugh at me if
I am boasting, sirs, but it is a glorious painting. I wrote a sonnet
about it when it was done, and while I worked upon it I constantly
felt that a halo of light hovered about my head.

Pico (gravely): You are right, Aldobrandino, your Madonna is
a masterpiece.

ALDOBRANDINO: Pico Mirandola, you are a great connoisseur, I
bend my knee before you. Good. Well, when the sermon was over
and I was outside in the crowd that accompanied the father back
to San Marco, some scoundrel looks me in the face and cries:
"Here is one of those sons of Belial who paint the Madonna as a
prostitute!" And at that the whole crowd turned against me in
a brutish rage, struck at me with the peaks of their hoods, be-
laboured me with their elbows, almost trod me underfoot--I
could not raise my arms, my whole body was tightly wedged in.
I spat in the face of the man next me, but that was a poor defence.
It is a miracle, I tell you, that I escaped with my life. God must
desire me to make a few more things of beauty, since He saved me.

POLIZIANO: You see now, my Lord, to what we have come?

PICO: That I knew nothing, my Aldobrandino--that I could
not come to your aid! For I cannot have been far off.

ALDOBRANDINO: Let me have my arms free, my Lord, and I need
no saviour. I have a stout heart in my breast, as I have shown in
more than one adventure. I have defended myself against three--
it was yesterday it befell me, on my way from Rome, where I had
commissions. You know that I hurried hither without stopping,
on account of my patron's illness. Well, I was not far from Flor-
ence; already I could see in my mind's eye the gate of Saint Peter
Gattolini. It was growing dark; I was on foot and alone. I was
striding vigorously through the pass you know when two vil-
lainous-looking creatures, who had been hiding in the bushes,
flung themselves upon my path, and as I turned I saw a third be-
hind me. Do you understand what the game was? Three rogues
tall as cypress trees, fearful to behold, armed to the teeth. Tney
may have been bravoes hired by envious rivals, or common thieves
with an eye on my money--in any case my situation was desper-
ate. "Well," thought I, "if I must die, they shall not get my life
for nothing!" I drew most nimbly, set my back to the wall of
the defile, struck up a Miserere at the top of my lungs, and when
the first one made a pass at me I dealt him such a blow on the head
that the sparks flew out of his eyes and he sank lifeless to the
ground. The others were seized with terror at my ferocity. They
crossed their arms on their breasts and begged me of my mercy to
let them go--which I did, in charity, as a Christian man. So they
made themselves scarce, with the corpse of their accomplice,
while I continued on my journey safe and sound.

GRIFONE: Now, by all the angels, what a thumping lie!

ALDOBRANDINO: God send me my death with a plague of tu-
mours--

PICO (coolly): Oh, are you there, Grifone? I overlooked you
until now. Seems to me, though, you ought to be on your travels?

GRIFONE: So I have been, and in your service, my Lord. What
a memory you have! I was on my travels, I got back only yester-
day. I had been given honourable and important commissions. I
have arranged a pageant for the Malatesta in honour of the name-
day of his illustrious wife; also Messer Giovanni Bentivoglio
found employment for my diverting talents. A witty and generous
prince! He gave me a present of doubloons to sit at table and imi-
tate all the dialects of Italy or assume the facial expression of
various famous men. It is undeniable, my Lord, men like me must
go a journeying to learn to set off their talents. In Florence there
is already too much wit. But in Lombardy or the Romagna one
can come into one's own.

PICO: I congratulate you. But tell me--you are a painter, are
you not?

GRIFONE: Certainly, my Lord, that is my trade.

PICO: And it happens from time to time that you paint a pic-
ture?

GRIFONE: From time to time. Yes, my Lord, it happens. But
not often, since I am active in so many fields. Lately I have been
making violins, that is a joy. But first and foremost I am a designer
of carnivals, the organizing of festivals is my proper sphere of art.
I have hurried hither to Florence because the May-day festival
in Piazza Santa Trinita is close at hand. Good God, it is the eighth
of April, high time to begin. Easter is not far off either; and I
must think up something new for the next carnival.

PICO: But it seems to me carnival is just over.

GRIFONE: Yes, it was a little while ago. But my friends and I are
racking our brains over the next one. The carnival procession, my
Lord--Orpheus with his beasts, Caesar with the seven virtues,
Perseus and Andromeda, Bacchus and Ariadne, all that is stale as
nuts. The crowd whistles and boos when we serve it up such stuff.
And now, after our Procession of the Dead--truly I am at a loss.

PICO: Florence counts upon your creative energy. But I was
talking with Aldobrandino, and you interrupted us. Retire, my
friend.--Aldobrandino, let us return to your affairs. If I under-
stand you, you are come to complain to the Magnifico....

ALDOBRANDINO: By my salvation, my Lord, that I am!

PICO: Do not, Aldobrandino, I implore you. You shall have
satisfaction--or, rather, you bear your satisfaction within your-
self. A man like you! So exceptional an artist knows that the
esteem of all knowledgeable men is on his side. What do you care
for the ephemeral hatred of the ignorant herd?

ALDOBRANDINO: Yours are glorious words, my Lord. I only--

PICO: But as for Lorenzo, he must on no account be disturbed.
You know that he is ill--in what degree one dares not think, who
loves him. It is essential to shield him from aught that might cloud
or weaken his spirits....

ALDOBRANDINO: If that is so, I gladly spare him, though it is ill
to forget an injury which one has borne in silence. But the gods
know that I love him in my heart above all men.

PICO: Well said, my Aldobrandino. You are a shrewd and indus-
trious man. Keep your word and it shall bear fruit....

POLIZIANO (at some distance, to some other artists): Truly, dear
friends, we know nothing. We await the judgment of the doctor
from Spoleto on the effect of the precious draught.

ANDREUCCIO: It is desirable that we should be able to spread
good reports about the city. The people are restless.

GUIDANTONIO: Yes, they are in pessimistic mood. Evil signs have
been seen.

GHINO: In the lion's cage at the palace one of the animals tore
another to pieces. There are people who put a sinister interpreta-
tion on that.

ERCOLE: Some purport to have heard the saints sighing at times
in the churches.

SiMONETTO: Many witness to it. And a fruit-seller in Piazza San
Domenico swears that the Madonna in his shop has several times
rolled her eyes.

ALDOBRANDINO: Quiet there, let me speak. All that is nothing
co.mpared to what I have seen. This morning when I was taking
a walk outside the gates, it rained blood,

GRIFONE: Nonsense. It never rains blood. There is no blood in
the clouds.

ALDOBRANDINO: My Lord Giovanni, will you instruct this
heretic that according to our holy religion such a thing is quite
possible?

GIOVANNI: Possible or not, when my father is well again it will
rain good Trebbiano, a liquid which for my part I greatly prefer.

ALDOBRANDINO: To blood. Aha, that is capital! Liquid! Treb-
biano is a liquid, of course, but the joke is to call it one.

ANDREUCCIO: No, no, gentlemen, the thing is that the Padre
prophesied the death of the Magnifico. That is what makes the
people restless.

Pandolfo: The scoundrel! He sings the same dirge in every
sermon. And threatens war, starvation, and pestilence to boot.

ANDREUCCIO: He has a saturnine temper.

Dioneo: What rubbish! It is hatred speaks out of him, green-
eyed envy.

ERCOLE: All the Ferrarese are avaricious and envious.

ANDREUCCIO: You cannot sav that he is avaricious. He brought
back poverty into San Marco and goes about in a worn-out habit.

LEONE: Do defend him, Brother Andreuccio the art-embroid-
erer. You are an old woman.

Guidanton'io: Easy to see he has made an impression on you.
You belong to the Weepers, the bead-tellers, the head-hangers.

ANDREUCCIO: That I do not, certainlv not, dear friends. But my
mind is full of misgiving, and mv heart is heavy. You know, gra-
cious Prince, and you. Lord Cardinal, that I not only serve the
arts with my hands, making beautiful embroideries and carpets,
but also sometimes speak in public in favour of the manual arts
and the beautifying of our whole life. Everything, it has seemed
to me, must become art and good taste under the house of the
Medici my masters. And I still think so. But there is a thorn in my
flesh. You see, not long ago I was speaking to a great concourse
of people about the artistic progress that has been made in the
production of gingerbread; for, as you know, we now make
gingerbread in all sorts of charming and amusing shapes, after the
modern ideas. Well, Brother Girolamo must have got wind of my
dissertation, for when I attended one of his last sermons in the
Duomo he came to speak of it and looked at me as he did so. He
said that whoever tried to turn higher things into common things
had no conception of their significance; that it is frivolous and
childish to talk about making beautiful gingerbread when thou-
sands have not even the coarsest bread to eat to satisfy their hun-
ger. The congregation sobbed and I hid my face. For his words
are like whizzing arrows, my lords, they hit the mark! Since then
I have been going about grieving and in doubt; for I know not
whether my work and my activity were right all this time, or
wrong.

POLIZIANO: Shame, shame, Andreuccio! You have not the heart
of an artist, else you would not give ear to this creature who daily
calumniates art with his vulgar hatred.

ANDREUCCIO: Does he hate art? I do not know. He speaks lov-
ingly of the work of the blessed Angelico. Believe me, his thoughts
are on fire with inward fervour. (With an effort) Suppose he has
such reverence for art that he thinks it blasphemous to apply it
to gingerbread?

ERCOLE: Whoever can understand that may! What I understand
is that this loathsome mendicant friar would like to suppress all
joy and light-heartedness in Florence. The feast of San Giovanni
is to be abolished, the carnival--

GRIFONE: What, what? The carnival?

ERCOLE: Yes, he wants to abolish it. You would have to look to
it, Grifone, how to earn your bread, after that. You will have to
start painting pictures.

GIOVANNI: Come, tell me more about him. I want to hear what
else he says. He is a most extraordinary man.

GUIDANTONIO: Well, I can assure your Eminence that the Prate
uses some pretty strong language. He treats the Pope more scur-
vily than a Turk, and the Italian princes worse than heretics. He
prophesies a speedy fall for you and your family; prophesies in a
roundabout and uncanny way. He speaks of certain great wings
which he will break. He speaks of the city of Babylon, the city
of fools, which the Lord will destroy; but everybody knows that
he means your father's house and his power. He describes pre-
cisely the architecture of this city: he says it is built of the twelve
follies of the godless--

GRIFONE: Wait! What? Twelve follies? That would be some-
thing for my pageant. Listen! (Pleased and excited, he draws aside
another artist and begins to talk and gesticulate to him.)

GHINO: I, your Eminence, have received the commission from
the printer Antonio Miscomini to make woodcuts for the new
edition of the Prate's works.

POLIZIANO: What? And you have accepted the commission?

GHINO: Certainly.

PICO: He was right, I think, Messer Angelo. The dissertations
on prayer, humility, and love of Jesus Christ are capital literary
performances. And they will be enhanced by Ghino's pictures.

GHINO: That last was not Brother Girolamo's view, I may say.
Imagine: he protested against the adornment of his works. He
wanted no pictures. Did you ever hear the like? But Signor
Miscomini was shrewd enough to insist that the book have a
suitably elegant appearance. I ask you: who would read a book
today that has no satisfaction for the eye and only contains the
bare text? I have already finished some quite good things for it,
I shall cut the Prate's seal in wood--

GIOVANNI: What is his seal?

GHINO: a Madonna, your Eminence, a Virgin with the letters
F H on either side.

LEONE: Now I know why Lorenzo cannot endure Brother Giro-
lamo. Or at least he has always done his best not to leave any
virgins in Florence. (They all burst out laughing.)

GIOVANNI (slapping his knee in his relish of the joke; then, quite
touched) : Come hither, Leone. That was very good. No Medici
could resist it. Here, take this ducat, you long-nosed satyr. You
may model me, if you wish. I like you well.

ALDOBRANDINO: That is all very fine, but after what has hap-
pened, Ghino, you must refuse the commission.

GHINO: Refuse it? A commission?

ALDOBRANDINO: Beyond any doubt. I have been insulted. In my
person our whole craft is insulted, and the Prate incited to the
insult. The devil can illustrate his books for him, but not one of us.
You must decline.

GHINO: Not at all. Are you mad? What are you thinking of? I
should refuse such a fat offer as that? Miscomini isn't stingy with
his pay; he knows that he has made a tidy sum with the Prate's
writings. They go everywhere. Everybody will see my woodcuts.
I shall have much praise and get fresh orders. I need them, I must
live. I have social obligations. And my little Ermelina wants pres-
ents, otherwise she goes with a shopkeeper behind my back. I
have to bring her a silk cap, a horn of rouge and white lead if I
want her to be yielding to me. I need money; I take it where I can
get it.

ALDOBRANDINO: Traitor! You have no honour in your whole
body. I spit on you--I despise you from the bottom of my heart.

GHINO: Ridiculous! I am an artist. A free artist. I have no opin-
ions. I adorn with my art what is given me to adorn and would
as leave illustrate Boccaccio as our holy Thomas Aquinas. There
are the books, they make their impression on me, I give out again
what I have received, as best I can. As for views and judgments,
I leave them to Fra Girolamo.

ANDREUCCIO (broodingly ) : But hard, hard it must be, a lofty and
painful task that you commit to him. To have to deal with and
judge of everything, of all life and morals--seems to me it needs
great courage--and freedom.

POLIZIANO: Freedom, Andreuccio? Your mind is confused.
Ghino calls himself free and he is right, for the creative man is
free--he over whose birth Saturn presided will always be at odds
with the world in whatever state he may have found it. But truly
it is better to be able to make a chair or anything of beauty than
to be born to set things right.

PICO: Well, I do not know. As a collector and amateur I prize
things according to their rarity. In Florence there is a legion of
brave fellows who can make beautiful chairs; but only one Brother
Girolamo.

POLIZIANO: You are pleased to be witty, my Lord.

PICO: No, I am serious.--Who is that coming?


5


PiERLEONI (comes hastily through the garden from the palace,
beckoning as he comes. His long robe makes him take tiny steps.
He is an eccentric old man, in clothing that suggests the charlatan
and magic-worker. He wears a peaked cap and has a short ivory
wand in his hand.): Lord Angelo! Messer Politian! He is asking
for you.

POLIZIANO: Lorenzo! I come!

PIERLEONI: He wants you to recite to him. He has thought of a
passage in your Rusticus and would like to hear it from your lips.

PICO: So he is awake, Messer Pierlconi? He is conscious?

PIERLEONI: He was, just a minute ago. But God knows if he will
not have forgotten his wish and himself again by now.

PoLiziANo; And the draught? The healing draught of distilled
precious stones? Did it help?

PIERLEONI: The draught? Very much....I don't mean that it
helped Lorenzo, exactly. Most likely the reverse. But the man
who brewed it, Messer Lazzarro from Pavia, him it helped very
much, it brought him in a fee of five hundred scudi.

(Giovanni giggles.)

PIERLEONI: You laugh, Lord Giovanni. Your spirits are blithe.
But I get red with anger when I think that this ignorant impostor
from Pavia got away unpunished. Why was he called in? They
did not ask me, they went over my head. He got a double handful
of pearls and precious stones delivered to him out of the house-
hold treasury, among them diamonds of more than thirty-five
carats; he certainly stuck half of them in his pocket, then he
ground up the rest and dissolved them and gave our master the
brew to drink, without even taking count of the position of the
planets, for he has no knowledge of astral influences, whereas I
never order a powder or apply a leech without carefully noting
the position of the planets....

PICO: You are a great and learned physician, Messer Pierleoni.
We know that our illustrious master is well looked after in your
hands. But now tell us, instruct us, remove us out of our uncer-
tainty. What is the illness that has laid Lorenzo low? Give us its
name. A name can be so consoling!

PIERLEONI: Mother of God, console us all! I can name you no
name, my good Lord. This sickness is nameless, like our fears. If
one give a name, it sounds short and dreadful.

PICO: You wrap yourself in silence, entrench yourself behind
riddling words, and have done ever since the hour when my friend
took to his bed. I insist on knowing: is there a secret here?

Pierleoni (breaking down): The weightiest.

PICO: I will confess the suspicion which I have had long before
today and which must overwhelm everybody who sees matters
from close at hand. Lorenzo, like every strong man, has enemies.

PIERLEONI: He was never strong. He lived despite himself.

PICO: He lived like a god! His life was a triumph, an Olympian
feast. His life was a great flame blazing boldly and royally to the
skies. And one fine day this flame dwindles, crackles, smokes,
smoulders, threatens to die down. Between ourselves we have seen
the like before; such surprises arc not foreign to our time. We
have heard of letters, of books, the confiding receiver of which
read himself over into the kingdom of the shades without know-
ing it; of litters wherein one sat down a joyful man and descended
pining and plague-stricken; of dishes in which the hand of some
generous friend had mingled diamond-dust so that the eater got
an indigestion for all eternity.

GIOVANNI: Very true. Very true. My father always took these
things too lightly. One should taste no banquet in the house of a
friend without taking at least one's own wine and cellarer along.
Certainly no good host is annoyed at that. It is a well-established
custom.

PICO: In short, Pierleoni, my friend, be open with us. Speak as a
man among men. Are my fears justified? Plays poison a role in
the affair?

Pierleoni (evasively): Poison - that depends...that de-
pends, my dear sir. Will you follow me, Messer Angelo? (He
bows and withdraws. Poliziano joins him; they move quickly
down the garden.)


6


PICO: Strange old man!

GIOVANNI: Things look bad. I am afraid, I feel sad. If my father
only did not roll his eyes so strangely...

ALDOBRANDINO: Do not grieve, your Eminence, dear Lord Gio-
vanni. If the illness is strange, so also shall be the cure. There are
extraordinary cures. Just listen what once happened to me. It will
distract you. I am often ill, as sensitive people always are; but
once, some years ago, I was mortally so. The trouble was in my
nose, a gnawing pain inside that noble organ. No doctor knew
what to do. All internal and external means had been sought in
vain. I had even used the excrement of wolves with powdered
cinnamon dissolved in the slime of snails and I was completely ex-
hausted from blood-letting. But the air passages were closing and
I thought there was nothing for it but I must suffocate. Then in
my hour of need my friends took me to a master of the secret
sciences, Eratosthenes of Syracuse, a marvellously skilled necro-
mancer, alchemist, and healer. He examined me, spoke not a word,
put five different kinds of powder in a pan and lighted them. He
said an incantation over them and left me alone in his laboratory.
Then there arose so frightful and irritating a smoke that I com-
pletely lost my breath and thought I should die upon the spot. I
summoned my last ounce of strength to reach the door and escape.
But when I stood up I was taken with such an immoderate sneez-
ing as I have never had in all my life before, and as I shook and
quivered from head to foot, there came out of my nose an animal,
a polyp or a worm, as long as my middle finger, very ugly, hairy,
striped, all slippery, with suckers and pincers. But my nose was
free, I breathed in air and realized that I was entirely cured.

Pico (looking down the garden to the right): Listen, Vannino,
I must leave you. I see your brother Piero. You know I do not
love his ways. Let me avoid him. I will see if they will let me in
to your father. Farewell, we shall see each other soon. Good day,
my lords. (He goes.)

GIOVANNI: Well, and the worm, the polyp, Aldobrandino? Did
you catch it?

ALDOBRANDINO: No, it got away. It ran into a crack in the floor.

GIOVANNI: Too bad. You could have tamed it and taught it to
do tricks, perhaps.


7


PIERO DE' MEDICI (comes with rapid, imperious gait along the
right-hand side path. He is a tall, strong, supple youth of one-and-
twenty-year, with a smooth, well-proportioned, arrogant face
and brown curlS, falling thick and soft at the nape of his neck. He
is armed with dagger and sword, and wears a velvet cap with an
agraffe and plume, and a tight blue silk doublet fastened in front
with quantities of little buttons. His bearing is offensive, his speech
loud and commanding, his whole personality uncontrolled and
violent.): Giovanni! Where are you? I am looking for you!

GIOVANNI: And lo, you have found me out, Piero. What is the
good news?

PIERO: You have company...have you been here long?

GRIFONE: About an hour, your Excellency, or thereabouts.

PIERO: Then it seems to me that at the moment you are not
needed further. If you should wish to take leave you will not be
hindered. (Stamping with his foot) You are invited to go to the
devil!

ERCOLE: Your Eminence, we crave your permission.

GIOVANNI: God be with you, dear friends; do nor go far off. I
am convinced my father will ask for you. Farewell, Aldobrandino
...Grifone...Francesco.... (He accompanies them as
they go, then returning) You do wrong, Piero, to treat such dis-
tinguished men as you did.

PIERO: I should not know how otherwise to treat buffoons and
suchlike of the artist tribe.

GIOVANNI: Yes, you see, that is wrong. In every artist, it may be,
there is something of the fool and the vagabond, but that is not all
of him, for each is after all something of a leader who directs the
taste of the many into fresh channels and, so to speak, puts in cur-
rency new coinage of pleasure.

PIERO: Glorious leaders, forsooth! This Aldobrandino--

GIOVANNI: Yes, yes, this Aldobrandino, I admit that I like best
the society of his sort. The humanists are tedious and irreligious,
and the poets for the most part pathetic and conceited; the artist
is my man. They are cultured without being tiresome. They dress
well and they have wit, originality, and a sense of fitness. And
what mobility, what lively fantasy! Messer Pulci has no more, I
declare. Before you can say a rosary this Aldobrandino can kill
you three giants, make it rain blood and blow monsters out of his
nose, without entertaining a single doubt of the truth of his boasts.

PIERO: You are welcome to all the pleasure you get out of it. But
I must speak to you alone and so I made bold to send your friends
packing.

GIOVANNI: You want to speak to me? I have no money, Piero!

PIERO: Don't lie! You always have money.

GIOVANNI: By the blood of Christ, I have had large expenses--
for musical instruments and for a dwarf Moor, the quaintest crea-
ture on the face of the earth. Should you like to see him? Come, I
will show him to you. Why stand here and talk of money--

PIERO: I need some. You must lend me for a little while.

GIOVANNI: I can't, Piero. Certainly not. The little I have I must
keep together.

PIERO: Your Highness is probably saving up for the Conclave?
But it is not your turn yet, most illustrious prince of the Church.
You cannot vie with Roderigo Borgia. They say he sends asses
laden with gold to those cardinals whom he has not yet poisoned,
to attune the Holy Ghost in his favour. Your Eminence will have
to have patience.

GIOVANNI: What are you talking about, Piero? Of course I shall
have patience. I am hardly seventeen. But the growth of simony
is a very interesting subject, which I should like to discuss with
you.

PIERO: Well, I need a hundred ducats, to buy a horse to ride at
our next tourney, the second day of Easter week--

GIOVANNI: A hundred ducats! You are stupid, A horse--when
you have so many horses! And your silly tourneys! How you can
be so mad about them! Running at each other and getting hurt--
no sense in that. Did you ever read that Caesar or Scipio rode tour-
neys? Such a dangerous passion! Petrarch--

PIERO: A fig for your Petrarch! I would not take advice about a
knightly and elegant career from a sonnet-tinker like that. The
times are past when the princes of Italy and Europe considered
us shopkeepers and money-changers; they were past when we
learned to wear armour and bear a lance. Our court shall lag be-
hind none other in Europe--and what is a court without tour-
neys? Anyhow, will you advance me the hundred ducats or not?

GIOVANNI: No, Piero, certainly not. It's no good. Don't be
angry, but giving you money is like pouring into the cask of the
Danaids. You squander it all with your boon companions and
your fat cows--

PIERO: What--fat cows?

GIOVANNI: A phrase all Florence knows. You do not seem to be
informed about the latest witticisms. And besides, you are so far in
the hands of usurers that you do not spend a florin without it cost-
ing you eight lire. Where will that end, I should like to know?
The times are bad enough, anyhow. The sparrows on the house-
tops know that our house has been going to the dogs since Grand-
father died. They say that our banks in Lyons and Bruges are
shaky. People are whispering that the bank of deposit for the
dowries of burghers' daughters has had to limit its payments be-
cause Father spent a lot of the money for works of art and festi-
vals. Many people have taken that amiss.

PIERO: Taken it amiss! Who dares grumble.? The factions are
scattered, the refractory have been consigned to exile or a dun-
geon. We are masters. Today it is Lorenzo, tomorrow or day after
it is myself. Then, trust me, there will be an end of small shop-
keeping. If the banks crash, let them. I'll give them a kick to finish
them. The important thing is landownership. We must get more
and more property. We are princes. Charles of France called my
father his favourite cousin--he must call me his brother! Just let
me be master once! Not a law shall be left that gives the people
the shadow of a right or even seems to set limits to our will. We
will have no nobility near the throne. There will be confiscations,
condemnations. Lorenzo has never gone about this matter firmly
enough. He has been too poor-spirited to give our position the
title it deserves. I do not care to be the first citizen of Florence;
duke and king is what they shall call me throughout Tuscany.

GIOVANNI: Ah, your Grace, your Majesty!--You are a brag-
gart. Is that all your political theory you are showing off? Are you
so sure that Madonna Fiorenza will take you for her lord and
lover, when our father--which may God forbid--is dead? You
have a wonderful understanding of physical exercise and affairs
of gallantry; but your knowledge of public matters is to seek.
Did you know that Brother Girolamo preaches against you? That
the people cannot stand you? That they stick up lampoons against
you on the palace?

PIERO: Listen, my lad, I advise you not to make me angry. Give
me the hundred ducats I need and keep your political dissertations
to yourself.

GIOVANNI: No, Piero. I gladly give you my blessing; receive it,
dear brother, I pray you. But I lend you no more money. Finis,
signed and sealed.

PIERO: You mule! You Sodomite! Sanctified son of a pig! What
prevents me from boxing your ears, you purple ape!

GIOVANNI: Nothing prevents you, you are quite vulgar and un-
gentle enough. So I will go away and withdraw myself from the
vicinity of your bad manners. You will find me with our father
if you should be looking for me to beg my pardon. Farewell. (He
goes off up the centre path.)

PIERO: Go, go, you weakling! Red hat on your head, wet swad-
dling-clouts on your breech! I do not need you. Soon I shall be
master; then the rejoicing world will see a prince to make its teeth
chatter! Wagons...wagons...towers on wheels...a swaying, shim-
mering purple progress in the dust, between carpets, under
awnings, through the heart of the yelling mob! Youths poising
lances, on prancing, whinnying steeds...flying gen11 strewing
roses...Scipio, Hannibal, the Olympian gods descending to pay
homage, rolling up to the triumph of Piero the divine!...And on
a gilded car high as a house--I, I! The orb of the earth re-
volving at my feet, Caesar's laurel wreath on my brow, and in.
my arms she...my creature, my handmaid, my blissfully blushing
slave...Fiorenza....Ah!...You are there, madonna?


8


Fiore has appeared on the right-hand path and now stands in
the centre one, her hands folded on her advanced abdomen, her
head thrown back, and her eyes cast down, calmly symmetrical,
in mute and mysterious loveliness.

PIERO (going up to her): Is it you, madonna?

FIORE: You behold me in the flesh, noble sir.

PIERO: I was unaware of your nearness, I was busy with my
thoughts.

FIORE: Thoughts?

PIERO: Still I will say that I am glad, that I am inexpressibly re-
joiced, to meet you.

FIORE: I beg you, spare me. I am a woman, and such words in
the mouth of the glorious Piero must abash any woman....

PIERO: Most gracious Fiore! Ravishing Anadyomene!

FIORE: Audacious flatterer! The Grand Turk sent us some of
his sweets, and when I ate of them after the meal I thought there
was nothing sweeter on earth. I think so no more, now I have
heard your words.

PIERO: Sweet simpleton! Come, we shall chat, you and I....What
would I say?...It grows cool....You have been walking in the garden,
lovely Fiore?

FIORE: Your keen perceptions have told you as much. I walked
between the hedgerows. And gazed sometimes out into the coun-
try, to see if guests were coming from the town, one guest per-
haps, to bring a little diversion to the villa....

PIERO: Yes, yes...I quite understand your longing for va-
riety, beautiful lady! Nothing more fatiguing than a country
sojourn, since Lorenzo got the bad idea of stopping in bed. Just
between us, I am surprised that you have not sooner thought of
having a change.

FIORE: What do you mean, my Lord?

PIERO: I mean--I mean, sweet Fiore, that you would not have
far to seek to find people downright willing to take over the
sweet duties of which my father has seemed now for a while no
longer capable. Your beauty blooms untasted, your mouth, your
bosom orphaned....Be assured, not you alone are vexed. Look
up and see a man who yearns immoderately to be in every way
of service to you.

FIORE: Forgive me, the sight is not novel enough to lure my
gaze from the ground. All long for me; do you say it of yourself
in hope to win me?

PIERO: In hope? Am I a boy? Am I a tyro in the lists of love?
I would and shall possess thee, divine creature....

Fiore (slowly lifting her eyes and looking with inexpressibly
languid contempt into his face): If you knew how you weary me!

PIERO: What are you saying? In my arms you would forget
your weariness.

FIORE (repulsing him scornfully): I will not belong to you,
Piero de' Medici!

PIERO: Not to me? Why not? I am strong, you would have
naught to complain of. I control the wildest stallion with my
thighs, needing no saddle nor bridle. I have challenged the best
players in Italy to wrestling, to ball, to boxing, and you have seen
that I was victor. If you will lie with me, sweet Fiore, I will tell
you of my triumphs in the gymnasia of Eros.

FIORE: I will not belong to you, Piero de' Medici.

PIERO: Hell and Hades, does that mean that you scorn me?

FIORE: It means that you bore me inexpressibly.

PIERO: Harken, madama, I speak to you as to a lady whose
charm and culture one considers, but I am not minded to whimper
after your love as though you were a bashful and dutiful burgh-
er's wife. If you would play the prude, it will but sweeten my
love; but I beg you not to ask me to take your cruelty to heart.
Who are you, to give yourself the air of repelling my advances?
You are of noble Florentine blood, but your father begot you
without priestly blessing and died in exile as a reward for his bar-
gain with Luca Pitti. You live and confer your favours in the
service of Aphrodite; and Lorenzo conceived you as a partner of
his pleasures when they were feasting him in Ferrara. You need
not doubt that Piero will know how to reward you for your ca-
resses as richly as Lorenzo.

FIORE: I will not belong to you, Piero de' Medici.

PIERO (furiously): To whom, then? To whom? You have an-
other lover already, you shameless courtesan?

FIORE: I will belong only to a hero, Piero de' Medici.

PIERO: To a hero? I am a hero! Italy knows it.

FIORE: You are no hero; you are only strong. And you bore me.

PIERO: Only strong? Only strong? And is not the strong man a
hero?

FIORE: No. He who is weak, but of so glowing a spirit that even
so he wears the garland--he is a hero.

PIERO: You gave yourself to my father--is he a hero?

FIORE: He is one. But another has arisen, to tear the garland
from him.

PIERO: You? You? I will have you. Who is he, who is he, the
weakling with the glowing soul, that I may flout him, and choke
him with two of my fingers?

FIORE: He is coming. I have seen to it that he should come.
They shall confront each other. But as for you--withdraw, when
heroes quarrel!

PIERO (raging): I will have you, I will have you, sweet inso-
lence, flower of all the world--

FIORE: You will not have me. You bore me. Make way, that I
may go and await your father's rival.


Act Three


A room adjoining the sleeping-chamber of the Magnifico. In
the background, left, between heavy half-open portihes, a view
of the bedchamber; steps occupy the rest of the rear of the stage,
leading up to a gallery. Centre left a splendid marble chimney-
piece with a relief supported by columns, and the Medici arms.
In front of it chairs. Left front an etagere with antique vases.
Right front a door hung with a gold-embroidered tapestry. Right
back a curtained window. Between door and window, drawn a
little forward, a bust of Julius Ccesar on a pedestal. Smaller busts,
without pedestals, on the chimney-piece and above the doors.
Slender columns are let into the walls. The subdued light of the
late afternoon sun filters through the window curtain.


I


Lorenzo de' Medici sits in a high-backed arm-chair in front of
the fire, asleep, with his head on his chest, a cushion at his back,
and a rug over his knees. He is ugly; with a yellowish-olive com-
plexion and a sinister expression due to the wrinkles in his
brow. He has a broads flat face with a flattened nose and a
large projecting mouth with flabby wrinkles round it. His cheeks
are marked from nose to fieshless chin by two deep slack fur-
rows; these are the more prominent because he cannot breathe
through his nose but must keep his mouth open. Yet his eyes as
he awakes are clear and full of fire despite his weakness and seem
to seize upon men and things with vigour and avidity. His lofty
and speaking brow triumphs over the rest of his facial ugliness;
his motions are the perfection of aristocracy. Sometimes a charm-
ing expression of fascinatingly innocent merriment comes out
upon his ravaged features, seeming to purify them entirely and
give them a childlike look. He wears a voluminous fur-bordered
garment like a dressing-gown, closed high round his short neck.
His hair is brown, with white threads; it is parted in the middle
and waves against his cheek and neck. He speaks with studied
clarity, in a nasal voice.--Watching his uneasy sleep are Pico
della Mirandola, Poliziano, Pierleoni, Marsilio Ficino, and Luigi
Pulci. Old Ficino has the worn face of a scholar, a 'withered neck,
and scant white locks coming out beneath his pointed cap; he
wears the usual voluminous garment closed to the throat and sits
in the centre of the room, surrounded by the others. Pulci, a
comic type, with little red-rimmed eyes and inflamed pockets be-
neath them, a pointed nose, prominent ears, and a mole on his
cheek, is pressmg his finger to his lips as he gazes with the others
into Lorenzo's face.

Pierleoni (going cautiously up to the invalid and feeling his
pulse) : It is very irregular. I am considering whether this is not
the time to bleed him once more.

PICO: You will kill him with your blood-lettings. It is not
twelve hours since you took a basinful from him.

PIERLEONI: The man does not need a tenth of the blood he
carries round with him.

POLIZIANO: Where is his spirit? It seems to move upon strange
paths far from ours. I would gladly hear your opinion of its ex-
periences, dear Marsilius.

FICINO: It is likely that at this hour contact with the divine
unity is established in his brain.

PULCI (lowering his strident and comically cracked voice):
Look, look, all that is mirrored upon his countenance! I wager
that he is dreaming the most extraordinary things. If he feels no
pain, then I envy him. The fever causes the strangest fancies, far
better than are produced by strong wine. Sometimes one may
dream in verse, but is prone to forget it.

PIERLEONI: This sleep is not the sort that feeds the natural re-
sources of the man. If his faintness continue, then I must hold
the little fingers and toes of His Magnificence while I anoint his
heart and his pulse with the oil which I have ready here.

PICO: Hush! He is stirring, he wakes.

PULCI: He will tell us of his adventures.

FICINO: Do you know us, Laurentius, my dear pupil?

LORENZO: Water....(They give him to drink.)

LORENZO: The water-seller had a skull....

POLIZIANO: What water-seller, my Lauro?

LORENZO: Angelo...is it you? Good, good, I will control myself.
Shall not one master this madness? I met a water-seller with
his laden ass and full jugs; but when he put a wooden goblet
to my parched lips there was fire in it and on the villain's shoul-
ders sat a grinning death's-head.

PULCI: Well, that is a modest invention.

LORENZO (recognizing him): Good day, Morgante. Are you
there, old good-for-nothing? And my Pico with the ambrosial
locks? And even great Marsilius, wooer and messenger between
me and wisdom--you are all with me, friends. The frightful old
man was only in my own blood.

PULCI: A frightful old man?

LORENZO: Rubbish! Worthless rubbish! I dreamed so hard of a
bald-headed old man who wanted me to ride in his rotten
bark...

POLIZIANO (shaken): Charon?

LORENZO: I was asleep....What time is it?

PICO: You slept about an hour. It is three o'clock. The sun has
begun to set.

LORENZO: Already? (Seized by sudden unrest) Listen, my
friends, I should like my carrying-chair. The air here is stifling.
...Carry me...carry me into the loggia; take me up on the
battlements....

PIERLEONI: Dear and gracious Lord, that would be folly. You
need rest.

LORENZO: Rest? I cannot rest. Why can I not rest, doctor?
Why do I feel that I must strain myself to think and arrange
'manifold matters before it is too late?

PIERLEONI: You have a little fever, my Lord.

LORENZO: I do not deny it. But I would say that the fever is
no ground for my being tortured by these ridiculous fears. You
see, I think logically. But I do not conceal that I am heavy with
cares. I have never pretended -Pico, there are no more Pazzi
in Florence, are there.? And the Neroni Diotisalvi are either in
exile or put safely away?

PULCI: Save those you sent to hear the grass grow!

LORENZO: Yes, come here, Margutte! Make jokes, you wild
rhapsodist! Yes, in truth, much blood has flowed. It had to.--I
implore you, Pico, for the time I am not able, to keep an eye on
the collections in Via Larga and the villas. You will do it for me?
A couple of lovely little trifles, two terracottas and a medallion,
have just been acquired; they must be kept in Poggio a Cajano,
you know, my dear fellow? And the Sforza has presented me
with a glorious antique from Pesaro, an Ares with breastplate. It
should be set up in my public garden and serve the young sculp-
tors as a model. Will you see to it? Thanks. That is all that was
troubling me.--Is Angelo here still?

POLIZIANO: Here, my Lauro.

LORENZO: Angelo, the Pliny which my grandfather got from
a cloister in L11beck is in the Signoria, is it not? I should like to
see it. It is bound in red velvet with silver mountings. Let a re-
sponsible person go at once--no, wait. That seems to me less
important than something else on my mind. Wait. One of my
searchers has been offered a Cato manuscript for five hundred
gulden. I am in doubt over the genuineness of the script. There
are cases where some rascal has made up something out of his
own head and put it on the market under an ancient name. I beg
you to test the manuscript very carefully and if it be genuine pro-
cure it for me without bargaining. They must not say that I let
a Cato escape me. May I burden you with this?--You lift a load
from my heart. Come, my friends, now I feel easier. I can think
of nothing to depress me. Let us talk. Let us discuss. Who was
greater, Mirandola: Caesar or Scipio? I say Caesar, and ye shall see
how I defend my thesis! But our great Marsilius Ficinus wants an
abstract theme, of course!

FICINO: Let your mind have repose, Laurentius! You will wear
yourself out.

LORENZO: Wisdom is worthy the sacrifice of one's last strength.
There is so much to clear up! It often used to seem to me as
though everything lay clear and open before me; but now I see
only darkness and confusion. How is it with the immortality of
the soul? Tell me!

PULCI: An old, a treacherous question--and not to be an-
swered ex abrupto like that. They say that Aristotle himself, even
in the kingdom of the shades, was still going about with equivocal
phrases, in order not to commit himself--though he was as dead
as a door-nail and yet alive. Let anyone try to make it out from
his writings!

LORENZO (laughing heartily)'. Good! But now, Angelo, say
something serious.

POLIZIANO: You are immortal, my Lauro! Must I tell you so?
Not everybody is. Not the masses, not the small and unknown
man. But you shall share the enlightened society of the laurel-
crowned spirits.

LORENZO: And why I?

PICO: Now, by the blue-eyed Athene! You have written carni-
val songs which I have not scrupled to place above Alighieri's
great poem!

FICINO: You have divine origins, forget it not. The six balls in
your arms signify the apples of the Hesperides, where your stock
had its rise.

POLIZIANO: They will know how to welcome you, singer of the
"Rencia," pater patriae! They will celebrate your coming. Cicero,
the Fabians, Curius, Fabricius, and all the others will surround you
and lead you into the hall of fame, which echoes with the music
of the spheres.

LORENZO: That is poesy, poesy, my friend! That is beauty,
beauty--but neither knowledge nor consolation!

PULCI: Yes, yes, it is a little thin, your music of the spheres,
Messer Politian. It is small comfort. Do not die, Lauro, it would be
stupid. You know Achilles' answer, when Odysseus visited him in
Hades and asked how he fared. "I assure you," said he, "that we
departed have the strongest desire to return to life." The body,
lad! The body is the main thing. The body cannot be substituted
for by any music of the spheres! Oh, forgive me! Are you worse?

LORENZO (very pale) : Doctor--a coldness is coming round my
heart--do you hear? A horror seizes upon me--help! It is death.
...What does it mean, that suddenly all power is gone from my
brain and my entrails? I am lost...I am forsaken....Dry the
sweat from my brow....Do not despise me. My spirit is stead-
fast, this fear is in my body.

PIERLEONI: It is nothing. Drink this good beaker of Greek wine.
I have been begging your Magnificence to go to bed.

LORENZO: If you want me to be able to breathe, let me sit in a
chair. I must see about me all you who love me. I must hear your
voices. Death is horrible, Pico. You cannot grasp it. No one here
can grasp it, save myself, who must die. I have so dearly loved
life that I held death to be the triumph of life. That was poetry
and extravagance. It is gone, it fails one at the pinch. For I have
seen dissolution unroll before me, the decay of the tomb.--Quick,
Ficino, quick, dear, wise old Ficino! What have you taught me,
that I might face death with fortitude? I have forgotten. What is
your uttermost wisdom, Ficino?

FICINO: I taught you that Plato's "Idea" and the "First Form"
of Aristotle are one and the same; that is, the sensitive soul, the
tertia essentia of bodies, which in man, the microcosm of creation,
is distinguished from the intellectual soul in that it--

LORENZO: Stop, wait a minute. I am confused. I understood that
once; perhaps I felt it. But now I struggle in vain to do so. I am
tired. I long to have something simple to hold fast to. Purgatory
is simpler than Plato; you will have to admit that, Marsilius. Was it
not a Franciscan father who came to me today?

POLIZIANO: Yes, beloved, a confessor came from that order.

LORENZO: A rascal. A clever head. I was ashamed to take the
business seriously before him. I turned a few good Florentine
phrases when he waited on me with his sacraments and he smiled
like the man of the world he was. I confess that the ceremony did
not soothe me much. The Father's morals were all too complaisant.
He forgave me my sins as though they were boyish pranks. But I
doubt if such absolution be quite valid in high places. I might have
confessed that I had murdered my father and mother and he would
have signed the cross over me with the greatest obligingness. No
wonder. I am the master. But when the end comes, there are draw-
backs about being the master whom nobody dare offend. I need
a confessor who would be as priest what I have been as mocker
and sinner....What is it your eyes say, Pico? You have some-
thing in your mind. You are hiding your thoughts.

PICO: What thoughts, my Lorenzo?

LORENZO: You are thinking of a priest who would be fit to be
my confessor, who would dare to damn me, who has already
dared, Pico....

PICO: What priest--?

LORENZO: The priest. What say, Marsilius? The Platonic idea
of the priest, become person and will--

POLIZIANO: I implore you, my dear Lord, turn your thoughts
to gayer pictures! You cloud your spirits with thoughts unworthy
for you to think. Do not forget yourself, Lorenzo de' Medici!

LORENZO: Truly, that will I not. Thanks, my Angelo. I feel
better. We will be gay. We will laugh. Laughter is a sunbeam of
the soul, so says a classic. We will let our souls shine in the recol-
lection of what has been.

PICO: And what will be again.

LORENZO: Enough that it has been. This was wont to be the
hour when we walked together to a spring. You remember? We
lay in a ring upon the rolling sward, with the childlike prattle of
the water in our midst. And we spent the time till the evening
meal with each of us telling a tale.

PICO: What a charming hour! And how we admired you! Per-
haps in the forenoon you may have been working out a new law
for the statutes, designed to give power more fully into your
hands, that you might be in a position to bless Florence still more
freely with beauty and joy; perhaps uttered the death sentence
upon some noble adversary; argued in the Platonic Academy upon
virtue, presided over a symposium in a group of artists and
lovely women; at table solved theoretic questions in art and
poetry--and in all that you had brought your whole mind to
bear and now were sharing the evening play of our minds, as fresh
and detached as though you had not given out any part of your
vital energy.

PIERLEONI: Yes, you were never niggard with your strength,
my gracious Lord.

LORENZO: Was I not, mv astronomical doctor? Did I not bend
them to my will, despite stars and portents, which had destined me
to your careful charge? Yes, I have lived. Come, let us remember.
Remember with me, my friends. Remember the drunken starry
nights, when we rose from our wine, you, Pico, Luigi, Angelo,
you, mad Ugolino, Cardiere the ecstatic musician, and all the rest
--when singing and twanging the lute we stormed the sleeping
streets and inflamed maidens in their chambers by the verses we
sent up to them.

POLIZIANO (rapturously): Alcibiades!

LORENZO: And the carnival, remember the carnival! When
pleasure like a torrent overflowed the bounds of everyday, when
wine ran in the streets and the populace in the squares danced and
shouted the songs I composed for them; when Florence surren-
dered to the god of love, and men's dignity and women's modesty
reeled in one intoxicated shout: Evoe! When the holy madness
seized even children and kindled their senses to love before its
time.

POLIZIANO: You were Dionysus.

LORENZO: And the kingdom was mine! And the sway of my
soul went abroad! And the fire of my longing kindled the woman's
breast, so that she fell to me, and the ugly weakling became lord
of her beauty--

PICO: Lord of beauty--in that name we salute you! Speak not
as though you had been all that!

LORENZO (after a moment of silence, gesturing with his head
behind him) : Someone wants to come in.

A PAGE (half-way down the stairs):. Signor Niccolo Cambi has
come from Florence and begs to be admitted to your Grace.

PIERLEONI: The Magnifico is receiving nobody.

LORENZO: Why not? Signor Niccolo is my friend. He comes
from Florence--I feel quite well. I want to see him.


2


The page conducts the merchant Niccolo Cambi from the gal-
lery down the steps into the room, leads him to Loretizo, atid with-
draws with a low bow. Cambi is a citizen, respectable, well dressed,
already a little stout, with a lively Florentine face. His shoes and
stockings are dusty. He wears a light-grey cloak over darker
undergarments.

LORENZO: A welcome visit, jMesser Niccolo. Do not take it for
discourtesy that I remain seated. I am a little unwell these days.

CAMBI: Enough to see you! To hear your voice again! My
heart is lightened thereby. Good evening, gentlemen. You in par-
ticular, illustrious Prince, you, Messer Pulci, Master Polizian! My
faith, the great translator of Plato too! Messer Pierlconi! To see
you again, Magnifico! To hear you speak! To feel the living pres-
sure of your hand!

LORENZO: Then you had not expected it?

CAMBI: Why not? Certainly, of course.

LORENZO: Sit down. Pull your chair close to mine. You rode
up? You are overheated; did you ride so fast, then? Are you on
business? Messages from Florence?

CAMBI: But why? Must one always have business with you,
messages for you, in order to feel impelled to see you? My busi-
ness is to look you a little while in the eye, witness my love to you,
and assure myself afresh of yours. My message, to tell in all the
streets of Florence that you are of good cheer, that soon we shall
be able to celebrate your return to health.

LORENZO: So Florence busies itself about my illness?

CAMBI: It certainly does! One cannot say that it is exactly indif-
ferent to it, ha ha! The Magnifico is naive in his question. But I
mean to give those rascals the lie who disquiet the people without
reason and make them prey to sinister rumours.

LORENZO: There are such rascals, then?

CAMBI: There are, there are! And, Magnifico, you would do
well, you would do very well, to put a stop to their activities with-
out delay. I see you up, I see you out of bed--could you not come
to Florence? Even for an hour? Just to show yourself five seconds
long at a window?

LORENZO: Aiaster Niccolo Cambi, what is going on in Florence?

CAMBI: Nothing, nothing, God keep me! Messer Pierleoni--
my visit is untimely. Shall I withdraw?

LORENZO: My desire, my will, are what count here. (with an
effort at gentleness) You will oblige me very much, honest Messer
Niccolo, by speaking briefly and without reserve.

CAMBI: Then I will do so. To whom should one speak, to whom
bring these fears and cares, if not to you? Things are not in Flor-
ence as they were, Magnifico! Vile machinations are afoot. The
source whence these rumours are disseminated is known, which
report you to be either already dead or sickened beyond cure:
they come from the monkish party, from the "Weepers," from
the party of the Ferrarese....

LORENZO (who has started at mention of the Ferrarese, with
forced lightness): You hear, Pico? They come from your dis-
covery, our monk.

CAMBI: Pardon me, illustrious Prince, it is the truth. I know
that you fostered him, that you first drew attention to his strange
new works, I know it. And I would not assert, either, that I do not
know how to value his gifts. I am not so behind the times. His
performances are titbits for a spoilt and licensed taste, that is
beyond a doubt, I am not speaking of him. I am speaking of the
influence he wields, which is--it is possible--independent of his
intentions.

POLIZIANO: Do you think so?

CAMBI: The people, Magnifico, the people! We can afford to
smile when young sprigs of the nobility forswear dancing, sing-
ing, and all frivolity and enter a cloister. But the people! All day
they run irresolute through the streets, they look darkly at the
beautiful houses of the rich and know nothing better to do than
to throng the cathedral to hear the sermons--a dense, silent
crowd, inwardly distraught, a great acreage of muddled heads, all
turned in his direction, in the direction of the lean little monk up
above them. When the Frate is carried back in triumph to San
Marco, the masses choke the streets again and resume their ob-
stinate, mischief-breeding activities. Before the house of Guidi,
chancellor of the city archives, and in front of Miniati's the ad-
ministrator of municipal debts, they have been disorderly and
insulting; for Brother Girolamo designated both of these citizens
as your tools, Magnifico, as people who connived with you how to
squeeze new taxes from the poor for your festivities. Barbarous,
insane things are happening. Before I left Florence I heard that a
group of mechanics forced themselves into the house of a wealthy
and art-loving citizen and broke a statue in the vestibule--(Pained
exclamations from his audience.)

LORENZO: Hush! An antique?

CAMBI: No, it seems to have been new and not very valuable.
But O Magnifico, it is not that which you must hear! There have
been noisy demonstrations before the palace all day. I was in the
Piazza, I was present. There were shouts from the people, which
I could have wished not to hear, not to understand. It sounded
like "Down with the golden balls!"

POLIZIANO: That is treason! That is ingratitude and treachery!

PICO: It is the childish love of the populace for political cries--
and nothing more! They should be dispersed with the pikes.

CAMBI: And yet another cry rose above these--a strange cry,
never heard before--once, twice, and again. I did not understand,
I am as you know a little deaf in one ear. But when I listened very
carefully, I heard it clear and plain: "Evviva Christo!"

(Silence)

CAMBI: You are silent, Magnifico.

LORENZO: What was the cry?

CAMBI: The one against your arms?

LORENZO: The other.

CAMBI: Evviva Christo!

(Silence. Lorenzo has collapsed into the cushions; his eyes are
closed.)

PIERLEONI: Go, gentlemen! In God's name, go! You see, he is
exhausted.

CAMBI: Magnifico, I wish you good repose. I have done my mis-
sion. You had to know how things stand with us. You are not
angry?

LORENZO: Go, friend....No, I am not angry with you. Go.
...Tell Florence--no, tell her nothing. She is a woman, one
must take care what one says or has said to her. She runs after
you with burning desire when you seem cool and strong and
despises you when you betray that you are lost in love for her.
Go, friend, say nothing. Say that I am well and that I laugh at
what I have heard.

CAMBI: That will I. By Bacchus, that will I say. That is a good
message, by my faith. And so be in good health, Laurentius
Medici. And come to Florence so soon as you can. Farewell!
(He hurries off.)


3


LORENZO (after a pause): Pico!

PICO: I am at your side, my Lorenzo.

LORENZO: Look at me. Seems to me you look a little embar-
rassed, eh, my subtle Pico? What have you to say now?

PICO: Nothing at all. What should I say? The people are drunk
--with drunkenness of a sort different from that you have known
so long how to cause in them. Tell the Bargello, it will know how
to sober them.

LORENZO: Pico! Maecenas! My subtle innovator! To call in the
hangman's services against the spirit? That was not subtle!

PICO: One counsel or the other. Call him in, then. Bewitch him.
Do you think this petty and solitary soul can withstand the bril-
liant allurement of your offers of friendliness?

LORENZO: It will, my Pico, it will! I know it better than do
you, whose inquiring spirit discovered it for us. It is full of hate
and mean opposition. Its gifts do not make it blithe or friendly
--only more obstinate. Do you understand that? He did not
come to me when he became prior--prior in that San Marco
which my own grandfather built. He stuck dumbly to his priestly
independence. See, thought I to myself, a stranger enters my
house and has not even the decency to pay me a visit. But I was
silent. I shrugged my shoulders at the little man's incivility. He
reviled me from the pulpit, indirectly and by name. I went--
you did not know it--to seek him out. More than once I attended
mass at San Marco and afterwards stopped some hour in the
cloister garden, awaiting his summons. Do you think he paused in
his literary labours to be hospitable to a guest who was after all
more than a guest? I went further. I am not used to have men deny
themselves to me. I sent presents to the cloister and gifts to charity.
He took them as signs of yielding and never once thanked me.
I let them find gold coins in the offertory boxes. He gave them
to the poor-wardens of San Martino; the copper and silver, he
said, were enough for the needs of the cloister. Do you under-
Stand? He wants war. He wants hostility. Approaches, homage,
he pockets, and gives nothing in return. He cannot be shamed.
Success does not soften him nor his mood. He came a nothing,
a beggar, to Florence. What he is after today is a decision between
me and him.

PICO: Dear friend, what fancies! He is ill and wretched. His
digestion is ruined, from watching, from ecstasies. He lives on
salad and water. May he enjoy them! Is he Lorenzo, who even in
suffering is courteous and full of charm? Do you expect pleasant
social intercourse with a father confessor? Let him have his way.
And let the childish populace have theirs. Any measures you
would take would give the situation a serious complexion which
it has not got. Only get well, only show your face again to your
city.

(There is a general backwards movement. A pale and breathless
youth in a distracted condition, appears rushing down the steps.
It is Ognibene, a young painter. He leans on the balustrade a
moment, quite exhausted, one foot a step lower than the other.)

OGNIBENE: Lorenzo! You are here. Thank God, I have found
him. Your Excellency, dear and gracious Lord, forgive me for my
urgent haste; I pressed onwards, I would not let them bar the way
to you. I must speak to you. I ran--Oh, my God! (He kneels
beside the Magnifico and takes his hand imploringly in both his
own.)

LORENZO: Ognibene! Indeed, you alarm me. No, let him lie
where he is. He has audience. He is a gifted youth and moreover
Botticelli's pupil. What is it, Ognibene?

OGNIBENE: I ran--I came--from Florence, from my master's
shop. Ah, my master! Ah, the picture! The wonderful, beautiful
new picture! Forgive me! I had no time to put on my cloak. I ran
as I was. The monk! My master! Lauro, win him back to you!

LORENZO (in alarm, threateningly): Pico!...Hush! I will hear
nothing. I will not hear it. Withdraw....Speak, boy, speak low.
What of Botticelli?

OGNIBENE: You know that he was painting a new picture. What
am I asking--he was painting it for youl I was allowed to help
him...and trembled for joy as I saw it grow. Often I slipped
alone into the workshop and knelt down in the stillness where it
stood and gleamed--it was more beautiful than the Primavera,
more beautiful than the Pallas, lovelier than the Birth of Aphro-
dite. It was youth, it was bliss, it was ravishment, painted with
sunshine--

LORENZO: And now? You must part?

OGNIBENE: Since he first heard Brother Girolamo in the cathe-
dral he has worked heavily and without joy. Often he sat silent on
a stool with his head in both hands and brooded. And when he
raised his head he stared at the picture with eyes full of conflict-
ing horrors. And today--

LORENZO: And today?

OGNIBENE: Today he was in San Marco after the sermon. In the
Prate's cell. Two hours or three, I do not know. And when he
came home he was as though dead--full of peace, but dead.
"Ognibene," he said, "God has called me with a frightful voice.
There is no healing in beauty and in the delight of the eyes. Tell
the Magnifico that I served Satan and that from now I will serve
Jesus the King, whose representative in Florence is His prophet
Girolamo. When I take my brush now I will paint in deep hu-
mility the Mother of Sorrows--tell the Medici that. Now will I
save my soul." And as he said that he took a knife from the colour
table and cut and slashed it across and across so that the tatters
hung down....(He sobs with his head in his hands, as though
his heart would break.)

LORENZO (with clenched fists, rigid with pain and rage): San-
dro....

OGNIBENE: Lauro, Lauro, what shall we do? I mean--what
does your Excellency command? Will you summon him? Will
you speak to him? I think if he saw you--Command me, order
me what to do. I will run back. I will bring my master to you
despite the darkness. You can do anything. You will lighten and
set free his spirit.

LORENZO (gloomy and exhausted) : No. Let it go. It is too late,
for today. I mean, it is too late in the afternoon. Be brave and go.
Go to your work. Or to your wine. Take a girl--forget. I would
be alone. Go, till I call you. No, Pico, you too. And listen: send
me the boys. I want to talk to Gino and Piero. They may come
in now. And then go.

(They all leave, some by the stairs, some by the door front right.
Lorenzo remains alone, sunk in his chair, clutching the lions' heads
on the arms with his emaciated hands. His chin rests on his breast,
his gaze seems to burrow deep into his own thoughts.)


4


LORENZO (dully and brokenly, between pauses): Jealousy--I
have never known what it was.--I was alone. Where was there
a purpose like to mine...a knowledge of power? Here!--Often
I marvelled.--And I made it serve.--It was beautiful, here within
me.--Distraction--suffering--burning--smiling? All in vain. I
hate him. I hate him too. He triumphs. For he is upright. He is
effective. He wasted himself, like me, he was not wise. But he had
enough left--just enough left, to do it. Perhaps because he is of
commoner stuff.--The picture? Let it go. A small matter here--
where we are dealing with souls. We are dealing with the king-
dom. (His eyes rest on the bust between the door and the window.
He continues to muse. Piero and Giovanni come cautiously
through the portieres of the door right front, approach him, and
kiss his hands.)

GIOVANNI (kneeling)-. How are you. Father?

LORENZO: Oh, so it is you. You don't often come, gentlemen.
Why has one sons? For show? To make an appearance? To make
one look more imposing? Just as one marries a wife, of noble
Roman blood, marries her in Rome by proxy and gets children
with her hardly knowing her, for reasons of state? Is that the way?

GIOVANNI: Father, you have been sincerely in our thoughts.

PIERO: We were impatiently awaiting your summons.

LORENZO: You are most courteous. Very well brought up. It
would be exacting to ask more, I suppose. How true it is that
father and son are furthest of all from each other. Relations be-
tween them are stranger and more uncomfortable than between
man and wife. Well, let that be. One must not give anything
away. Must not seek love too eagerly. Still, I confess, I have had
you in my mind, I have thought of your welfare. That is why I
had you summoned....It seemed to me I had a few words to say
to you, and that I should like to have you stand before me.
You look at me searchingly--how do you find me?

GIOVANNI: Better, Father, much better. You have a little colour.

LORENZO: Really? My friendly little Giovanni. See, I lift my
hand. I will to do it, and do it. It trembles--and falls. And falls.
There it lies; quite white. I could not hold it up. Come here, Nino;
bend over, Piero. I stand with one foot in Charon's bark.

GIOVANNI: No, no, Father! Do not speak like that. Pierleoni--

LORENZO: Pierleoni is a ninny. He and his rival with his draught
of precious stones. I am at my last hour. I am going to hear the
grass grow, as Pulci says. I am going, and you remain. Now, Piero,
what have you to say to that?

PIERO: God grant you a long life. Father.

LORENZO: Very polite. But to come to the point: Are you
ready to step into my shoes?

PIERO: If it must be so, yes, Father.

LORENZO: Fiorenza--you love her? Patience a little. My
thoughts are confused, that I admit. I see everything in a lurid
light, as in a conflagration; one thing flows into another in my
mind.

GIOVANNI: Perhaps we ought to go, Father?

LORENZO: Ah, the little one is afraid. No, stay here, Nino. The
fever gives me courage to speak out my feelings boldly. What I
say sounds odd. But reason is at work. Piero, I speak to you. Your
expectancy of power is great, and well founded--but it is not
sure, not unimpeachable. You cannot rest idly upon it. We are not
kings, not princes in Florence. We have no document on which
our power is secured. We rule without a crown, by natural right,
by our own strength. We became great of ourselves, by industry,
by struggle, by self-discipline; the idle throng stood amazed and
then submitted. But such power, my son, must daily be won
afresh. Glory, love, the submission of others--these are all false
and fickle things. If you think to rule, to shine without shining
deeds, Florence will be lost to you. You will hear your name
cried aloud, they will strew the laurel at your feet, they will lift
you on their shields, recount your great deeds with slavish ex-
aggeration; that is but for the moment, for what you have done
up to now; it secures not a single morrow, promises no future like
the past--even as they shout you may be losing ground. Be on
your guard. Be cool-headed. Be aloof. They think only of them-
selves. They need to pay homage--homage is so easy to pay! But
no one will think of sharing your struggles, your pains, your
cares, your own deep fears. Guard yourself from the injurious
contempt of these same idle acclamations. You stand alone, you
stand entirely by yourself. Do you understand? Be stern with
yourself. Do not be rendered soft and careless, for if you do,
Florence will be lost to you. Do you understand?

PIERO: Yes, Father.

LORENZO: Count as nothing the outward glitter of power.
Cosimo the Great shunned the eyes and the homage of the crowd,
that its love might not exhaust itself in acclamations. Oh, how
wise he was! How much shrewdness passion needs, to be creative!
And you are foolish--I know you. You are too much like your
mother. You have too much Orsini blood in your veins. You
want to be painted in armour, play the prince in all the streets of
Florence. Do not be a fool. Take care! Florence is sharp-eyed and
loose-tongued. Be reserved--and reign!...Remember, too, that
we are of burgher, not noble stock; that we are what we are only
because of the people; that our only foe is he who would estrange
the people from us--do you understand?

PIERO: Yes, Father.

LORENZO: "Yes, Father." Polite, soothing, knowing better. A
perfect son. I am certain you do not believe a syllable. Hearken,
Piero, things may turn out badly, I foresee it. We might fall, be
driven out, when I am gone. It might be so--be quiet. Florence is
false; she is a strumpet. Lovely, indeed--ah, lovely, but a strum-
pet. She might come to give herself to a wooer who wooed her
with scorpions. So, if that should hap, Piero, if the foolish people
should rise in wrath against us, then, Piero, listen, save our treas-
ure, save the treasure of beauty which through three generations
we have gathered together. I see it spread out in the palace, in the
villas. I could touch the marble limbs, drink in with my eyes the
glowing colour of the paintings--put my hands on the splendid
vases, the gems, the inlay work, the coins, the gay majolica. You
see, my children, it was not only my money and my zeal, it was
my worth as a citizen I spent upon them. Who does not under-
stand me would condemn. I made no scruple to seize the property
of the state when I needed money to pay for my collections and
my feasts. Unrighteous goods? Rubbish! I was the state. The state
was I. Pericles himself took public money unhesitatingly when he
needed it. And beauty is above law and virtue. Enough. But when
they rave against it, then, Piero, save our treasures of beauty.
Rescue them. Let all else go, but protect them with your life. This
is my last will. You promise me?

PIERO: Be without care. Father.

LORENZO: But have a care yourself! Be shrewd. I do not believe
you will be shrewd, but that is my advice.--And you, Vannino,
my friendly little Giovanni! With a quiet heart I leave you. For
you I have no misgivings. Your path is marked out. It will lead you
to the throne of Saint Peter. You will add to our arms the triple
tiara and the crossed keys. Have you any idea what that means?
Why I put that in train with all my skill? A Medici in the seat
of Christ? Do you understand? Do not speak. But if you under-
stand, smile with your eyes into mine. He smiles--see, he .smiles.
Come, let me kiss you on your brow. Farewell. Live joyously. I
summon you to no great deeds. You are not made for bearing
heavy burdens of guilt and greatness. Keep yourself free of deeds
of violence and crime too great for you. Be innocent, be undis-
turbed. Cover yourself not with blood. Be a happy father to the
populace. Let the Vatican ring with merriment and the sound of
lutes. Let jests and jollity be the lightnings that flash from the
throne of this son of Zeus. May beauty and the arts flourish be-
neath your staff of power, and joy go out from your throne into
all the lands. I have your promise?

GIOVANNI: I will ever be dutifully mindful of your words, dear
Father.

LORENZO: Then leave me now. And thanks to you both--go
now. I am very weary. My soul yearns for deep stillness. Fare-
well, my sons. Love one another. Think of me, and farewell.

(The brothers quietly leave the room by the same door. Gio-
vanni 'with a charming gesture makes 'way for Piero to pass.)


5


LORENZO (alone): "Yes, Father." He understood not a word. I
was talking to myself. It has not eased my mind. There is one to
whom to speak out all one's mind would avail. Impossible. Ah,
Florence, Florence! If she were to yield herself to him, this fright-
ful Christian! She loved me, she for whom we wrestle, this sombre
monk and I. O world! O deep desire! O love-dream of power,
sweeter, more consuming--one must not possess. Longing is a
giant's power, owning unmans. Our bliss was mutual so long as
my slender strength sufficed. The wanton responds to the hero's
mighty charms. Now that I am broken, she despises me....She
is vulgar, boundlessly vulgar and cruel. Why do we vie for her
favour? Ah, I am weary unto death!

(Fiore appears in the background, at the top of the steps; her
hands crossed over her abdomen, artificial, symmetrical, mysteri-
ous. From where she stands she flashes a quick glance across at
Lorenzo from beneath her lowered lids, then descends slowly
into the room, with a smile.)

FIORE: How goes it with the Lord of Florence?

LORENZO (starts and struggles to sit upright. A painful, pathetic
smile spreads over his features): Well, very well, excellently well,
my beauty! Is it you? I am well. Why should I not be so? Did I
seem a little absorbed in thought as I sat here? I was composing
a poem. I was conceiving a little sonnet to the exquisiteness of
your nostrils when they dilate in mockery. And since I was com-
posing poetry, it follows I am well; I am as sound as a fish swim-
ming in its native element. For he who versifies thereby evinces a
plenitude of fancy.

FIORE: Then I congratulate you.

LORENZO: And I thank you, my gracious goddess. I do not see
you; yet your sweet, cool voice laves and refreshes my heart.
And now, now I will see you; ah, your loveliness! Will you sit
down beside me? Here on this stool? Though it would be more
fitting were I to take my place at your feet. You see, they have
left me alone--and I complain not. Indeed, I may have sent them
on their way, I needed them not. I could meditate more pro-
foundly upon your charms, and love you better, being alone.

FIORE: So you still love me, Lorenzo de' Medici?

LORENZO: Love you still? I should perhaps love you no more.
You do not know that all the strength of my being and my under-
standing are consumed in love of you?

FIORE: Then I do not understand why you do not stir out of
your cushions to make fetes for me.

LORENZO: Fetes? Certainly. But--fetes--you see, I am a little
tired.

FIORE: Of me?

LORENZO: Sharp and sweet! I love your scorn.

FIORE: How should you be tired, if not of me?

LORENZO: Permit me to lay my hand upon your brow. It is hot,
is it not? This fever--Pierleoni says it comes .from the unfavour-
able position of Jupiter and Venus with respect to the sun and to
each other, which is harmful to me. Pierleoni knows nothing. This
fever inflamed my blood when I first caught sight of you, when
my soul first comprehended all your charms. Since that hour it
has not ceased to glow. Do you remember? Ferrara? The Duke
came to meet me on the Po in a gilded gondola, surrounded by
gay little barks where banners fluttered, music sounded, and I
was greeted by a choir of singers. The shores were strewn with
flowers, the statues of the joyous gods gleamed white; and be-
tween them stood slender boys holding garlands in their hands.
But every bark bore a lovely woman, adorned each differently,
for these were the cities of Italy, who came to meet me. And one,
one I saw among them all, laurel in her hair and lilies in her hand;
and the minstrels sang to me in saucy strophes: "Thou art Fio-
renza, thou, the only one, the sweet one, the glory and the bril-
liance, the love and the power, the goal of yearning, thou the
flower of the world, thou wilt be mine...." I looked at you and
pain seized my heart, an ache, a deep oppression and a stubborn
grief--what shall I call it? A longing for thee! For thee! To
possess thee, thou flower of the world, thou many-hued seduction,
and of thee to die!

FIORE: Poor victor! What would you not give to receive this
pain back again for your weariness!

LORENZO: I feel it. It never left me again. Does one possess you?
Does the struggle to win you ever end? Is there ever repose in
your arms?...You came to me, you wonderful creature. Do
you remember the evening after the fete? You came....You
came in to me through the marble doorway. And when for the
first time I embraced you in the golden darkness of the room and
won your lips with my mouth--then I felt the dagger you carry
in your bodice and thought of Judith. Your father hated us
Medici. He joined the Pitti, we sent him away to misery, and his
exile saw your beauty reach its flower. Perhaps you only gave
yourself to be revenged? Perhaps in the moment of deepest
desire the poisoned death found its mark? How often, let us be
never so drunken with love, I searched your unfathomable eyes,
listened to what lay behind your cool and polished words....
Have you ever loved me? Ever loved anyone to whom you gave
yourself? Or do you only out of curiosity obey the power of
desire, which may never slumber satiated, which having once
possessed must ever be born anew, if it will not lose you igno-
miniously? For him, madonna, who has once tasted of your
charms, there can be no more repose, in conning either memories
of the past or dreams of the future. Only a constant, piercing
present, wakeful, fateful, perilous, and--consuming.

FIORE: Hearken, my Lord Lorenzo. I am not come to argue
with you about the art of love. I am a woman; yet it often seemed
that you laid stress upon my view and voice even in serious
matters?

LORENZO: Speak, I beg you.

FIORE: Well, then, I came to express to you my astonishment
at the negligence with which you look on at the evil course which
public affairs are taking....You have never heard of a monk.
Hieronymus Ferrarensis by name and Prior of San Marco?

LORENZO (looking at her) : I have heard of him.

FIORE: And heard that he subdues the city to himself with
words, brings youth to his feet, makes artists repent in sackcloth
and ashes, stirs up the populace against you and your rule, and
lets himself be the object of worship as envoy of the Crucified?

LORENZO: I have heard of it.

FIORE: Indeed--and you suffer all this mildly, sitting in weak-
ness amid your cushions?

LORENZO: If Florence loves him, I cannot and I will not hinder
it.

FIORE: He insults Florence.

LORENZO: And Florence loves him for it.

FIORE: Would you endure to have him insult me too?

LORENZO: Did he do so?

FIORE: I will tell you all the tale from the beginning. It lies fur-
ther back than events in Santa Maria del Fiore.

LORENZO: You were in the cathedral?

FIORE: Like the rest of the world.

LORENZO: You went often to the cathedral?

FIORE: As often as it pleased me. And from a curiosity better
grounded than that of others. I know this monk from early days.

LORENZO: From early days?

FIORE: From days when your glory's crown still hovered invis-
ible high above your head. It is quickly told. At Ferrara, near the
hut where my father and I found refuge from your bravoes,
there lived a citizen named Niccolo, learned, wealthy, and of
ancient lineage, in favour at court. He lived there with his wife,
Monna Helena, and two daughters and four sons. The eldest
son had gone for a soldier. I was a child still, or almost a child,
twelve years, thirteen--yet I was already beautiful (if you can
believe it) and youths gazed after me. I was on friendly terms
with my neighbours. We visited each other, we talked at the win-
dows, walked together in summer outside the city walls, played
games in the fields, wove wreaths for each other's heads. But one
of our neighbour's sons shut himself away from our merry com-
pany, the second eldest, about eighteen years old, I think: small,
weak, ugly as darkness. He feared people. When all Ferrara
streamed out of doors to the public festivals, he buried himself in
his books, played mournful melodies upon his lute, and wrote
what no one was allowed to read. They thought to make a phy-
sician of him, and he applied himself to the study of philosophy,
sitting in his little chamber bpwed over Thomas Aquinas and the
expounders of Aristotle. Often we teased him and threw orange-
peel through the window on his writing-desk; he would look up
with an uneasy and contemptuous smile. Between us two, things
stood very strangely. He seemed to flee the sight of me with fear
and loathing, yet to be condemned to meet me forever, indoors
and out and everywhere I went. Then he seemed to play the cow-
ard and avoid me, yet he would force himself, pressing his thick
lips together as he came towards me, passed and greeted me,
blushing red and bending on me a sour and injured gaze. In this
wise I came to understand that he was in love with me, and I re-
joiced in the power I had over his gloomy arrogance. I played
with him and led him on, I gave him hope and dashed it with a
look. It thrilled me to know that my eyes could control the flow
of his blood. He grew more lean and silent still, he began a fast
that hollowed out the caverns of his eyes; one saw him sitting long
hours in church, bruising his brow against the altar step. But one
day, out of curiosity, I brought it about that he was alone with me
in a room at twilight. I sat silent and waited. Then he groaned
and was as though pulled towards me, and whispered and con-
fessed. I made as though astonished and repulsed him; he seemed
then to rave, almost like an animal, begging me with gasps and
panting with parched lips to yield me to him. With horror and
disgust I thrust him from me--it may even be I struck at him,
since he would not leave his avid clinging. And when I did so,
he tore himself away and stood up with a shriek, inarticulate and
hoarse, and rushed off, his fists before his eyes.

LORENZO: I understand, I understand.

Fiore; He was named Girolamo. That night he fled to Bologna,
and entered a cloister of Dominicans. He preached repentance in
unheard-of accents. Folk laughed, they stared, they were subdued.
His name went through all Italy. And your spoilt curiosity, gentle-
men of Florence, drew him hither. And he waxes great in this
Florence.

LORENZO: You have made him great.

FIORE: I--have made him? Then hear how he rewards me. He
has insulted me before the populace, today, in the cathedral...
pointed at me with his finger, spat upon me with words, com-
pared me to the great Babylon, with whom kings have commerce!

LORENZO: Kings! You made him great. Greater than I, to whom
you gave yourself.

FIORE: Greater than you? That I find still undecided; it will
be decided. Hearken, my friend--if you summoned him? Here
before you? Be it only to see how the poor little monk stumbles
over the carpet when in the presence of the Magnifico. For his
Rhodus would be here. Hear him, answer him. Let him measure
himself against you. And if you see his worthlessness, then send
him back to his cell, back to his pulpit. Let him insult you further
as he will, you--and me. And if you feel his power predominant,
then it lies with you to deny it out of existence with arguments
of the sternest and coldest. He is in your grasp; if you are a man
he will never escape from it....

LORENZO: And if I should shame to employ such arguments?
You know that I should thus shame.

FIORE: I know nothing. I wait. I wait to see how each one
shows himself. I await the event. From me, indeed, expect no
thanks if you feel shame to show yourself the stronger!

LORENZO: He would not come. On what pretext could one call
him hither?

FIORE: Indeed, you are very ailing. Have you never lied? You
call the priest. You feel ill. You want to confess. You seek for
spiritual counsel.

LORENZO: In very truth I seek it. I yearn for it. Emptiness and
horror are all about me at this moment. I see you not, madonna.
I see not that you are beautiful. No longer do I understand what
desire is. I should like to despise you, but I only shudder at you.
Whither shall I turn? Call Ficino! Ah, that is naught. Call Brother
Girolamo. You are right. Let him come.

FIORE: He is coming.

LORENZO: How then--he is coming?

FIORE: I sent for him to you. I knew you desired him. I sent
for him today after the sermon. After he had insulted me. He is
on the way. He may be here at any moment.

LORENZO: At any moment. By God, you know how to act!
Your zeal for this meeting is great. At any moment...the
enemy in Careggi! Today, at once. Good, then, let him come. Am
I afraid? If he comes I will not send him away. If I will still hear
him, it may be the time has come. But first call someone about me.
Summon my companions. Have Pico come and the others. (Fiore
touches a bell.) Thank you, madonna. I love you. I were ill armed
against this prophet did I not love you....Ah, there you are,
my friends! Lend me yet awhile the pleasure of your blithe
company!


6


Pico, Ficino, Poliziano, Pulci, and Pierleoni come down the
steps.

PICO: Ah, Lauro! We thought you resting quietly and alone,
and you have just finished, so it seems, an appointment and a
love-scene. Humble good day, madonna. But, Lauro, seriously:
then you must not deny yourself to the jovial youth who have
been hours long awaiting your pleasure: a group of artists, with
FRANCESCO ROMANO at their head, Aldobrandino--

LORENZO: He too? Good, good, I will see them. I need them.
Let them come. (A message is sent out by the gallery.) I am in a
good mood, gentlemen. I have had good news. I am receiving a
visit. I expect today a charming and famous guest. No, you could
not guess. Not even you, Pico. But I await him with impatience
and am highly gratified that my artists have come to shorten the
time before his entrance to my chamber. There they are. See
Aldobrandino's innocent red face. And Leone's amorous nose
And Ghino, the bright darling of the gods. Welcome, children!

(The eleven artists come in^ making low bows.)

ALDOBRANDINO: Health and blessings to your Excellency!

GRIFONE: Healing and joy to the godlike Laurentius Medici!

(They press round him^ kneel down, or bend over his band.)

LORENZO: I thank you. Be sure that I rejoice to see you all. Let
me see, who are there here? Ercole, iny brave goldsmith, and
Guidantonio, who makes the beautiful chairs....Yes, and I see
Simonetto, the glorious architect, and Dioneo, who shapes wax
in men's images. How is it with art, Pandolfo? I have not said,
but I saw Messer Francesco at first glance.

ALDOBRANDINO: Truly, your Excellency, Messer Francesco is
a great painter, and despite the closeness of his mouth far ahead of
us all in his art; yet in love to you, gracious Lord, not one of us
stands behind him, and some, perhaps, might even be before. May
I mention, since it just occurs to me, that I have not long since
come back to breathe my native air?

LORENZO: Yes, yes, my good Aldobrandino, you are right. You
were away. You were in Rome, I remember quite clearly. You
had work there, did you not?

ALDOBRANDINO: I did indeed, sir, and for lovers of art in high
places, if I may say so. But then I heard a report that Lorenzo de'
Medici, my good and great patron, was not well, and I dropped
everything where it was and hastened to Florence with such zeal
that I covered the ground in less than eight hours.

GRIFONE: He is only boasting, my Lord; it is shameless of him,
I say. Nobody could cover that distance in eight hours; it is a lie.

ALDOBRANDINO: You hear, my gracious Lord, how this man
tries to harm me before you and in your eyes.

LORENZO: Peace, children, there is no cause for hard words.
Even if it is impossible to come hither from Rome in eight hours,
Aldobrandino in saying so merely shows that he wants to give
evidence of his love to me, and that in some vivid and poetical
way. I cannot chide him for it.

ALDOBRANDINO: That is a splendid setting out, my Lord. But
yet you do not know the depth of my devotion, nor what I am
ready to do and suffer in silence for you....So much I must
be allowed to say, your Excellency. Good, good, I don't want to
make a fuss.

GRIFONE: You are right there. We came here on a more impor-
tant errand. We must discuss the festivities to be arranged in
honour of your recovery, Magnifico.

LORENZO: My recovery--

GRIFONE: That is my suggestion--with your magnanimous
permission I ask leave to suggest it. We must consider what a fine
opportunity Lorenzo's restoration to health gives us for organiz-
ing a beautiful pageant and a ball and public banquet afterwards.
My head is full of ideas. Let me manage the whole thing and you
shall see a fete the printed descriptions of which will spread
throughout Italy.

LORENZO: Good, good, Grifone. Thank you, my lad. I will
count on you. We will take up the matter together later. Now I
must ask what Ercole has been doing since I saw him last....
What are you peering about the room like that for, Guidantonio?

GUIDANTONIO: Pardon, my Lord, I was looking at the furnish-
ing. Some of it is good. The chair your Excellency is sitting on
at this minute was made by me. A fine piece. But the other things
are quite out of fashion and not the height of good taste. I am
working on a room for you which shall most wonderfully com-
bine the classic motifs with the most modern comfort. May I
bring you the drawings?

LORENZO: Pray do so one of these days. I shall not be able to
resist ordering the room, if it is a genuine Guidantonio in taste
and comfort. And now, Ercole, let me hear from you.

ERCOLE: I have done only trifles, sir; still, there are pretty con-
ceits among them. A charming set for salt and pepper, with fig-
ures and foliage, I made especially for your table. You will pay
me anything I ask, so soon as you see it. Also I have made a
medallion with your likeness, with Moses on the reverse striking
water from the rock. The inscription runs: Ut bibat populus.

LORENZO: And it has drunk, the people! Cast me the medal, my
Ercole. Cast it in silver and in copper. I must praise it without even
having .seen it. You have chosen your motto well--Ut bibat
populus.

ERCOLE: But the finest of all is a little breviary to the honour
of God's Mother, with covers in heavy gold most richly worked.
There is an image of the Mother of God on the front, you sec,
in precious stones--they alone are worth six thousand scudi.

ALDOBRANDINO: Pack up, Ercole! Lorenzo will not buy your
breviary.

LORENZO: And why will he not?

ALDOBRANDINO: Because he does not care for the sign of the
Virgin. At least he has done his best to have as few as possible of
them in Florence. (Laughter and applause.)

LEONE: What cheek, Magnifico! That is a shameless piece of
plagiarism. I made that joke myself an hour ago, down in the
garden. I call these gentlemen to witness.

ALDOBRANDINO: You should not make such an ugly display of
your envy, Leone. You may have said something of the sort, I
admit it. But it was in quite a different connection, and anyhow
it shows a bad character to grudge me the applause these gentle-
men would pay to my quickwittedness.

LEONE: If Lauro were not sitting here, and Madonna Fiore, you
braggart, you, I would tell you to your face that you are an
empty-headed rattlepate.

ALDOBRANDINO: And I would counter with the absolute truth
that you are like nothing so much as a stinking billy-goat.

LORENZO: Aldobrandino! Leone! Enough! I declare the subject
closed. I know that you are both of you very witty. Come here,
Leone, Tell us a story. Tell us one of your adventures, you joke-
smith, you! We will make up for your lost applause. Look how
our mistress prays you with her eyes. She loves your historiettes.
And our Messer Francesco--his wishes are written on his face.
Would you like Leone to tell us a tender tale--yes or no?

FRANCESCO ROMANO (rolls his black eyes, simpers, then opens
bis mouth for the first time and says in a loud, naive voice): Yes,

LORENZO (much diverted): Did you hear, Leone? The master
understands painting better than making words; but what he says
is weighty and solid. Impossible to refuse. Begin! Madonna is
queen of the day. She summons you, and this noble circle waits
to hear.

LEONE: Well, then, listen. But I must beg the learned gentle-
men to bear one thing in mind. I talk as it comes to me, without
art. I am no tale-writer, I make no fables, nor need to fable as a
poet does. A poet, it is well known, loves and enjoys only with
his inky goose-quill--but I do it with another kind of productive
stub. (Hilarity, cries of Bravo!") And accordingly I will tell
you truly how Dan Cupid has favoured me of late. Listen: I was
of late in Lombardy, at the house of a friend, which neighbours a
convent famed for its abbess, who lives in great piety and in the
odour of sanctity. Now, my friend's cousin, named Fiammetta
was a nun in this abbey, and l went with him to visit her one day
at the grating. Hardly had I set eyes on her when I was enflamed
by love for her youth and beauty and in her eyes I read that I was
no less attractive to her. From then on I bent all my powers to
see how I could gain her intimacy, and as I am not inexperienced
in these matters I had soon conceived a plan to take advantage of
the fact that a gardener was needed for the convent gardens. I
took the precaution of changing my appearance a little, shaved
my beard, put on ragged clothing, and applied to the holy and
austere abbess for the vacant place. I made out that I was dumb,
a capital idea, since it reassured the chaste madame that I was
completely harmless to her flock. I was taken on and went at
once to work. And it soon fell out that I met the lovely Fiam-
metta in the garden, made myself known and explained to her
that I was not only not dumb but also not suffering from any
other physical lacks--the which she begged me to demonstrate
to her more convincingly. And since her desire most fully coin-
cided with mine, she took me into her cell on the first evening
that offered, and I remained there the night. And I assure you that
whatever skill I lacked in my tasks by day, I was most punctual
and adroit at my nightly ones. Yes, the charms of my lovely
Fiammetta roused me on more than one night to heroic deeds,
and would have gone on doing so, had not envy made an end to
our joys. There were two ugly little nuns who had no lovers and
had privately to go about as best they could to satisfy their needs.
They made the discovery that here in the cloister the goat had
been made the gardener; filled with ill will against their sweet
sister, they scrupled not to bring their suspicions to the ear of the
abbess. In order that no doubt might remain, it was decided to take
us in the act. They watched; and one evening late, when Fiam-
metta had opened her door to me, the two envious nuns hastened
to the cell or the abbess, pounded on the door, and announced that
the fox was in the trap. It may have disturbed the abbess's rest to
be thus summoned in the night--as the sequel will show. But at
all events she sprang from her bed, flung on her clothes, and rushed
with the two spies to Fiammetta's cell. They burst open the door,
brought lights, and exposed our embraces to the public eye. Fiam-
metta and I were stiff with fright. But when I had pulled myself
together and looked at the abbess, who was exhausting all the
curses and vile names in her vocabulary, I noticed an extraordinary
circumstance. The holy female, that is, when she had thought in
the darkness to set her hood on her head, had stuck on a priest's
small-clothes instead, so that the kneebands hung down on her
shoulders in the most singular way. "Madonna," said I, interrupt-
ing the stream of her cursings, "will perhaps first button up her
headgear and then say on what pleases her to say." Then she
noticed what she had done and stood crimson with blushes, for
she knew where he was to whom the garment belonged. She
rushed off in a fury and with her the two spies, and my Fiammetta
and I were left alone to enjoy once more unvexed all the bliss of
heaven.

(The general merriment has increased as he talks, certain places
being warmly applauded by the artists and humanists. Even Fiore
joins in. Lorenzo, completely diverted, has followed the tale with
childlike enjoyment. Towards the end of it the whole room re-
sounds with tumultuous mirth. Lorenzo laughs heartily; the art-
ists fit to split themselves. But suddenly the narrator breaks off
and there comes an abrupt silence.)

A PAGE (entering through the curtained door front right, an-
nounces in a clear, very audible voice) : The Prior of San Marco.

(Pause.)

POLIZIANO (horrified, not trusting his ears): What did you say,
boy?

PAGE (abashed): The Prior of San Marco.

(Stillness. All present seek Lorenzo helplessly with their eyes.
All mouths are open, all eyebrows raised.)

LORENZO (to the page): Come nearer. What do they call you?

PAGE: My name is Gentile, gracious Lord.

LORENZO: Gentile. That is pretty. Go back to the door, Gentile,
and come in again. I like to look at you, you walk so well. You
have pretty hips. Stand so, as you are. Aldobrandino, notice the
line. Take this ring, Gentile, because you have pleased my eyes.
And him whom you have announced, let him now come in.

POLIZIANO: You would not!

LORENZO: I will.

(The page goes out. Deathlike stillness reigns. The portiere is
lifted. The sallow, woebegone, fanatical profile of the Ferrarese is
projected slowly into the room. It is irredeemably ugly; its savage
expression and large bony structure are in startling contrast to the
smallness and sickliness of the rest of his figure. His head is framed
in the cowl of the black mantle he wears over his white habit. T here
is an abrupt depression between the great hooked nose and the nar-
row peaked forehead. The thick lips are compressed with a sort of
finality, emphasized still more by the hollow ashen cheeks. The
eyebrows are thick and grow together over the nose, also they are
perpetually raised, making horizontal wrinkles in the forehead
and giving the little eyes, ringed with the black shadows of ex-
haustion, a staring and yet vacant expression. He is out of breath
from walking at a quick pace through the long passages, but tries
to conceal the fact. His hands, now hanging down inside his
mantle, look waxen and shake when he raises them. His voice has
a nervous, frightened note, yet sometimes inexplicably takes on
a hard and savage power.

As he enters, the artists retreat backwards, giving him more
than enough room. They form a group; one of them takes his
neighbour's arm, turns half round, and stares over his shoulder at
the monk, with lifted brows, his lips distorted with amazement,
disgust, and fear. They retreat gradually leftwards up the steps
and through the gallery, and with them the humanists. Pico is the
last to go, casting inquisitive glances back at the group of three
persons who remain. At last he goes off, treading softly.

The Ferrarese looks straight ahead and his gaze meets Fiore as
she sits in her composed and studied posture at Lorenzo's feet. He
starts back, for a moment his face is visited by a tormented ex-
pression; then he straightens himself, fixes his eye on Lorenzo, and
with his head and the upper part of his body makes a vague ges-
ture of salutation.)

FIORE (has risen. Her hands are folded on her prominent abdo-
men, her eyes are lowered as she moves towards the Ferrarese and
speaks in a high, monotonous murmur): Welcome to Careggi,
Master Prior. May I congratulate you on your sermon today? I
was a little late, yet not too late to hear the best of it. Be assured
that I was highly edified. Your performance is very powerful in-
deed.--Well? Why are you so silent? It is not fitting that an
artist should so stiffly and haughtily pocket the praise he gets,
without even the tribute of a disclaiming smile.

THE PRIOR (still breathless, tormented and harsh). I spoke to
you in the Duomo. I will speak to you only from my pulpit.

FIORE (affecting a pout): Not everybody is so stern. From the
cathedras of all the arts they speak to me--they make me smile or
I give them my ear--and still have enough flesh and blood left
over to treat me as a human being.

THE PRIOR: I live only in mv pulpit.

FIORE (pretending to shudder): So down here you are dead?
Ha, yes, so you are. You are pale and cold. I am here in this room
with a sick man and a dead man. But once on a time, Mr. Dead
Man, a long time ago, you were alive, were you not, and spoke to
me here below.

THE PRIOR: I spoke. I shrieked. You smiled. You laughed. You
lashed me with opprobrium. You drove me up--up to my pulpit.
And now you pay me homage.

FIORE: You use large words. That is the orator's art. I pay you
homage? People pay me homage, and I incline to him who knows
how to pay it in the best and finest way.

THE PRIOR: I pay you no homage. I revile you. I call you aban-
doned and an abomination. I call you the bait of Satan, the poison
of the spirit, the sword of souls, wolf's milk for him who drinks
it, occasion of destruction, nymph, witch, Diana I call you.

FIORE: And you say well. It takes as much talent to revile as
to praise. And what if all that seems to me but the last and ex-
tremest kind of homage? Can you imagine that? Tell me! You
felt it yourself!

THE PRIOR: I understand you not. You heard me in the Duomo.
I am unskilled and cannot trifle. But you heard me in the Duomo.
The Word is hard and it is holy. He who closes his lips with his
finger, Peter Martyr, he is my master.

FIORE: Work and be silent....I find, Magnifico, much resemblance
between your guest and Messer Francesco Romano. But, Mr.
Dead Man, you came to talk to this sick man here. So I will go,
wishing the gentlemen the pleasantest entertainment. I wish
you good accord and rich experience. It would seem that it
cannot lack.

(She goes up the steps and disappears through the gallery. Dur-
ing the following scene it grows dark.)


7


LORENZO (seems entirely to have forgotten the Ferrarese, who
keeps his burning gaze directed upon him. With bowed head the
Magnifico gazes up into space. At length, coming back to himself,
he makes a charming effort to assume his man-of-the-world man-
ner and says): Will you not sit down. Padre?

THE PRIOR (tempted by weariness to sink down upon a chair
near the door, but recovering hhnself and standing stiffly erect):
Let me tell you this one thing, Lorenzo de' Medici! I have seen the
world, I know the treachery of princes, their accustomed practice
of bloody violence. If this is a snare, if I have been lured hither
to be enforced and done away with--then have a care. I am be-
loved. My words have won souls to me. The people stand behind
me. You dare not touch me.

LORENZO (suppressing a smile): You are afraid? But no! Have
no fear. It would be far from my mind to lay traitorous hands on
a man so extraordinary as yourself. Am I a Malatesta, a Baglioni?
You do me less than justice to compare me with these. I am not
savage, not without honour. I know how to value your life and
work as well as any of your own flock. May I not ask in return
that you will look upon mine as direct and fairly?

THE PRIOR: What have you to say to me?

LORENZO: Oh, I have already said some of it. But you speak
grudgingly. And you look worn and weary. I do not deceive my-
self. My eye is sharp for such signs. (With genuine sympathy)
You are not well?

THE PRIOR: I preached in the cathedral today. Afterwards I was
ill. I lay abed. I left my bed only on your summons.

LORENZO: On my--yes, yes, quite right. I am sorry. So your
work consumes you, then, so much?

THE PRIOR: My life is tortured. Fever, dysentery, and continu-
ous mental labour for the weal of this city have so weakened all
my internal organs that I can no longer bear the least hardship.

LORENZO: By God, you should spare yourself--you ought to
rest.

THE PRIOR (scornfully): I know no rest. Rest the many know
who have no mission. For them it is easy. But an inward fire burns
in my limbs and urges me to the pulpit.

LORENZO: An inward fire--I know, I know! I know this fire.
I have called it demon, will, frenzy--but it has no name. It is the
madness of him who offers himself up to an unknown god. He
despises the base, cautious, home-keeping folk and lets them stare
amazed at one for choosing a wild, brief, burning life instead of
their long, wretched, frightened one.

THE PRIOR: Choosing? I have not chosen. God summoned me to
greatness and to pain and I obeyed.

LORENZO: God--or passion. Ah, Padre, we understand each
other. We shall understand each other.

THE PRIOR: You and I? You blaspheme. Why did you send for
the priest? You who have worked evil all your life long!

LORENZO: What do you call evil?

THE PRIOR: All that is against spirit--within us and without.

LORENZO: Against spirit....I will gladly follow you. I called
you to listen to you. I beg you, Brother, have faith in my good-
will. Tell me, pray: What do you mean by spirit?

THE PRIOR: The power, Lorenzo Medici, which makes for
purity and freedom.

LORENZO: That sounds strong--and mild. And yet--why do I
shudder? But I will hear you. In us, you say? And so in you as
well? You struggle also with yourself?

THE PRIOR: I am born of woman. No flesh is pure. One must
know sin, feel it, understand it, in order to hate it. The angels do
not hate sin. They are ignorant of it. There have been hours when
I rebelled against the order of spirits. It seemed to me that I was
higher than the angels.

LORENZO (with unaccustomed light irony): A question so dar-
ing, so enthralling, that it is worthy being put by you. Yet, dear
Brother, a question concerning you alone, and so today we can
put it aside. See, I am ill, and fear is in my heart--I make no bones
of telling you this. Fear for the world, for myself--who knows?
--for truth. I have sought consolation with my Platonists, my
artists--and I have found none. Why not? Because they are none
of them my sort. They admire me, perhaps, they love me, and
they know nothing of me. Courtiers, orators, children--what use
is all that to me? You see, I count on you. Padre. I must hear you
--about you and about me; I must compare myself, must come to
terms with you; then I should have peace--I feel it. You are not
like the others. You do not crawl prattling to my feet. You have
risen up beside me, you breathe the same air as myself. You hate
me, you repulse me, you work against me with all your art--and
see, I am in my soul not far from calling you brother.

THE PRIOR (whose lank cheeks at the words, have taken on a
glow): I will not be your brother. I am not your brother. There
you have it. I am a poor monk, a priest, scorned and despised like
all my kind by the whole insolent world of the flesh, and yet I
have raised myself and through me my kind to honour, so that I
throw your brotherliness in your face, Magnifico though you be
and a lord of this earth.

LORENZO: You see me inclined to admire you for it.

THE PRIOR: You shall not admire me, you shall hate me. And as
I must be frightful to you, so must you fear me. I have heard much
of your charm, Lorenzo Medici. It shall not ensnare me. Once
more: why did you send for me? You shuddered before the
heaped-up measure of your sins, and fear urges you to treat with
God--you thirst to learn the conditions of grace. Am I not right?

LORENZO: Not quite--perhaps almost. And treat--yes, you
see, that is what I want to do, that is what I am doing. But you
are impatient. Let me understand you. You say I have all my life
worked against the spirit?

THE PRIOR: Do you ask? Is your soul utterly insensitive, then,
as they say your nose is? You have made more the temptations of
this earth, the allurements of Satan which he makes run through
the flesh like a luscious torment. You have set up the pride of the
eye as a god, you have made pleasure spurt from the very walls
of Florence--and called it beauty. You have beguiled the masses
to believe the rankest lies which paralyse the desire for salvation;
you have instigated feasts of gallantry in honour of the glistening
surface of life--and called that art.

LORENZO: I perceive a strange contradiction here: You are zeal-
ous against art, and yet, Brother, you yourself--you too are an
artist!

THE PRIOR: The people see more clearly--they call me a
prophet.

LORENZO: What is a prophet, then?

THE PRIOR: An artist who is at the same time a saint.--I have
nothing in common with your art of the eyes, Lorenzo de'Medici.
My art is holy, for it is knowledge and a flaming denial. Long ago,
when I suffered agony, I dreamed of a torch which should light
up with mercy all the frightful depths, all the shameful and sor-
rowful abysses of being, of a divine fire which should be laid to
all the world that it might blaze up and perish, together with all
its shame and martyrdom in redeeming pity. It was art of which
I dreamt.

LORENZO (musing): The earth seemed fair to me.

THE PRIOR: I saw! I saw through the fairness and the appearance!
I suffered too much not to insist proudly upon my vision. Shall I
tell you a parable? It was in Ferrara. Once my father took me to
court with him. I saw the castle of the Estes. I saw the prince with
his companions--women, dwarfs, jesters, and enlightened spirits
--revelling at table. Music and the dance, sweet odours and feast-
ing were all. Yet somotimes, very low, awesomely faint, another
and strange sound rose above the tumult and the luxury: a sound
of torment, a groaning and moaning--it came from below, out
of frightful dungeons, where the prisoners lay and languished. I
saw them too, I asked and was taken down below whence the
howling and the horror came. And the sound of the'feasting came
down to them below; and I knew that those above felt no shame,
that not one conscience was even uneasy. And suddenly it seemed
as though I must choke with hatred and resistance....And I
saw a great bird in the air, beautiful, bold, and blithe of spirit it
hovered there. And my heart was gripped by a pain, an aching, a
defiance and a profound urge, a fervid wish, a gigantic resolve:
could I but break those great pinions!

LORENZO: So that was your one desire?

THE PRIOR: I looked into the heart of the time and saw its fore-
head with the mark of the whore; shameless was she, gladsome and
shameless--can you understand? She would not be ashamed. She
took the tapers from the altar of the Crucified and bore them to
the sepulchre of one who had created beauty. Beauty--what is
beauty? Is it possible not to fathom what she is? If not--who
could realize a state of things on earth without being prevented
by pain and disgust from still willing it to be? Who? Who? The
time! All of you! But not I--I alone! I fled, fled from the abomi-
nable sight of such complacency, which laughed at feeling and
suffering and redemption. I fled into the monastery, I saved my-
self in the austere twilight of Holy Church. Here, thought I, in
the sanctified precincts of the Cross, here suffering has power to
move. Here, so I thought, holiness and wisdom reign, the sacrae
litterae. What did I see? Here too I saw the Cross betrayed. The
wearers of stole and cowl, whom I thought to be my brothers in
the company of suffering--I saw them fallen away from the maj-
esty of the spirit. They had compounded with the foe, with the
great Babylon. Here also I was alone. Lo, I understood this too:
I had to make myself, my very self, great in opposition against the
world--for I was chosen Christ's vicar. The spirit was born again
in me!

LORENZO: Against beauty? Brother, Brother, you are leading me
astray. Must there be conflict here too? Must one see the world
divided in two hostile camps? Are spirit and beauty opposed to
each other?

THE PRIOR: They are. I speak the truth, learnt in suffering. (A
pause. It has grown dark.) Would you know a sign, manifest when
two worlds are eternally strange to each other and may not be
reconciled? Longing is this sign. Where abysses yawn, she spans
her rainbow, and where she is, are abysses. I.earn, learn, Lorenzo
de' Medici: The spirit can yearn towards beauty. In hours of
weakness and self-betrayal, in the sweetness of shame, then it hap-
pens. For she, who is blithe and lovely and strong, she who is life,
she can never understand spirit, she shrinks from it, perhaps would
fear it and put it away from her; even mock it pitilessly and drive
it back upon itself. But then, Lorenzo de' Medici, it can renounce,
it can grow hard under torture and great in solitude and return in
power so that she gives herself.

LORENZO: Why do you stop? I am listening--I am closing my
eyes to hear. I am hearing the melody of my life. Will you stop so
soon? It is so sweet to listen thus, without an effort, to oneself. I
scarcely see you. Perhaps it is darkness, perhaps my sight is failing.
but my spirit is awake. I listen. And I hear a song: my own song,
the deep low song of longing. Girolamo, yet do you not know
me? Whither the longing urges, there one is not, that one is not
--you know? And yet man likes to confuse himself with his long-
ing. You have heard that people call me the lord of beauty? But I
myself am ugly. Yellow, ugly and weak. I adore the senses--and
one lacks me, a precious one. I have no sense of smell. I know not
the scent of the rose nor of a woman. I am a cripple, a deformed
object. Is that only my body? Nature thrust me forth in a con-
tortion; but I have compelled the frenzy and the staggering to
measure and rhythm. My soul was a smouldering torment of de-
sire and a flame of lust; I have fanned it to a clear flame. Without
my longing I should be but a satyr; and when my poets put me
with the company of the Olympians, not one of them dreams of
the long, stern discipline which went to bridle my wild nature. It
was well so. Had I been born beautiful, I had never made myself
the lord of beauty. Hindrance is the will's best friend. To whom
do I say that? To you, who know so painfully well that the hero's
garland is not won by him who is merely strong. Are we foes?
Well, then, I say that we are warring brothers.

THE PRIOR: I am not your brother. Have you not heard me say
it? Let lights be brought, if the darkness weakens you. I hate this
contemptible balancing, this lewd intellectuality, this blasphemous
toleration of extremes! It shall not move me. Let them be still. I
know it, this spirit--too well, too well! I put it behind me. I hear
Florence, I hear your time--subtle, daring, easy-going--but it
shall not weaken my powers, shall not disarm me, not me, not me
--know that once and for all!

LORENZO: You hate the time, it understands you. Which is
greater?

THE PRIOR (savagely): I am, I am!

LORENZO: Perhaps. You, then. I did not summon you to quarrel
with you. And yet--forgive me: I would gladly see you at one
with yourself. You rave at the spirit by which you rose to great-
ness, by which you let yourself be borne upwards--am I right?
I cannot see your face. But this is how things seem to me: in times
like these, such as you have said they are--subtle, sceptical, tol-
erant, inquisitive, vacillating, manifold, without clear limits--in
such a time limitation can seem like genius. Forgive me. I am not
fencing, I seek not to offend, I seek but clarity as between you
and me. A power that resolutely holds itself aloof from the general
scepticism can work wonders. All these subtle little people--they
have no faith, do not believe it --they feel a power and they bow
before it. Once more, forgive me! And again: you revile art, yet
use it for your ends. Your name and fame are cried aloud because
the city and our time worship the man who proudly dares to be
himself. Never, anywhere, has there been such rich reward, so
much response, for him who strives in his own way after fame.
That you grew great in Florence was only because this Florence
is so free, such a spoilt child of art, as to take you as her lord.
Were it less so, were it only a very little less lapped in art, it would
tear you to pieces instead of paying you homage. You are aware
of that?

THE PRIOR: I will not be aware of it.

LORENZO: May one will not to be aware? You rail at the indiffer-
ence, at the refusal to see, at the shamelessness. But are you not
yourself ashamed to win such power, knowing by what means
you win it?

THE PRIOR: I am chosen. I may know and still do it. For I must
be strong. God performs miracles. You see the miracle of detach-
ment regained. (Looking at the bust of Caesar) Did he ask by what
means he climbed?

LORENZO: Caesar? You are a monk. And you have ambition!

THE PRIOR: How could I not have, I that suffered so? Ambition
says: My sufferings must not have been in vain. They must bring
me fame.

LORENZO: By God, that is it! Have I not known it? You have
understood all that to a miracle. We rulers of men are egoist, and
they blame us for it, not knowing that it comes of our suffering.
They call us hard and understand not it was pain made us so. We
may justly say: Look at yourselves, who have had so much easier
a time on this earth. To myself I am torment and joy sufficient.

THE PRIOR: But they do not rail. They marvel. They reverence.
See them come to the strong ego, the many who are only we, see
them serve, see them tirelessly do his will--

LORENZO: Although his own advantage is plain to any eye--

THE PRIOR: Although he leave their services quite unrewarded
and take them for granted--

LORENZO: Cosimo, my forbear--I was old enough to know him;
he was a cold and clever tyrant. They gave him the title pater
patriae. He took it with a smile and never a word of thanks. I shall
never forget it. How he must despise them, I thought. And since
then I have despised the folk.

THE PRIOR: Fame is the school of scorn.

LORENZO: Ah, the worthlessness of the masses! They are so poor,
so empty, so selflessly self-forgetful.

THE PRIOR: So simple, so easy to dominate.

LORENZO: They know nothing better than to be dominated.

THE PRIOR: They write to me from all the quarters of the earth,
they come from far to kiss the hem of my robe, they spread my
fame to the four winds. Do I ever ask them for it, have I ever
thanked them?

LORENZO: It is amazing.

THE PRIOR: Quite amazing is it. Are you so futile, one thinks,
so vacant yourselves, that you know nothing prouder than to
serve another?

LORENZO: Just so, just so! One cannot believe one's eyes, to see
them bowing low and willingly--so satisfied.

THE PRIOR: One might laugh at the docility of the world...

LORENZO: And laughing, laughing, one takes the world as will-
ing instrument on which to play.

THE PRIOR: To play one's own tune.

LORENZO (feverishly): Oh, my dreams! My power and art!
Florence was my lyre. Did it not resound? Sweetly? It sang of my
longing. It sang of beauty, it sang of great desire, it sang, it sang
the great song of life....Hush! On your knees....There! I see her.
She comes, she draws near to me, all the veils fall and all my
blood flows out to meet her naked beauty. Oh, joy! Oh, sweet
and fearful thrill! Am I chosen to look upon you, Venus Genetrix,
you who are life, the sweet world?...Creative beauty, mighty
impulse of art! Venus Fiorenza! Dost thou know what I would?
The perpetual feast--that was my sovereign will!...Oh, stay!
Dost thou turn away? Dost pale? I see no more....Red waves
come...and a horror...a yawning abyss. (Fainting) Are you still
there, by whom I have understood myself? Speak to me!
Fear! Anguish! Vol terra! Blood! I emptied the treasury of the
dowries, I drove the virgins to unchastity....Speak quickly.
Speak quickly. The conditions of grace...?

Tnt.PkiOR (beside him, low, eagerly): Misericordiam volo....There
are three. The first, repentance.

LORENZO (in the same tone): I will repent the plundering of
Volterra and the theft of moneys....

THE PRIOR: The second: That you return all unjustly owned
property to the state.

LORENZO: My son shall do so. Then?

THE PRIOR (in an awesome whisper, with a gesture of com-
mand): The third: That you make Florence free--at once for-
ever--free from the lordship of your house.

LORENZO (as softly; there is a silent, passionate struggle between
the two): Free--for you!

THE PRIOR: Free for the King who died on the Cross.

LORENZO: For you. For you! Why do you lie? We understood
each other. Fiorenza, my city! Do you love her, then? Say quickly.
You love her?

THE PRIOR: Fool! Child! Lay yourself to bed in the grave with
the ideas which are your playthings. A torrential love, a hate all-
embracingly sweet--I am this complex, and this complex wills
that I be lord in Florence!

LORENZO: Unhappy one--to what end? What can be your
purpose?

THE PRIOR: Eternal peace. The triumph of the spirit. I will break
them, these great wings--

LORENZO (anguished, desperate): You shall not. Wretch! You
shall not. I forbid you--I, the Magnifico. Oh, I know you now,
you have betrayed yourself to me. It is the wings of life you mean.
It is death whom you proclaim as spirit, and all the life of life is
art. I will prevent you. I am still master.

THE PRIOR: I laugh at you. You are dying, I am on my feet.
My art won the people. Florence is mine.

LORENZO (in a paroxysm): Ah, monster! Evil spirit! Then you
shall see me strong and ruthless. (He shrieks, pulling himself up
in the chair by both hands on the arms) To me, to me! Come,
come! Seize him! Bind him! He will break the great wings. Dun-
geon and chains! The lions' den! Kill him, he would slay all! Flor-
ence is mine...Florence...Florence! (He collapses, his head
rolls upon his neck. His eyeballs turn in, his arms describe a last
all-embracing motion. Several servants with wax torches come
from the right along the gallery into the roorn. The stage is sud-
denly full of flickering light. Pico, Ficino, Poliziano, Pulci, Pier-
leoni, and the artists hasten in horror down the steps.)

PICO: Lorenzo!

PIERLEONI: He is gone.

POLIZIANO (in despair): My Lauro, my Lauro!

(A new movement in the gallery. Four or five men, dust-
covered, make their way hastily in.)

ONE OF THEM: Hear ye, hear ye! We are sent by the high and
noble Signoria. The city is in an uproar. It is reported that the
Prophet Girolamo has been betrayed, taken, murdered. The popu-
lace are on their way to Careggi. They demand to see the Frate.

THE PRIOR (looking down at the body of his foe): Here am I.

FIORE (appearing like a vision in the torchlight, at the top of the
steps): Monk, do you hear me?

THE PRIOR (stiffly upright, without turning round): I hear.

FIORE: Then hear this: Descend! The fire you have fanned will
consume you, you yourself, to purify you and the world of you.
Shudder before it--and descend. Cease to will, instead of willing
nothingness. Void the power! Renounce! Be a monk!

THE PRIOR: I love the fire.

(He turns. They make way. A lane opens for him, timidly. He
strides slowly through it in the torchlight, upwards, away, mto
his destiny.)


1904



A GLEAM



Hush! Let us look into a human soul. On the wing, as it were, and
only in passing; only for a page or so, for we are very busy. 'We
come from Florence, Florence of the old days, where we have
been dealing with high and tragic and ultimate concerns. And
after that--whither? To court, perhaps, a royal castle? Who
knows? Strange, faint-shimmering forms are taking their place on
the stage.--Anna, poor little Baroness Anna, we have little time
to spare for you.

Waltz-time, tinkling glasses; smoke, steam, hubbub, voices,
dance-steps. We all know these little weaknesses of ours. Do we
secretly love to linger at life's silliest feasts simply because there
suffering wears bigger, more childlike eyes than in other places?

"Avantageur!" cried Baron Harry, the cavalry captain. He
stopped dancing and called the whole length of the hall, one hand
on his hip, the other still holding his partner embraced. "That's
not a waltz, man, it's a funeral march! You have no rhythm in
your body; you just float and sway about without any sense of
time. Let Lieutenant von Gelbsattel play, so that we can feel the
rhythm. Come on down, Avantageur! Dance, if you can do that
better!"

And the Avantageur stood up, clapped his spurs together, and
without a word yielded the platform to Lieutenant von Gelbsattel,
who straightway began to make the piano ring and rattle under
the blows from his sprawling white fingers.

Baron Harry, we observe, had music in him: waltz music, march
music. He had rhythm, joviality, hauteur, good fortune, and a
conquering-hero air. His gold-braided hussar jacket suited to a T
his glowing young face, unmarked by a single care, a single
thought. He was burnt red, like a blond, though hair and mous-
tache were dark--a piquant combination that appealed to the
ladies--and the red scar across his right cheek gave a bold and
dashing look to his open countenance. The scar might be from
a wound, or a fall from a horse--in any case it was glorious. He
danced divinely.

But the Avantageur floated and swayed--to extend the mean-
ing of Baron Harry's phrase. His eyelids were much too large, so
that he could never properly open his eyes; also his uniform fitted
him rather carelessly and improbably round the waist--and God
alone knew how he came to be a soldier. He had not cared much
for this affair with the "Swallows" at the Casino, but even so he
had come to it; he had to be careful not to give offence, for two
reasons: first, because his origins were bourgeois, and second, be-
cause there was a book by him, that he had written or put to-
gether, or whatever the word is, a collection of stories, that any-
body could buy in a book-shop. It must make people feel a little
shy of him, of course.

The hall in the officers' Casino was long and wide--much too
large for the thirty people who were disporting themselves in it.
The walls and the musicians' platform were decorated with imita-
tion draperies in red plaster, and from the ugly ceiling hung two
crooked chandeliers, in which the candles stood askew and dripped
hot wax. But the board floor had been scrubbed the whole fore-
noon by seven hussars told off for the job; and, after all, officers in
a little hole like Hohendamm could not expect grandeur. Whatever
was otherwise lacking to the feast was amply made up by its char-
acteristic atmosphere; it had the sweetness of forbidden fruit, the
reckless charm imparted by the presence of the "Swallows."
Even the orderlies smirked knowingly as they renewed the sup-
plies of champagne in the ice-tubs beside the white-covered tables
which stood ranged along three walls of the room. They looked
at each other and then down with a grin, as servants do when they
assist irresponsibly at the excesses of their masters. And all this
with reference to the "Swallows."

The Swallows, the Swallows.^ Well, in short, they were the
"Swallows from Vienna." Like migratory birds, thirty in the
flock, they flew through the country, appearing in fifth-rate va-
riety-theatres and music-halls, where they stood on the stage in
easy, unconventional poses and chirped their famous swallows'
chorus:

"When the swallows come again
See them fly, aren't they fly?"

It was a good song, its humour was not obscure; it was always re-
ceived with warm applause from the more knowing section of the
public.

Well, the Swallows came to Hohendamm and sang in Gugel-
fing's beer-hall. A whole regiment of hussars were in barracks at
Hohendamm, and the Swallows were justified in anticipating a
good reception from representative circles. But they got more,
they got an enthusiastic one. Evening after evening the unmarried
officers sat at the girls' feet, listened to their swallow song, and
drank their health in Gugelfing's yellow beer. It was not long be-
fore the married officers were there too; one evening Colonel von
Rummler appeared in person, followed the programme with the
closest interest, and afterwards expressed himself with unlimited
approval in various places.

So then the lieutenants and cavalry captains conceived a plan to
bring about closer contact with the Swallows: to invite a select
group of them--say, ten of the prettiest--to a jolly champagne
supper in the Casino. The upper orders could not take any public
cognizance of the affair, of course; they had to refrain, however
sore at heart. Not only the unmarried lieutenants, however, but
also the married first lieutenants and cavalry captains took part,
and also--this was the nub of the whole matter, the thing that
gave it, so to speak, its "punch"--their wives.

Obstacles and misgivings? First Lieutenant von Levzahn brushed
them all away with a phrase: what else, said he, were obstacles for,
if not that soldiers might triumph over them! The good citizens
of Hohendamm might rage when they heard that the officers
were introducing their wives to the Swallows, Of course, they
could not have done such a thing themselves. But there were
heights, there were aloof and untrammelled regions of existence,
where things might freely come to pass that in a lower sphere
could only sully and dishonour. It was not as though the worthy
natives of Hohendamm were not used to expecting all sorts of un-
expectednesses from their hussars. The officers would ride along
the middle of the pavement, in broad daylight, if it occurred to
them so to do. They had done it. One evening pistols had been
fired off in the Marktplatz--nobody but the officers could have
done that. And had anyone dared to murmur? The following anec-
dote was amply vouched for:

One morning, between five and six o'clock, Captain of Cavalry
Baron Harry, feeling pretty jolly, was on his way home from a
party, with his friends Captain of Cavalry von H11hnemann and
Lieutenants Le Maistre, Baron Truchsess, von Trautenau, and von
Lichterloh. Riding across the Old Bridge, they met a baker's boy,
with a great basket of rolls on his shoulder, taking his way through
the fresh morning air and whistling blithely as he went. "Give
me that basket!" commanded Baron Harry. He seized it by the
handle, swung it three times round his head, so skilfully that not
a roll fell out, and sent it flying out into the stream on a great
curve that showed the strength of his arm. At first the baker's
boy was scared stiff. Then as he saw his rolls swimming about, he
flung up his arms with a yell and behaved as though he had gone
out of his mind. The gentlemen amused themselves for a while
with his childish despair; then Baron Harry tossed him a gold
piece which would have paid three times over for his loss and the
officers rode laughing away home. Then the boy realized that
these were the nobility and ceased his outcry.

This story lost no time in going the rounds--but who would
have ventured to look askance? You might gnash your teeth over
the pranks of Baron Harry and his friends; outwardly you took
them with a smile. They were the lords and masters of Hohen-
damm. And now the lords and masters were having a party for
the Swallows.

The Avantageur seemed not to know how to dance a waltz any
better than to play one. For he did not take a partner, but going
up to one of the white tables made a bow and sat down near little
Baroness Anna, Baron Harry's wife, to whom he addressed a few
shy words. The capacity to amuse himself with a Swallow was
simply beyond the poor young man. Actually he was afraid of
that kind of girl; he fancied that whatever he said to one she looked
at him as though she were surprised--and this hurt the Avanta-
geur. But music, even the poorest, always put him into a speech-
less, relaxed, and dreamy mood--it is often the way with these
flabby and futile characters; and as the Baroness Anna, to whom
he was entirely indifferent, made only absent answers to his re-
marks, they soon fell silent and confined themselves to gazing into
the whirling scene, with the same somewhat wry smile, strange
to say, on both their faces.

The candles flickered and sputtered so much that they became
quite mis-shapen with great blobs of soft wax. Beneath them the
couples twisted and turned in obedience to Lieutenant von Gelb-
sattel's inspiring strains. They put out their feet and pointed their
toes, swung round with a flourish, then glided away. The gentle-
men's long legs bent and balanced and sprang again. Petticoats
flew. Gay hussar jackets whirled in abandon; voluptuously the
ladies inclined their heads, yielding their waists to their partners'
embraces.

Baron Harry held an amazingly pretty young Swallow pressed
fairly close to his braided chest, putting his face down to hers and
looking unswervingly into her eyes. Baroness Anna's gaze and her
smile followed the pair. The long, lanky Lichterloh was trundling
along with a plump and dumpy little Swallow in an extraordinary
decolletage. But Frau Cavalry Captain von H11hnemann, who
loved champagne above all else in life, there she was, dancing
round and round under one of the chandeliers, completely ab-
sorbed, with another Swallow, a friendly creature whose freckled
face beamed all over at the unprecedented honour done her.
"My dear Baroness," Frau von H11hnemann said later to Frau First
Lieutenant von Truchsess, "these girls are far from ignorant.
They know all the cavalry garrisons in Germany off by heart."
The pair were dancing together because there were two extra
ladies; they were quite unaware that the other couples had gradu-
ally left the field to them until they were performing all by them-
selves. At last, however, they saw what had happened and stood
there together in the centre of the hall overwhelmed from all sides
by laughter and applause.

Next came the champagne, and the white-gloved orderlies ran
from table to table pouring out. After that the Swallows were
urged to sing again--they simply had to sing, no matter how out
of breath they were.

They stood on the platform that ran along the narrow side of
the hall and made eyes at the company. Their shoulders and arms
were bare, and they were dressed like the birds they presented,
in long dark swallow-tails over pale grey waistcoats. They wore
grey clocked stockings, and slippers with very low vamps and
very high heels. There were blonde and brunette, there were the
fat good-natured and the interestingly lean; there were some
whose cheeks were staringly rouged, others with faces chalk-
white like clowns. But the prettiest was the little dark one who
had almond-shaped eyes and arms like a child's--she it was with
whom Baron Harry had just danced. Baroness Anna, too, found
that she was the prettiest one, and continued to smile.

The Swallows sang, and Lieutenant von Gelbsattel accompanied
them, flinging back his torso and twisting round his head to look,
while his long arms reached out after the keys. They sang as with
one voice, that they were gay birds, that they had flown the world
over and always left broken hearts behind them when they flew
away. They sang another very tuneful piece beginning:

"Yes, yes, the arm-y.
How we love the arm-y,"

and ending with the same. And in response to vociferous requests
they repeated their Swallow song, and the officers, who knew it
by now as well as they did, joined lustily in the chorus:

'When the swallows come again
See them fly--aren't they fly?"

The whole hall rang with laughter and song and the stamping and
clinking of spurred feet beating out the time.

Baroness Anna laughed too, at all the nonsense and extravagant
spirits. She had laughed so much already, all the evening, that her
head and her heart ached, and she would have been glad to close
her eyes in darkness and quiet had not Harry been so zealous in
his pleasures. "I feel so jolly today," she had told her neighbour,
at a moment when she believed what she said; but the neighbour
had answered only by a mocking look, and she had realized that
people do not say such things. If you really feel jolly, you act like
it; to proclaim the fact makes it sound queer. On the other hand,
it would have been quite impossible to say: "I feel so sad!"

Baroness Anna had grown up in the solitude and stillness of her
father's estate by the sea; she was at all times too much inclined to
leave out of consideration such home truths as the above, despite
her constitutional fear of putting people out and her constitu-
tional yearning to be like them and have them love her. She had
white hands and heavy, ash-blond hair--much too heavy for her
narrow face with its delicate bones. Between her light eyebrows
ran a perpendicular furrow, which gave a pained expression to
her smile.

The truth was, she loved her husband. You must not laugh. She
loved him even for the prank with the rolls. With a cowering and
miserable love, though he betrayed her and daily abused her love
like a schoolboy. She suffered for love of him as a woman does
who despises her own weak tenderness and knows that power
and the happiness of the powerful are justified on this earth. Yes,
she yielded herself to love and its torments as once she had yielded
herself to him when in a brief attack of tenderness he wooed her;
with the hungry yearning of a lonely and dreamy soul, that craves
for life and passion and an outlet for its emotions.

Waltz-time, tinkling glasses--hurly-burly and smoke, voices
and dancing steps. That was Harry's world and his kingdom. It
was the kingdom of her dreams as well; the world of love and life,
the happy commonplace.

Social life, harmless, jolly conviviality--what a frightful thing
it is, how enervating, how degrading; what a vain, alluring poison,
what an insidious enemy to our peace! There she sat, evening after
evening, night after night, a martyr to the glaring contrast be-
tween the utter emptiness round about her and the feverish excite-
ment born of wine and coffee, of sensual music and the dance. She
sat and looked on while Harry exercised his arts of fascination
upon gay and pretty ladies--not because of their personal charms
but because it fed his vanity to have people see him with them and
know what a lucky man he was, how much in the centre of things,
without one single ungratified longing. His vanity hurt her--and
yet she loved it! How sweet to feel how handsome he was, how
young, splendid, and bewitching! The infatuation of those other
women would bring her own to fever pitch. And when afterwards,
at the end of an evening spent by her in suffering for his sake, he
would exhaust himself in stupid and self-centred expressions of
enjoyment, there would come moments when her hatred and
scorn outweighed her love; in her heart she would call him a
puppy and a trifler and try to punish him by not talking, by an
absurd and desperate dumbness.

Are we guessing right, little Baroness Anna? Are we giving
words to all that lay behind that poor little smile of yours as the
Swallows sang their song? Behind that pitiable and shameful state,
when you lay in bed afterwards in the grey dawn, thinking of
the jests, the witticisms, the repartee, the social charms you should
have displayed--and did not! Dreams come, in that grey dawn:
you, quite worn with anguish, weep on his shoulder, he tries to
console you with some of his empty, pleasant, commonplace
phrases, and you are suddenly overcome with the mockery of
your situation: you, lying on his shoulder, are shedding tears over
the whole world!

Suppose he were to fall ill? Are we right in saying that some
small trifling indisposition of his could call up a whole world of
dreams for you, wherein you see him as your ailing child; in which
he lies helpless and broken before you and at last, at last, belongs to
you alone? Do not blush, do not shrink away! Trouble does some-
times make us think bad thoughts. But after all you might trouble
yourself a little about the young Avantageur with the drooping
eyelids, sitting there beside you--how gladly he would share his
loneliness with you! Why do you scorn him?- Why despise? Be-
cause he belongs to your own world, not to that other where
pride and high spirits reign, and conscious triumph and dancing
rhythm. Truly it is hard not to be at home in one world or in the
other. We know. But there is no half-way house.

Applause broke in upon Lieutenant von Gelbsattel's final chords.
The Swallows had finished their song. They scorned the steps of
the platform and jumped down from the front, flopping or flut-
tering--the gentlemen rushed up to be of help. Baron Harry
helped the little brunette Swallow with the childlike arms; he
helped her very efficiently and with understanding for such
things. He took her by the thigh and the waist, gave himself plenty
of time to set her down, then almost carried her to the table, where
he brimmed her glass with champagne till it overflowed, and
touched his own to it, slowly, meaningfully, gazing into her eyes
with a foolish, insistent smile. He had drunk a good deal, and the
scar stood out on his forehead, that looked very white next his
glowing face. But his mood was a free and hilarious one, unclouded
by any passion.

His table stood opposite to Baroness Anna's across the hall. As
she sat talking idly with her neighbour she was listening greedily
to the laughter over there and sending stolen and reproachful
glances to watch every moment--in that painful state of tension
which enables a person to carry on a conversation that complies
with all the social forms, while actually being elsewhere all the
time, and in the presence of the person one is watching.

Once or twice it seemed to her that the little Swallows eye
caught her own. Did she know her? Did she know who she was?
How lovely she looked! How provocative, how full of fascina-
tion and thoughtless life! If Harry had been in love with her, if he
had burned and suffered for her sake, his wife could have for-
given that, she could have understood and sympathized. And sud-
denly she became conscious that her own feeling for the little
Swallow was warmer and deeper than Harry's own.

And the little Swallow herself? Dear me, her name was Emmy,
and she was fundamentally commonplace. But she was wonderful
too, with black strands of hair framing a wide, sensuous face,
shadowed, almond-shaped eyes, a generous mouth full of shining
teeth, and those arms like a child's. Loveliest of all were the shoul-
ders--they had a way of moving with such ineffable suppleness
in their sockets. Baron Harry took great interest in these shoul-
ders; he would not have them covered, and set up a noisy struggle
for the scarf which she would have put about them. And in all
this, nobody in the whole hall saw, neither Baron Harry nor his
wife nor anyone else, that this poor little waif, made sentimental
by the wine she had drunk, had all the evening been casting long-
ing glances at the young Avantageur whose lack of feeling for
rhythm had caused his demission from the piano-stool. She had
been drawn by the way he played, by his drooping lids, she found
him noble, poetic, a being from a different world--whereas she
was familiar unto boredom with Baron Harry's sort and all its
works and ways. She was saddened, she was wretched, because
the Avantageur cast not a thought in her direction.

The candles burned low and dim in the cigarette smoke and
blue wreaths drifted above the company's heads. There was a
smell of coffee on the heavy air, and odours and vapours of the
feast, made still more heady by the somewhat daring perfume
affected by the Swallows, hung about the scene; the white tables
and champagne coolers, the men and women, flirting, giggling and
guffawing, weary-eyed and unrestrained.

Baroness Anna talked no more. Despair--and that frightful
mixture of yearning, envy, love, and self-contempt which we call
jealousy and which makes the world no good place at all to live
in--had so subdued her heart that she had not power to counter-
feit any more. Let him see how she felt, perhaps he would be
ashamed--or at least he would have some feeling about her, of
whatever kind, in his heart.

She looked across. The game over there was going rather far,
everybody was watching and laughing. Harry had thought of a
new kind of amorous struggle with the fair Swallow: it consisted
in an exchange of rings. Bracing his knee against hers he held her
fast to her chair, and snatched and tugged after her hand in a vio-
lent effort to open her little clenched fist. In the end he won.
Amid noisy applause he wrenched off the narrow circlet she wore
--it cost him some trouble--and triumphantly forced his own
wedding ring upon her finger.

Then Baroness Anna stood up. Anger and pain, a longing to
hide herself away in the dark with her sense of his so dear un-
worthiness; a desperate desire to punish him by making a scandal,
by forcing him at all costs to acknowledge her presence--such
were the emotions that overpowered her. She pushed back her
chair, and pale as death she walked across the hall towards the
door.

There was a great sensation. People were sobered, they looked
at one another grave-faced. One or two gentlemen called out
Harry's name. All at once it became still in the hall.

Then something very odd happened: the little Swallow--Emmy
--suddenly and decisively espoused the Baroness's cause.
Perhaps she was moved by a natural feminine instinct of pity
for suffering love; perhaps her own pangs for the Avantageur
with the drooping lids made her see in the little Baroness a fel-
low-sufferer. In any case, she acted--to the amazement of the
company.

"You are coarse!" she said loudly, in the hush, and gave the
dumbfounded Harry a great push. Just these three words: "You
are coarse." And all at once she was at Baroness Anna's side,
where the latter stood lifting the latch of the door.

"Forgive!" she breathed--softly, as though no one else in the
room were worthy to hear. "Here is the ring," and she slipped
Harry's wedding ring into the Baroness's hand. And suddenly
Baroness Anna felt the girl's broad, glowing face bend over this
hand of hers; she felt burning on it a soft and passionate kiss.
"Forgive!" whispered the little Swallow once more, and ran off.

But Baroness Anna stood outside in the darkness, still quite
dazed, and waited for this unexpected event to take on shape and
meaning within her. And it did: it was a joy, so warm, so sweet,
so comfortable that for a moment she closed her eyes.

We stop here. No more, it is enough. Just this one priceless
little detail, as it stands: there she was, quite enraptured and en-
chanted, simply because a little chit of a strolling chorus-girl had
come and kissed her hand!

We leave you. Baroness Anna. We kiss your brow and take our
leave; farewell, we must hurry away. Sleep, now. You will dream
all night of the Swallow who came to you, and you will have a
gleam of happiness.

For it brings happiness, it brings to the heart a little thrill and
ecstasy of joy, when two worlds, between which longing plies,
for one fleeting, illusory moment touch each other.


1904



AT THE PROPHET'S



Strange regions there are, strange minds, strange realms of the
spirit, lofty and spare. At the edge of large cities, where street
lamps are scarce and policemen walk by twos, are houses where
you mount till you can mount no further, up and up into attics
under the roof, where pale young geniuses, criminals of the dream,
sit with folded arms and brood; up into cheap studios with sym-
bolic decorations, where solitary and rebellious artists, inwardly
consumed, hungry and proud, wrestle in a fog of cigarette smoke
with devastatingly ultimate ideals. Here is the end: ice, chastity,
null. Here is valid no compromise, no concession, no half-way,
no consideration of values. Here the air is so rarefied that the
mirages of life no longer exist. Here reign defiance and iron con-
sistency, the ego supreme amid despair; here freedom, madness,
and death hold sway.

It was eight o'clock of Good Friday evening. Several of those
whom Daniel had invited arrived together. Their invitations,
written in a peculiar script on quarto paper headed by an eagle
carrying a naked dagger in its talons, had summoned them to for-
gather on this evening for the reading aloud of Daniel's Procla-
mations. Accordingly they had now met at the appointed hour,
in the gloomy suburban street, in front of the cheap apartment-
house wherein the prophet had his earthly dwelling.

Some of them knew each other and exchanged greetings.
There were the Polish artist and the slender girl who lived with
him; a lyric poet; a tall, black-bearded Semite with his heavy, pale
wife, who dressed in long, flowing robes; a personage with an
aspect soldierly yet somewhat sickly withal, who was a retired
cavalry captain and professed spiritualist; a young philosopher
who looked like a kangaroo." Finally a novelist, a man with a stiff
hat and a trim moustache. He knew nobody. He belonged to
quite another sphere and was present by the merest chance, being
on good terms with life and having written a book which was
read in middle-class circles. He wore an unassuming air, as one
who knew that he was here on sufferance and was grateful. At a
little distance he followed the others into the house.

They climbed the stairs, one after the other, with their hands
on the cast-iron rail. There was no talking; these were folk who
knew the value of the Word and were not given to light speaking.
In the dim light from the little oil lamps which stood on the
window-ledges of the landings they read, as they passed, the
names on the doors. The homes and business premises of an in-
surance official, a midwife, an "agent," a blanchisseuse du fin, a
chiropodist--they passed by all these, not contemptuous, yet
remote. They mounted the narrow staircase as up a dark shaft,
cautiously yet firmly; for from far above, from the very last
landing, came a faint gleam, a flickering glimmer from the top-
most height.

At length they arrived at their goal under the roof, in the light
of six candles in divers candlesticks, burning at the head of the
stairs on a little table covered with a faded altar-cloth. On the
door, which seemed, as indeed it was, the entrance to an attic, was
fastened a large pasteboard shield with the name of Daniel on it
in Roman lettering done in black crayon. They rang. A boy in
a new blue suit and shiny boots opened to them, a pleasant-looking
boy with a broad forehead; he had a candle in his hand and lighted
them diagonally across the narrow dark corridor into an un-
papered mansard-like space, entirely bare save for a wooden hat-
stand. With a gesture accompanied by gurgling and babbling
sounds but no words the boy invited them to take off their things.
When the novelist, inspired by vague sympathy, addressed a ques-
tion to him it became evident that the lad was dumb. He lighted
the guests back across the corridor to another door and ushered
them in. The novelist entered last. He was wearing a frock-coat
and gloves and had made up his mind to behave as though he were
in church.

The moderate-sized room which they entered was pervaded by
a ceremonial and flickering illumination from twenty or twenty-
five candles. A young girl in a modest frock with white turn-over
collar and cuffs, and with an innocent and simple face, stood near
the door and gave each guest her hand in turn. This was Maria
Josepha, Daniel's sister. The novelist had met her at a literary tea,
where she sat bolt upright, cup in hand, and talked of her brother
in a clear, earnest voice. Daniel was her adoration.

The novelist looked about for him.

"He is not here," said Maria Josepha. "He has gone out, I do
not know where. But in spirit he will be with us and follow sen-
tence by sentence the Proclamations which we shall hear read."

"Who is to read them?" asked the novelist with subdued and
reverent mien. He took all this very seriously. He was a well-
meaning and essentially modest man, full of respect for all the
phenomena of this world, ready to learn and to esteem what was
estimable.

"One of my brother's young men, whom he expect from
Switzerland," Maria Josepha replied. "He is not here yet. He
will be present at the right moment."

On a table opposite the door, with its upper edge resting against
the slope of the mansard ceiling, was a large, hastily executed
drawing. The candlelight revealed it as a picture of Napoleon,
standing in a clumsy and autocratic pose warming his jack-boots
at a fire. At the right of the entrance was a shrine or altar whereon,
between candles in silver candelabra, was a painted figure of a
saint with uplifted eyes and outstretched hands. Before the altar
was a prie-dieu. A nearer view disclosed a little amateur photo-
graph leaning at one foot of the saint: a portrait of a young
man of some thirty years with pale, retreating brow and bony,
vulture-like face, expressive of a ferociously concentrated intel-
lect.

The novelist paused awhile before this picture of Daniel; then
he cautiously ventured further into the room. It had a large round
table with a polished yellow surface displaying in burnt-work the
same design--the eagle with the dagger in its claws--which had
been on the invitations. Behind the table were low wooden chairs
and lording it over these one elevated seat like a throne, tall, nar-
row, austere, and Gothic. A long plain bench covered with cheap
stuff stood under a low windov , occupying the space formed by
the meeting of wall and roof. The squat porcelain stove had evi-
dently been giving out too much heat, for the window was open
upon a square section of the blue night outside, in whose deeps
and distances the bright yellow points of the gas street lamps
made an irregular pattern that tailed off into the open country.

But opposite the window the room narrowed to form an alcove
lighted more brightly than the rest and furnished half as a cabinet,
half as a chapel. On the right side stood a curtained book-shelf
with lighted candelabra and antique lamps on top. On the left was
a white-covered table holding a crucifix, a seven-branched candle-
stick, a goblet of red wine, and a piece of raisin cake on a plate.
But at the very front was a low platform beneath an iron chande-
lier; on it stood a gilded plaster column. The capital of the column
was covered with an altar-cloth of blood-red silk, and on that lay
a thick folio manuscript--it contained Daniel's Proclamations. A
light-coloured paper with little Empire garlands covered the walls
and sloping ceiling; death-masks, rose-garlands, and a great rusty
sword hung against the walls, and besides the large picture of
Napoleon there were about the room various reproductions of
Luther, Nietzsche, Moltke, Alexander VI, Robespierre, and Sa-
vonarola,

"It is all symbolic," said Maria Josepha, searching the novelist's
reserved and respectful features to see if she could tell what im-
pression the room made on him. Meanwhile other guests had come
in, silently, solemnly; they all began to take their places in suit-
able attitudes on the benches and chairs. Besides the earlier corners
there was a designer, a fantastic creature with a wizened childish
face; a lame woman, who was in the habit of introducing herself
as a priestess of Eros; an unmarried young mother whose aristo-
cratic family had cast her out, and who was admitted into the
circle solely on the ground of her motherhood, since intellectual
pretensions she had none; an elderly authoress and a deformed
musician--in all some twelve persons. The novelist had retreated
into the window-alcove, and Maria Josepha sat near the door, her
hands close together on her knees. Thus they awaited the young
man from Switzerland, who would be present at the right moment.

Suddenly another guest arrived--a rich woman who out of
sheer amateurishness had a habit of frequenting such gatherings
as this. She came from the city in her satin-lined coupe, from her
splendid house with the tapestries on the walls and the giallo-antico
door-jambs; she had come all the way up the stairs and in at the
door, sweet-scented, luxurious, lovely, in a blue cloth frock with
yellow embroidery, a Paris hat on her red-brown hair, and a smile
in her Titian eyes. She came out of curiosity, out of boredom, out
of craving for something different, out of amiable extravagance,
out of pure universal goodwill, which is rare enough in this world.
She greeted Daniel's sister, also the novelist, who had entree at
her house, and sat down on the bench under the window, between
the priestess of Eros and the kangaroo-philosopher--quite as
though she were used to such things.

"I was almost too late," said she softly, with her lovely mobile
lips, to the novelist as he sat behind her. "I had people at tea;
it was rather dragged out."

The novelist was slightly overcome; how thankful he was that
he had on presentable clothes! "How beautiful she is!" thought
he. "Actually she is worthy of being her daughter's mother."

"And Fraulein Sonia?" he asked over her shoulder. "You
have not brought Fraulein Sonia with you?"

Sonia was the rich woman's daughter; in the novelist's eyes al-
together too good to be true, a marvellous creature, a consummate
cultural product, an achieved ideal. He said her name twice be-
cause it gave him an indescribable pleasure to pronounce it.

"Sonia is a little ailing," said the rich woman. "Yes, imagine,
she has a bad foot. Oh, nothing--a swelling, something like a little
inflammation or gathering. It has been lanced. The lancing may
not have been necessary but she wanted it done."

"She wanted it done," repeated the novelist in an enraptured
whisper. "How characteristic! But how may I express my sym-
pathy for the affliction?"

"Of course, I will give her your greetings," said the rich
woman. And as he was silent: "Is not that enough for you?"

"No, that is not enough for me," said he, quite low; and as she
had a certain respect for his writing she replied with a smile:

"Then send her a few flowers."

"Oh, thanks!" said he. "Thanks, I will." And inwardly he thought:
"A few flowers! A whole flower-shopful! Tomorrow, before break-
fast. I'll go in a droshky." And he felt that life and he were on
very good terms.

Just then a noise was heard outside, the door opened with a
quick push and closed, and before the guests there stood in the
candlelight a short, thickset youth in a dark jacket suit--the
young man from Switzerland. He glanced over the room with a
threatening eye, went in an impetuous stride to the platform at
the front of the alcove, and placed himself behind the plaster
column--all with a certain violence, as though he wished to root
himself there. He seized the top quire of the manuscript and began
to read straightway.

He was perhaps eight-and-twenty years old, short-necked and
ill-favoured. His close-cropped hair grew to a point very far
down on the low and wrinkled brow. His face, beardless, heavy,
and morose, displayed a nose like a bulldog's, large cheek-bones,
sunken cheeks, and thick protruding lips, which seemed to form
words clumsily, reluctantly, and as it were with a sort of flaccid
contempt. The face was coarse and yet pale. He read too loud,
in a fierce voice which nevertheless had a suppressed tremolo and
sometimes faltered for lack of breath. The hand that held the
manuscript was broad and red and yet it shook. The youth dis-
played an odd and unpleasant mixture of brutality and weakness
and the matter of his reading was in remarkable consonance with
its manner.

The "Proclamations" consisted of sermons, parables, theses,
laws, prophecies, and exhortations resembling orders of the day,
following each other in a mingled style of psalter and revelation
with an endless succession of technical phrases, military and stra-
tegic as well as philosophical and critical. A fevered and fright-
fully irritable ego here expanded itself, a self-isolated megalo-
maniac flooded the world with a hurricane of violent and
threatening words. Christus imperator maximus was his name; he
enrolled troops ready to die for the subjection of the globe; he
sent out embassies, gave inexorable ultimata, exacted poverty and
chastity, and with a sort of morbid enjoyment reiterated his roar-
ing demand for unconditional obedience. Buddha, Alexander,
Napoleon and Jesus--their names were mentioned as his humble
forerunners, not worthy to unloose the laces of their spiritual
lord.

The young man read for an hour; then panting he took a swal-
low from the beaker of red wine and began on fresh Proclama-
tions. Beads of sweat stood on his low brow, his thick lips
quivered, and in between the words he kept expelling the air
through his nose with a short, snorting sound, an exhausted roar.
The solitary ego sang, raved, commanded. It would lose itself in
confused pictures, go down in an eddy of logical error, to bob up
again suddenly and startlingly in an entirely unexpected place.
Blasphemies and hosannahs--a waft of incense and a reek of
blood. In thunderings and slaughterings the world was con-
quered and redeemed.

It would have been hard to estimate the effect of Daniel's Proc-
lamations upon their hearers. Some with heads tipped far back
looked up to the ceiling with a blank stare; others held their
heads in their hands, bowed deep over their knees. The eyes of
the priestess of Eros wore a strange veiled look whenever the'
word "chastity" was pronounced; and the kangaroo-philosopher
now and then wrote something or other with his long crooked
forefinger in the air. The novelist sought in vain for a comfortable
position for his aching back. At ten o'clock he had a vision of a
ham sandwich but manfully put it away.

Towards half past ten the young man was seen to be holding
the last sheet of paper in his red, unsteady hand. This was his
peroration. "Soldiers," he cried, his voice of thunder failing for
very weakness, "I deliver to you for plundering--the world!"
He stepped down from the platform, looked at everybody with
a threatening glance, and went out of the door, as violently as he
had come in.

His audience remained a moment motionless in the last position
they had taken up. Then as with a common resolve they rose and
departed, each one pressing Maria Josepha's hand with a low-
toned word, as she stood once more, chaste and silent, at the door.

The dumb boy was still on duty outside. He lighted the guests
into the cloak-room, helped them with their overcoats, and led
them down the narrow stair, with the flickering light falling upon
it from up there where Daniel's kingdom was; down to the outer
door, which he unlocked. One after the other the guests issued
into the dismal suburban street.

The rich woman's coupe stood before the house; the coachman
on the box between the two clear-shining lanterns carried the
hand with the whip in it to his hat. The novelist accompanied
the rich woman to her carriage.

"How are you feeling?" he inquired.

"I don't like to talk about such things," she answered. "Per-
haps he really is a genius or something like that."

"Yes, after all, what is genius?" said he pensively. "In this
Daniel all the conditions are present: the isolation, the freedom,
the spiritual passion, the magnificent vision, the belief in his own
power, yes, even the approximation to madness and crime. What
is there lacking? Perhaps the human element? A little feeling, a
little yearning, a little love? But of course that is just a rough
hypothesis."

"Greet Sonia for me," said he, after she was seated, as she gave
him her hand. He looked anxiously into her face to see how she
would take his speaking simply of Sonia and not of "Fraulein
Sonia" or "your daughter."

She esteemed his literary talent and so she suffered it, with a
smile. "I will do so," said she.

"Thanks," said he, and a bewildering gust of hope swept over
him. "Now I am as hungry as a wolf for my supper."

Yes, he and life were certainly on good terms!



A WEARY HOUR



He got up from the table, his little, fragile writing-desk; got up
as though desperate, and with hanging head crossed the room to
the tall, thin, pillar-like stove in the opposite corner. He put his
hands to it; but the hour was long past midnight and the tiles
were nearly stone cold. Not getting even this little comfort that
he sought, he leaned his back against them and, coughing, drew
together the folds of his dressing-gown, between which a draggled
lace shirt-frill stuck out; he snuffed hard through his nostrils to
get a little air, for as usual he had a cold.

It was a particular, a sinister cold, which scarcely ever quite
disappeared. It inflamed his eyelids and made the flanges of his
nose all raw; in his head and limbs it lay like a heavy, sombre in-
toxication. Or was this cursed confinement to his room, to which
the doctor had weeks ago condemned him, to blame for all his
languor and flabbiness? God knew if it was the right thing--per-
haps so, on account of his chronic catarrh and the spasms in his
chest and belly. And for weeks on end now, yes, weeks, bad
weather had reigned in Jena--hateful, horrible weather, which
he felt in every nerve of his body--cold, wild, gloomy. The De-
cember wind roared in the stove-pipe with a desolate god-forsaken
sound--he might have been wandering on a heath, by night and
storm, his soul full of unappeasable grief. Yet this close confine-
ment--that was not good either; not good for thought, nor for
the rhythm of the blood, where thought was engendered.

The six-sided room was bare and colourless and devoid of cheer:
a whitewashed ceiling wreathed in tobacco smoke, walls covered
with trellis-patterned paper and hung with silhouettes in oval
frames, half a dozen slender-legged pieces of furniture; the whole
lighted by two candles burning at the head of the manuscript on
the writing-table. Red curtains draped the upper part of the win-
dow-frames; mere festooned wisps of cotton they were, but red,
a warm, sonorous red, and he loved them and would not have
parted from them; they gave a little air of ease and charm to
the bald unlovely poverty of his surroundings. He stood by the
Stove and blinked repeatedly, straining his eyes across at the work
from which he had just fled: that load, that weight, that gnawing
conscience, that sea which to drink up, that frightful task which
to perform, was all his pride and all his misery, at once his heaven
and his hell. It dragged, it stuck, it would not budge--and now
again...! It must be the weather; or his catarrh, or his fatigue.
Or was it the work? Was the thing itself an unfortunate concep-
tion, doomed from its beginning to despair?

He had risen in order to put a little space between him and his
task, for physical distance would often result in improved per-
spective, a wider view of his material and a better chance of con-
spectus. Yes, the mere feeling of relief on turning away from the
battlefield had been known to work like an inspiration. And a
more innocent one than that purveyed by alcohol or strong,
black coffee.

The little cup stood on the side-table. Perhaps it would help him
out of the impasse? No, no, not again! Not the doctor only, but
somebody else too, a more important somebody, had cautioned
him against that sort of thing--another person, who lived over in
Weimar and for whom he felt a love which was a mixture of
hostility and yearning. That was a wise man. He knew how to live
and create; did not abuse himself; was full of self-regard.

Quiet reigned in the house. There was only the wind, driving
down the Schlossgasse and dashing the rain in gusts against the
panes. They were all asleep--the landlord and his family, Lotte
and the children. And here he stood by the cold stove, awake,
alone, tormented; blinking across at the work in which his morbid
self-dissatisfaction would not let him believe.

His neck rose long and white out of his stock and his knock-
kneed legs showed between the skirts of his dressing-gown. The
red hair was smoothed back from a thin, high forehead; it re-
treated in bays from his veined white temples and hung down in
thin locks over the ears. His nose was aquiline, with an abrupt
whitish tip; above it the well-marked line of the brows almost
met. They were darker than his hair and gave the deep-set, in-
flamed eyes a tragic, staring look. He could not breathe through
his nose; so he opened his thin lips and made the freckled, sickly
cheeks look even more sunken thereby.

No, it was a failure, it was all hopelessly wrong. The army
ought to have been brought in! The army was the root of the
whole thing. But it was impossible to present it before the eyes
of the audience--and was art powerful enough thus to enforce
the imagination? Besides, his hero was no hero; he was contempt-
ible, he was frigid. The situation was wrong, the language was
wrong; it was a dry pedestrian lecture, good for a history class,
but as drama absolutely hopeless!

Very good, then, it was over. A defeat. A failure. Bankruptcy.
He would write to Korner, the good Komer, who believed in
him, who clung with childlike faith to his genius. He would scoff,
scold, beseech--this friend of his; would remind him of the
Carlos, which likewise had issued out of doubts and pains and
rewritings and after all the anguish turned out to be something
really fine, a genuine masterpiece. But times were changed. Then
he had been a man still capable of taking a strong, confident grip
on a thing and giving it triumphant shape. Doubts and struggles?
Yes. And ill he had been, perhaps more ill than now; a fugitive,
oppressed and hungry, at odds with the world; humanly speaking,
a beggar. But young, still young! Each time, however low he had
sunk, his resilient spirit had leaped up anew; upon the hour of
affliction had followed the feeling of triumphant self-confidence.
That came no more, or hardly ever, now. There might be one
night of glowing exaltation--when the fires of his genius lighted
up an impassioned vision of all that he might do if only they
burned on; but it had always to be paid for with a week of ener-
vation and gloom. Faith in the future, his guiding star in times
of stress, was dead. Here was the despairing truth: the years of
need and nothingness, which he had thought of as the painful
testing-time, turned out to have been the rich and fruitful ones;
and now that a little happiness had fallen to his lot, now that he
had ceased to be an intellectual freebooter and occupied a posi-
tion of civic dignity, with office and honours, wife and children
--now he was exhausted, worn out. To give up, to own himself
beaten--that was all there was left to do. He groaned; he pressed
his hands to his eyes and dashed up and down the room like one
possessed. What he had just thought was so frightful that he could
not stand still on the spot where he had thought it. He sat down on
a chair by the further wall and stared gloomily at the floor, his
clasped hands hanging down between his knees.

His conscience...how loudly his conscience cried out! He had
sinned, sinned against himself all these years, against the deli-
cate instrument that was his body. Those youthful excesses, the
nights without sleep, the days spent in close, smoke-laden air,
straining his mind and heedless of his body; the narcotics with
which he had spurred himself on--all that was now taking its
revenge.

And if it did--then he would defy the gods, who decreed the
guilt and then imposed the penalties. He had lived as he had to
live, he had not had time to be wise, not time to be careful. Here
in this place in his chest, when he breathed, coughed, yawned,
always in the same spot came this pain, this piercing, stabbing,
diabolical little warning; it never left him, since that time in Erfurt
five years ago when he had catarrhal fever and inflammation of
the lungs. What was it warning him of? Ah, he knew only too
well what it meant--no matter how the doctor chose to put him
off. He had no time to be wise and spare himself, no time to save
his strength by submission to moral laws. What he wanted to do
he must do soon, do quickly, do today.

And the moral laws?...Why was it that precisely sin, surrender
to the harmful and the consuming, actually seemed to him more
moral than any amount of wisdom and frigid self-discipline?
Not that constituted morality: not the contemptible knack of
keeping a good conscience--rather the struggle and compulsion,
the passion and pain.

Pain...how his breast swelled at the word! He drew himself up
and folded his arms; his gaze, beneath the close-set auburn
brows, was kindled by the nobility of his suffering. No man was
utterly wretched so long as he could still speak of his misery in
high-sounding and noble words. One thing only was indispen-
sable; the courage to call his life by large and fine names. Not to
ascribe his sufferings to bad air and constipation; to be well
enough to cherish emotions, to scorn and ignore the material.
Just on this one point to be naive, though in all else sophisticated.
To believe, to have strength to believe, in suffering....But he
did believe in it; so profoundly, so ardently, that nothing which
came to pass with suffering could seem to him either useless or
evil. His glance sought the manuscript, and his arms tightened
across his chest. Talent itself--was that not suffering? And if the
manuscript over there, his unhappy effort, made him suffer, was
not that quite as it should be--a good sign, so to speak? His
talents had never been of the copious, ebullient sort; were they
to become so he would feel mistrustful. That only happened with
beginners and bunglers, with the ignorant and easily satisfied,
whose life was not shaped and disciplined by the possession of
a gift. For a gift, my friends down there in the audience, a gift is
not anything simple, not anything to play with; it is not mere
ability. At bottom it is a compulsion; a critical knowledge of the
ideal, a permanent dissatisfaction, which rises only through suf-
fering to the height of its powers. And it is to the greatest, the
most unsatisfied, that their gift is the sharpest scourge. Not .to
complain, not to boast; to think modestly, patiently of one's pain;
and if not a day in the week, not even an hour, be free from it--
what then? To make light and little of it all, of suffering and
achievement alike--that was what made a man great.

He stood up, pulled out his snuff-box and sniffed eagerly, then
suddenly clasped his hands behind his back and strode so briskly
through the room that the flames of the candles flickered in the
draught. Greatness, distinction, world conquest and an imperish-
able name! To be happy and unknown, what was that by com-
parison? To be known--known and loved by all the world--ah,
they might call that egotism, those who knew naught of the urge,
naught of the sweetness of this dream! Everything out of the
ordinary is egotistic, in proportion to its suffering. "Speak for
yourselves," it says. "ye without mission on this earth, ye whose
life is so much easier than mine!" And Ambition says: "Shall my
sufferings be vain? No, they must make me great!"

The nostrils of his great nose dilated, his gaze darted fiercely
about the room. His right hand was thrust hard and far into the
opening of his dressing-gown, his left arm hung down, the fist
clenched. A fugitive red played in the gaunt cheeks--a glow
thrown up from the fire of his artistic egoism: that passion for
his own ego, which burnt unquenchably in his being's depths.
Well he ki ew it, the secret intoxication of this love! Sometimes
he needed only to contemplate his own hand, to be filled with the
liveliest tenderness towards himself, in whose service he was bent
on spending all the talent, all the art that he owned. And he was
right so to do, there was nothing base about it. For deeper still
than his egoism lay the knowledge that he was freely consuming
and sacrificing himself in the service of a high ideal, not as a virtue,
of course, but rather out of sheer necessity. And this was his am-
bition: that no one should be greater than he who had not also
suffered more for the sake of the high ideal. No one. He stood
still, his hand over his eyes, his body turned aside in a posture
of shrinking and avoidance. For already the inevitable thought
had stabbed him: the thought of that other man, that radiant
being, so sense-endowed, so divinely unconscious, that man over
there in Weimar, whom he loved and hated. And once more, as
always, in deep disquiet, in feverish haste, there began working
within him the inevitable sequence of his thoughts: he must assert
and define his own nature, his own art, against that other's. Was
that other greater? Wherein, then, and why? If he won, would he
have sweated blood to do so? If he lost, would his downfall be a
tragic sight? He was no hero, no; a god, perhaps. But it was easier
to be a god than a hero. Yes, things were easier for him. He was
wise, he was deft, he knew how to distinguish between knowing
and creating; perhaps that was why he was so blithe and carefree,
such an effortless and gushing spring! But if creation was divine,
knowledge was heroic, and he who created in knowledge was
hero as well as god.

The will to face difficulties....Did anyone realize what discipline
and self-control it cost him to shape a sentence or follow out
a hard train of thought? For after all he was ignorant, undisci-
plined, a slow, dreamy enthusiast. One of Caesar's letters was
harder to write than the most effective scene--and was it not al-
most for that very reason higher? From the first rhythmical urge
of the inward creative force towards matter, towards the material,
towards casting in shape and form--from that to the thought, the
image, the word, the line--what a struggle, what a Gethsemane!
Everything that he wrote was a marvel of yearning after form,
shape, line, body; of yearning after the sunlit world of that other
man who had only to open his godlike lips and straightway call
the bright unshadowed things he saw by name!

And yet--and despite that other man. Where was there an
artist, a poet, like himself? Who like him created out of nothing,
out of his own breast? A poem was born as music in his soul, as
pure, primitive essence, long before it put on a garment of meta-
phor from the visible world. History, philosophy, passion were
no more than pretexts and vehicles for something which had little
to do with them, but was at home in orphic depths. Words and
conceptions were keys upon which his art played and made
vibrate the hidden strings. No one realized. The good souls
praised him, indeed, for the power of feeling with which he
struck one note or another. And his favourite note, his final emo-
tional appeal, the great bell upon which he sounded his summons
to the highest feasts of the soul--many there were who re-
sponded to its sound. Freedom! But in all their exaltation, cer-
tainly He meant by the word both more and less than they did.
Freedom--what was it? A self-respecting middle-class attitude
towards thrones and princes? Surely not that. When one thinks of
all that the spirit of man has dared to put into the word! Freedom
from what? After all, from what? Perhaps, indeed, even from
happiness, from human happiness, that silken bond, that tender,
sacred tie....

From happiness. His lips quivered. It was as though his glance
turned inward upon himself; slowly his face sank into his hands.
...He stood by the bed in the next room, where the flowered
curtains hung in motionless folds across the window, and the lamp
shed a bluish light. He bent over the sweet head on the pillow...
a ringlet of dark hair lay across her cheek, that had the paleness
of pearl; the childlike lips were open in slumber. "My wife!
Beloved, didst thou yield to my yearning and come to me to be
my joy? And that thou art....Lie still and sleep; nay, lift not
those sweet shadowy lashes and gaze up at me, as sometimes with
thy great, dark, questioning, searching eyes. I love thee so! By
God I swear it. It is only that sometimes I am tired out, struggling
at my self-imposed task, and my feelings will not respond. And
I must not be too utterly thine, never utterly happy in thee, for
the sake of my mission."

He kissed her, drew away from her pleasant, slumbrous warmth,
looked about him, turned back to the outer room. The clock
struck; it warned him that the night was already far spent; but
likewise it seemed to be mildly marking the end of a weary hour.
He drew a deep breath, his lips closed firmly; he went back and
took up his pen. No, he must not brood, he was too far down for
that. He must not descend into chaos; or at least he must not stop
there. Rather out of chaos, which is fullness, he must draw up to
the light whatever he found there fit and ripe for form. No
brooding! Work! Define, eliminate, fashion, complete!

And complete it he did, that effort of a labouring hour. He
brought it to an end, perhaps not to a good end, but in any case to
an end. And being once finished, lo, it was also good. And from
his soul, from music and idea, new works struggled upward to
birth and, taking shape, gave out light and sound, ringing and
shimmering, and giving hint of their infinite origin--as in a
shell we hear the sighing of the sea whence it came.



THE BLOOD OF THE WALSUNGS



It was seven minutes to twelve. Wendelin came into the first-
floor entrance-hall and sounded the gong. He straddled in his
violet knee-breeches on a prayer-rug pale with age and belaboured
with his drumstick the metal disk. The brazen din, savage and
primitive out of all proportion to its purport, resounded through
the drawing-rooms to left and right, the billiard-room, the library,
the winter-garden, up and down through the house; it vibrated
through the warm and even atmosphere, heavy with exotic per-
fume. At last the sound ceased, and for another seven minutes
Wendelin went about his business while Florian in the dining-
room gave the last touches to the table. But on the stroke of
twelve the cannibalistic summons sounded a second time. And
the family appeared.

Herr Aarenhold came in his little toddle out of the library
where he had been busy with his old editions. He was continu-
ally acquiring old books, first editions, in many languages, costly
and crumbling trifles. Gently rubbing his hands he asked in his
slightly plaintive way:

"Beckerath not here yet?"

"No, but he will be. Why shouldn't he? He will be saving a meal
in a restaurant," answered Frau Aarenhold, coming noiselessly
up the thick-carpeted stairs, on the landing of which stood
a small, very ancient church organ.

Herr Aarenhold blinked. His wife was impossible. She was small,
ugly, prematurely aged, and shrivelled as though by tropic suns.
A necklace of brilliants rested upon her shrunken breast. She
wore her hair in complicated twists and knots to form a lofty
pile, in which, somewhere on one side, sat a great jewelled brooch,
adorned in its turn with a bunch of white aigrettes. Herr Aafen-
hold and the children had more than once, as diplomatically as
possible, advised against this style of coiffure. But Frau Aaren-
hold clung stoutly to her own taste.

The children came: Kunz and Marit, Siegmund and Sieglinde.
Kunz was in a braided uniform, a stunning tanned creature with
curling lips and a killing scar. He was doing six weeks' service
with his regiment of hussars. Marit made her appearance in an
uncorseted garment. She was an ashen, austere blonde of twenty-
eight, with a hooked nose, grey eyes like a falcon's, and a bitter,
contemptuous mouth. She was studying law and went entirely her
own way in life.

Siegmund and Sieglinde came last, hand in hand, from the sec-
ond floor. They were twins, graceful as young fawns, and with
immature figures despite their nineteen years. She wore a Flor-
entine cinquecento frock of claret-coloured velvet, too heavy for
her slight body. Siegmund had on a green jacket suit with a tie
of raspberry shantung, patent-leather shoes on his narrow feet,
and cuff-buttons set with small diamonds. He had a strong growth
of black beard but kept it so close-shaven that his sallow face
with the heavy gathered brows looked no less boyish than his
figure. His head was covered with thick black locks parted far
down on one side and growing low on his temples. Her dark
brown hair was waved in long, smooth undulations over her ears,
confined by a gold circlet. A large pearl--his gift--hung down
upon her brow. Round one of his boyish wrists was a heavy gold
chain--a gift from her. They were very like each other, with
the same slightly drooping nose, the same full lips lying softly
together, the same prominent cheek-bones and black, bright eyes.
Likest of all were their long slim hands, his no more masculine
than hers, save that they were slightly redder. And they went al-
ways hand in hand, heedless that the hands of both inclined to
moisture.

The family stood about awhile in the lobby, scarcely speaking.
Then Beckerath appeared. He was engaged to Sieglinde. Wende-
lin opened the door to him and as he entered in his black frock-
coat he excused himself for his tardiness. He was a government
official and came of a good family. He was short of stature, with
a pointed beard and a very yellow complexion, like a canary. His
manners were punctilious. He began every sentence by drawing
his breath in quickly through his mouth and pressing his chin on
his chest.

He kissed Sieglinde's hand and said;

"And you must excuse me too, Sieglinde--it is so far from the
Ministry to the Zoo--"

He was not allowed to say thou to her--she did not like it. She
answered briskly:

"Very far. Supposing that, in consideration of the fact, you left
your office a bit earlier."

Kunz seconded her, his black eyes narrowing to glittering
cracks:

"It would no doubt have a most beneficial effect upon our
household economy."

"Oh, well--business, you know what it is," von Beckerath said
dully. He was thirty-five years old.

The brother and sister had spoken glibly and with point. They
may have attacked out of a habitual inward posture of self-de-
fence; perhaps they deliberately meant to wound--perhaps again
their words were due to the sheer pleasure of turning a phrase.
It would have been unreasonable to feel annoyed. They let his
feeble answer pass, as though they found it in character; as though
cleverness in him would have been out of place. They went to
table; Herr Aarenhold led the way, eager to let von Beckerath see
that he was hungry.

They sat down, they unfolded their stiff table-napkins. The
immense room was carpeted, the walls were covered with eight-
eenth-century panelling, and three electric lustres hung from the
ceiling. The family table, with its seven places, was lost in the
void. It was drawn up close to the large French window, beneath
which a dainty little fountain spread its silver spray behind a
low lattice. Outside was an extended view of the still wintry gar-
den. Tapestries with pastoral scenes covered the upper part of the
walls; they, like the panelling, had been part of the furnishings
of a French chateau. The dining-chairs were low and soft and
cushioned with tapestry. A tapering glass v.ase holding two orchids
stood at each place, on the glistening, spotless, faultlessly ironed
damask cloth. With careful, skinny hands Herr Aarenhold settled
the pince-nez half-way down his nose and with a mistrustful air
read the menu, three copies of which lay on the table. He suf-
fered from a weakness of the solar plexus, that nerve centre which
lies at the pit of the stomach and may give rise to serious distress.
He was obliged to be very careful what he ate.

There was bouillon with beef marrow, sole au vin blanc, pheas-
ant, and pineapple.

Nothing else. It was a simple family meal. But it satisfied Herr
Aarenhold. It was good, light, nourishing food. The soup was
served: a dumb-waiter above the sideboard brought it noiselessly
down from the kitchen and the servants handed it round, bending
over assiduously, in a very passion of service. The tiny cups were
of translucent porcelain, whitish morsels of marrow floated in the
hot golden liquid.

Herr Aarenhold felt himself moved to expand a little in the
comfortable warmth thus purveyed. He carried his napkin cau-
tiously to his mouth and cast after a means of clothing his thought
in words.

"Have another cup, Beckerath," said he. "A working-man has
a right to his comforts and his pleasures. Do you really like to
eat--really enjoy it, I mean? If not, so much the worse for you.
To me every meal is a little celebration. Somebody said that life
is pretty nice after all--being arranged so that we can eat four
times a day. He's my man! But to do justice to the arrangement
one has to preserve one's youthful receptivity--and not every-
body can do that. We get old--well, we can't help it. But the
thing is to keep things fresh and not get used to them. For in-
stance," he went on, putting a bit of marrow on a piece of roll
and sprinkling salt on it, "you are about to change your estate,
the plane on which you live is going to be a good deal elevated"
(von Beckerath smiled), "and if you want to enjoy your new
life, really enjoy it, consciously and artistically, you must take
care never to get used to your new situation. Getting used to
things is death. It is ennui. Don't live into it, don't let anything
become a matter of course, preserve a childlike taste for the
sweets of life. You see...for some years now I have been able
to command some of the amenities of life" (von Beckerath
smiled), "and yet I assure you, every morning that God lets me
wake up I have a little thrill because my bed-cover is made of
silk. That is what it is to be young. I know perfectly well how
I did it; and yet I can look round me and feel like an enchanted
prince."

The children exchanged looks, so openly that Herr Aarenhold
could not help seeing it; he became visibly embarrassed. He knew
that they were united against him, that they despised him: for
his origins, for the blood which flowed in his veins and through
him in theirs; for the way he had earned his money; for his fads,
which in their eyes were unbecoming: for his valetudinarianism,
which they found equally annoying; for his weak and whimsical
loquacity, which in their eyes traversed the bounds of good taste.
He knew all this--and in a way conceded that they were right.
But after all he had to assert his personality, he had to lead his
own life; and above all he had to be able to talk about it. That
was only fair--he had proved that it was worth talking about.
He had been a worm, a louse if you like. But just his capacity to
realize it so fully, with such vivid self-contempt, had become the
ground of that persistent, painful, never-satisfied striving which
had made him great. Herr Aarenhold had been born in a remote
village in East Prussia, had married the daughter of a well-to-do
tradesman, and by means of a bold and shrewd enterprise, of
large-scale schemings which had as their object a new and pro-
ductive coal-bed, he had diverted a large and inexhaustible stream
of gold into his coffers.

The fish course came on. The servants hurried with it from the
sideboard through the length of the room. They handed round
with it a creamy sauce and poured out a Rhine wine that prickled
on the tongue. The conversation turned to the approaching
wedding.

It was very near, it was to take place in the following week.
They talked about the dowry, about plans for the wedding jour-
ney to Spain. Actually it was only Herr Aarenhold who talked
about them, supported by von Beckerath's polite acquiescence.
Frau Aarenhold ate greedily, and as usual contributed nothing to
the conversation save some rather pointless questions. Her speech
was interlarded with guttural words and phrases from the dialect
of her childhood days. Marit was full of silent opposition to the
church ceremony which they planned to have; it affronted her
highly enlightened convictions. Herr Aarenhold also was pri-
vately opposed to the ceremony. Von Beckerath was a Protestant
and in Herr Aarenhold's view Protestant ceremonial was without
any aesthetic value. It would be different if von Beckerath be-
longed to the Roman confession. Kunz said nothing, because when
von Beckerath was present he always felt annoyed with his
mother.And neither Siegmund nor Sieglinde displayed any in-
terest. They held each other's narrow hands between their chairs.
Sometimes their gaze sought each other's, melting together in an
understanding from which everybody else was shut out. Von
Beckerath sat next to Sieglinde on the other side.

"Fifty hours," said Herr Aarenhold, "and you are in Madrid,
if you like. That is progress. It took me sixty by the shortest way.
I assume that you prefer the train to the sea route via Rotter-
dam?"

Von Beckerath hastily expressed his preference for the over-
land route.

"But you won't leave Paris out. Of course, you could go direct
to Lyons. And Sieglinde knows Paris. But you should not neglect
the opportunity ... I leave it to you whether or not to stop
before that. The choice of the place where the honeymoon be-
gins should certainly be left to you."

Sieglinde turned her head, turned it for the first time towards
her betrothed, quite openly and unembarrassed, careless of the
lookers-on. For quite three seconds she bent upon the courteous
face beside her the wide-eyed, questioning, expectant gaze of her
sparkling black eyes--a gaze as vacant of thought as any animal's.
Between their chairs she was holding the slender hand of her
twin; and Siegmund drew his brows together till they formed two
black folds at the base of his nose.

The conversation veered and tacked to and fro. They talked
of a consignment of cigars which had just come by Herr Aaren-
hold's order from Havana, packed in zinc. Then it circled round
a point of purely abstract interest, brought up by Kunz: namely,
whether, if a were the necessary and sufficient condition for b, b
must also be the necessary and sufficient condition for a. They
argued the matter, they analysed it with great ingenuity, they
gave examples; they talked nineteen to the dozen, attacked each
other with steely and abstract dialectic, and got no little heated.
Marit had introduced a philosophical distinction, that between the
actual and the causal principle. Kunz told her, with his nose in
the air, that "causal principle" was a pleonasm. Mark, in some
annoyance, insisted upon her terminology. Herr Aarenhold
straightened himself, with a bit of bread between thumb and
forefinger, and prepared to elucidate the whole matter. He suf-
fered a complete rout, the children joined forces to laugh him
down. Even his wife jeered at him. "What are you talking
about?" she said. "Where did you learn that--you didn't learn
much!" Von Beckerath pressed his chin on his breast, opened
his mouth, and drew in breath to speak--but they had already
passed on, leaving him hanging.

Siegmund began, in a tone of ironic amusement, to speak of an
acquaintance of his, a child of nature whose simplicity was such
that he abode in ignorance of the difference between dress clothes
and dinner jacket. This Parsifal actually talked about a checked
dinner jacket. Kunz knew an even more pathetic case--a man
who went out to tea in dinner clothes.

"Dinner clothes in the afternoon!" Sieglinde said, making a
face. "It isn't even human!"

Von Beckerath laughed sedulously. But inwardly he was re-
membering that once he himself had worn a dinner coat before
six o'clock. And with the game course they passed on to matters
of more general cultural interest: to the plastic arts, of which von
Beckerath was an amateur, to literature and the theatre, which in
the Aarenhold house had the preference--though Siegmund did
devote some of his leisure to painting.

The conversation was lively and general and the young people
set the key. They talked well, their gestures were nervous and
self-assured. They marched in the van of taste, the best was none
too good for them. For the vision, the intention, the labouring
will, they had no use at all; they ruthlessly insisted upon power
achievement, success in the cruel trial of strength. The trium-

phant work of art they recognized--but they paid it no homage.
Herr Aarenhold himself said to von Beckerath;

"You are very indulgent, my dear fellow; you speak up for
intentions--but results, results are what we are after! You say:
"Of course his work is not much good--but he was only a peasant
before he took it up, so his performance is after all astonishing.'
Nothing in it. Accomplishment is absolute, not relative. There are
no mitigating circumstances. Let a man do first-class work or let
him shovel coals. How far should I have got with a good-natured
attitude like that? I might have said to myself: 'You're only a
poor fish, originally--it's wonderful if you get to be the head of
your office.' Well, I'd not be sitting here! I've had to force the
world to recognize me, so now I won't recognize anything unless
I am forced to!"

The children laughed. At that moment they did not look down
on him. They sat there at table, in their low, luxuriously cushioned
chairs, with their spoilt, dissatisfied faces. They sat in splendour
and security, but their words rang as sharp as though sharpness,
hardness, alertness, and pitiless clarity were demanded of them
as survival values. Their highest praise was a grudging acceptance,
their criticism deft and ruthless; it snatched the weapons from
one's hand, it paralysed enthusiasm, made it a laughing-stock.
"Very good," they would say of some masterpiece whose lofty
intellectual plane would seem to have put it beyond the reach of
critique. Passion was a blunder--it made them laugh. Von Becke-
rath, who tended to be disarmed by his enthusiasms, had hard
work holding his own--also his age put him in the wrong. He got
smaller and smaller in his chair, pressed his chin on his breast, and
in his excitement breathed through his mouth--quite unhorsed
by the brisk arrogance of youth. They contradicted everything--
as though they found it impossible, discreditable, lamentable, not
to contradict. They contradicted most efficiently, their eyes nar-
rowing to gleaming cracks. They fell upon a single word of his,
they worried it, they tore it to bits and replaced it by another
so telling and deadly that it went straight to the mark and sat in
the wound with quivering shaft. Towards the end of luncheon
von Beckerath's eyes were red and he looked slightly deranged.
Suddenly--they were sprinkling sugar on their slices of pine-
apple--Siegmund said, wrinkling up his face in the way he had,
as though the sun were making him blink:

"Oh, by the bye, von Beckerath, something else, before we
forget it. Sieglinde and I approach you with a request--meta-
phorically speaking, you see us on our knees. They are giving
the Walkure tonight. We should like, Sieglinde and I, to hear it
once more together--may we? We are of course aware that
everything depends upon your gracious favour --"

"How thoughtful!" said Herr Aarenhold.

Kunz drummed the Hunding motif on the cloth.

Von Beckerath was overcome at anybody asking his permission
about anything. He answered eagerly:

"But by all means, Siegmund--and you too, Sieglinde; I find
your request very reasonable--do go, of course; in fact, I shall
be able to go with you. There is an excellent cast tonight."

All the Aarenholds bowed over their plates to hide their laugh-
ter. Von Beckerath blinked with his effort to be one of them, to
understand and share their mirth.

Siegmund hastened to say:

"Oh, well, actually, it's a rather poor cast, you know. Of course,
we are just as grateful to you as though it were good. But I
am afraid there is a slight misunderstanding. Sieglinde and I
were asking you to permit us to hear the Walkure once more
alone together before the wedding. I don't know if you feel now
that--

"Oh, certainly. I quite understand. How charming! Of course
you must go!"

"Thanks, we are most grateful indeed. Then I will have Percy
and Leiermann put in for us...

"Perhaps I may venture to remark," said Herr Aarenhold, "that
your mother and I are driving to dinner with the Erlangers and
using Percy and Leiermann. You will have to condescend to the
brown coupe and Baal and Lampa."

"And your box?" asked Kunz.

"I took it long ago," said Siegmund, tossing back his head.

They all laughed, all staring at the bridegroom.

Herr Aarenhold unfolded with his finger-tips the paper of a
belladonna powder and shook it carefully into his mouth. Then
he lighted a fat cigarette, which presently spread abroad a price-
less fragrance. The servants sprang forward to draw away his and
Frau Aarenhold's chairs. The order was given to serve coffee in
the winter-garden. Kunz in a sharp voice ordered his dog-cart
brought round; he would drive to the barracks.

Siegmund was dressing for the opera; he had been dressing for
an hour. He had so abnormal and constant a need for purification
that actually he spent a considerable part of his time before the
wash-basin. He stood now in front of his large Empire mirror
with the white enamelled frame; dipped a powder-puff in its em-
bossed box and powdered his freshly shaven chin and cheeks. His
beard was so strong that when he went out in the evening he was
obliged to shave a second time.

He presented a colourful picture as he stood there, in rose-
tinted silk drawers and socks, red morocco slippers, and a wadded
house-jacket in a dark pattern with revers of grey fur. For back-
ground he had his large sleeping-chamber, full of all sorts of ele-
gant and practical white-enamelled devices. Beyond the windows
was a misty view over the tree-tops of the Tiergarten.

It was growing dark. He turned on the circular arrangement of
electric bulbs in the white ceiling--they filled the room with
soft milky light. Then he drew the velvet curtains across the
darkening panes. The light was reflected from the liquid depths
of the mirrors in wardrobe, washing-stand, and toilet-table, it
flashed from the polished bottles on the tile-inlaid shelves. And
Siegmund continued to work on himself. Now and then some
thought in his mind would draw his brows together till they
formed two black folds over the base of the nose.

His day had passed as his days usually did, vacantly and swiftly.
The opera began at half past six and he had begun to change at
half past five, so there had not been much afternoon. He had
rested on his chaise-longue from two to three, then drunk tea
and employed the remaining hour sprawled in a deep leather arm-
chair in the study which he shared with Kunz, reading a few
pages in each of several new novels. He had found them pitiably
weak on the whole; but he had sent a few of them to the binder's
to be artistically bound in choice bindings, for his library.

But in the forenoon he had worked. He had spent the hour from
ten to eleven in the atelier of his professor, an artist of European
repute, who was developing Siegmund's talent for drawing and
painting, and receiving from Herr Aarenhold two thousand marks
a month for his services. But what Siegmund painted was absurd.
He knew it himself; he was far from having any glowing expec-
tations on the score of his talent in this line. He was too shrewd
not to know that the conditions of his existence were not the
most favourable in the world for the development of a creative
gift. The accoutrements of life were so rich and varied, so elabo-
rated, that almost no place at all was left for life itself. Each and
every single accessory was so costly and beautiful that it had an
existence above and beyond the purpose it was meant to serve--
until one's attention was first confused and then exhausted. Sieg-
mund had been born into superfluity, he was perfectly adjusted
to it. And yet it was the fact that this superfluity never ceased to
thrill and occupy him, to give him constant pleasure. Whether
consciously or not, it was with him as with his father, who prac-
tised the art of never getting used to anything.

Siegmund loved to read, he strove after the word and the spirit
as after a tool which a profound instinct urged him to grasp. But
never had he lost himself in a book as one does when that single
work seems the most important in the world; unique, a little, all-
embracing universe, into which one plunges and submerges oneself
in order to draw nourishment out of every syllable. The books and
magazines streamed in, he could buy them all, they heaped up
about him and even while he read, the number of those still to be
read disturbed him. But he had the books bound in stamped
leather and labelled with Siegmund Aarenhold's beautiful book-
plate; they stood in rows, weighing down his life like a possession
which he did not succeed in subordinating to his personality.

The day was his, it was given to him as a gift with all its
hours from sunrise to sunset; and yet Siegmund found in his heart
that he had no time for a resolve, how much less then for a deed.
He was no hero, he commanded no giant powers. The preparation,
the lavish equipment for what should have been the serious busi-
ness of life used up all his energy. How much mental effort had
to be expended simply in making a proper toilette! How much
time and attention went to his supplies of cigarettes, soaps, and
perfumes; how much occasion for making up his mind lay in that
moment, recurring two or three times daily, when he had to select
his cravat! And it was worth the effort. It was important. The
blond-haired citizenry of the land might go about in elastic-sided
boots and turn-over collars, heedless of the effect. But he--and
most explicitly he--must be unassailable and blameless of exterior
from head to foot.

And in the end no one expected more of him. Sometimes there
came moments when he had a feeble misgiving about the nature
of the "actual"; sometimes he felt that this lack of expectation
lamed and dislodged his sense of it....The household arrange-
ments were all made to the end that the day might pass quickly
and no empty hour be perceived. The next mealtime always came
promptly on. They dined before seven; the evening, when one
can idle with a good conscience, was long. The days disappeared.
swiftly the seasons came and went. The family spent two sum-
mer months at their little castle on the lake, with its large and
splendid grounds and many tennis courts, its cool paths through
the parks, and shaven lawns adorned by bronze statuettes. A
third month was spent in the mountains, in hotels where life was
even more expensive than at home. Of late, during the winter, he
had had himself driven to school to listen to a course of lectures
in the history of art which came at a convenient time. But he had
had to leave off because his sense of smell indicated that the rest
of the class did not wash often enough.

He spent the hour walking with Sieglinde instead. Always she had
been at his side since the very first; she had clung to him since
they lisped their first syllables, taken their first steps. He had no
friends, never had had one but this, his exquisitely groomed,
darkly beautiful counterpart, whose moist and slender hand he
held while the richly gilded, empty-eyed hours slipped past. They
took fresh flowers with them on their walks, a bunch of violets
or lilies of the valley, smelling them in turn or sometimes both to-
gether, with languid yet voluptuous abandon. They were like
self-centred invalids who absorb themselves in trifles, as narcotics
to console them for the loss of hope. With an inward gesture of
renunciation they doffed aside the evil-smelling world and loved
each other alone, for the priceless sake of their own rare useless-
ness. But all that they uttered was pointed, neat, and brilliant; it
hit off the people they met, the things they saw, everything done
by somebody else to the end that it might be exposed to the unerr-
ing eye, the sharp tongue, the witty condemnation.

Then von Beckerath had appeared. He had a post in the govern-
ment and came of a good family. He had proposed for Sieglinde.
Frau Aarenhold had supported him, Herr Aarenhold had dis-
played a benevolent neutrality, Kunz the hussar was his zealous
partisan. He had been patient, assiduous, endlessly good-man-
nered and tactful. And in the end, after she had told him often
enough that she did not love him, Sieglinde had begun to look
at him searchingly, expectantly, mutely, with her sparkling black
eves--a gaze as speaking and as vacant of thought as an animal's
--and had said yes. And Siegmund, whose will was her law, had
taken up a position too; slightly to his own disgust he had not
opposed the match; was not von Beckerath in the government and
a man of good family too? Sometimes he wrinkled his brows over
his toilette until they made two heavy black folds at the base of
his nose.

He stood on the white bearskin which stretched out its claws
beside the bed; his feet were lost in the long soft hair. He sprinkled
himself lavishly with toilet water and took up his dress shirt. The
starched and shining linen glided over his yellowish torso, which
was as lean as a young boy's and yet shaggy with black hair. He
arrayed himself further in black silk drawers, black silk socks, and
heavy black silk garters with silver buckles, put on the well-
pressed trousers of silky black cloth, fastened the white silk braces
over his narrow shoulders, and with one foot on a stool began to
button his shoes. There was a knock on the door.

"May I come in, Gigi?" asked Sieglinde.

"Yes, come in," he answered.

She was already dressed, in a frock of shimmering sea-green
silk, with a square neck outlined by a wide band of beige em-
broidery. Two embroidered peacocks facing each other above the
girdle held a garland in their beaks. Her dark brown hair was un-
adorned; but a large egg-shaped precious stone hung on a thin
pearl chain against her bare skin, the colour of smoked meer-
schaum. Over her arm she carried a scarf heavily worked with
silver.

"I am unable to conceal from you," she said, "that the carriage
is waiting." He parried at once:

"And I have no hesitation in replying that it will have to wait
patiently two minutes more." It was at least ten. She sat down on
the white velvet chaise-longue and watched him at his labours.

Out of a rich chaos of ties he selected a white pique band and
began to tie it before the glass.

"Beckerath," said she, "wears coloured cravats, crossed over
the way they wore them last year."

"Beckerath," said he, "is the most trivial existence I have ever
had under my personal observation." Turning to her quickly he
added: "Moreover, you will do me the favour of not mention-
ing that German's name to me again this evening."

She gave a short laugh and replied: "You may be sure it will not
be a hardship."

He put on the low-cut pique waistcoat and drew his dress coat
over it, the white silk lining caressing his hands as they passed
through the sleeves.

"Let me see which buttons you chose," said Sieglinde. They
were the amethyst ones; shirt-studs, cuff-links, and waistcoat but-
tons, a complete set.

She looked at him admiringly, proudly, adoringly, with a world
of tenderness in her dark, shining eyes. He kissed the lips lying
so softly on each other. They spent another minute on the chaise-
longue in mutual caresses.

"Quite, quite soft you are again," said she, stroking his shaven
cheeks.

"Your little arm feels like satin," said he, running his hand
down her tender forearm. He breathed in the violet odour of her
hair.

She kissed him on his closed eyelids; he kissed her on the throat
where the pendant hung. They kissed one another's hands. They
loved one another sweetly, sensually, for sheer mutual delight in
their own well-groomed, pampered, expensive smell. They played
together like puppies, biting each other with their lips. Then he
got up.

"We mustn't be too late today," said he. He turned the top of
the perfume bottle upside down on his handkerchief one last
time, rubbed a drop into his narrow red hands, took his gloves,
and declared himself ready to go.

He put out the light and they went along the red-carpeted cor-
ridor hung with dark old oil paintings and down the steps past the
little organ. In the vestibule on the ground floor Wendelin was
waiting with their coats, very tall in his long yellow paletot. They
yielded their shoulders to his ministrations; Sieglinde's dark head
was half lost in her collar of silver fox. Followed by the servant
they passed through the stone-paved vestibule into the outer air.
It was mild, and there were great ragged flakes of snow in the
pearly air. The coupe awaited them. The coachman bent down
with his hand to his cockaded hat while Wendelin ushered the
brother and sister to their seats; then the door banged shut, he
swung himself up to the box, and the carriage was at once in
swift motion. It crackled over the gravel, glided through the high,
wide gate, curved smoothly to the right, and rolled away.

The luxurious little space in which they sat was pervaded by a
gentle warmth. "Shall I shut us in?" Siegmund asked. She nodded
and he drew the brown silk curtains across the polished panes.

They were in the city's heart. Lights flew past behind the cur-
tains. Their horses' hoofs rhythmically beat the ground, the car-
riage swayed noiselessly over the pavement, and round them
roared and shrieked and thundered the machinery of urban life.
Quite safe and shut away they sat among the wadded brown silk
cushions, hand in hand. The carriage drew up and stopped. Wen-
delin was at the door to help them out. A little group of grey-
faced shivering folk stood in the brilliance of the arc-lights and
followed them with hostile glances as they passed through the
lobby. It was already late, they were the last. They mounted the
staircase, threw their cloaks over Wendelin's arms, paused a sec-
ond before a high mirror, then went through the little door into
their box. They were greeted by the last sounds before the hush
--voices and the slamming of seats. The lackey pushed their
plush-upholstered chairs beneath them; at that moment the lights
went down and below their box the orchestra broke into the wild
pulsating notes of the prelude.

Night, and tempest....And they, who had been wafted hither on
the wings of ease, with no petty annoyances on the way, were
in exactly the right mood and could give all their attention at
once. Storm, a raging tempest, without in the wood. The angry
god's command resounded, once, twice repeated in its wrath,
obediently the thunder crashed. The curtain flew up as though
blown by the storm. There was the rude hall, dark save for a glow
on the pagan hearth. In the centre towered up the trunk of the
ash tree. Siegmund appeared in the doorway and leaned against
the wooden post beaten and harried by the storm. Draggingly
he moved forwards on his sturdy legs wrapped round with hide
and thongs. He was rosy-skinned, with a straw-coloured beard;
beneath his blond brows and the blond forelock of his wig his
blue eyes were directed upon the conductor, with an imploring
gaze. At last the orchestra gave way to his voice, which rang
clear and metallic, though he tried to make it sound like a gasp.
He sang a few bars, to the effect that no matter to whom the
hearth belonged he must rest upon it; and at the last word he let
himself drop heavily on the bearskin rug and lay there with his
head cushioned on his plump arms. His breast heaved in slumber.
A minute passed, filled with the singing, speaking flow of the
music, rolling its waves at the feet of the events on the stage....
Sieglinde entered from the left. She had an alabaster bosom which
rose and fell marvellously beneath her muslin robe and deerskin
mantle. She displayed surprise at sight of the strange man; pressed
her chin upon her breast until it was double, put her lips in posi-
tion and expressed it, this surprise, in tones which swelled soft and
warm from her white throat and were given shape by her tongue
and her mobile lips. She tended the stranger; bending over him so
that he could see the white flower of her bosom rising from the
rough skins, she gave him with both hands the drinking-horn. He
drank. The music spoke movingly to him of cool refreshment and
cherishing care. They looked at each other with the beginning of
enchantment, a first dim recognition, standing rapt while the or-
chestra interpreted in a melody of profound enchantment.

She gave him mead, first touching the horn with her lips, then
watching while he took a long draught. Again their glances met
and mingled, while below, the melody voiced their yearning.
Then he rose, in deep dejection, turning away painfully, his arms
hanging at his sides, to the door, that he might remove from her
sight his affliction, his loneliness, his persecuted, hated existence
and bear it back into the wild. She called upon him but he did
not hear; heedless of self she lifted up her arms and confessed her
intolerable anguish. He stopped. Her eyes fell. Below them the
music spoke darkly of the bond of suffering that united them. He
stayed. He folded his anns and remained by the hearth, awaiting
his destiny.

Announced by his pugnacious motif, Hunding entered, paunchy
and knock-kneed, like a cow. His beard was black with brown
tufts. He stood there frowning, leaning heavily on his spear, and
staring ox-eyed at the stranger guest. But as the primitive custom
would have it he bade him welcome, in an enormous, rusty voice.

Sieglinde laid the evening meal, Hunding's slow, suspicious
gaze moving to and fro between her and the stranger. Dull lout
though he was, he saw their likeness: the selfsame breed, that odd,
untrammelled rebellious stock, which he hated, to which he felt
inferior. They sat down, and Hunding, in two words, introduced
himself and accounted for his simple, regular, and orthodox ex-
istence. Thus he forced Siegmund to speak of himself--and that
was incomparably more difficult. Yet Siegmund spoke, he sang
clearly and with wonderful beauty of his life and misfortunes.
He told how he had been born with a twin sister--and as people
do who dare not speak out, he called himself by a false name. He
gave a moving account of the hatred and envy which had been
the bane of his life and his strange father's life, how their hall had
been burnt, his sister car'^ied off, how they had led in the forest
a harried, persecuted, outlawed life; and how finally he had mys-
teriously lost his father as well....And then Siegmund sang the
most painful thing of all: he told of his yearning for human be-
ings, his longing and ceaseless loneliness. He sang of men and
women, of friendship and love he had sometimes won, only to be
thrust back again into the dark. A curse had lain upon him forever,
he was marked by the brand of his strange origins. His speech
had not been as others' speech nor theirs as his. What he found
good was vexation to them, he was galled by the ancient laws to
which they paid honour. Always and everywhere he had lived
amid anger and strife, he had borne the yoke of scorn and hatred
and contempt--all because he was strange, of a breed and kind
hopelessly different from them.

Hunding's reception of all this was entirely characteristic. His
reply showed no sympathy and no understanding, but only a sour
disgust and suspicion of all Siegmund's story. And finally under-
standing that the stranger standing here on his own hearth was the
very man for whom the hunt had been called up today, he be-
haved with the four-square pedantry one would have expected of
him. With a grim sort of courtesy he declared that for tonight
the guest-right protected the fugitive; tomorrow he would have
the honour of slaying him in battle. Gruffly he commanded Sieg-
linde to spice his night-drink for him and to await him in bed
within; then after a few more threats he followed her, taking all
his weapons with him and leaving Siegmund alone and despairing
by the hearth.

Up in the box Siegmund bent over the velvet ledge and leaned
his dark boyish head on his narrow red hand. His brows made two
black furrows, and one foot, resting on the heel of his patent-
leather shoe, was in constant nervous motion. But it stopped as
he heard a whisper close to him.

"Gigi!"

His mouth, as he turned, had an insolent line.

Sieglinde was holding out to him a mother-of-pearl box with
maraschino cherries.

"The brandy chocolates are underneath," she whispered. But
he accepted only a cherry, and as he took it out of the waxed
paper she said in his ear:

"She will come back to him again at once."

"I am not entirely unaware of the fact," he said, so loud that
several heads were jerked angrily in his direction....Down in
the darkness big Siegmund was singing alone. From the depths of
his heart he cried out for the sword--for a shining haft to swing
on that day when there burst forth at last the bright flame of his
anger and rage, which so long had smouldered deep in his heart.
He saw the hilt glitter in the tree, saw the embers fade on the
hearth, sank back in gloomy slumber--and started up in joyful
amaze when Sieglinde glided back to him in the darkness.

Hunding slept like a stone a deafened, drunken sleep. Together
they rejoiced at the outwitting of the clod; they laughed, and
their eyes had the same way of narrowing as they laughed. Then
Sieglinde stole a look at the conductor, received her cue, and
putting her lips in position sang a long recitative; related the
heart-breaking tale of how they had forced her, forsaken, strange
and wild as she was, to give herself to the crude and savage Hun-
ding and to count herself lucky in an honourable marriage which
might bury her dark origins in oblivion. She sang too, sweetly
and soothingly, of the strange old man in the hat and how he had
driven the sword-blade into the trunk of the ash tree, to await
the coming of him who was destined to draw it out. Passionately
she prayed in song that it might be he whom she meant, whom she
knew and grievously longed for, the consoler of her sorrows, the
friend who should be more than friend, the avenger of her shame,
whom once she had lost, whom in her abasement she wept for,
her brother in suffering, her saviour, her rescuer....

But at this point Siegmund flung about her his two rosy arms.
He pressed her cheek against the pelt that covered his breast and,
holding her so, sang above her head--sang out his exultation to
the four winds, in a silver trumpeting of sound. His breast glowed
hot with the oath that bound him to his mate. All the yearning of
his hunted life found assuagement in her; all that love which
others had repulsed, when in conscious shame of his dark origins
he forced it upon them--in her it found its home. She suffered
shame as did he, dishonoured was she like to himself--and now,
now their brother-and-sister love should be their revenge!

The storm whistled, a gust of wind burst open the door, a flood
of white electric light poured into the hall. Divested of darkness
they stood and sang their song of spring and spring's sister, love!

Crouching on the bearskin they looked at each other in the
white light, as they sang their duet of love. Their bare arms
touched each other as they held each other by the temples and
gazed into each other's eyes, and as they sang their mouths were
very near. They compared their eyes, their foreheads, their voices
--they were the same. The growing, urging recognition wrung
from his breast his father's name; she called him by his: Siegmund!
Siegmund! He freed the sword, he swung it above his head, and
submerged in bliss she told him in song who she was: his twin
sister, Sieglinde. In ravishment he stretched out his arms to her,
his bride, she sank upon his breast--the curtain fell as the music
swelled into a roaring, rushing, foaming whirlpool of passion-^
swirled and swirled and with one mighty throb stood still.

Rapturous applause. The lights went on. A thousand people got
up, stretched unobtrusively as they clapped, then made ready to
leave the hall, with heads still turned towards the stage, where the
singers appeared before the curtain, like masks hung out in a row
at a fair. Hunding too came out and smiled politely, despite all
that had just been happening.

Siegmund pushed back his chair and stood up. He was hot;
little red patches showed on his cheek-bones, above the lean, sal-
low, shaven cheeks.

"For my part," said he, "what I want now is a breath of fresh
air. Siegmund was pretty feeble, wasn't he?"

"Yes," answered Sieglinde, "and the orchestra saw fit to drag
abominably in the Spring Song."

"Frightfully sentimental," said Siegmund, shrugging his nar-
row shoulders in his dress coat. "Are you coming out?" She
lingered a moment, with her elbows on the ledge, still gazing at
the stage. He looked at her as she rose and took up her silver
scarf. Her soft, full lips were quivering.

They went into the foyer and mingled with the slow-moving
throng, downstairs and up again, sometimes holding each other by
the hand.

"I should enjoy an ice," said she, "if they were not in all prob-
ability uneatable."

"Don't think of it," said he. So they ate bonbons out of their
box--maraschino cherries and chocolate beans filled with cognac.

The bell rang and they looked on contemptuously as the crowds
rushed back to their seats, blocking the corridors. They waited
until all was quiet, regaining their places just as the lights went
down again and silence and darkness fell soothingly upon the hall.
There was another little ring, the conductor raised his arms and
summoned up anew the wave of splendid sound.

Siegmund looked down into the orchestra. The sunken space
stood out bright against the darkness of the listening house; hands
fingered, arms drew the bows, cheeks puffed out--all these simple
folk laboured zealously to bring to utterance the work of a
master who suffered and created; created the noble and simple
visions enacted above on the stage. Creation? How did one create?
Pain gnawed and burned in Siegmund's breast, a drawing anguish
which yet was somehow sweet, a yearning--whither, for what?
It was all so dark, so shamefully unclear! Two thoughts, two
words he had: creation, passion. His temples glowed and throbbed,
and it came to him as in a yearning vision that creation was born
of passion and was reshaped anew as passion. He saw the pale, spent
woman hanging on the breast of the fugitive to whom she gave
herself, he saw her love and her destiny and knew that so life
must be to be creative. He saw his own life, and knew its contra-
dictions, its clear understanding and spoilt voluptuousness, its
splendid security and idle spite, its weakness and wittiness, its
languid contempt; his life, so full of words, so void of acts, so full
of cleverness, so empty of emotion--and he felt again the burn-
ing, the drawing anguish which yet was sweet--whither, and to
what end? Creation? Experience? Passion?

The finale of the act came, the curtain fell. Light, applause,
general exit. Sieglinde and Siegmund spent the interval as before.
They scarcely spoke, as they walked hand-in-hand through the
corridors and up and down the steps. She offered him cherries but
he took no more. She looked at him, but withdrew her gaze as his
rested upon her, walking rather constrained at his side and endur-
ing his eye. Her childish shoulders under the silver web of her
scarf looked like those of an Egyptian statue, a little too high and
too square. Upon her cheeks burned the same fire he felt in his
own.

Again they waited until the crowd had gone in and took their
seats at the last possible moment. Storm and wind and driving
cloud; wild, heathenish cries of exultation. Eight females, not
exactly stars in appearance, eight untrammelled, laughing maidens
of the wild, were disporting themselves amid a rocky scene.
Brunnhilde broke in upon their merriment with her fears. They
skimmed away in terror before the approaching wrath of Wotan,
leaving her alone to face him. The angry god nearly annihilated
his daughter--but his wrath roared itself out, by degrees grew
gentle and dispersed into a mild melancholy, on which note it
ended. A noble prospect opened out, the scene was pervaded with
epic and religious splendour. Brunnhilde slept. The god mounted
the rocks. Great, full-bodied flames, rising, falling, and flickering,
glowed all over the boards. The Walkure lay with her coat of
mail and her shield on her mossy couch ringed round with fire
and smoke, with leaping, dancing tongues, with the magic sleep-
compelling fire-music. But she had saved Sieglinde, in whose
womb there grew and waxed the seed of that hated unprized race,
chosen of the gods, from which the twins had sprung, who had
mingled their misfortunes and their afflictions in free and mutual
bliss.

Siegmund and Sieglinde left their box; Wendelin was outside,
towering in his yellow paletot and holding their cloaks for them
to put on. Like a gigantic slave he followed the two dark, slender,
fur-mantled, exotic creatures down the stairs to where the car-
riage waited and the pair of large finely matched glossy thorough-
breds tossed their proud heads in the winter night. Wendelin
ushered the twins into their warm little silken-lined retreat, closed
the door, and the coupe stood poised for yet a second, quivering
slightly from the swing with which Wendelin agilely mounted
the box. Then it glided swiftly away and left the theatre behind.
Again they rolled noiselessly and easefully to the rhythmic beat
of the horses' hoofs, over all the unevennesses of the road, shel-
tered from the shrill harshness of the bustling life through which
they passed. They sat as silent and remote as they had sat in their
opera-box facing the stage--almost, one might say, in the same
atmosphere. Nothing was there which could alienate them from
that extravagant and stormily passionate world which worked
upon them with its magic power to draw them to itself.

The carriage stopped; they did not at once realize where they
were, or that they had arrived before the door of their parents'
house. Then Wendelin appeared at the window, and the porter
came out of his lodge to open the door.

"Are my father and mother at home?" Siegmund asked, look-
ing over the porter's head and blinking as though he were staring
into the sun.

No, they had not returned from dinner at the Erlangers'. Nor
was Kunz at home; Mark too was out, no one knew where, for
she went entirely her own way.

In the vestibule they paused to be divested of their wraps; then
they went up the stairs and through the first-floor hall into the
dining-room. Its immense and splendid spaces lay in darkness save
at the upper end, where one lustre burned above a table and
Florian waited to serve them. They moved noiselessly across the
thick carpet, and Florian seated them in their softly upholstered
chairs. Then a gesture from Siegmund dismissed him, they would
dispense with his services.

The table was laid with a dish of fruit, a plate of sandwiches,
and a jug of red wine. An electric tea-kettle hummed upon a
great silver tray, with all appliances about it.

Siegmund ate a caviar sandwich and poured out wine into a
slender glass where it glowed a dark ruby red. He drank in quick
gulps, and grumblingly stated his opinion that red wine and caviar
were a combination offensive to good taste. He drew out his case,
jerkily selected a cigarette, and began to smoke, leaning back
with his hands in his pockets, wrinkling up his face and twitch-
ing his cigarette from one corner of his mouth to the other. His
strong growth of beard was already beginning to show again un-
der the high cheek-bones; the two black folds stood out on the
base of his nose.

Sieglinde had brewed the tea and added a drop of burgundy.
She touched the fragile porcelain cup delicately with her full, soft
lips and as she drank she looked across at Siegmund with her
great humid black eyes.

She set down her cup and leaned her dark, sweet little head upon
her slender hand. Her eyes rested full upon him, with such liquid,
speechless eloquence that all she might have said could be nothing
beside it.

"Won't you have any more to eat, Gigi?"

"One would not draw," said he, "from the fact that I am smoking,
the conclusion that I intend to eat more."

"But you have had nothing but bonbons since tea. Take a peach,
at least."

He shrugged his shoulders--or rather he wriggled them like
a naughty child, in his dress coat.

"This is stupid. I am going upstairs. Good night."

He drank out his wine, tossed away his table-napkin, and
lounged away, with his hands in his pockets, into the darkness
at the other end of the room.

He went upstairs to his room, where he turned on the light--
not much, only two or three bulbs, which made a wide white
circle on the ceiling. Then he stood considering what to do next.
The good-night had not been final; this was not how they were
used to take leave of each other at the close of the day. She was
sure to come to his room. He flung off his coat, put on his fur-
trimmed house-jacket, and lighted another cigarette. He lay down
on the chaise-longue; sat up again, tried another posture, with his
cheek in the pillow; threw himself on his back again and so re-
mained awhile, with his hands under his head.

The subtle, bitterish scent of the tobacco mingled with that of
the cosmetics, the soaps, and the toilet waters; their combined
perfume hung in the tepid air of the room and Siegmund breathed
it in with conscious pleasure, finding it sweeter than ever. Closing
his eyes he surrendered to this atmosphere, as a man will console
himself with some delicate pleasure of the senses for the extraor-
dinary harshness of his lot.

Then suddenly he started up again, tossed away his cigarette
and stood in front of the white wardrobe, which had long mirrors
let into each of its three divisions. He moved very close to the
middle one and eye to eye he studied himself, conned every fea-
ture of his face. Then he opened the two side wings and studied
both profiles as well. Long he looked at each mark of his race:
the slightly drooping nose, the full lips that rested so softly on
each other; the high cheek-bones, the thick black, curling hair
that grew far down on the temples and parted so decidedly on one
side; finally the eyes under the knit brows, those large black eyes
that glowed like fire and had an expression of weary sufferance.

In the mirror he saw the bearskin lying behind him, spreading
out its claws beside the bed. He turned round, and there was tragic
meaning in the dragging step that bore him towards it--until
after a moment more of hesitation he lay down all its length and
buried his head in his arm.

For a while he lay motionless, then propped his head on his
elbows, with his cheeks resting on his slim reddish hands, and
fell again into contemplation of his image opposite him in the
mirror. There was a knock on the door. He started, reddened, and
moved as though to get up--but sank back again, his head against
his outstretched arm, and stopped there, silent.

Sieglinde entered. Her eyes searched the room, without finding
him at once. Then with a start she saw him lying on the rug.

"Gigi, what ever are you doing there? Are you ill?" She ran
to him, bending over with her hand on his forehead, stroking his
hair as she repeated: "You are not ill?"

He shook his head, looking up at her under his brow as she
continued to caress him.

She was half ready for bed, having come over in slippers from
her dressing-room, which was opposite to his. Her loosened
hair flowed down over her open white dressing-jacket; beneath
the lace of her chemise Siegmund saw her little breasts, the colour
of smoked meerschaum.

"You were so cross," she said. "It was beastly of you to go
away like that. I thought I would not come. But then I did, be-
cause that was not a proper good-night at all...."

"I was waiting for you," said he.

She was still standing bent over, and made a little moue which
brought out markedly the facial characteristics of her race. Then,
in her ordinary tone:

"Which does not prevent my present position from giving me
a crick in the back."

He shook her off.

"Don't, don't--we must not talk like that--not that way,
Sieglinde." His voice was strange, he himself noticed it. He felt
parched with fever, his hands and feet were cold and clammy.
She knelt beside him on the skin, her hand in his hair. He lifted
himself a little to fling one arm round her neck and so looked at
her, looked as he had just been looking at himself--at eyes and
temples, brow and cheeks.

"You are just like me," said he, haltingly, and swallowed to
moisten his dry throat. "Everything about you is just like me--
and so--what you have--with Beckerath--the experience--is
for me too. That makes things even, Sieglinde--and anyhow,
after all, it is, for that matter--it is a revenge, Sieglinde --"

He was seeking to clothe in reason what he was trying to say--
yet his words sounded as though he uttered them out of some
strange, rash, bewildered dream.

But to her it had no quality of strangeness. She did not blush
at his half-spoken, turbid, wild imaginings; his words enveloped
her senses like a mist, they drew her down whence they had come,
to the borders of a kingdom she had never entered, though some-
times,, since her betrothal, she had been carried thither in ex-
pectant dreams.

She kissed him on his closed eyelids; he kissed her on her throat,
beneath the lace she wore. They kissed each other's hands. They
loved each other with all the sweetness of the senses, each for the
other's spoilt and costly well-being and delicious fragrance. They
breathed it in, this fragrance, with languid and voluptuous aban-
don, like self-centred invalids, consoling themselves for the loss
of hope. They forgot themselves in caresses, which took the upper
hand, passing over into a tumult of passion, dying away into a
sobbing....

She sat there on the bearskin, with parted lips, supporting her-
self with one hand, and brushed the hair out of her eyes. He
leaned back on his hands against the white dressing-chest, rocked
to and fro on his hips, and gazed into the air.

"But Beckerath," said she, seeking to find some order in her
thoughts, "Beckerath, Gigi ...what about him, now?"

"Oh," he said--and for a second the marks of his race stood
out strong upon his face--"he ought to be grateful to us. His
existence will be a little less trivial, from now on."


1905



RAILWAY ACCIDENT



Tell you a story? But I don't know any. Well, yes, after all, here
is something I might tell.

Once, two years ago now it is, I was in a railway accident; all
the details are clear in my memory.

It was not really a first-class one--no wholesale telescoping or
"heaps of unidentifiable dead"--not that sort of thing. Still, it
was a proper accident, with all the trimmings, and on top of that
it was at night. Not everybody has been through one, so I will
describe it the best I can.

I was on my way to Dresden, whither I had been invited by
some friends of letters: it was a literary and artistic pilgrimage, in
short, such as, from time to time, I undertake not unwillingly.
You make appearances, you attend functions, you show yourself
to admiring crowds--not for nothing is one a subject of Wil-
liam 11. And certainly Dresden is beautiful, especially the Zwinger;
and afterwards I intended to go for ten days or a fortnight to the
White Hart to rest, and if, thanks to the treatments, the spirit
should come upon me, I might do a little work as well. To this
end I had put my manuscript at the bottom of my trunk, together
with my notes--a good stout bundle done up in brown paper
and tied with string in the Bavarian colours. I like to travel in
comfort, especially when my expenses are paid. So I patronized
the sleeping-cars, reserving a place days ahead in a first-class com-
partment. All was in order; nevertheless I was excited, as I always
am on such occasions, for a journey is still an adventure to me,
and where travelling is concerned I shall never manage to feel
properly blase. I perfectly well know that the night train for
Dresden leaves the central station at Munich regularly every eve-
ning, and every morning is in Dresden. But when I am travelling
with it, and linking my momentous destiny to its own, the matter
assumes importance. I cannot rid myself of the notion that it is
making a special trip today, just on my account, and the unreason-
ing and mistaken conviction sets up in me a deep and speechless
unrest, which does not subside until all the formalities of departure
are behind me--the packing, the drive in the loaded cab to the
station, the arrival there, and the registration of luggage--and I
can feel myself finally and securely bestowed. Then, indeed, a
pleasing relaxation takes place, the mind turns to fresh concerns,
the unknown unfolds itself beyond the expanse of window-pane,
and I am consumed with joyful anticipations.

And so on this occasion. I had tipped my porter so liberally that
he pulled his cap and gave me a pleasant journey; and I stood at
the corridor window of my sleeping-car smoking my evening
cigar and watching the bustle on the platform. There were whis-
tlings and rumblings, hurryings and farewells, and the singsong
of newspaper and refreshment vendors, and over all the great
electric moons glowed through the mist of the October evening.
Two stout fellows pulled a hand-cart of large trunks along the
platform to the baggage car in front of the train. I easily identi-
fied, by certain unmistakable features, my own trunk; one among
many there it lay, and at the bottom of it reposed my precious
package. "There," thought I, "no need to worry, it is in good
hands. Look at that guard with the leather cartridge-belt, the
prodigious sergeant-major's moustache, and the inhospitable eye.
Watch him rebuking the old woman in the threadbare black cape
--for two pins she would have got into a second-class carriage.
He is security, he is authority, he is our parent, he is the State. He
is strict, not to say gruff, you would not care to mingle with him;
but reliability is writ large upon his brow, and in his care your
trunk reposes as in the bosom of Abraham."

A man was strolling up and down the platform in spats and a
yellow autumn coat, with a dog on a leash. Never have I seen a
handsomer dog: a small, stocky bull, smooth-coated, muscular,
with black spots; as well groomed and amusing as the dogs one
sees in circuses, who make the audience laugh by dashing round
and round the ring with all the energy of their small bodies. This
dog had a silver collar, with a plaited leather leash. But all this was
not surprising, considering his master, the gentleman in spats, who
had beyond a doubt the noblest origins. He wore a monocle,
which accentuated without distorting his general air; the defiant
perch of his moustache bore out the proud and stubborn expres-
sion of his chin and the corners of his mouth. He addressed a ques-
tion to the martial guard, who knew perfectly well with whom
he was dealing and answered hand to cap. My gentleman strolled
on, gratified with the impression he had made. He strutted in his
spats, his gaze was cold, he regarded men and affairs with penetrat-
ing eye. Certainly he was far above feeling joumey-proud; trayel
by train was no novelty to him. He was at home in life, without
fear of authority or regulations; he was an authority himself--in
short, a nob. I could not look at him enough. When he thought
the time had come, he got into the train (the guard had just turned
his back). He came along the corridor behind me, bumped into
me, and did not apologize. What a man! But that was nothing to
what followed. Without turning a hair he took his dog with him
into the sleeping-compartment! Surely it was forbidden to do
that. When should I presume to take a dog with me into a sleep-
ing-compartment? But he did it, on the strength of his prescriptive
rights as a nob, and shut the door behind him.

There came a whistle outside, the locomotive whistled in re-
sponse, gently the train began to move. I stayed awhile by the
window watching the hand-waving and the shifting lights....
I retired inside the carriage.

The sleeping-car was not very full, a compartment next to mine
was empty and had not been got ready for the night; I decided
to make myself comfortable. there for an hour's peaceful reading.
I fetched my book and settled in.The sofa had a silky salmon-pink
covering, an ash-tray stood on the folding table, the light burned
bright. I read and smoked.

The sleeping-car attendant entered in pursuance of his duties
and asked for my ticket for the night. I delivered it into his grimy
hands. He was polite but entirely official, did not even vouchsafe
me a good-night as from one human being to another, but went
out at once and knocked on the door of the next compartment.
He would better have left it alone, for my gentleman of the spats
was inside; and perhaps because he did not wish anyone to dis-
cover his dog, but possibly because he had really gone to bed, he
got furious at anyone daring to disturb him. Above the rumbling
of the train I heard his immediate and elemental burst of rage.
"What do you want?" he roared. "Leave me alone, you swine."
He said "swine." It was a lordly epithet, the epithet of a cavalry
officer--it did my heart good to hear it. But the sleeping-car
attendant must have resorted to diplomacy--of course he had tb
have the man's ticket--for just as I stepped into the corridor to
get a better view the door of the compartment abruptly opened
a little way and the ticket flew out into the attendant's face; yes,
it was flung with violence straight in his face. He picked it up
with both hands, and though he had got the corner of it in one eye,
so that the tears came, he thanked the man, saluting and clicking
his heels together. Quite overcome, I returned to my book.

I considered whether there was anything against my smoking
another cigar and concluded that there was little or nothing. So I
did it, rolling onward and reading; I felt full of contentment and
good ideas. Time passed, it was ten o'clock, half past ten, all my
fellow-travellers had gone to bed, at last I decided to follow them.
I got up and went into my own compartment. A real little bed-
room, most luxurious, with stamped leather wall hangings, clothes-
hooks, a nickel-plated wash-basin. The lower berth was snowily
prepared, the covers invitingly turned back. Oh, triumph of mod-
em times! I thought. One lies in this bed as though at home, it
rocks a little all night, and the result is that next morning one is
in Dresden. I took my suitcase out of the rack to get ready for
bed; I was holding it above my head, with my arms stretched up.

It was at this moment that the railway accident occurred. I
remember it like yesterday.

We gave a jerk--but jerk is a poor word for it. It was a jerk
of deliberately foul intent, a jerk with a horrid reverberating crash,
and so violent that my suitcase leaped out of my hands I knew not
whither, while I was flung forcibly with my shoulder against the
wall. I had no time to stop and think. But now followed a frightful
rocking of the carriage, and while that went on, one had plenty
of leisure to be frightened. A railway carriage rocks going over
switches or on sharp curves, that we know; but this rocking would
not let me stand up, I was thrown from one wall to the other as
the carriage careened. I had only one simple thought, but I thought
it with concentration, exclusively. I thought: "Something is the
matter, something is the matter, something is very much the mat-
ter!" Just in those words. But later I thought: "Stop, stop, stop!"
For I knew that it would be a great help if only the train could be
brought to a halt. And lo, at this my unuttered but fervent behest,
the train did stop.

Up to now a deathlike stillness had reigned in the carriage, but at
this point terror found tongue. Shrill feminine screams mingled
with deeper masculine cries of alarm .Next door someone was
shouting "Help!" No doubt about it, this was the very same voice
which, just previously, had uttered the lordly epithet--the voice
of the man in spats, his very voice, though distorted by fear.
"Help!" it cried; and just as I stepped into the corridor, where
the passengers were collecting, he burst out of his compartment in
a silk sleeping-suit and halted, looking wildly round him. "Great
God!" he exclaimed, "Almighty God!" and then, as though to
abase himself utterly, perhaps in hope to avert destruction, he
added in a deprecating tone: "Dear God!" But suddenly he
thought of something else, of trying to help himself. He threw
himself upon the case on the wall where an axe and saw are kept
for emergencies, and broke the glass with his hst. But finding that
he could not release the tools at once, he abandoned them, buffeted
his way through the crowd of passengers, so that the half-dressed
women screamed afresh, and leaped out of the carriage.

All that was the work of a moment only. And then for the first
time I began to feel the shock: in a certain weakness of the spine,
a passing inability to swallow. The sleeping-car attendant, red-
eyed, grimy-handed, had just come up; we all pressed round him;
the women, with bare arms and shoulders, stood wringing their
hands.

The train, he explained, had been derailed, we had run off the
track. That, as it afterwards turned out, was not true. But behold,
the man in his excitement had become voluble, he abandoned his
official neutrality; events had loosened his tongue and he spoke to
us in confidence, about his wife. "I told her today, I did. 'Wife,'
I said, 'I feel in my bones somethin's goin' to happen.'" And sure
enough, hadn't something happened? We all felt how right he
had been. The carriage had begun to fill with smoke, a thick
smudge; nobody knew where it came from, but we all thought it
best to get out into the night.

That could only be done by quite a big jump from the foot-
board onto the line, for there was no platform of course, and be-
sides our carriage was canted a good deal towards the opposite
side. But the ladies--they had hastily covered their nakedness--
jumped in desperation and soon we were all standing there be-
tween the lines.

It was nearly dark, but from where we were we could see that
no damage had been done at the rear of the train, though all the
carriages stood at a slant. But further forward--fifteen or twenty
paces further forward! Not for nothing had the jerk we felt made
such a horrid crash. There lay a waste of wreckage; we could see
the margins of it, with the little lights of the guards' lanterns
flickering across and to and fro.

Excited people came towards us, bringing reports of the situa-
tion. We were close by a small station not far beyond Regensburg,
and as the result of a defective point our express had run onto the
wrong line, had crashed at full speed into a stationary freight
train, hurling it out of the station, annihilating its rear carriages,
and itself sustaining serious damage. The great express engine from
Maffei's in Munich lay smashed up and done for. Price seventy
thousand marks. And in the forward coaches, themselves lying
most on one side, many of the seats were telescoped. No, thank
goodness, there were no lives lost. There was talk of an old woman
having been "taken out," but nobody had seen her. At least,
people had been thrown in all directions, children buried under
luggage, the shock had been great. The baggage car was demol-
ished. Demolished--the baggage car? Demolished.

There I stood.

A bareheaded official came running along the track. The station-
master. He issued wild and tearful commands to the passengers,
to make them behave themselves and get back into the coaches.
But nobody took any notice of him, he had no cap and no self-
control. Poor wretch! Probably the responsibility was his. Per-
haps this was the end of his career, the wreck of his prospects.
I could not ask him about the baggage car--it would have been
tactless.

Another official came up--he limped up. I recognized him by
the sergeant-major's moustache: it was the stern and vigilant guard
of the early evening--our Father, the State. He limped along, bent
over with his hand on his knee, thinking about nothing else. "Oh,
dear!" he said, "oh, dear, oh, dear me!" I asked him what was the
matter. "I got stuck, sir, jammed me in the chest, I made my
escape through the roof." This "made my escape through the
roof" sounded like a newspaper report. Certainly the man would
not have used the phrase in everyday life; he had experienced not
so much an accident as a newspaper account of it--but what was
that to me? He was in no state to give me news of my manuscript.
So I accosted a young man who came up bustling and self-impor-
tant from the waste of wreckage, and asked him about the heavy
luggage.

"Well, sir, nobody can say anything as to that"--his tone im-
plied that I ought to be grateful to have escaped unhurt. "Every-
thing is all over the place. Women's shoes --" he said with a
sweeping gesture to indicate the devastation, and wrinkled his
nose. "When they start the clearing operations we shall see....
Women's shoes. ..."

There I stood. All alone I stood there in the night and searched
my heart. Clearing operations. Clearing operations were to be
undertaken with my manuscript. Probably it was destroyed, then,
torn up, demolished. My honeycomb, my spider-web, my nest,
my earth, my pride and pain, my all, the best of me--what should
I do if it were gone? I had no copy of what had been welded
and forged, of what already was a living, speaking thing--to say
nothing of my notes and drafts, all that I had saved and stored up
and overheard and sweated over for years--my squirrel's hoard.
What should I do? I inquired of my own soul and I knew that I
should begin over again from the beginning. Yes, with animal
patience, with the tenacity of a primitive creature the curious and
complex product of whose little ingenuity and industry has been
destroyed; after a moment of helpless bewilderment I should set to
work again--and perhaps this time it would come easier!

But meanwhile a fire brigade had come up, their torches cast a
red light over the wreck; when I went forward and looked for
the baggage car, behold it was almost intact, the luggage quite
unharmed. All the things that lay strewn about came out of the
freight train: among the rest a quantity of balls of string--a per-
fect sea of string covered the ground far and wide.

A load was lifted from my heart. I mingled with the people who
stood talking and fraternizing in misfortune--also showing off
and being important. So much seemed clear, that the engine-driver
had acted with great presence of mind. He had averted a great
catastrophe by pulling the emergency brake at the last moment.
Otherwise, it was said, there would have been a general smash and
the whole train would have gone over the steep embankment on
the left. Oh, praiseworthy engine-driver! He was not about, no-
body had seen him, but his fame spread down the whole length
of the train and we all lauded him in his absence. "That chap,"
said one man, and pointed with one hand somewhere off into the
night, "that chap saved our lives." We all agreed.

But our train was standing on a track where it did not belong,
and it behoved those in charge to guard it from behind so that an-
other one did not run into it. Firemen perched on the rear carriage
with torches of flaming pitch, and the excited young man who had
given me such a fright with his "women's shoes" seized upon a
torch too and began signalling with it, though no train was any-
where in sight.

Slowly and by degrees something like order was produced, the
State our Father regained poise and presence. Steps had been taken,
wires sent, presently a breakdown train from Regensburg steamed ,
cautiously into the station and great gas flares with reflectors were
set up about the wreck. We passengers were now turned off and
told to go into the little station building to wait for our new con-
veyance. Laden with our hand luggage, some of the party with
bandaged heads, we passed through a lane of inquisitive natives
into the tiny waiting-room, where we herded together as best we
could. And inside of an hour we were all stowed higgledy-piggledy
into a special train.

I had my first-class ticket--my journey being paid for--but it
availed me nothing, for everybody wanted to ride first and my
carriage was more crowded than the others. But just as I found
me a little niche, whom do I see diagonally opposite to me, hud-
dled in the corner? My hero, the gentleman with the spats and
the vocabulary of a cavalry officer. He did not have his dog, it had
been taken away from him in defiance of his rights as a nob and
now sat howling in a gloomy prison just behind the engine. His
master, like myself, held a yellow ticket which was no good to
him and he was grumbling, he was trying to make head against
this communistic levelling of rank in the face of general misfor-
tune. But another man answered him in a virtuous tone: "You
ought to be thankful that you can sit down." And with a sour
smile my gentleman resigned himself to the crazy situation.

And now who got in, supported by two firemen? A wee little
old grandmother in a tattered black cape, the very same who in
Munich would for two pins have got into a second-class carriage.

"Is this the first class?" she kept asking. And when we made
room and assured her that it was, she sank down with a "God be
praised!" onto the plush cushions as though only now was she safe
and sound.

By Hof it was already five o'clock and light. There we break-
fasted; an express train picked me up and deposited me with my
belongings, three hours late, in Dresden.

Well, that was the railway" accident I went through. I suppose
it had to happen once; but whatever mathematicians may say, I
feel that I now have every chance of escaping another.


1907



THE FIGHT BETWEEN JAPPE AND DO ESCOBAR



I WAS very much taken aback when Johnny Bishop told me that
Jappe and Do Escobar were going to fight each other and that we
must go and watch them do it.

It was in the summer holidays at Travem11nde, on a sultry day
with a slight land breeze and a flat sea ever so far away across the
sands. We had been some three-quarters of an hour in the water
and were lying on the hard sand under the props of the bathing-
cabins--we two and Jurgen Brattstrom the shipowner's son.
Johnny and Brattstrom were lying on their backs entirely naked;
I felt more comfortable with my towel wrapped round my hips.
Brattstrom asked me why I did it and I could not think of any
sensible answer; so Johnny said with his winning smile that I was
probably too big now to lie naked. I really was larger and more
developed than Johnny and Brattstrom; also a little older, about
thirteen; so I accepted Johnny's explanation in silence, although
with a certain feeling of mortification. For in Johnny Bishop's
presence you actually felt rather out of it if you were any less
small, fine, and physically childlike than he, who was all these
things in such a very high degree. He knew how to look up at
you with his pretty, friendly blue eyes, which had a certain mock-
ing smile in them too, with an expression that said: "What a great,
gawky thing you are, to be sure!" The ideal of manliness and
long trousers had no validity in his presence--and that at a time,
not long after the war, when strength, courage, and every hardy
virtue stood very high among us youth and all sorts of conduct
were banned as effeminate. But Johnny, as a foreigner--or half-
foreigner--was exempt from this atmosphere. He was a little
like a woman who preserves her youth and looks down on other
women who are less successful at the feat. Besides he was far and
away the best-dressed boy in town, distinctly aristocratic and
elegant in his real English sailor suit with the linen collar, sailor's
knot, laces, a silver whistle in his pocket, and an anchor on the
sleeves that narrowed round his wrists. Anyone else would have
been laughed at for that sort of thing--it would have been jeered
at as "girls' clothes." But he wore them with such a disarming and
confident air that he never suffered in the least.

He looked rather like a thin little cupid as he lay there, with his
pretty, soft blond curls and his arms up over the narrow English
head that rested on the sand. His father had been a German busi-
ness man who had been naturalized in England and died some
years since. His mother was English by blood, a long-featured
lady with quiet, gentle ways, who had settled in our town with
her two children, Johnny and a mischievous little girl just as
pretty as he. She still wore black for her husband, and she was
probably honouring his last wishes when she brought the children
to grow up in Germany. Obviously they were in easy circum-
stances. She owned a spacious house outside the city and a villa at
the sea and from time to time she travelled with Johnny and Sissie
to more distant resorts. She did not move in society, although it
would have been open to her. Whether on account of her mourn-
ing or perhaps because the horizon of our best families was too
narrow for her, she herself led a retired life, but she managed that
her children should have social intercourse. She invited other
children to play with them and sent them to dancing and deport-
ment lessons, thus quietly arranging that Johnny and Sissie should
associate exclusively with the children of well-to-do families--
of course not in pursuance of any well-defined principle, but just
as a matter of course. Mrs. Bishop contributed, remotely, to my
own education: it was from her I learned that to be well thought
of by others no more is needed than to think well of yourself.
Though deprived of its male head the little family showed none
of the marks of neglect or disruption which often in such cases
make people fight shy. Without further family connection, with-
out title, tradition, influence, or public office, and living a life
apart, Mrs. Bishop by no means lacked social security or preten-
sions. She was definitely accepted at her own valuation and the
friendship of her children was much sought after by their young
contemporaries.

As for Jurgen Brattstrom, I may say in passing that his father
had made his own money, achieved public office, and built for
himself and his family the red sandstone house on the Burgfeld,
next to Mrs. Bishop's. And that lady had quietly accepted his
son as Johnny's playmate and let the two go to school together.
Jurgen was a decent, phlegmatic, short-legged lad without any
prominent characteristics. He had begun to do a little private
business in licorice sticks.

As I said, I was extremely shocked when Johnny told me
about the impending meeting between Jappe and Do Escobar
which was to take place at twelve o'clock that day on the Leuch-
tenfeld. It was dead earnest--might have a serious outcome, for
Jappe and Do E'scobar were both stout and reckless fellows and
had strong feelings about knightly honour. The issue might well
be frightful. In my memory they still seem as tall and manly as
they did then, though they could not have been more than fifteen
at the time. Jappe came from the middle class of the city; he was
not much looked after at home, he was already almost his own
master, a combination of loafer and man-about-town. Do Escobar
was an exotic and bohemian foreigner, who did not even come
regularly to school but only attended lectures now and then--an
irregular but paradisial existence! He lived en pension with some
middle-class people and rejoiced in complete independence. Both
were people who went late to bed, visited public-houses, strolled
of evenings in the Broad Street, followed girls about, performed
crazy "stunts"--in short, were regular blades. Although they
did not live in the Kurhotel at Travem11nde--where they would
scarcely have been acceptable--but somewhere in the village,
they frequented the Kurhaus and garden and were at home there
as cosmopolitans. In the evening, especially on a Sunday, when I
had long since been in my bed in one of the chalets and gone off
to sleep to the pleasant sound of the Kurhaus band, they, and
other members of the young generation--as I was aware--still
sauntered up and down in the stream of tourists and guests, loitered
in front of the long awning of the cafe, and sought and found
grown-up entertainment. And here they had come to blows, good-
ness knows how and why. It is possible that they had only
brushed against each other in passing and in the sensitiveness of
their knightly honour had made a fighting matter of the en-
counter. Johnny, who of course had been long since in bed too
and was instructed only by hearsay in what happened, expressed
himself in his pleasant, slightly husky childish voice, that the
quarrel was probably about some "gal"--an easy assumption,
considering Jappe's and Do Escobar's precocity and boldness. In
short, they had made no scene among the guests, but in few and
biting words agreed upon hour and place and witnesses for the
satisfaction of their honour. The next day, at twelve, rendezvous
at such and such a spot on the Leuchtenfeld. Good evening.--
Ballet-master Knaak from Hamburg, master of ceremonies and
leader of the Kurhaus cotillions, had been on the scene and prom-
ised his presence at the appointed hour and place.

Johnny rejoiced wholeheartedly in the fray--I think that
neither he nor Brattstrom would have shared my apprehensions.
Johnny repeatedly assured me, forming the r far forward on his
palate, with his pretty enunciation, that they were both "in dead
eahnest" and certainly meant business. Complacently and with a
rather ironic objectivity he weighed the chances of victory for
each. They were both frightfully strong, he grinned; both of
them great fighters--it would be fun to have it settled which of
them was the greater. Jappe, Johnny thought, had a broad chest
and capital arm and leg muscles, he could tell that from seeing him
swimming. But Do Escobar was uncommonly wiry and savage--
hard to tell beforehand who would get the upper hand. It was
strange to hear Johnny discourse so sovereignly upon Jappe's and
Do Escobar's qualifications, looking at his childish arms, which
could never have given or warded off a blow. As for me, I was
indeed far from absenting myself from the spectacle. That would
have been absurd and moreover the proceedings had a great fasci-
nation for me. Of course I must go, I must see it all, now that I
knew about it. I felt a certain sense of duty, along with other and
conflicting emotions; a great shyness and shame, all unwarlike as
I was, and not at all minded to trust myself upon the scene of
manly exploits. I had a nervous dread of the shock which the
sight of a duel a outrance, a fight for life and death, as it were,
would give me. I was cowardly enough to ask myself whether,
once on the field, I might not be caught up in the struggle and
have to expose my own person to a proof of valour which I knew
in my inmost heart I was far from being able or willing to give.
On the other hand I kept putting myself in Jappe's and Do Esco-
bar's place and feeling consuming sensations which I assumed to
be what they were feeling. I visualized the scene of the insult and
the challenge, summoned my sense of good form and with Jappe
and Do Escobar resisted the impulse to fall to there and then. I
experienced the agony of an overwrought passion for justice, the
flaring, shattering hatred, the attacks of raving impatience for
revenge, in which they must have passed the night. Arrived at the
last ditch, lost to all sense of fear, I fought myself blind and bloody
with an adversary just as inhuman, drove my fist into his hated
jaw with all the strength of my being, so that all his teeth were
broken, received in exchange a brutal kick in the stomach and
went under in a sea of blood. After which I woke in my bed with
ice-bags, quieted nerves, and a chorus of mild reproaches from
my family. In short, when it was half past twelve and we got up
to dress I was half worn out with my apprehensions. In the cabin
and afterwards when we were dressed and went outdoors, my
heart throbbed exactly as though it was I myself who was to
fight with Jappe or Do Escobar, in public and with all the rigours
of the game.

I still remember how we took the narrow wooden bridge which
ran diagonally up from the beach to the cabins. Of course we
jumped, in order to make it sway as much as possible, so that we
bounced as though on a spring-board. But once below we did not
follow the board walk which led along the beach past the tents
and the basket chairs; but held inland in the general direction of
the Kurhaus but rather more leftwards. The sun brooded over
the dunes and sucked a dry, hot odour from the sparse and
withered vegetation, the reeds and thistles that stuck into our legs.
There was no sound but the ceaseless humming of the blue-bottle
flies which hung apparently motionless in the heavy warmth, sud-
denly to shift to another spot and begin afresh their sharp, mo-
notonous whine. The cooling effect of the bath was long since
spent. Brattstrom and I kept lifting our hats, he his Swedish sailor
cap with the oilcloth visor, I my round Heligoland woollen bon-
net--the so-called tam-o'-shanter--to wipe our brows. Johnny
suffered little from heat, thanks to his slightness and also because
his clothing was more elegantly adapted than ours to the summer
day. In his light and comfortable sailor suit of striped washing
material which left bare his throat and legs, the blue, short-
ribboned cap with English lettering on his pretty little head, the
long slender feet in fine, almost heelless white leather shoes, he
walked with mounting strides and somewhat bent knees between
Brattstrom and me and sang with his charming accent "Little
Fisher Maiden"--a ditty which was then the rage. He sang it
with some vulgar variation in the words, such as boys like to in-
vent. Curiously enough, in all his childishness he knew a good
deal about various matters and was not at all too prudish to take
them in his mouth. But always he would make a sanctimonious
little face and say: "Fie! Who would sing such dirty songs?"--
as though Brattstrom and I had been the ones to make indecent
advances to the little fisher maiden.

I did not feel at all like singing, we were too near the fatal spot.
The prickly grass of the dunes had changed to the sand and sea
moss of a barren meadow; this was the Leuchtenfeld, so called
after the yellow lighthouse towering up in the far distance. We
soon found ourselves at our goal.

It was a warm, peaceful spot, where almost nobody ever came:
protected from view by scrubby willow trees. On the free space
among the bushes a crowd of youths lay or sat in a circle. They
were almost all older than we and from various strata of society.
We seemed to be the last spectators to arrive. Everybody was
waiting for Knaak the dancing-master, who was needed in the
capacity of neutral and umpire. Both Jappe and Do Escobar were
there--I saw them at once. They were sitting far apart in the
circle and pretending not to see each other. We greeted a few
acquaintances with silent nods and squatted in our turn on the
sun-warmed ground.

Some of the group were smoking. Both Jappe and Do Escobar
held cigarettes in the corners of their mouths. Each kept one eye
shut against the smoke and I instantly felt and knew that they
were aware how grand it was to sit there and smoke before
entering the ring. They were both dressed in grown-up clothes,
but Do Escobar's were more gentlemanly than Jappe's. He wore
yellow shoes with pointed toes, a light-grey summer suit, a rose-
coloured shirt with cuffs, a coloured silk cravat, and a round, nar-
row-brimmed straw hat sitting far back on his head, so that his
mop of shiny black hair showed on one side beneath it, in a big
hummock. He kept raising his right hand to shake back the silver
bangle he wore under his cuff. Jappe's appearance was distinctly
less pretentious. His legs were encased in tight trousers of a
lighter colour than his coat and waistcoat and fastened with
straps under his waxed black boots. A checked cap covered his
curly blond hair; in contrast to Do Escobar's jaunty headgear he
wore it pulled down over his forehead. He sat with his arms
clasped round one knee; you could see that he had on loose cuffs
over his shirt-sleeves, also that his finger-nails were either cut too
short or else that he indulged in the vice of biting them. Despite
the smoking and the assumed nonchalance, the whole circle was
serious and silent, restraint was in the air. The only one to make
head against it was Do Escobar, who talked without stopping to
his neighbours, in a loud, strained voice, rolling his r's and blow-
ing smoke out of his nose.

I was rather put off by his volubility; it inclined me, despite
the bitten finger-nails, to side with Jappe, who at most addressed
a word or two over his shoulder to his neighbour and for the rest
gazed in apparent composure at the smoke of his cigarette.

Then came Herr Knaak--I can still see him, in his blue striped
flannel morning suit, coming with winged tread from the direct-
ion of the Kurhaus and lifting his hat as he paused outside the
circle. That he wanted to come I do not believe; I am convinced
rather that he had made a virtue of necessity when he honoured
the fight with his presence. And the necessity, the compulsion, was
due to his equivocal position in the eyes of martially- and mascu-
linely-minded youth. Dark-skinned and comely, plump, particu-
larly in the region of the hips, he gave us dancing and deportment
lessons in the wintertime--private, family lessons as well as pub-
lic classes in the Casino; and in the summer he acted as bathing-
master and social manager at Travemunde. He rocked on his hips
and weaved in his walk, turning out his toes very much and setting
them first on the ground as he stepped. His eyes had a vain ex-
pression, his speech was pleasant but affected, and his way of
entering a room as though it were a stage, his extraordinary and
fastidious mannerisms charmed all the female sex, while the mascu-
line world, and especially critical youth, viewed him with sus-
picion. I have often pondered over the position of Francois Knaak
in life and always I have found it strange and fantastic. He was
of humble origins, his parents were poor, and his taste for the
social graces left him as it were hanging in the air--not a member
of society, yet paid by it as a guardian and instructor of its con-
ventions. Jappe and Do Escobar were his pupils too; not in pri-
vate lessons, like Johnny, Brattstrom, and me, but in the public
classes in the Casino. It was in these that Herr Knaak's character
and position were most sharply criticized. We of the private
classes were less austere. A fellow who taught you the proper de-
portment towards little girls, who was thrillingly reported to wear
a corset, who picked up the edge of his frock-coat with his finger-
tips, curtsied, cut capers, leaped suddenly into the air, where he
twirled his toes before he came down again--what sort of chap
was he, after all? These were the suspicions harboured by militant
youth on the score of Herr Knaak's character and mode of life,
and his exaggerated airs did nothing to allay them. Of course, he
was a grown-up man (he was even, comically enough, said to
have a wife and children in Hamburg); and his advantage in years
and the fact that he was never seen except officially and in the
dance-hall, prevented him from being convicted and unmasked.
Could he do gymnastics? Had he ever been able to? Had he
courage? Had he parts? In short, could one accept him as an
equal? He was never in a position to display the soldier char-
acteristics which might have balanced his salon arts and made him
a decent chap. So there were youths who made no bones of call-
ing him straight out a coward and a jackanapes. All this he knew
and therefore he was here today to manifest his interest in a good
stand-up fight and to put himself on terms with the young, though
.in his official position he should not have countenanced such
goings-on. I am convinced, however, that he was not comfortable
--he knew he was treading on thin ice. Some of the audience
looked coldly at him and he himself gazed uneasily round to see
if anybody was coming.

He politely excused his late arrival, saying that he had been
kept by a consultation with the management of the Kurhaus
about the next Sunday's ball. "Are the combatants present?" he
next inquired in official tones. "Then we can begin." Leaning on
his stick with his feet crossed he gnawed his soft brown mous-
tache with his under lip and made owl eyes to look like a con-
noisseur.

Jappe and Do Escobar stood up, threw away their cigarettes,
and began to prepare for the fray. Do Escobar did it in a hurry,
with impressive speed. He threw hat, coat, and waistcoat on the
ground, unfastened tie, collar, and braces and added them to the
pile. He even drew his rose-coloured shirt out of his trousers,
pulled his arms briskly out of the sleeves, and stood up in a red
and white striped undershirt which exposed the larger part of his
yellow arms, already covered with a thick black fell. "At your
service, sir," he said, with a rolling r, stepping into the middle of
the ring, expanding his chest and throwing back his shoulders.
He still wore the silver bangle.

Jappe was not ready yet. He turned his head, elevated his
brows, and looked at Do Escobar's feet a moment with narrowed
eyes--as much as to say: "Wait a bit--I'll get there too, even if
I don't swagger so much." He was broader in the shoulder; but
as he took his place beside Do Escobar he seemed nowhere near
so fit or athletic. His legs in the tight strapped boots inclined to
be knock-kneed and his fit-out was not impressive--grey braces
over a yellowed white shirt with loose buttoned sleeves. By con-
trast Do Escobar's striped tricot and the black hair on his arms
looked uncommonly grim and businesslike. Both were pale but it
showed more in Jappe as he was otherwise blond and red-cheeked,
with jolly, not-too-refined features including a rather turned-up
nose with a saddle of freckles. Do Escobar's nose was short,
straight, and drooping and there was a downy black growth on
his full upper lip.

They stood with hanging arms almost breast to breast, and
looked at one another darkly and haughtily in the region of the
stomach. They obviously did not know how to begin--and how
well I could understand that! A night and half a day had inter-
vened since the unpleasantness. They had wanted to fly at each
other's throats and had only been held in check by the rules of the
game. But they had had time to cool off. To do to order, as it
were, before an audience, by appointment, in cold blood, what
they had wanted to do yesterday when the fit was on them--it
was not the same thing at all. After all, they were not gladiators.
They were civilized young men. And in possession of one's senses
one has a certain reluctance to smash a sound human body with
one's fists. So I thought, and so, very likely, it was.

But something had to be done, that honour might be satisfied,
so each began to work the other up by hitting him contemptu-
ously with the finger-tips on the breast, as though that would be
enough to finish him off. And, indeed, Jappe's face began to be
distorted with anger--but just at that moment Do Escobar broke
off the skirmish.

"Pardon," said he, taking two steps backwards and turning
aside. He had to tighten the buckle at the back of his trousers,
for he was narrow-hipped and in the absence of braces they had
begun to slip. He took his position again almost at once, throwing
out his chest and saying something in guttural and rattling Spanish,
probably to the effect that he was again at Jappe's service. It was
clear that he was inordinately vain.

The skirmishing with shoulders and buffeting with palms began
again. Then unexpectedly there ensued a blind and raging hand-
to-hand scuffle with the fists, which lasted three seconds and broke
off without notice.

"Now they are warming up," said Johnny, sitting next to me
with a dry grass in his mouth. "I'll wager Jappe beats him. Look
how he keeps squinting over at us--Jappe keeps his mind on his
job. Will you bet he won't give him a good hiding?"

They had now recoiled and stood, fists on hips, their chests
heaving. Both had doubtless taken some punishment, for they both
looked angry, sticking out their lips furiously as much as to say:
"What do you mean by hurting me like that?" Jappe was red-
eyed and Do Escobar showed his white teeth as they fell to again.

They were hitting out now with all their strength on shoulders,
forearms, and breasts by turns and in quick succession. "That's
nothing," Johnny said, with his charming accent. "They won't
get anywhere that way, either of them. They must go at it under
the chin, with an uppercut to the jaw. That does it." But mean-
while Do Escobar had caught both Jappe's arms with his left
arm, pressed them as in a vise against his chest, and with his right
went on pummelling Jappe's fianks.

There was great excitement. "No clinching!" several voices
.cried out, and people jumped up. Herr Knaak hastened between
the combatants, in horror. "You are holding him fast, my dear
friend. That is against all the rules." He separated them and again
instructed Do Escobar in the regulations. Then he withdrew once
more outside the ring.

Jappe was obviously in a fury. He was quite white, rubbing his
side and looking at Do Escobar with a slow nod that boded no
good. When the next round began, his face looked so grim that
everybody expected him to deliver a decisive blow.

And actually as soon as contact had been renewed Jappe carried
out a coup--he practised a feint which he had probably planned
beforehand. A thrust with his left caused Do Escobar to protect
his head; but as he did so Jappe's right hit him so hard in the
stomach that he crumpled forwards and his face took on the
colour of yellow wax.

"That went home," said Johnny. "That's where it hurts.
Maybe now he will pull himself together and take things seri-
ously, so as to pay it back." But the blow to the stomach had been
too telling. Do Escobar's nerve was visibly shaken. It was clear
he could not even clench his fists properly, and his eyes took on
a glazed look. However, finding his muscles thus affected, his
vanity counselled him to play the agile southron, dancing round
the German bear and rendering him desperate by his own dex-
terity. He took tiny steps and made all sorts of useless passes,
moving round Jappe in little circles and trying to assume an arro-
gant smile--which in his reduced condition struck me as really
heroic. But it did not upset Jappe at all--he simply turned round
on his heel and got in many a good blow with his right while
with his left he warded off Do Escobar's feeble attack. But what
sealed Do Escobar's fate was that his trousers kept slipping. His
tricot shirt even came outside and rucked up, showing a little
strip of his bare yellow skin--some of the audience sniggered.
But why had he taken off his braces? He would have done better
to leave aesthetic considerations on one side. For now his trousers
bothered him, they had bothered him during the whole fight. He
kept wanting to pull them up and stuff in his shirt, for however
much he was punished he could bear it better than the thought
that he might be cutting a ridiculous figure. In the end he was
fighting with one hand while with the other he tried to put him-
self to rights; and thus Jappe was able to land such a blow on his
nose that to this day I do not understand why it was not broken.

But the blood poured out, and Do Escobar turned and went
apart from Jappe, trying with his right hand to stop the bleeding
and with his left making an eloquent gesture behind him as he
went. Jappe stood there with his knock-kneed legs spread out and
waited for Do Escobar to come back. But Do Escobar was finished
with the business. If I interpret him aright he was the more
civilized of the two and felt that it was high time to call a halt.
Jappe would beyond doubt have fought on with his nose bleed-
ing; but almost as certainly Do Escobar would equally have re-
fused to go on, and he did so with even more conviction in that
it was himself that bled. They had made the claret run out of his
nose--in his view things should never have been allowed to go
so far, devil take it! The blood ran between his fingers onto his
clothes, it soiled his light trousers and dripped on his yellow shoes.
It was beastly and nothing but beastly--and under such circum-
stances he declined to take part in more fighting. It would be
inhuman.

And his attitude was accepted by the majority of the spec-
tators. Herr Knaak came into the ring and declared that the fight
was over. Both sides had behaved with distinction. You could see
how relieved he felt that the affair had gone off so smoothly.

"But neither of them was brought to a fall," said Johnny,
surprised and disappointed. However, even Jappe was quite satis-
fied to consider the affair as settled. Drawing a long breath he
went to fetch his clothes. Everybody generally accepted Herr
Knaak's delicate fiction that the issue was a draw. Jappe was con-
gratulated, but only surreptitiously; on the other hand some peo-
ple lent Do Escobar their handkerchiefs, as his own was soon
drenched. And now the cry was for more. Let two other fellows
fight. That was the sense of the meeting; Jappe's and Do E!scobar's
business had taken so little time, hardly ten minutes; since they
were all there and it was still quite early something more ought
to come. Another pair must enter the arena--whoever wanted to
show that he deserved being called a lad of parts.

Nobody offered. But why at this summons did my heart begin
to beat like a little drum? What I had feared had come to pass:
the challenge had become general. Why did I feel as though I
had all the time been awaiting this very moment with shivers of
delicious anticipation and now when it had come why was I
plunged into a whirl of conflicting emotions? I looked at Johnny.
Perfectly calm and detached he sat beside me, turned his straw
about in his mouth and looked about the ring with a frankly
curious air, to see whether a couple of stout chaps would not be
found to let their noses be broken for his amusement. Why was
it that I had to feel personally challenged to conquer my nervous
timidity, to make an unnatural effort and draw all eyes upon my-
self by heroically stepping into the ring? In an access of self-
consciousness mingled with vanity I was about to raise my hand
and offer myself for combat when somewhere in the circle the
shout arose;

"Herr Knaak ought to fight!"

All eyes fastened themselves upon Herr Knaak. I have said that
he was walking upon slippery ice in exposing himself to the dan-
ger of such a test of his kidney, but he simply answered:

"No, thanks, very much--I had enough beatings when I was young."

He was safe. He had slipped like an eel out of the trap. How
astute of him, to bring in his superiority in years, to imply that
at our age he would not have avoided an honourable fight--and
that without boasting at all, even making his words carry irre-
sistible conviction by admitting with a disarming laugh at himself
that he too had taken beatings in his time. They let him alone.
They perceived that it was hard, if not impossible, to bring him
to book.

"Then somebody must wrestle!" was the next cry. This sug-
gestion was not taken up either; but in the midst of the discussion
over it (and I shall never forget the painful impression it made)
Do Escobar said in his hoarse Spanish voice from behind his
gory handkerchief: "Wrestling is for cowards. Only Germans
wrestle." It was an unheard-of piece of tactlessness, coming from
him, and got its reward at once in the capital retort made by Herr
Knaak; "Possibly," said he. "But it looks as though the Germans
know how to give pretty good beatings sometimes too!" He was
rewarded by shouts of approving laughter; his whole position was
improved, and Do Escobar definitely put down for the day.

But it was the general opinion that wrestling was a good deal of
a bore, and so various athletic feats were resorted to instead:
leap-frog, standing on one's head, handsprings and so on, to fill in
the time.

"Come on, let's go," said Johnny to Brattstrom and me, and
got up. That was Johnny Bishop for you. He had come to see
something real, with the possibility of a bloody issue. But the
thing had petered out and so he left.

He gave me my first impression of the peculiar superiority of
the English character, which later on I came so greatly to admire.


1911



FELIX KRULL



As I take my pen in hand, in ample leisure and complete retire-
ment--in sound health too, though tired, so very tired that I
shall hardly be able to proceed save in small stages and with fre-
quent pauses for rest--as I take up my pen, then, to commit my
confessions to the long-suffering paper, in the neat and pleasing
calligraphy of which I am master, I own to a fleeting misgiving
on the score of my own fitness for the task in hand. Am I, I ask
myself, equipped by previous training for this intellectual enter-
prise? However, since every word that I have to say concerns
solely my own personal and peculiar experiences, errors, and
passions and hence should be entirely within my compass; so the
only doubt which can arise is whether I command the necessary
tact and gifts of expression, and in my view these are less the fruit
of a regular course of study than of natural parts and a favourable
atmosphere in youth. For the latter I have not lacked; I come of
an upper-class if somewhat loose-living home, and my sister
Olympia and I had the benefit for some months of the ministra-
tions of a Fraulein from Vevey--though it is true that she had to
leave, in consequence of a rivalry between her and my mother, of
which my father was the object. My godfather Maggotson, with
whom I was in daily and intimate contact, was an artist of con-
siderable merit; everybody in the little town called him professor,
though that enviable title was his more by courtesy than by right.
My father, his size and obesity notwithstanding, had great per-
sonal charm, and he always laid stress upon lucid and well-chosen
language. There was French blood in the family from the grand-
mother's side and he himself had spent some of his young years in
France--he used to say that he knew Paris like his waistcoat
pocket. His French pronunciation was excellent and he was fond
of introducing into his conversation little expressions like "C'est
ca," "epatant," "parfaitement" "a mon gout" and so on. Up till
the end of his life he was a great favourite with the female sex.
I have said all this of course by way of preface and somewhat out
of the due order of my tale. As for myself I have a natural in-
stinct for good form, upon which throughout my career of fraud
I have always been able to rely, as my story will only too abun-
dantly show. I think therefore that I may commit it to writing
without further misgivings on this score. I am resolved to practise
the utmost candour, regardless whether I incur the reproach of
vanity or shamelessness--for what moral value or significance
can confessions like mine possess if they have not the value of
perfect sincerity?


The Rhine valley brought me forth--that region favoured of
heaven, mild and without ruggedness either in its climate or in
the nature of its soil, abounding in cities and villages peopled by
a blithe and laughter-loving folk--truly of all the regions of the
earth it must be one of the sweetest. Here on these slopes exposed
to the southern sun and sheltered from rude winds by the hills
of the Rhine valley lie those flourishing resorts the very sound of
whose names makes the heart of the toper to laugh: Rudesheim,
Johannisberg, Rauenthal--and here too that most estimable little
town where forty years ago I saw the light. It lies slightly west-
ward of the bend made by the river at Mainz. Containing some
four thousand souls, it is famous for its wine-cellars and is one of
the chief landing-places for the steamers which ply up and down
the Rhine. Thus the gay city of Mainz was very near, the Taunus
baths patronized by high society, Homburg, Langenschwalbach,
and Schlangenbad. This last we could reach by a half-hour's
journey on a narrow-gauge road; and how often in the pleasant
time of year did we make excursions thither, my parents, my sister
Olympia, and I. by train, by carriage, or by boat! Many other
excursions we made too, in all directions, for everywhere nature
smiled and the hand of man and his fertile brain had spread out
pleasures for our delectation. I can still see my father, clad in his
comfortable summer suit with a pattern of small checks, as he
used to sit with us in the arbour of some inn garden, rather far off
the table, for his paunch prevented him from drawing up close,
wrapt in enjoyment of a dish of prawns washed down with golden
wine. Often my godfather Maggotson was with us, looking at the
scene through his big round glasses and absorbing great and small
into his artist soul.

My poor father was the proprietor of the firm of EngElliert
Krull, makers of the now extinct brand of sparkling wine called
Lorley Extra Cuvee. The cellars of the firm lay on the Rhine not
far from the landing-stage, and often as a lad I used to play in
the cool vaults or follow the stone-paved lanes that led in all direc-
tions among the high-tiered shelves, meditating upon the army
of bottles that lay in slanting rows upon their sides. "There you
lie," I would apostrophize them--though of course at that time
I had no power to put my thoughts into apposite words ~ "there
you lie in this subterranean twilight and within you there is
clearing and mellowing that bubbling golden sap which shall make
so many pairs of eyes to sparkle and so many hearts to throb with
heightened zest. You are not much to look at now; but one day
you will mount up to the light and be arrayed in festal splendour
and there will be parties and weddings and little celebrations in
private rooms and your corks will pop up to the ceiling and kindle
mirth and levity and desire in the hearts of men."--Some such
ideas as these the boy strove to express; and so much at least was
true, that the firm of EngElliert Krull laid great stress upon the
exterior of their wares, those last touches which in the trade are
known as the coiffure. The compressed corks were fastened with
silver wire and gold cords sealed with purple wax, yes, actually
a stately round seal such as one sees on documents. The necks
were wrapped in a fullness of silver foil and on the swelling
body was a flaring label with gilt flourishes round the edge.
This label had been concocted by my godfather Maggotson. It
bore several coats of arms and stars, my father's monogram, and
the name of the brand: Lorley Extra Cuvee, all in gilt letters, and
a female figure arrayed in a few spangles and a necklace, sitting
on the top of a rock with her legs crossed, combing her flowing
hair. But unfortunately it appears that the quality of the wine did
not correspond to the splendour of its setting-out. "Krull," I have
heard my godfather say, "I have the greatest respect for you
personally; but really the police ought to condemn your wine.
A week ago I was foolish enough to drink half a bottle and my
constitution has not yet recovered from the shock. What sort of
stuff do you dose it with--petroleum, fusel oil? Anyhow, it's
poison. You ought to be afraid to sell it." My poor father's was a
soft nature, he could not bear hard words and was always thrown
into a distress. "It's all right for you to joke, Maggotson," he
would answer, gently caressing his belly with his finger-tips, as
was his habit, "but there is such a prejudice against the domestic
product, I have to keep down the price and make the public be-
lieve it is getting something for its money. Anyhow, the competi-
tion is so fierce that I shall not be able to go on for long." Thus
my poor father.

Our villa was a charming little property seated on a slope com-
manding a view of the Rhine. The front garden ran downhill and
rejoiced in many crockery ware adornments: dwarfs, toadstools,
and animals in lifelike poses; there was a looking-glass ball on a
stand, which grotesquely distorted the faces of the passers-by;
an aeolian harp, several grottoes, and a fountain whose spray made
an ingenious design in the air while silver-fish swam in the basin.
As for our domestic interior, it was after my father's heart, who
above all things liked comfort and good cheer. Cosy nooks invited
one to sit down; there was a real spinning-wheel in one corner,
and endless trifles and knick-knacks. Mussel-shells, glass boxes,
bottles of smelling-salts stood about on etageres and velvet-topped
tables. A multiplicity of down cushions in silk-embroidered cov-
ers were distributed on sofas and day-beds, for my father loved
to lie soft. The curtain-rods were halberds, and the portieres very
jolly, made of coloured beads and rushes, which look quite like
a solid door, but you can pass through without lifting your hand,
when they fall behind you with a whispering sound. Above the
wind-screen was an ingenious device which played the first bar
of "Wine, Women, and Song" in a pleasing little tinkle when-
ever the door opened or shut.

Such was the home upon which, on a mild rainy Sunday in
May, I first opened my eyes. From now on I mean to follow the
order of events and not run ahead of my story. If report tells true,
the birth was slow and difficult and did not come to pass without
help from the family doctor, whose name was Mecum. It appears
that I--if I may use the first person to refer to that far-away and
foreign little being--was extremely inactive and made no at-
tempt to second my mother's efforts, showing no zeal to enter
a world which I was yet to love with such an ardent love. How-
ever, I was a healthy and well-formed infant and throve at the
breast of my excellent wet-nurse in a way to encourage the live-
liest hopes for mv future. Yet the most mature reflection inclines
me to associate this reluctance to exchange the darkness of the
womb for the light of day with the extraordinary gift and passion
for sleep which has been mine all my life. They tell me that I was
a quiet child, that I did not cry and break the peace, but was given
to sleep and napping, to a degree most comfortable to my nurses.
And however great my subsequent love of the world, which
caused me to mingle in it in all sorts of guises and to attach it to
myself by all possible means, yet I feel that in night and slumber
always my true home was to be found. Even without physical
fatigue I have always fallen asleep with the greatest ease and en-
joyment, lost myself in far and dreamless forgetfulness, and waked
after ten or twelve or even fourteen hours' oblivion more re-
freshed and gratified than even by all the satisfactions and successes
of my waking hours. Is there a contradiction here between this
love of sleep and my great urge towards life and love of which it
will be in place to speak hereafter? I have said that I have concen-
trated much thought upon this matter and several times I have
had the clearest perception that there is no contradiction but
rather a hidden connection and correspondence. And it is the
fact that now, when I have aged and grown weary so that I feel
none of my old irresistible compulsion towards the society of
men, but live in complete retirement, only now is my power of
sleep impaired, so that I am in a sense a stranger to it, my slumbers
being short and light and fleeting; whereas even in the prison--
where there was much opportunity--I slept better than in the
soft beds of the most luxurious hotels. But I am fallen into my old
error of getting ahead of my story.

Often enough I heard from my parents' lips that I was a Sun-
day child; and though I was brought up to despise all forms of
superstition I have always thought there was some significance
in the fact, taken in connection with my Christian name of Felix
(for so I was christened, after my godfather Maggotson) and my
physical fineness and sense of well-being. Yes, I have always be-
lieved that I was felix, a favoured child of the gods; and I may
say that, on the whole, events do not show me to have been mis-
taken in this lively conviction. Indeed, it is peculiarly character-
istic of my career that whatever misfortune and suffering it may
have held always seemed like a divergence from the natural order,
a cloud, as it were, through which my native sunniness continued
to shine.--After which digression into the abstract I will once
more return to depict in its broad outlines the scene of my early
youth.

A child full of fantasy, I afforded the family much amusement
by my imaginative flights. I have often been told, and seem still
to remember, how when I was still in dresses it pleased me to pre-
tend that I was the Kaiser. In this game I would persist for hours
at a time. Sitting in my little go-cart, which my nurse would push
about the garden or the lower floors of the house, I would draw
down my mouth as far as I could, so that my upper lip was
lengthened out of all proportion, and blink my eyes slowly until
what with the strain and the strength of my feelings they would
presently grow red and fill with tears. Quite overcome with the
burden of my age and dignity I would sit silent in my go-cart,
my nurse having been instructed to tell all the passers-by how
things stood, for I should have taken it hard had they failed to fall
in with my whim. "This is the Kaiser I am pushing about here,"
she would say, carrying her hand to her temple in an awkward
salute; and everybody would pay me homage. My godfather
Maggotson, who loved his joke, would play up to me in every
way. "Look, there he goes, the hoary old hero!" he would say,
with an exaggeratedly deep obeisance. Then he would pretend
to be the populace and stand beside my path tossing his hat in
the air, his stick, even his glasses, shouting: "Hurrah, hurrah!"
and laughing fit to kill himself when out of the excess of my
emotions the tears would roll down my long-drawn face.

I used to play the same sort of game when I was much older
and could no longer expect my elders to fall in with them. I did
not miss their co-operation, glorying as I did in my free and in-
communicable flights of imagination. I awoke one morning, for
instance, filled with the idea that I was a prince, a prince eighteen
years old, named Karl; and prince I remained all day long, for the
inestimable advantage of this kind of game was that it never
needed to be interrupted, not even during the almost insupport-
able hours which I spent at school. I moved about clothed in a
sort of amiable aloofness, holding lively imaginary converse with
my governor or adjutant; and the secret of my own superiority
which I hugged to my breast filled me with a perfectly inde-
scribable pride and joy. What a glorious gift is the fancy, what
subtle satisfactions it affords! The boys I knew, being ignorant
of this priceless advantage which I possessed, seemed to me dull
and limited louts indeed, unable to enter the kingdom where I was
at home at no cost to myself and simply by an act of the will.
They were all very simple fellows, with coarse hair and red
hands. They would have had a hard time indeed convincing them-
selves that they were princes--and very foolish they would have
looked. Whereas my hair was as silken-soft as one seldom sees it
in boys, and light in colour; together with my blue-grey eyes it
formed a fascinating contrast to the golden brownness of my skin,
so that I hovered on the border-line between blond and brunet
and might have been considered either. I had good hands and early
began to care for them: well-shaped without being too narrow,
never clammy, but dry and just warm enough to be pleasant.
The finger-nails too were the kind that it is a pleasure to look at.
And my voice, even before it changed, had an ingratiating note
and could fall so flatteringly upon the ear that I liked above all
things to listen to it myself when I was alone and could blissfully
engage in long, plausible, but quite meaningless colloquies with my
aide-de-camp, accompanying them with extravagant gestures and
attitudes. Such, then, were the physical advantages which I pos-
sessed; but these things are mostly very intangible, well-nigh im-
possible to put into words even for one equipped with a high
degree of literary skill, and only recognizable in their effects.
However that may be, I could not for long have disguised from
myself that I was made of finer stuff than my schoolmates, and
take no shame to myself for frankly admitting that such was the
case. It is nothing to me to be accused of conceit; I should need to
be either a fool or a hypocrite to write myself down an average
person when I am but honouring the truth in repeating that I am
made of finer stuff.

I grew up very much by myself, for my sister Olympia was
several years older than I; and indulged as pastime in various
mental quiddities, of which I will cite one or two. I had taken
it into my head to study that mysterious force the human will
and to practise in myself how far it was capable of extension into
regions considered beyond human powers. It is a well-known
fact that the muscles controlling the pupils of our eyes react in-
voluntarily in accordance with the strength of the light upon
them. I decided to test whether this reaction could be brought
under control of the will. I would stand before my mirror and
concentrate all my powers upon the effort to expand or contract
my pupils. And I protest that these obstinate efforts were actually
crowned with success. At first, while I stood bathed in perspira-
tion, my colour coming and going, there would be an irregular
flicker and fluctuation. But by practice I actually succeeded in
narrowing the pupils to the merest points and then expanding
them to great round pools of blackness. The fearful joy I felt at
this result was actually accompanied by a physical shuddering
before the mysteries of our human nature.

It was at this time, too, I often amused myself by a sort of in-
trospection which even today has not lost all charm for me. I
would inquire of myself: which is better, to see the world small
or to see it large? The significance of the question was this: great
men, I thought, field-marshals, statesmen, conquerors, and leading
spirits generally that rise above the mass of mankind must be so
constituted as to see the world small, like a chess-board, else they
would never command the necessary ruthlessness to regulate the
common weal and woe according to their own will. Yet it was
quite possible, on the other hand, that such a diminishing point
of view, as it were, might lead to one doing nothing at all. For if
you saw the world and human beings in it as small and insignifi-
cant and were early persuaded that nothing was worth while.
you could easily sink into indifference and indolence and con-
temptuously prefer your own peace of mind to any influence you
might exert upon the spirits of men. And added to that your own
supine detachment from mankind would certainly give offence
and cut you off still further from any success you might have had
in despite of yourself. Then is it better, I would next inquire, to
think of the world and human nature as great, glorious, and im-
portant, worthy the expenditure of every effort to the end of
achieving some meed of esteem and good report? Yet again, how
easily can such a point of view lead to self-detraction and loss of
confidence, so that the fickle world passes you by with a smile
as a simpleton, in favour of more self-confident lovers! Though
on the other hand such genuine credulity and artlessness has its
good side too, since men cannot but be flattered by the way you
look up to them; and if you devote yourself to making this im-
pression, it will give weight and seriousness to your life, lend it
meaning in your own eyes, and lead to your advancement. In
this wise would I speculate and weigh the pros and cons; but al-
ways it has lain in my nature to take up the second position,
seeing the world and mankind as great and glorious phenomena,
capable of affording such priceless satisfactions that no effort on
my part could seem disproportionate to the rewards I might reap.

Ideas of this kind were certainly calculated to isolate me from
my schoolmates and companions, who of course spent their time
in more commonplace and traditional occupations. But it is also a
fact that these boys, most of whose fathers were either civil
servants or the owners of vineyards, were instructed to avoid my
society. I early discovered this, for on inviting one of them to
our home he made no bones of telling me that he had been for-
bidden to associate with me because my family were not respect-
able. The experience not only wounded pride but made me
covet an intercourse which otherwise I could not have craved.
But there is no doubt that the current opinion about our house-
hold and the goings-on there was in large measure justified.

I have referred above to the disturbance in our family circle
due to the presence of our Fraulein from Vevey. My poor father
was infatuated with this girl and ran after her until he succeeded
in gaining his ends, or so it seemed, for dissensions arose between
him and my mother and he departed for Mainz, where he re-
mained for several weeks restoring his equilibrium with the joys
of a bachelor life. My mother took entirely the wrong course,
I am convinced, in treating my poor father with such a lack of
consideration. She was a woman of insignificant mental parts; but
what was more to the point, her human weaknesses were no less
apparent than his own. My sister Olympia, a fat and fleshly-mind-
ed creature who later went on the stage and had some small
success there, took after her in this respect--the difference be-
tween them and my poor father being that theirs was a heavy
and sensual greed or pleasure, whereas his follies were never with-
out a certain ease and grace. Mother and daughter lived in unusual
intimacy--I recall once seeing my mother measure Olympia's
thigh with a tape-measure, which gave me to think for several
hours. Another time, when I was old enough to have some in-
tuitive understanding of such matters though no words to express
them in, I watched unseen and saw my mother and sister flirting
with a young painter who was doing some work about the house.
He was a dark-eyed lad in a white smock and they painted upon
him a green moustache with his own paint. In the end they roused
him to such a pitch that they fled giggling up the attic stair and
he pursued them thither. My parents bored each other to tears
and got relief by filling the house with guests from Mainz and
Wiesbaden so that our house was the scene of a continual round
of gaieties. It was a promiscuous crew who frequented these
gatherings: actors and actresses, young business men, the sickly
young infantry lieutenant who later proposed to my sister; a
Jewish banker with a wife whose charms gushed appallingly out
of her jet-spangled frock; a journalist in a velvet waistcoat with
a lock of hair falling over his brow, who every time brought along
a new wife. They would arrive for seven o'clock dinner, and
the feasting, the dancing and piano-playing, the skylarking and
shrieks of laughter would go on all night. Particularly at carnival-
time and the vintage season the waves of pleasure rose very high.
My father, who was very clever in such things, would set off the
most splendid fireworks in the garden; all the company would be
masked and unearthly light would play upon the crockery dwarfs.
All restraint was abandoned. At that time it was my sorry lot to
attend the high school of our little town; and often I would go
down to the dining-room at seven o'clock or half past with face
new-washed, to eat my breakfast and find the guests still at their
after-dinner coffee, rumpled, sallow, and hollow-eyed, blinking
at the daylight; they would receive me into their midst with
shoutings.

When still quite young I was allowed with my sister Olympia
to take part in the festivities. Even when alone we always set a
good table, and my father drank champagne mixed with soda-
water. But at these parties there were endless courses prepared
by a chef from Wiesbaden with the assistance of our own cook:
the most tempting succession of sweets, savouries, and ices. Lorley
Extra Cuvee flowed in streams, but many good wines were served
as well. I was particularly fond of the bouquet of Bemcasteler
Doctor. Later in life I made acquaintance with many of the noblest
wines and could order Grand Vin Chateau Margaux or Grand
Cru Mouton-Rothschild, two very fine wines, as to the manner
born.

I love to call up the picture of my father as he presided at
the head of the table, with his white imperial, and his belly con-
fined in a white silk waistcoat. His voice was weak and sometimes
he would be seized by self-consciousness and look down at his
plate. Yet his enjoyment was to be read in his eyes and in his
shining red face. "C'est epatant" he would say. "Parfaitement"
--and with his fingers, which curved backwards at the tips, he
would give delicate touches to the table-service. My mother and
sister meanwhile were abandoned to a gross and soulless gluttony,
between courses flirting with their table-mates behind their fans.

After dinner, when the gas-chandeliers began to be wreathed
in smoke, came dancing and forfeit-playing. When the evening
was advanced I used to be sent to bed; but as sleep, in that din, was
out of the question, I would wrap myself in my red woollen cover-
let and in this becoming disguise return to the feast, where I was
received with cries of joy from all the females. Refreshments such
as wine jellies, lemonade, punch, herring salad, were served in
relays until the morning coffee. The dance was free and untram-
melled, the games of forfeits were pretext for much kissing and
caressing; the ladies bent over the backs of their chairs to give
the gentlemen stimulating glimpses into the bosoms of their frocks;
and the climax of the evening arrived when some humorist turned
out the gas and there was a general scramble in the dark.

These parties were undoubtedly the cause of the unfavourable
criticism which spread about the town; but according to the
reports which came to my ears it was their economic aspect that
was the target for gossip. For it was only too well known that my
father's business was at a desperate pass and that the dining and
wining and fireworks must give it the coup de grace. I was sensi-
tive enough to feel the hostile atmosphere when I was still very
young; it united, as I have said, with certain peculiarities of my
own character to give me on the whole a great deal of pain. The
more cordially, then, did I appreciate an incident which took place
at about this time; I set it down here with peculiar pleasure.

I was eight years old when my family and I spent some weeks
one summer at the famous and neighbouring resort of Langen-
schwalbach. My father took mud baths for his gout, and my
mother and sister made themselves talked about for the size and
shape of their hats. Of the society we frequented there is little
good to be said. The residential class, as usual, avoided us. The
better-class guests kept themselves to themselves as they usually
do; and such society as we could get had not much to recommend
it. Yet I liked Langenschwalbach and later on often made such
resorts the scene of my operations. The tranquil, well-regulated
existence and the sight of aristocratic and well-groomed people
in the gardens and on the tennis courts satisfied an inward craving
of my soul. But the strongest attraction of all was the daily con-
cert given by a well-trained orchestra to the guests of the cure.
Though I have never attained to skill in any branch of the art
I was a fanatical lover of music; even as a child I could not tear
myself away from the pretty little pavilion where a becomingly
uniformed band played selections and potpourris under the direc-
tion of their gypsy leader. Hours on end I would crouch on the
steps of that little temple of art, enchanted to my very marrow
by the ordered succession of sweet sounds and watching with rap-
ture every motion of the musicians as they attacked their instru-
ments. In particular I was thrilled by the gestures of the violinists
and when I went home I delighted my parents with an imitation
performed on two sticks, one long and one short. The swinging
movement of the left arm in producing a soulful tone, the soft
gliding motion from one position to the next, the dexterity of
the fingering in virtuoso passages and cadenzas, the fine and supple
bowing of the right wrist, the cheek cuddled in such utter aban-
donment to the violin--all this I succeeded in reproducing so
faithfully that the family, especially my father, burst into enthu-
siastic applause. And being in good spirits due to the beneficial
effect of the baths, he conceived the following little joke, with
the connivance of the long-haired and almost speechless little
bandmaster. They bought a small cheap violin and plentifully
smeared the bow with vaseline. As a rule not much attention was
paid to my appearance; but now I was arrayed in a pretty sailor
suit with gilt buttons and lanyard all complete, also silk stockings
and shiny patent-leather shoes. And one Sunday I took my place
at the side of the little conductor during the afternoon promenade
concert and assisted in the performance of a Hungarian dance,
doing with my violin and my vaselined bow what I had done with
my two sticks. My success was tremendous. The public, gentle and
simple, streamed up from all sides and assembled before the pa-
vilion to look at the infant prodigy. My pale face, my utter absorp-
tion in my task, the lock of hair falling over my brow, my childish
hands and wrists in the full, tapering sleeves of the pretty blue
sailor suit--in short, my whole touching and astonishing little
figure captured all hearts. When I finished with a full sweep of
the bow across all the fiddle-strings, the garden resounded with
applause and delighted cries from male and female throats. The
bandmaster stowed my bow and fiddle safely away and I was set
down on the ground, where I was overwhelmed with praises and
caresses. The most aristocratic ladies and gentlemen stroked my
hair, patted my cheeks and hands, called me an angel child and an
amazing little devil. An old Russian princess in violet silk and
white side-curls took my head between her beringed hands and
kissed my brow, all beaded as it was with perspiration. Then in
a pitch of enthusiasm she snatched a lyre-shaped diamond brooch
from her throat and with a perfect torrent of ecstatic French
pinned it on the front of my blouse. My familv approached and
my father made excuses for the defects of my playing on the score
of my tender years. I was escorted to the confectioner's, where
at three different tables I was regaled with chocolate and cream
cakes. The scions of the noble family of Siebenklingen, whom I
had admired from afar while they regarded me with cold disdain,
came up and asked me to play croquet, and while our parents drank
coffee together I went off with the children in the seventh heaven
of delight, my diamond brooch upon my blouse. That was one of
the happiest days of mv life, perhaps quite the happiest. The cry
was set up that I should play again; actually the management of
the Casino approached my father and asked for an encore; but he
refused, saying that he had only permitted me to play by way
of exception and that repeated public appearances were not con-
sistent with my social position. And besides our stay in Bad
Langenschwalbach was drawing to a close.

I wish now to speak of my godfather Maggotson, by no means
an ordinary man. He was short and thickset in build, with thin
and prematurely grey hair, which he wore parted over one -ear
and brushed across his crown. He was clean-shaven, with a
hooked nose and thin, compressed lips, and wore large round
glasses with celluloid rims. His face was further remarkable for
the fact that it was bald above the eyes, having no brows to speak
of; also for the somewhat acidulous disposition it betrayed--to
which, indeed, he was wont to give expression in words, as for
instance in his cynical explanation of the name he bore. "Nature,"
he would say, "is full of corruption and blow-flies, and I am her
offspring. Therefore am I called Maggotson. But as for why I
am called Felix, that God alone knows." He came from Cologne,
where he had once moved in the best social circles and often acted
as carnival steward. But for reasons which remained obscure he
had been obliged to leave Cologne; he had gone into retirement in
our little town, where he very soon--a considerable time before
my birth--became an intimate of our household. At all our eve-
ning companies he was a regular and indispensable guest and in
high favour with young and old. He would purse his lips and fix
the ladies through his round glasses, with appraising eyes, until
they would screech for mercy, putting their hands before their
faces and begging him to turn away his gaze. Apparently they
feared the penetrating artist eye; but he, it would seem, did not
share in their awe of his calling, and not infrequently made ironic
allusions to the nature of artists. "Phidias," he would say, "also
called Pheidias, was a man of more than average gifts--as might
perhaps be gathered from the fact that he was convicted for theft
and put in jail at Athens for having appropriated to his own use
the gold and ivory entrusted to him for his statue of Athena. But
Pericles, who had discovered him, had him set free, thereby prov-
ing himself to be a connoisseur not only of art but of artists as
well; and Phidias--or Pheidias--went to Olympia, where he was
commissioned to make the great chryselephantine statue of the
Olympian Zeus. But what did he do? He stole the gold and ivory
again--and there in the prison at Olympia he died. An extraordi-
nary combination, my friends. But that is the way people are.
They want people to be talented--which is already something
out of the ordinary. But when it comes to the other qualities
which go with the talents--and perhaps are essential to them--
oh, no, they don't care for these at all, they refuse to have any
understanding of them." Thus my godfather. I have set down his
remarks verbatim because he repeated them so often that I know
them by heart.

I have said that we lived on terms of mutual regard; yes, I be-
lieve that I enjoyed his especial favour, and often as I grew older
it was my especial delight to serve as his model, dressing up in all
sorts of costumes, of which he possessed a large and varied collec-
tion. His studio was a sort of lumber-room with a large window
under the roof of a little house standing by itself down on the
Rhine. He rented this house and lived in it with an old serving-
woman, and there I would pose for him hours at a time, perched
on a rude model-throne while he brushed and scraped and painted
away. Several times I sat for him in the nude for a large picture
with a Greek mythological subject, destined to adorn the dining-
room of a wine-dealer in Mainz. When I did this my godfather
was not chary of his praise; and indeed I was a little like a young
god, slender, graceful, yet powerful in build, with a golden skin
and proportions that lacked little of perfection. If there was a
fault it lay in that my legs were a little too short; but my god-
father consoled me for this defect by saying that Goethe, that
prince of the intellect, had been short-legged too and certainly had
never been hampered thereby. The hours devoted to these sittings
form an especial chapter in my memory. Yet I enjoyed even more,
I think, the "dressing up" itself; and that took place not only in
the studio but at our house as well. Often when my godfather
was to sup with us he would send up a large bundle of costumes,
wigs, and accessories and try them all on me after the meal,
sketching any particularly good effect on the lid of a pasteboard
box. "He has a head for costumes," he would say, meaning that
everything became me, and that in each disguise which I assumed
I looked better and more natural than in the last. I might appear
as a Roman flute-player in a short smock, a wreath of roses
twined in my black locks; as an English page in snug-fitting satin
with lace collar and plumed hat; as a Spanish bullfighter in
spangled jacket and large round sombrero; as a youthful abbe of
the Watteau period, with cap and bands, mantle and buckled
shoes; as an Austrian officer in white military tunic with sash and
dagger; or as a German mountaineer in leather shorts and hob-
nailed boots, with the bock's-beard stuck in his green felt hat--
whatever the costume, the mirror assured me that I was born to
wear it, and my audience declared that I looked to the life exactly
the person whom I aimed to represent. My godfather even as-
serted that with the aid of costume and wig I seemed able to put
on not only whatever social rank or national characteristics I
chose, but that I could actually adapt myself to any given period
or century. For each age, my godfather would say, imparts to its
children its own physiognomical stamp; whereas I, in the costume
of a Florentine dandy of the end of the Middle Ages, could look
as though I had stepped from a contemporary portrait, and yet
be no less convincing in the full-bottomed wig which was the
fashionable ideal of a later century.--Ah, those were glorious
hours! But when they were over and I resumed my dull and
ordinary dress, how stale, flat, and unprofitable seemed all the
world by contrast, in what deep dejection did I spend the rest
of the evening!

Of my godfather I shall say no more in this place. Later on,
at the end of my strenuous career, this extraordinary man inter-
vened decisively in my destiny and saved me from despair.

I search my mind for further impressions of my youth, and
am reminded at once of the day when I first attended the theatre,
at Wiesbaden, with my parents. I should interpolate here that in
what I have so far set down I have not too anxiously adhered
to the chronological order but have treated my younger days as
a whole and moved freely within them from episode to episode.
When I posed to my godfather as a Greek god I was sixteen or
seventeen years old and thus no longer a child, though very back-
wards at school. But my first visit to the theatre fell in my four-
teenth year--though even so my physical and mental maturity,
as will presently be seen, was well advanced and my sensitive-
ness to certain classes of impressions much keener than is or-
dinarily the case. What I saw that evening made the strongest
impression on me and gave me food for perennial reflection.

We had first visited a Viennese cafe, where I drank sweet punch
and my father imbibed absinthe through a straw--and this al-
ready was calculated to stir me to my depths. But how put into
words the fever which possessed me when we drove in a
droshky to the theatre and entered the lighted auditorium with
its tiers of boxes? The women fanning their bosoms in the bal-
cony, the men leaning over their chairs to chat; the hum and
buzz of conversation in the stalls where we presently took our
seats; the odours which streamed from hair and clothing to mingle
with that of the illuminating gas; the confusion of sounds as the
orchestra tuned up; the voluptuous frescoes displaying whole
cascades of rosy foreshortenings--certainly all this could not
but spur my youthful senses and prepare my mind for all the
extraordinary scenes to follow. I had never before save in church
seen so many people gathered together; and this playhouse, with
its impressively complex seating-arrangements and its elevated
stage where the elect, in brilliant costumes and to musical accom-
paniment, performed their dialogues and dances and developed
the activities required by the plot--certainly all that was in my
eyes a church where pleasure was the god; where men in need
of edification gathered in the darkness to gaze upwards open-
mouthed at a sphere of bright perfection where each saw em-
bodied the desire of his heart.

The piece was an unpretentious offering to the comic muse--
I have even forgotten its name. Its scene was laid in Paris, which
delighted my poor father's heart, and it centred round the figure
of an idle young attache, the traditional fascinator and lady-
killer, played by the highly popular leading man, whose name
was Muller-Rose. I heard his real name from my father, who
rejoiced in his personal acquaintance, and the picture of this man
will remain forever in my memory. He is probably old and worn-
out by now, like me, but at that time his power to dazzle all the
world, myself included, made upon me so strong an impression
that it belongs to the decisive experiences of my life. I say to
dazzle, and it will be seen hereafter how much meaning I would
convey by that word. But first I will essay to set down from my
still very lively recollections the impression which Muller-Rose
made upon me. On his first entrance he was dressed all in black--
yet he radiated brilliance. He was supposed to come from some
resort of the gay world and to be slightly intoxicated--a state
which he knew how to counterfeit to perfection, yet without
any suggestion of grossness. He wore a black cloak with a satin
lining, patent-leather shoes, evening dress, white kid gloves, and
a top hat which sat far back on his glistening locks, arranged in
the then fashionable military parting, which ran all the way to
the back of the neck. And every article of all this was so irre-
proachable, so well-pressed, and sat with a flawless perfection
such as in real life could not endure above a quarter of an hour
and made him seem like a being from another world. In particular
the top hat, light-heartedly askew on his head, was the very pat-
tern and mirror of what a top hat should be, without one grain
of dust and with the most beautiful reflections, exactly as though
they had been painted on. And this superb figure had a face to
match, of a rosy fineness like wax, with almond-shaped, black-
rimmed eyes, a small, short, straight nose and an extremely clear-
cut, coral-red mouth and a little black moustache, even as though
it were drawn with a paint-brush, following the outline of his
arched upper lip. Reeling with a supple poise such as drunken
men in everyday life do not possess, he gave his hat and stick to
an attendant, slipped out of his cloak, and stood there in full
evening fig, with diamond studs in his pleated shirt-front. As he
drew off his gloves, laughing and rattling on in a silvery voice,
you could see that his hands were white as milk outside and
adorned with diamond rings, but inside pink like his face. He
stood before the footlights at one side of the stage and trilled the
first verse of a song all about what a wonderful life it was to be
an attache and a favourite with the ladies. Then he spread out
his arms and snapped his fingers and waltzed apparently delirious
with bliss over to the other side of the stage, where he sang the
second verse and made his exit. Being recalled by loud applause;
he sang the third and last verse in front of the prompter's box.
And then with easy grace he began unfolding his role as called
for by the plot. He was supposed to be very rich, which in itself
lent his figure an almost magical charm. He appeared in a suc-
cession of "changes": immaculate white sports clothes with a
red belt; a full-dress, slightly outre uniform--yes, in one delicate
and hair-raising situation, pale-blue silk underdrawers. The com-
plications of the plot were audacious, adventurous, and risque by
turns. One saw him at the feet of a countess, at a champagne
supper with two predatory daughters of joy, and standing with
raised pistol confronting his fatuous rival in a duel. And not one
of these elegant but strenuous occupations had power to derange
one fold of his shirt-front, extinguish any of the brilliance of his
top hat, or deepen the delicate tint of his complexion. He moved
so easily within the frame of the musical and dramatic conven-
tions that they seemed, so far from restricting him, to release him
from the limitations of everyday life. He seemed pervaded to the
finger-tips by a magic which we know how to express only by
the vague and inadequate word "talent"--the exercise of which
obviously gave him as much pleasure as it did us. He would fit
his fingers round the silver crook of his cane, would let his hands
glide into his trouser pockets, and these actions, even his getting
out of a chair, his very exits and entrances, had a quality of con-
scious gratification which filled the heart of the beholder with
joy. Yes, that was it: Muller-Rose heightened our joy of life--
if the phrase is adequate to express that feeling, mingled of pain
and pleasure, envy, yearning, hope, and irresistible love which the
sight of the consummately charming can kindle in the human soul.

The public in the stalls was composed of middle-class citizens
and their wives, clerks, one-year service men, and little girls in
blouses; and despite the rapture of my own sensations I was able
and eager to look about me and interpret the feelings of the audi-
ence. On all these faces sat a look of almost silly bliss. They were
rapt in self-forgetful absorption, a smile played about their lips,
sweeter and more lively in the little shop-girls, more brooding and
dreamy in the grown-up women, while on the faces of the men it
expressed the benevolent admiration which simple fathers feel in
the presence of sons who have passed beyond their own sphere
and realized the dreams of their youth. As for the clerks and the
young soldiers, everything stood wide open in their upturned
faces--eyes, mouths, nostrils, everything. And their smiles seemed
to be saying: "Suppose it was us, standing up there in our under-
drawers--how should we be making out? And look how he knows
how to behave with those shameless hussies, just as though he
were no better than they!"--When Muller-Rose left the stage
a power seemed to have gone out of the audience, all their shoul-
ders sagged. When he stormed triumphantly from the back-stage
to the footlights, holding a note with arms outspread, every bosom
seemed to heave in his direction and the ladies' satin bodices
creaked at the seams. Yes, as we sat there in the darkness we
were like a swarm of night-flying insects rushing blind, dumb, and
drunken into the flame.

My father was royally entertained. He had followed the French
custom and carried hat and stick into the theatre with him. When
the curtain fell he put on the one and with the other banged on
the floor loud and long. "C'est epatant," said he several times,
quite weak with enthusiasm. At last it was all over and we were
outside in the lobby, among a crowd of clerks who were quite up-
lifted and trying to walk, talk, and hold their canes like the hero
of the evening. My father said to me: "Come along, let's go and
shake hands with him. Good Lord, weren't we on pretty good
terms once, Muller and I? He will be delighted to see me again."
So we instructed our ladies to wait for us in the vestibule and went
off to pay our respects. We passed through the director's box,
next the stage and already dark, then through a little door and
behind the scenes. Stage-hands were clearing away in the eerie
darkness. A little creature in red livery, who had been a lift-boy
in the play, stood leaning against the wall sunk in reverie. My poor
father pinched her playfully where her figure was amplest and
asked her the way to the dressing-rooms, which she pointed out
with rather an ill grace. We went through a whitewashed corridor,
where uncovered gas-jets flared in the confined air. From behind
several doors issued loud laughter or angry voices, and my father
gestured with his thumb to call my attention to them as we went
on. At the end of the narrow passage he knocked on the last door,
laying his ear to his knuckle. From within came a gruff shout:
"Who's there?" or "What the devil do you want?" or words to
that effect. "May I come in?" asked my father in reply, where-
upon the voice instructed him to do something else with which
I would not sully the pages of my narrative. My father smiled his
deprecating little smile and called through the door: "Muller, it's
Krull, EngElliert Krull. I suppose I may shake you by the hand,
after all these years?" There was a laugh from inside and the
voice said: "Oh, so it's you, old horse! Always on the hunt for
some sport, eh?" And as we opened the door it went on: "I sup-
pose you won't take any harm from my nakedness!" We went in.
I shall never forget the disgusting sight that offered itself to my
boyish eyes.

Muller-Rose was seated at a grubby dressing-table in front of a
dusty and speckled mirror with side wings. He had nothing on but
a pair of grey tricot drawers, and a man in shirt-sleeves was mas-
saging his back, the sweat running down his own face. The actor's
visage glistened with salve and he was busy wiping it off with a
towel already stiff with rouge and grease paint. Half of his coun-
tenance still had the rosy coating which had made him radiant on
the stage but now looked merely pink and silly beside the cheesy
pallor of the man's natural complexion. He had taken off the
chestnut-brown wig and I saw that he was red-haired. One of his
eyes still had deep black shadows beneath it and metallic dust
clung to the lashes; the other was inflamed and watery and leered
up at us with an indescribably gamin expression. All this I might
have borne. But not the pimples with which Muller-Rose's back,
chest, shoulders, and upper arms were thickly strewn. They were
horrible pimples, red-rimmed, suppurating, some of them even
bleeding; even today I cannot repress a shudder at the thought of
them. I find that our capacity for disgust is in direct proportion
to our capacity for enjoyment, to our eagerness for the pleasures
which this world can give. A cool and indifferent nature could
never be so shaken by disgust as I was at that moment. Worst of
all was the air of the room, compounded of sweat and exhalations
from the pots and jars and sticks of grease paint which strewed
the table. At first I thought I could not stand it above a minute
without being sick.

However, I stood and looked--but I can add nothing to this
description of Muller-Rose's dressing-room. Perhaps I should re-
proach myself for having so little that is objective to report of my
first visit to a theatre--if I were not writing primarily for my
own amusement and only secondarily for any public I may have. I
am not bent on sustaining any dramatic suspense, leaving such ef-
fects to the writers of imaginative tales, who must contrive to give
their inventions the beautiful and symmetrical proportions of a
work of art--whereas my material is derived from my own expe-
riences alone and I feel I may dispose it as seems to me good. Thus
I shall linger upon such events as were of especial value or signifi-
cance to me, neglecting no necessary detail to bring them out;
passing over more lightly those of less personal moment. I have
well-nigh forgotten what passed between my father and M11ller-
Rose on that occasion--probably because other matters took my
attention. For it is undoubtedly true that we receive stronger im-
pressions through the senses than through the mind. I recall that
the singer--though surely the applause which had greeted him
that evening must have left him in no great doubt as to his tri-
umph--kept asking my father whether it had "gone over" or
how well it had "gone over." I perfectly understood how he felt.
I have even a vague memory of some rather ordinary turns of
phrase which he wove into the conversation, as for instance, in
reply to some insinuation of my father's: "Shut your jaw --"
then adding in the same breath: "over a quid of tobacco, there's
some on the stand." But, as I said, I lent but half an ear to this or
other specimeins of his mental quality, being altogether taken up
by my own sense impressions.

"So this, then"--ran my thoughts--"this pimpled and smeary
individual is the charmer at whom the indistinguished masses were
just now gazing up blissful-eyed! This repulsive worm is the
reality of the glorious butterfly in whom all those deluded on-
lookers thought to see realized all their own secret dreams of
beauty, grace, and perfection! He is just like one of those disgust-
ing little creatures which have the power of being phosphorescent
in the evening." But the grown-up people in the audience, who on
the whole must know about life and who yet were so frightfully
eager to be deceived, must they not have been aware of the decep-
tion? Or did they just privately not consider it one? And that is
quite possible. For when you come to think about it, which is the
"real" shape of the glow-worm: the insignificant little creature
crawling about on the flat of your hand, or the poetic spark that
swims through the summer night? Who would presume to say?
Rather call up the picture you saw before: the swarm of moths
and gnats, rushing blindly and irresistibly into the flame. With
what unanimity in the work of self-delusion! What can it be, then,
but that such an instinctive need as this is implanted by God Him-
self in the heart of man, to satisfy which the Muller-Roses are cre-
ated? Here beyond a doubt is operative in life a wise and indis-
pensable economy, in the service of which such men are kept and
rewarded. How much admiration is his due for the success which
he achieved tonight and achieves every night! Let us then smother
what disgust we feel, in the realization that he knows all about his
frightful pimples and yet--with the help of grease paint, lighting,
music, and distance--can move before his audience with such
complete assurance as to make them see in him their heart's ideal
and thereby endlessly to enliven and edify them. And more: let us
ask ourselves what it was that urged this miserable mountebank
to learn the art of transfiguring himself nightly. What are the
secret sources of the charm which possessed him and radiated
from his finger-tips? The question needs but to be asked to be an-
swered: who does not know the magic, the ineffable sweetness--
for which any words we have are all too pale--of the power which
teaches the glow-worm to light the night? This man could not
hear too often nor too emphatically that his performance gave
pleasure, pleasure beyond the ordinary. It was the yearning of all
his being towards that host of yearning souls, it was that inspired
and winged his art. He gave us joy of life, we in our turn sated his
craving for applause; and was this not a mutual satisfaction, a
true marriage of desires?

The above lines indicate the main current of the thoughts
which surged through my eager and overheated brain as I sat there
in Muller-Rose's dressing-room, yes, and for days and weeks after-
wards possessed my musings and my dreams. And always they
were accompanied by emotions so profound and shattering, such a
drunkenness of yearning, hope, and joy, that even today, despite
my great fatigue, the memory of them makes my heart beat faster.
In those days my feelings were of such violence that they threat-
ened to burst my frame; often they made me somewhat ailing and
thus served me as a pretext for stopping away from school.

It would be superfluous to dwell upon the reasons for my grow-
ing aversion to this odious institution. I am only able to live when
my mind and my fancy are completely free; and thus it is that the
memory of my years in prison is actually less hateful to me than
those of the ostensibly more honourable bond of slavery and fear
which chafed my sensitive boyish soul when I was forced to at-
tend at the ugly little white box of a school-building down in the
town. Add to these feelings the isolation from which I suffered,
the grounds of which I have set forth above, and it will surprise
nobody that I early had the idea of taking more holidays than the
law allowed.

And in carrying out my idea another game I had long practised
was of signal service to me: that of imitating my father's hand-
writing, A father is the natural and nearest model for the growing
boy striving to adapt himself to the adult world. Physical struc-
ture as well as the more mysterious bond between them incline the
boy to admire all that in the parent of which he is still incapable
himself and to strive to imitate it--or rather it is perhaps his very
admiration which unconsciously leads him to develop along the
lines which the laws of inheritance have laid down. At the time
when I was still digging great pothooks in my slate I already
dreamed of guiding a steel pen with my father's swiftness and
skill; and how many scraps of paper I covered later on with efforts
to copy his hand from memory, my fingers arranged, round the
pen in the same delicate fashion as his. His writing was not in fact
very hard to imitate, for my poor father wrote a childish hand,
like a copybook, quite undeveloped, its only peculiarity being that
the letters were very tiny and prolonged immoderately by hair-
lines in a way I have never seen anywhere else. This mannerism I
soon mastered to the life. In contrast to the angular Gothic char-
acter of the script the signature, E. Krull, had a Latin ductus. It
was surrounded by a perfect cloud of flourishes, which at first
sight looked difficult to copy, but were in reality so simple in con-
ception that I succeeded almost better with the signature than
with anything else. The lower half of the E made a bold curve to
the right, in whose open lap, as it were, the remaining syllable was
neatly nestled. A second flourish rose from the u, embracing
everything before it, cutting the curve of the E in two places and
ending in an y-shaped down-stroke flanked like the curve of the E
with rows of dots. The whole signature was higher than it was
long, it was both naive and bizarre; thus it lent itself so well to my
purpose that in the end the inventor of it could not himself have
distinguished between my products and his own.

Of course I very soon made practical use of a gift which had
been acquired solely for my amusement. I employed it to gain my
mental freedom--as follows: "My son Felix," I wrote, "had se-
vere cramps on the 7th of this month and had to stop away from
school. Regretfully yours, E. Krull." Or: "An infected sore on
the gum as well as a sprained right arm obliged my son Felix to
keep his bed from the 10th to the 14th. Regret his not having been
able to attend school. Faithfully yours, E. Krull." My efforts being
crowned with success, nothing hindered me from spending the
school hours of one day or even of several roaming about outside
the town, lying stretched in the leafy, whispering shade of some
green pasture, dreaming the dreams peculiar to my youth and
state. Sometimes I hid in the ruins of the old episcopal seat on the
Rhine; sometimes, even, in winter and rough weather in the hos-
pitable studio of my godfather, who indeed chid me for my con-
duct, but in tones which showed that he had a certain sympathy
with the motives which led to it.

But now and again it came about that I lay in bed at home--and
not always, as I have explained above, without any justification.
It is a favourite theory of mine that every deception which has
not a higher truth at its root but is simply a barefaced lie is by the
very fact so gross and palpable that nobody can fail to see through
it. Only one kind of lie has a chance of being effective; that which
is quite undeserving of the name of deceit, being but the product
of a lively imagination which has not yet entered wholly into the
realm of the actual and acquired those tangible signs by which
alone it can be estimated at its proper worth. True, I was a sturdy
boy, who never aside from the usual childish ails had anything
the matter with him. Yet when one morning I decided to avoid
trouble and suffering by stopping in bed I was by no means prac-
tising a gross perversion of the actual situation. For why should I
have gone to meet trouble, when I possessed the means of render-
ing powerless at will the arm of my oppressors? The higher truth
actually was that the tension and depression due to my imaginative
flights was not seldom so overpowering that they became actual
suffering; together with my fear of what the day might bring
forth they were enough to produce a basis of solid fact for my
pretences to rest upon. I needed to put no strain upon myself
to command the sympathy and concern of my people and the
family doctor.

On a certain day, when the need for freedom and the possession
of my own soul had become overpowering, I began with produc-
ing my symptoms with myself as sole audience. The extreme limit
of the hour for rising was overpassed in dreams; breakfast had
been brought in and was cooling on the table downstairs; all the
stupid louts in town were on their dull schoolward way; daily life
had begun, and I was irretrievably committed to a course of rebel-
lion against my taskmasters. The audacity of my conduct was
enough to make my heart flutter and my cheek turn pale. I noted
that my finger-nails had taken on a bluish tint. The morning was
cold and I needed to throw off the covers for only a few moments
and to lie relaxed--when I had brought on a most convincing at-
tack of shivers and teeth-chattering. All that I am saying is of
course highly indicative of my character and temperament. I have
always been very sensitive, susceptible, and in need of cherishing;
and everything I have accomplished in life has been the result of
self-conquest--yes, to be regarded as a moral achievement of a
high order. If it were otherwise I should never, either then or later,
have succeeded by mere voluntary relaxation of mind and body in
producing the appearance of physical suffering and thus in inclin-
ing those about me to tenderness and concern. To counterfeit
illness effectively could never be within the powers of the coarse-
grained man. But anybody who is made of finer stuff--if I may be
pardoned for repeating the phrase--is always, though he may
never be ill in the rude sense of the word, on familiar terms with
suffering and can control its symptoms by intuition.

I closed my eyes and then opened them to their widest extent,
making them look appealing and plaintive. I knew without the aid
of a glass that my hair was rumpled from sleep and fell in damp
strands on my brow. My face being already pale, I made it look
sunken by a device of my own, drawing in the cheeks and holding
them imperceptibly with the teeth from inside. This made my
chin look longer too and gave me the appearance of having got
thin overnight. A dilating of the nostrils and an almost painful
twitching of the muscles at the corners of the eyes contributed to
the effect. I put my basin on a chair by my bed, folded my blue-
nailed fingers across my breast, chattered my teeth from time to
time, and thus awaited the moment when somebody should come
to look me up.

That would not be too early; my parents loved to lie abed and
it might be two or three school hours had passed before it became
known that I was still in the house. Then my mother came upstairs
and into the room and asked if I were ill. I looked at her large-
eyed, as though in my dazed condition it was hard for me to tell
who she was. Then I said yes, I thought I must be ill. What was
the matter? Oh, my head, and the ache in my bones--"and why
am I so cold?" I went on, in a monotonous voice, articulating
with difficulty and tossing myself from side to side of the bed.
My mother looked sympathetic. I do not believe that she took my
sufferings very seriously, but as her sensibilities were very much
in excess of her reason she could not bring herself to spoil the
game but instead joined in and began to support me in my per-
formance. "Poor child," she said, laying her forefinger on my
cheek and shaking her head in pity, "don't you want something to
eat?" I declined with a shudder, pressing my chin on my chest.
The iron consistency of my performance sobered her somewhat;
she was startled out of her enjoyment of the game, for that any-
body should on such grounds refrain from food and drink was
quite beyond her. She looked at me with a growing sense of real-
ity. When she had got so far I assisted her to a decision by a dis-
play of art as arduous as it was effective. Starting up in bed with
fitful and shuddering motions I drew my basin towards me and
bent over it with frightful twitchings and contortions of my whole
body, such as could not be witnessed without sympathetic convul-
sions by anyone not possessed of a heart of stone. "Nothing in
me," I gasped between my writhings, lifting my wry and wasted
face from the basin. "Gave it all up in the night and then I
nerved myself to a protracted climax of such gaspings and chok-
ings that it seemed I should never again get my breath. My mother
held my head and repeatedly called me by my name in anxious
and urgent tones, to bring me to myself. When my limbs began at
length to relax, "I will send for Dusing!" she cried, and ran out
of the room. Exhausted but with an indescribable and joyful sense
of satisfaction, I fell back upon my pillows.

How often had I imagined to myself such a scene, how often
passed through all its stages in my mind before I ventured to put
it into operation! I hope that I may be understood when I say that
I felt as though I were in a joyful dream when for the first time I
put it into practice and achieved a complete success. It is not
everybody can do such a thing. One may dream of it--but one
does not do it. Suppose, a man thinks, that something awful were
to happen to me: if I were to fall in a faint or blood were to burst
out of my nose, or if I were to have some kind of seizure--then
how suddenly the world's harsh unconcern would turn into atten-
tion, sympathy, and tardy remorse! But the flesh is obtusely strong
and enduring, it holds out long after the mind has felt the need of
sympathy and care; it will not manifest the alarming tangible
symptoms which would make everybody imagine himself in a like
state of suffering and speak with admonishing voice to the con-
science of the world. But I--I had produced these symptoms, as
effectively as though I had had nothing to do with their appear-
ance. I had improved upon nature, realized a dream; and he alone
who has tried to create a compelling and effective reality out of
nothing, out of sheer inward knowledge and contemplation--in
short, out of a combination of nothing but fantasy and his own
personality--he alone can understand the strange and dreamlike
satisfaction with which I rested from my creative task.

An hour later came Medical Inspector Dusing. He had been our
family physician ever since the death of old Dr. Mecum, the prac-
titioner who had ushered me into the world. Dr. Dusing was tall
and stooped, with an awkward carriage and bristling mouse-
coloured hair. He was constantly either caressing his long nose
with thumb and forefinger or else rubbing his large bony hands.
This man might have been dangerous to my enterprise. Not, I
think, through his professional ability, which I believe to have
been meagre--though indeed a genuine scholar serving science
with single mind and heart for its own sake would have been
easiest of all to deceive. No, but Dr. Dusing might have seen
through me by virtue of a certain crude knowledge of human
frailty which he possessed and which is often the whole stock-in-
trade of inferior natures. This unworthy follower of Esculapius
was both stupid and striving and had been appointed to office
through personal influence, adroit exploitation of wine-house
acquaintances, and the receipt of patronage; he was always driving
to Wiesbaden to further his interests in the exercise of his office.
It was very telling that he did not keep to the rule of first come,
first served in his waiting-room, but took the more influential pa-
tients first, leaving the simpler ones to sit. His manner towards the
former class was obsequious, towards the latter harsh and cynical,
often betraying that he did not believe in their complaints. I am
convinced that he would not have stopped at any lie, corruption,
or bribery which would ingratiate him with his superiors or rec-
ommend him as a zealous party man with the ruling powers; such
behaviour was consistent with the shrewd practical sense which in
default of higher qualifications he relied upon to see him to his
goal. My poor father's position was already very dubious; yet as a
taxpayer and a business man he belonged to the influential classes
of the town, and Dr. Dusing naturally wished to stand well with
such a client. It is even possible that the wretched man enjoyed
corruption for corruption's sake and found that a sufficient reason
for conniving at my fraud. In any case, he would come in and sit
down at my bedside with the usual phrases, saying: "Well, well,
what's all this?" or "What have we here?" and the moment
would come when a wink, a smile, or a significant little pause
would indicate to me that we were partners in deception at the
little game of shamming sick--"school-sick," as he was pleased to
call it. Never did I make the smallest return to his advances. Not
out of caution, for he would probably not have betrayed me, but
out of pride and the genuine contempt I felt for him. I only
looked more dismal and helpless, my cheeks grew hollower, my
breathing shorter and more difficult, my mouth more lax, at each
attempt he made to seduce me. I was quite prepared to go through
another attack of vomiting if needs must; and so persistently did
I fail to understand his worldly wisdom that in the end he had to
abandon that line of attack in favour of a more strictly profes-
sional one.

That presented some difficulty. First because he was actually
stupid; and second because the clinical picture I presented was
very general and indefinite in its character. He thumped my chest
and listened to me all over, peered into my throat by means of the
handle of a tablespoon, gave me great discomfort by taking my
temperature, and finally for better or worse was driven to pass
judgment. "Just the megrims," said he. "Nothing to worry about.
The usual attack. And our young friend's tummy always acts in
sympathy. He must be quiet, see no visitors, he must not talk, bet-
ter lie in a darkened room. I'll write a prescription--a little caf-
feine and citric acid will do no harm, it's always the best thing."
If there were any cases of flu in the town, he would say: "Flu,
my dear lady, with a gastric complication. That is what our young
friend has caught. Not much inflammation of the passages as yet;
still there is some. Do you notice any, my child? Do you feel like
coughing? There is a little fever too; it will probably increase in
the course of the day. The pulse is rapid and irregular." And he
could think of nothing more, save to prescribe a certain bitter-
sweet tonic wine from the chemist's. I was nothing loth; I found
it most soothing and comforting, now that the battle had been
won.

Indeed, the doctor's calling is not different from any other: its
practitioners are for the most part ordinary empty-headed folk,
ready to see what is not there and to deny the obvious. Any un-
trained person, if he loves and has knowledge of the flesh, is their
superior and in the mysteries of the art can lead them by the nose.
The inflammation of the air passages was something I had not
thought of, so I had not included it in my performance. But once
I had forced the doctor to drop the theory of "school-sickness,"
he had to fall back on flu, and to that end had to assume that my
throat was irritated and my tonsils swollen, which was just as lit-
tle the case as the other. He was quite right about the fever--
though the fact entirely disproved his first diagnosis by presenting
a genuine clinical phenomenon. Medical science teaches that fever
can only be caused by the infection of the blood through some
agency or other and that fever on other than physical grounds
does not exist. That is absurd. My readers will be as convinced as I
am myself that I was not ill in the ordinary sense when Inspector
Dusing examined me. But I was highly excited; I had concentrated
my whole being upon an act of the will; I was drunk with the in-
tensity of my own performance in the role of parodying nature--
a performance which had to be masterly lest it become ridiculous;
I was delirious with the alternate tension and relaxation necessary
to give actuality in my own eyes and others' to a condition which
did not exist; and all this so heightened and enhanced my organic
processes that the doctor could actually read the result off the ther-
mometer. The same explanation applies to the pulse. When the
Inspector's head lay on my chest and I inhaled the animal odour of
his dry grey hair, I had it in my power to feel a violent reaction
that made my heart beat fast and unevenly. And as for my stom-
ach, Dr. Dusing always said that it was affected, whatever other
diagnosis he produced; and it was true enough that the organ was
uncommonly sensitive, pulsing and contracting with every stir of
feeling, so that where others under stress of circumstances speak
of a throbbing heart, I might always speak of a throbbing stomach.
Of this phenomenon the doctor was aware and he was not a little
impressed by it.

So he prescribed his acid drops or his tonic wine and stopped
awhile gossiping with my mother; I lay meantime breathing short-
windedly through my flaccid lips and looking vacantly at the ceil-
ing. My father would probably come in, too, and look at me with
an embarrassed self-conscious air, avoiding my eye. He would take
occasion to consult the doctor about his gout. Then I was left
alone, to spend the day--perhaps two or three days--on short
commons (which I did not mind, because they made the food
taste better) and in peace and freedom, given over to dreams of
the brilliant future. When my youthful appetite rebelled at the
diet of rusks and gruel, I would slip out of my bed, open my writ-
ing-desk, and resort to the store or chocolate which nearly always
lay there.

Where did I get my chocolate? It came into my possession in a
strange, almost a fantastic way. On a corner of the busiest street
in our little city there was an excellent delicatessen shop, a branch,
if I mistake not, of a Wiesbaden firm. It supplied the wants of the
best society and was most attractive. My way to school led me
past this shop and many times I had entered it with a small coin
in my hand to buy cheap sweets, such as fruit drops or barley
sugar. But one day on going in I found it empty, not only of pur-
chasers but also of attendants. There was a little bell on a spring
over the door, and this had rung as I entered; but either the inner
room was empty or the occupants did not hear the bell--I was
and remained alone. And at first the emptiness surprised and
startled me, it even gave, me an uncanny feeling; but presently I
began to look about me, for never before had I been able to con-
template undisturbed the delights of such a spot. It was a narrow
room, with a rather high ceiling, and crammed from top to bot-
tom with goodies. There were rows and rows of hams, sausages
of all shapes and colours--white, yellow, red, and black; fat and
lean and round and long--lines of tins and conserves, cocoas and
teas, bright translucent glasses of honey, marmalade, and jam; bot-
tles plump and bottles slender, filled with liqueurs and punch--all
these things crowded the shelves from floor to ceiling. Then there
were glass show-cases where smoked mackerel, lampreys, floun-
ders, and eels were displayed on platters to tempt the appetite.
There were dishes of Italian salad, lobsters spreading their claws
on blocks of ice, sprats pressed flat and gleaming goldenly from
opened boxes; choice fruits--garden strawberries and grapes beau-
tiful as though they came from the Promised Land; tiers of sardine
tins and those fascinating little white earthenware jars of caviar and
foie gras. Plump chickens dangled their necks from the top shelf,
and there were trays of cooked meats, ham, tongue, beef, and veal,
smoked salmon and breast of goose, with the slender slicing-knife
lying ready to hand. There were all sorts of cheeses under glass
bells, brick-red, milk-white, and marbled, also the creamy ones
that ooze in a golden wave out of their silver foil. Artichokes,
bundles of asparagus, truffles, little liver sausages in silver paper--
all these things lay heaped in rich abundance; while on other
tables stood open tin boxes full of fine biscuits, spice cakes piled in
criss-cross layers, and glass urns full of dessert bonbons and crys-
tallized fruits.

I stood transfixed. Holding my breath and cocking my ears I
drank in the enchanting atmosphere of the place and the medley
of odours from chocolate and smoked fish and earthy truffles.
My fancy ran riot with memories of fairy-stories of the paradise
of children, of underground treasure-chambers where children
born on Sunday might enter and fill their pockets with precious
stones. It seemed like a dream; everyday laws and dull regulations
were all suspended, one might give free rein to one's desires and
let fancy rove in blissful unrestraint. I was seized with such a fever
of desire on beholding this paradise of plenty entirely given over
to my single person that I felt my very limbs to twitch. It took
great self-control not to burst out in a paean of jubilation at so
much richness and so much freedom. I spoke into the silence,
saying: "Good day" in quite a loud voice; I can still remember
how the strained tones of my voice died away into the stillness.
No one answered. And the water ran into my mouth in streams
at that very moment. One quick and noiseless step and I stood
beside one of the laden tables. I made one rapturous grab into
the nearest glass um, slipped my fistful of pralines into my coat
pocket, gained the door, and by another second was round the
corner of the street.

No doubt I shall be accused of common theft. I will not deny
the accusation, I will simply retreat and not confront anyone who
chooses to take the paltry word into his mouth. But the word--
the poor, cheap, worn-out word, which does violence to all the
finer meanings of life--is one thing, and quite another the living,
primeval, and absolute deed, forever shining with newness and
originality. It is only out of habit and sheer mental indolence that
we come to regard them as the same thing. And the truth is that
the word, as used to describe or characterize a deed, is no better
than one of these wire fly-killers that always miss the fly. More-
over, whenever it is a question of an act, it is not the what nor
the why that matters (although the second is the more important),
but simply and solely the who. Whatever I have done and com-
mitted, it has always been first of all my deed, not Tom's, Dick's,
or Harry's: and though I have had to swallow, especially at the
hands of the lalw, having the same name applied to me as to ten
thousand others, I have always rebelled against such an unnatural
comparison, in the unshakable conviction that I am a favourite of
the powers that be and actually compact of different flesh and
blood. The reader will forgive me this excursion into the abstract,
and it may be that it ill becomes me, for I have no training or
warrant for that kind of metaphysical thought. But I consider it
my duty either to reconcile him so far as possible with the idio-
syncrasies of my existence or else to prevent him from reading
further.

When I got home I went up to my room, still in my overcoat,
spread my treasure-trove out on my table, and examined it. I
almost disbelieved that it was still there--for how often do not
priceless things come to us in our dreams, yet when we wake our
hands are empty. Imagine iny lively joy--like that of a man wak-
ing from such a dream to find his treasure materialized on his
bed-quilt--in examining my bonbons! They were of the best
quality, wrapped in silver paper, filled with sweet liqueur and
flavoured creams; but it was not alone their quality that enrap-
tured me; even more it was the winning over of my dream treas-
ure into my waking hand that made up the sum of my delight
--a delight too great for me not to think of repeating it as occa-
sion offered. Whatever the explanation--I did not cudgel my
brains to find one--the shop proved to be often open and un-
watched at the noon hour, as I could tell by strolling slowly past
the door with my school-satchel on my back. I would return and
go in, having learned to open the door so softly that the little bell
did not jingle. By way of precaution I would say: "Good day"
--and then take what was nearest, never too much, always with
wise moderation, a handful of bonbons, a tablet of chocolate, a
slice of cake--very probably nothing was ever missed. But these
dreamlike occasions on which I clutched with open hand the
sweets of life were accompanied by such an expansion of my
whole personality that they gave me anew the sensations with
which certain trains of thought and introspection had already
made me familiar.

At this point--though not without having laid aside the flow-
ing pen to pause and collect my thoughts--I wish to enter at
more length with my unknown reader upon a theme already
glanced at earlier in these confessions. Let me say at once that
such a reader will be disappointed if he expects from me any
lightness of tone or lewdness of expression. No, for the dictates
of morality and good form demand that discretion and sobriety
be united with the candour which I promised at the outset of my
enterprise. Pleasure in the salacious for its own sake, though an
almost universal fault, has always been incomprehensible to me,
and verbal excesses of this kind I have always found the most
repulsive of all, since they are the cheapest and have not the excuse
of passion. People laugh and joke about these matters precisely
as though they were dealing with the simplest and most amusing
subject in the world, whereas the exact opposite is the truth; and
to talk of them in that loose and airy way is to surrender to the
whinnyings of the mob the most important and mysterious con-
cern of nature and of life. But to my confession.

First of all I must make it clear that the above-mentioned con-
cern began very early to play a role with me, to occupy my
thoughts, shape my fancies, and form the content of my childish
enterprises--long, that is, before I had any words for it or could
possibly form any general ideas of its nature or bearing. For
a considerable time, that is, I regarded my tendency to such
thoughts and the lively pleasure I had in them to be private and
personal to myself. Nobody else, I thought, would understand
them, and it was in fact advisable not to talk of them at all. Lack-
ing any other means of description, I grouped all my emotions
and fancies together under the heading of "the great joy" or
"the best of all" and guarded them as a priceless secret. And
thanks to this jealous reserve, thanks also to my isolation, and to
a third cause to which I shall presently come, I long remained in
this state of intellectual ignorance which so little corresponded to
the liveliness of my senses. For as far back as I can remember, this
"great joy" took up a commanding position in my inner life--
indeed it probably began to do so farther back than my conscious
memory extends. For small children are to that extent ‘'innocent"
in that they are unconscious; but that they are so in the sense of
angelic purity is without doubt a sentimental superstition which
would not stand the test of an objective examination. For myself,
at least, I have it from an unexceptionable source, that even at my
nurse's breast I displayed the clearest evidence of certain feelings
--and this tradition has always seemed highly credible to me, as
indicative of the eagerness of my nature.

In fact my penchant for the pleasures of love bordered on the
extraordinary; even today it is my conviction that it far exceeded
the usual measure. That this was so I had early grounds for sus-
pecting; but my suspicions were converted to certainty on the
evidence of that person who told me of my susceptible behaviour
while still at the breast. With this person I sustained for several
years a secret relationship. I refer to our housemaid Genoveva,
who had been with us from a child and was in the beginning of
her thirties when I reached sixteen. She was the daughter of a
sergeant-major and had for a long time been engaged to the
station-master at a little station between Frankfurt and Nieder-
Lahnstein. She had a good deal of feeling for the refinements of
life, and although she performed all the hard work of the house
her position was as much housekeeper as servant. The marriage
was--for lack of money--only a distant prospect; and the long
waiting must have been a genuine hardship to the poor girl. In
person she was a well-developed blonde with a lively green eye
and mincing ways. But despite the prospect of spending her best
years in renunciation she never listened to proposals from a lower
sphere of society--advances from soldiers, working-men, or such
people--for she did not reckon herself with common folk, feeling
disgust for their speech and the way they smelt. The case was
different with the son of the house, who aroused her approbation
as he developed, and might give her the feeling that in satisfying
him she both as it were performed a domestic duty and also im-
proved her own station in society. Thus it happened that my de-
sires did not encounter any serious resistance. I need not go into
great detail--the episode had the usual features, too well known
to be of interest to a cultured audience.

One evening my godfather Maggotson had supped with us, and
we had spent the evening trying on costumes. When I went up
to bed it happened--very likely so contrived by her--that I met
Genoveva at the door of my attic room. We stopped to talk, by
degrees moved over into the room itself, and ended by occupying
it together for the night. I well remember my mood: it was one
of gloom, disillusion, and boredom such as often seized upon me
at the end of an evening devoted to the exercise of my "head
for costumes"--only this time even more severe than usual. I
had resumed my ordinary garb with loathing, I had the impulse
to tear it off--but not the desire to forget my misery in slumber.
For it seemed to me that the only possible consolation was to be
found in Genoveva's arms--yes, to tell the whole truth, I felt
that in complete intimacy with her I should find the continuation
and consummation of my brilliant evening and the proper goal
of my ramblings through my godfather's wardrobe of costumes.
However that may be, at least the soul-satisfying, unimaginable
delight I discovered on Genoveva's white, well-nourished breast
defies all description. I cried out for very bliss, I felt myself
mounting heavenwards. And it was not of a selfish nature, my
desire: for so I was constructed that it was kindled only by the
mutual joy of Genoveva.

Of course every possibility of comparison is out of the ques-
tion; I can neither demonstrate nor disprove, but I was then and
am now convinced that with me the satisfaction of love is twice
as sweet and twice as poignant as with the average man. But it
would be doing me an injustice to conclude that on the score of
my unusual endowment I became a libertine and lady-killer. My
dif11cult and dangerous life made great demands on my powers
of concentration--I had to take care not to exhaust myself. I have
observed that with some the act of love is a trifle which they per-
functorily discharge and go their way as though nothing had
happened. As for me, the tribute which I paid was so great as to
leave me for the time quite vacant and empty of the power to
act. True, I have often exceeded, for the flesh is weak and I found
my amorous requirements only too easily met. But in the end and
on the whole I was of a temper too manly and too serious not to
be called back from sensual relaxation to a necessary and healthful
austerity. Moreover, the purely physical satisfaction is surely the
grosser part of that which I had as a child instinctively called "the
great joy." It enervates by satisfying us all too completely; it
makes us bad lovers of the world, because on the one hand it robs
life of its bloom and enchantment and on the other it impoverishes
our own power to charm, since only he who desires is amiable,
not he who is sated. For my part, I know many kinds of satisfac-
tion finer and more subtle than the crude act which after all is
but a limited and illusory satisfaction of appetite; and I am con -
vinced that he has but a crude notion of enjoyment whose activi-
ties are directed only and immediately to the definite goal. My
desires were always upon a broader, larger, and more general
scale; they found the sweetest feeding where others might not
seek; they were never precisely defined or specialized--and for
this reason among others it was that despite my special aptitude
I remained so long innocent and unconscious, yes, actually my
whole life long a child and dreamer.

And herewith I leave a subject in dealing with which I believe
I have not for a moment transgressed the canons of propriety and
good taste, and hasten forwards to the tragic moment which
terminated my sojourn under my parents' roof, and formed the
turning-point of my career. I begin by mentioning the betrothal
of my sister Olympia to Second Lieutenant Deibel of the second
Nassau regiment No. 88, stationed in Mainz. The betrothal was
attended by celebrations on a grand scale but led up to no other
consequences. For the stress of circumstances proved too much
for it; it was broken off and my sister--after the collapse of our
family life--went on the stage. Deibel was a sickly young man,
very ignorant of life. He was a constant guest at our parties, where,
heated by dancing, forfeit-playing, and Berncasteler Doctor and
fired by the judicious glimpses of their charms vouchsafed by the
ladies of our household, he fell wildly in love with Olympia.
With the concupiscence of weak-chested persons the world over,
and probably overestimating our position and consequence, he
actually one evening went on his knees and, almost shedding tears
in his ardour, implored her to be his. To this day I do not under-
stand how Olympia had the face to accept him, for certainly she
did not respond to the feelings he professed and was doubtless
informed by my mother of the true state of our affairs. But she
probably thought it was high time to be sure of some refuge, no
matter how frail, from the oncoming storm; she may even have
thought that her engagement to an officer in the army, however
poor his prospects, might delay the catastrophe. My poor father
was appealed to for his consent and gave it with an embarrassed
air and not much to say; whereupon the family event was com-
municated to the assembled guests, who received the news with
loud acclaim and baptized it, so to say, with streams of Lorley
Extra Cuvee. After that. Lieutenant Deibel came almost daily to
our house from Mainz, and did no little damage to his health by
constant attendance upon the object of his sickly desire. I once
entered the room where the betrothed pair had been for some
little time alone and found him looking so distracted and mori-
bund that I am convinced the turn which affairs presently took
was for him a piece of unmixed good fortune.

As for me, my mind was occupied in these weeks almost wholly
with the fascinating subject of the change of name which my
sister's marriage would entail upon her. I remember that I envied
her almost to bitterness. She who for so long had been called
Olympia Krull would sign herself in future Olympia Deibel--and
that fact alone possessed all the charm of novelty. How tiresome
it is to sign all one's life long the same name to letters and papers!
The hand grows paralysed with irritation and disgust--what a
pleasurable refreshment and stimulation then of the whole being
comes of being able to give oneself a new name and to hear oneself
addressed by it! It seemed to me a positive advantage which the
female sex has over the male that at least once in life the oppor-
tunity is afforded of this tonic and restorative--whereas to the
male any change is as good as forbidden by law. I, personally, not
having been born to lead the flabby and protected existence of
the great bourgeois class, have often overstepped a prohibition
which ran counter both to my safety and my dislike of the hum-
drum and everyday. I displayed in the process, if I may say so, a
very pretty gift of invention; and there was a peculiar easy grace
in the act whereby I, for the first time in my life, laid aside like
a soiled and worn-out garment the name to which I was born, to
assume another which for elegance and euphony far surpassed
that of Lieutenant Deibel.

But in the midst of the betrothal episode events had taken their
course, and ruin--to express myself poetically--knocked with
harsh knuckles upon the door of our home. Those malicious
rumours about my poor father's business, the studied avoidance
we suffered from all and sundry, the gossip about our domestic
affairs--all these were most cruelly confirmed by the event, to
the unlovely satisfaction of the croakers. The consuming public
had more and more refrained from buying our brand of wine.
Lowering the price of course did not improve the product, nor
did the alluring design produced against his better judgment by
my good-natured godfather have any effect in staying the disaster.
Ruin fell upon my poor father in the spring of my eighteenth
year.

I was of course at that time entirely lacking in business sense--
nor am I now any better off in that respect, since my own career,
based on imagination and self-discipline, gave me no commercial
training. Accordingly I refrain from trying my pen on a subject of
which I have no knowledge and from burdening the reader w11li
an account of the misfortunes of the Lorley wine company. But
I feel impelled to give expression to the great sympathy which
in these last months I felt for my father. He sank more and more
into a speechless melancholy and would sit somewhere about the
house with his head bent and the fingers of his right hand gently
stroking his rounded belly, ceaselessly and rapidly blinking his
eyes. He made frequent pathetic trips to Mainz, probably to try
to get hold of some money; he would return from these excursions
greatly dejected, wiping his face and eyes with a little batiste
handkerchief. It was only at the evening parties, which we still
held in our villa, when he sat at table with his napkin tied round
his neck, his guests about him, and his glass in his hand, presiding
over the feast, that anything like comfort revisited him. Yet in
the course of one such evening there occurred a most unpleasant
quarrel between my poor father and the Jewish banker, husband
of the jet-laden female. He, as I then learned, was one of the most
hardened cut-throats who ever lured harried and unwary business
folk into their nets. Very soon thereafter came that serious and
ominous day--yet for me refreshing in its novel excitement--
when the factory and business premises of my father did not open
and a group of cold-eyed, tight-lipped gentlemen appeared at our
villa to attach our possessions. My poor father, in the choicest of
phrases, had declared his bankruptcy before the courts and ap-
pended to his declaration that naive and flourishing signature of
his which I so well knew how to imitate; and with due solemnity
proceedings in bankruptcy were instituted.

On that day our disgrace gave me occasion to stop away from
school--and I may say here that it was never granted me to flnish
my course. This was firstly due to my never having troubled to
conceal my aversion to the despotism and dullness which char-
acterized that institution, and secondly because our domestic cir-
cumstances and ultimate disruption filled the masters with venom
and contempt. At the Easter holidays after my poor father's
failure they refused to give me my leaving-certificate, thus offer-
ing me the alternative of putting up with an inferior position
unsuited to my age or of leaving the school and losing the ad-
vantages of a certificate. In the joyful consciousness that my na-
tive parts were adequate to make up for the loss of such extremely
limited advantages, I chose the latter course.

Our financial collapse was complete; it became clear that my
poor father had put it off so long and involved himself so deeply
in the toils of the usurers only because he was aware that when
the crash came it would reduce him to beggary. Everything came
under the hammer; the warehouses (but who wanted to buy so
notoriously bad a product as my father's wine.^), the real estate
--that is, the cellars and our villa, laden as those were with mort-
gages to two-thirds of their value, the interest on which had not
been paid for years; the dwarfs, the toadstools and crockery ani-
mals in the gardens--yes, the glass ball and the aeolian harp went
the same sad way. The inside of the house was stripped of every
charm: the spinning-wheel, the down cushions, the glass boxes
and smelling-bottles all went at public auction, not even the hal-
berds over the windows and the glass bead curtains were spared,
and if the little device over the ventilator that played "Wine,
Women, and Song" when the door was opened, still jingled un-
mindful of the desolation, it was only because it had not been
noticed by its legal owners.

One could scarcely say at first that my father looked like a
broken man. His face even expressed a certain satisfaction that
his affairs, having passed beyond his own competence, now found
themselves in such good hands; and since the bank which had
purchased our property let us for very pity remain for the present
within its bare walls, we still had a roof over our heads. Tem-
peramentally easy-going and good-natured, he could not credit
his fellow human beings with being so puritanically cruel as to
reject him utterly; he was simple enough to try to form a local
company with himself as director. His proposals were brusquely
repulsed, as also other efforts he made to re-establish himself in
life--though if he had been successful he would doubtless have
proceeded upon his old courses of feastings and fireworks. But
when everything failed he at last recognized the fact; and prob-
ably considering that he was in the way of us others, who might
make better headway without him, he resolved to make an end
of himself.

Five months had passed since the beginning of the bankruptcy
proceedings; it was early autumn. Since Easter I had not gone back
to school and was enjoying my temporary freedom and lack of
prospects. We had gathered in our bare dining-room, my mother,
my sister Olympia, and I, to eat our meagre meal, and were wait-
ing for the head of the family. But when we had finished our soup
and he did not appear, we sent Olympia, who had always been his
favourite, to summon him. She had been gone scarcely three
minutes when we heard her give a prolonged scream and then
run still screaming upstairs and down and then distractedly up
again. Frightened to my very marrow and ready for the worst,
I went to my father's room. There he lay, upon the floor, with
his clothing opened; his hand was resting upon the roundness of
his belly, and beside him lay the fatal shining thing with which he
had shot himself in his gentle heart. Our maid Genoveva and I
lifted him to the sofa, and while she ran for the doctor, my sister
Olympia still rushed screaming through the house, and my mother
out or very fear would not venture out of the dining-room, I
stood beside the earthly husk of my progenitor, now growing
cold, with my hand over my eyes, and paid him the abundant
tribute of my tears.

1911



DEATH IN VENICE



Gustave Aschenbach--or von Aschcnbach, as he had been
known officially since his fiftieth birthday--had set out alone
from his house in Prince Regent Street, Munich, for an extended
walk. It was a spring afternoon in that year of grace 19--, when
Europe sat upon the anxious seat beneath a menace that hung over
its head for months. Aschenbach had sought the open soon after
tea. He was overwrought by a morning of hard, nerve-taxing
work, work which had not ceased to exact his uttermost in the
way of sustained concentration, conscientiousness, and tact; and
after the noon meal found himself powerless to check the onward
sweep of the productive mechanism within him, that motus animi
continuus in which, according to Cicero, eloquence resides. He
had sought but not found relaxation in sleep--though the wear
and tear upon his system had come to make a daily nap more and
more imperative--and now undertook a walk, in the hope that
air and exercise might send him back refreshed to a good evening's
work.

May had begun, and after weeks of cold and wet a mock sum-
mer had set in. The English Gardens, though in tenderest leaf,
felt as sultry as in August and were full of vehicles and pedes-
trians near the city. But towards Aumeister the paths were soli-
tary and still, and Aschenbach strolled thither, stopping awhile
to watch the lively crowds in the restaurant garden with its fringe
of carriages and cabs. Thence he took his homeward way outside
the park and across the sunset fields. By the time he reached the
North Cemetery, however, he felt tired, and a storm was brewing
above Fohring; so he waited at the stopping-place for a tram to
carry him back to the city.

He found the neighbourhood quite empty. Not a wagon in
sight, either on the paved Ungererstrasse, with its gleaming tram-
lines stretching off towards Schwabing, nor on the Fohring high-
way. Nothing stirred behind the hedge in the stone-mason's yard,
where crosses, monuments, and commemorative tablets made a
supernumerary and untenanted graveyard opposite the real one.
The mortuary chapel, a structure in Byzantine style, stood facing
it, silent in the gleam of the ebbing day. Its facade was adorned
with Greek crosses and tinted hieratic designs, and displayed a
symmetrically arranged selection of scriptural texts in gilded let-
ters, all of them with a bearing upon the future life, such as:
"They are entering into the House of the Lord" and "May the
Light Everlasting shine upon them." Aschenbach beguiled some
minutes of his waiting with reading these formulas and letting
his mind's eye lose itself in their mystical meaning. He was
brought back to reality by the sight of a man standing in the
portico, above the two apocalyptic beasts that guarded the stair-
case, and something not quite usual in this man's appearance gave
his thoughts a fresh turn.

Whether he had come out of the hall through the bronze doors
or mounted unnoticed from outside, it was impossible to tell.
Aschenbach casually inclined to the first idea. He was of medium
height, thin, beardless, and strikingly snub-nosed; he belonged to
the red-haired type and possessed its milky, freckled skin. He was
obviously not Bavarian; and the broad, straight-brimmed straw
hat he had on even made him look distinctly exotic. True, he had
the indigenous rucksack buckled on his back, wore a belted suit
of yellowish woollen stuff, apparently frieze, and carried a grey
mackintosh cape across his left forearm, which was propped against
his waist. In his right hand, slantwise to the ground, he held an
iron-shod stick, and braced himself against its crook, with his legs
crossed. His chin was up, so that the Adam's apple looked very
bald in the lean neck rising from the loose shirt; and he stood there
sharply peering up into space out of colourless, red-lashed eyes,
while two pronounced perpendicular furrows showed on his fore-
head in curious contrast to his little turned-up nose. Perhaps his
heightened and heightening position helped out the impression
Aschenbach received. At any rate, standing there as though at
survey, the man had a bold and domineering, even a ruthless, air,
and his lips completed the picture by seeming to curl back, either
by reason of some deformity or else because he grimaced, being
blinded by the sun in his face; they laid bare the long, white,
glistening teeth to the gums.

Aschenbach's gaze, though unawares, had very likely been in-
quisitive and tactless; for he became suddenly conscious that the
stranger was returning it, and indeed so directly, with such hos-
tility, such plain intent to force the withdrawal of the other's
eyes, that Aschenbach felt an unpleasant twinge and, turning his
back, began to walk along the hedge, hastily resolving to give the
man no further heed. He had forgotten him the next minute. Yet
whether the pilgrim air the stranger wore kindled his fantasy or
whether some other physical or psychical influence came in play,
he could not tell; but he felt the most surprising consciousness
of a widening of inward barriers, a kind of vaulting unrest, a
youthfully ardent thirst for distant scenes--a feeling so lively and
so new, or at least so long ago outgrown and forgot, that he stood
there rooted to the spot, his eyes on the ground and his hands
clasped behind him, exploring these sentiments of his, their bear-
ing and scope.

True, what he felt was no more than a longing to travel; yet
coming upon him with such suddenness and passion as to resemble
a seizure, almost a hallucination. Desire projected itself visually:
his fancy, not quite yet lulled since morning, imaged the marvels
and terrors of the manifold earth. He saw. He beheld a landscape,
a tropical marshland, beneath a reeking sky, steaming, monstrous,
rank--a kind of primeval wilderness-world of islands, morasses,
and alluvial channels. Hairy palm-trunks rose near and far out of
lush brakes of fern, out of bottoms of crass vegetation, fat, swol-
len, thick with incredible bloom. There were trees, mis-shapen as
a dream, that dropped their naked roots straight through the air
into the ground or into water that was stagnant and shadowy and
glassy-green, where mammoth milk-white blossoms floated, and
strange high-shouldered birds with curious bills stood gazing
sidewise without sound or stir. Among the knotted joints of a
bamboo thicket the eyes of a crouching tiger gleamed--and he
felt his heart throb with terror, yet with a longing inexplicable.
Then the vision vanished. Aschenbach, shaking his head, took up
his march once more along the hedge of the stone-mason's yard.

He had, at least ever since he commanded means to get about
the world at will, regarded travel as a necessary evil, to be en-
dured now and again willy-nilly for the sake of one's health. Too
busy with the tasks imposed upon him by his own ego and the
European soul, too laden with the care and duty to create, too pre-
occupied to be an amateur of the gay outer world, he had been
content to know as much of the earth's surface as he could with-
out stirring far outside his own sphere--had, indeed, never even
been tempted to leave Europe. Now more than ever, since his life
was on the wane, since he could no longer brush aside as fanciful
his artist fear of not having done, of not being finished before the
works ran down, he had confined himself to close range, had
hardly stepped outside the charming city which he had made his
home and the rude country house he had built in the mountains,
whither he went to spend the rainy summers.

And so the new impulse which thus late and suddenly swept
over him was speedily made to conform to the pattern of self-
discipline he had followed from his youth up. He had meant to
bring his work, for which he lived, to a certain point before leaving
for the country, and the thought of a leisurely ramble across the
globe, which should take him away from his desk for months,
was too fantastic and upsetting to be seriously entertained. Yet
the source of the unexpected contagion was known to him only
too well. This yearning for new and distant scenes, this craving for
freedom, release, forgetfulness--they were, he admitted to him-
self, an impulse towards flight, flight from the spot which was the
daily theatre of a rigid, cold, and passionate service. That service
he loved, had even almost come to love the enervating daily
struggle between a proud, tenacious, well-tried will and this grow-
ing fatigue, which no one must suspect, nor the finished product
betray by any faintest sign that his inspiration could ever flag or
miss fire. On the other hand, it seemed the part of common sense
not to span the bow too far, not to suppress summarily a need that
so unequivocally asserted itself. He thought of his work, and the
place where yesterday and again today he had been forced to lay
it down, since it would not yield either to patient effort or a swift
coup de main. Again and again he had tried to break or untie the
knot--only to retire at last from the attack with a shiver of re-
pugnance. Yet the difficulty was actually not a great one; what
sapped his strength was distaste for the task, betrayed by a fastidi-
ousness he could no longer satisfy. In his youth, indeed, the na-
ture and inmost essence of the literary gift had been, to him, this
very scrupulosity; for it he had bridled and tempered his sensibili-
ties, knowing full well that feeling is prone to be content with
easy gains and blithe half-perfection. So now, perhaps, feeling,
thus tyrannized, avenged itself by leaving him, refusing from now
on to carry and wing his art and taking away with it all the ecstasy
he had known in form and expression. Not that he was doing bad
work. So much, at least, the years had brought him, that at any
moment he might feel tranquilly assured of mastery. But he got
no joy of it--not though a nation paid it homage. To him it
seemed his work had ceased to be marked by that fiery play of
fancy which is the product of joy, and more, and more potently,
than any intrinsic content, forms in turn the joy of the receiving
world. He dreaded the summer in the country, alone with the
maid who prepared his food and the man who served him; dreaded
to see the familiar mountain peaks and walls that would shut him
up again with his heavy discontent. What he needed was a break,
an interim existence, a means of passing time, other air and a new
stock of blood, to make the summer tolerable and productive.
Good, then, he would go a journey. Not far--not all the way to
the tigers. A night in a wagon-lit, three or four weeks of lotus-
eating at some one of the gay world's playgrounds in the lovely
south....

So ran his thoughts, while the clang of the electric tram drew
nearer down the Ungererstrasse; and as he mounted the platform
he decided to devote the evening to a study of maps and railway
guides. Once in, he bethought him to look back after the man in
the straw hat, the companion of this brief interval which had after
all been so fruitful. But he was not in his former place, nor in the
tram itself, nor yet at the next stop; in short, his whereabouts re-
mained a mystery.


Gustave Aschenbach was born at L--, a country town in the
province of Silesia. He was the son of an upper official in the
judicature, and his forbears had all been officers, judges, depart-
mental functionaries--men who lived their strict, decent, sparing
lives in the service of king and state. Only once before had a
livelier mentality--in the quality of a clergyman--turned up
among them; but swifter, more perceptive blood had in the gen-
eration before the poet's flowed into the stock from the mother's
side, she being the daughter of a Bohemian musical conductor.
It was from her he had the foreign traits that betrayed themselves
in his appearance. The union of dry, conscientious officialdom and
ardent, obscure impulse, produced an artist--and this particular
artist: author of the lucid and vigorous prose epic on the life of
Frederick the Great; careful, tireless weaver of the richly pat-
terned tapestry entitled Maia, a novel that gathers up the threads
of many human destinies in the warp of a single idea; creator
of that powerful narrative The Abject, which taught a whole
grateful generation that a man can still be capable of moral
resolution even after he has plumbed the depths of knowledge;
and lastly--to complete the tale of works of his mature period--
the writer of that impassioned discourse on the theme of Mind
and Art whose ordered force and antithetic eloquence led serious
critics to rank it with Schiller's Simple and Sentimental Poetry.

Aschenbach's whole soul, from the very beginning, was bent on
fame--and thus, while not precisely precocious, yet thanks to
the unmistakable trenchancy of his personal accent he was early
ripe and ready for a career. Almost before he was out of high
school he had a name. Ten years later he had learned to sit at his
desk and sustain and live up to his growing reputation, to write
gracious and pregnant phrases in letters that must needs be brief,
for many claims press upon the solid and successful man. At forty,
worn down by the strains and stresses of his actual task, he had
to deal with a daily post heavy with tributes from his own and
foreign countries.

Remote on one hand from the banal, on the other from the ec-
centric, his genius was calculated to win at once the adhesion of
the general public and the admiration, both sympathetic and
stimulating, of the connoisseur. From childhood up he was pushed
on every side to achievement, and achievement of no ordinary
kind; and so his young days never knew the sweet idleness and
blithe laissez aller that belong to youth. A nice observer once said
of him in company--it was at the time when he fell ill in Vienna
in his thirty-fifth year; "You see, Aschenbach has always lived
liked this"--here the speaker closed the fingers of his left hand
to a fist--"never like this"--and he let his open hand hang re-
laxed from the back of his chair. It was apt. And this attitude was
the more morally valiant in that Aschenbach was not by nature
robust--he was only called to the constant tension of his career,
not actually born to it.

By medical advice he had been kept from school and educated
at home. He had grown up solitary, without comradeship; yet had
early been driven to see that he belonged to those whose talent
is not so much out of the common as is the physical basis on which
talent relies for its fulfilment. It is a seed that gives early of its
fruit, whose powers seldom reach a ripe old age. But his favourite
motto was "Hold fast"; indeed, in his novel on the life of Fred-
erick the Great he envisaged nothing else than the apotheosis of
the old hero's word of command, "Durchhalten,"' which seemed
to him the epitome of fortitude under suffering. Besides, he deeply
desired to live to a good old age, for it was his conviction that
only the artist to whom it has been granted to be fruitful on all
stages of our human scene can be truly great, or universal, or
worthy of honour.

Bearing the burden of his genius, then, upon such slender shoul-
ders and resolved to go so far, he had the more need of discipline
--and discipline, fortunately, was his native inheritance from the
father's side. At forty, at fifty, he was still living as he had com-
menced to live in the years when others are prone to waste and
revel, dream high thoughts and postpone fulfilment. He began his
day with a cold shower over chest and back; then, setting a pair of
tall wax candles in silver holders at the head of his manuscript, he
sacrificed to art, in two or three hours of almost religious fervour,
the powers he had assembled in sleep. Outsiders might be par-
doned for believing that his Maia world and the epic amplitude
revealed by the life of Frederick were a manifestation of great
power working under high pressure, that they came forth, as it
were, all in one breath. It was the more triumph for his morale;
for the truth was that they were heaped up to greatness in layer
after layer, in long days of work, out of hundreds and hundreds
of single inspirations; they owed their excellence, both of mass
and detail, to one thing and one alone: that their creator could
hold out for years under the strain of the same piece of work,
with an endurance and a tenacity of purpose like that which had
conquered his native province of Silesia, devoting to actual com-
position none but his best and freshest hours.

For an intellectual product of any value to exert an immediate
influence which shall also be deep and lasting, it must rest on an
inner harmony, yes, an affinity, between the personal destiny of
its author and that of his contemporaries in general. Men do not
know why they award fame to one work of art rather than an-
other. Without being in the faintest connoisseurs, they think to
justify the warmth of their commendations by discovering in it a
hundred virtues, whereas the real ground of their applause is in-
explicable--it is sympathy. Aschenbach had once given direct
expression--though in an unobtrusive place--to the idea that al-
most everything conspicuously great is great in despite: has come
into being in defiance of affliction and pain, poverty, destitution,
bodily weakness, vice, passion, and a thousand other obstructions.
And that was more than observation--it was the fruit of experi-
ence, it was precisely the formula of his life and fame, it was the
key to his work. What wonder, then, if it was also the fixed char-
acter, the outward gesture, of his most individual figures?

The new type of hero favoured by Aschenbach, and recurring
many times in his works, had early been analysed by a shrewd
critic: "The conception of an intellectual and virginal manliness,
which clenches its teeth and stands in modest defiance of the
swords and spears that pierce its side." That was beautiful, it was
spirituel it was exact, despite the suggestion of too great passivity
it held. Forbearance in the face of fate, beauty constant under
torture, are not merely passive. They are a positive achievement,
an explicit triumph; and the figure of Sebastian is the most beau-
tiful symbol, if not of art as a whole, yet certainly of the art we
speak of here. Within that world of Aschenbach's creation were
exhibited many phases of this theme: there was the aristocratic
self-command that is eaten out within and for as long as it can
conceals its biologic decline from the eyes of the world; the sere
and ugly outside, hiding the embers of smouldering fire--and
having power to fan them to so pure a flame as to challenge su-
premacy in the domain of beauty itself; the pallid languors of the
flesh, contrasted with the fiery ardours of the spirit within, which
can fling a whole proud people down at the foot of the Cross, at
the feet of its own sheer self-abnegation; the gracious bearing
preserved in the stern, stark service of form; the unreal, precarious
existence of the born intrigant with its swiftly enervating alterna-
tion of schemes and desires--all these human fates and many more
of their like one read in Aschenbach's pages, and reading them
might doubt the existence of any other kind of heroism than the
heroism born of weakness. And, after all, what kind could be truer
to the spirit of the times? Gustave Aschenbach was the poet-
spokesman of all those who labour at the edge of exhaustion; of
the overburdened, of those who are already worn out but still
hold themselves upright; of all our modern moralizers of accom-
plishment, with stunted growth and scanty resources, who yet
contrive by skilful husbanding and prodigious spasms of will to
produce, at least for a while, the effect of greatness. There are
many such, they are the heroes of the age. And in Aschenbach's
pages they saw themselves; he justified, he exalted them, he sang
their praise--and they, they were grateful, they heralded his
fame.

He had been young and crude with the times and by them
badlv counselled. He had taken false steps, blundered, exposed
himself, offended in speech and writing against tact and good
sense. But he had attained to honour, and honour, he used to say,
is the natural goal towards which every considerable talent presses
with whip and spur. Yes, one might put it that his whole career
had been one conscious and overweening ascent to honour, which
left in the rear all the misgivings or self-derogation which might
have hampered him.

What pleases the public is lively and vivid delineation which
makes no demands on the intellect; but passionate and absolutist
youth can only be enthralled by a problem. And Aschenbach was
as absolute, as problematist, as any youth of them all. He had done
homage to intellect, had overworked the soil of knowledge and
ground up her seed-corn; had turned his back on the "mysteries,"
called genius itself in question, held up art to scorn--yes, even
while his faithful following revelled in the characters he created,
he, the young artist, was taking away the breath of the twenty-
year-olds with his cynic utterances on the nature of art and the
artist life.

But it seems that a noble and active mind blunts itself against
nothing so quickly as the sharp and bitter irritant of knowledge.
And certain it is that the youth's constancy of purpose, no matter
how painfully conscientious, was shallow beside the mature reso-
lution of the master of his craft, who made a right-about-face,
turned his back on the realm of knowledge, and passed it by with
averted face, lest it lame his will or power of action, paralyse his
feelings or his passions, deprive any of these of their conviction
or utility. How else interpret the oft-cited story of The Abject
than as a rebuke to the excesses of a psychology-ridden age, em-
bodied in the delineation of the weak and silly fool who manages
to lead fate by the nose; driving his wife, out of sheer innate pusil-
lanimity, into the arms of a beardless youth, and making this dis-
aster an excuse for trifling away the rest of his life?

With rage the author here rejects the rejected, casts out the
outcast--and the measure of his fury is the measure of his con-
demnation of all moral shilly-shallying. Explicitly he renounces
sympathy with the abyss, explicitly he refutes the flabby human-
itarianism of the phrase; "Tout coinprendre e'est tout pardon-
ner" What was here unfolding, or rather was already in full
bloom, was the "miracle of regained detachment," which a little
later became the theme of one of the author's dialogues, dwelt
upon not without a certain oracular emphasis. Strange sequence of
thought! Was it perhaps an intellectual consequence of this re-
birth, this new austerity, that from now on his style showed an
almost exaggerated sense of beauty, a lofty purity, symmetry, and
simplicity, which gave his productions a stamp of the classic, of
conscious and deliberate mastery? And yet: this moral fibre, sur-
viving the hampering and disintegrating effect of knowledge, does
it not result in its turn in a dangerous simplification, in a tendency
to equate the world and the human soul, and thus to strengthen
the hold of the evil, the forbidden, and the ethically impossible?
And has not form two aspects? Is it not moral and immoral at
once: moral in so far as it is the expression and result of discipline,
immoral--yes, actually hostile to morality--in that of its very es-
sence it is indifferent to good and evil, and deliberately concerned
to make the moral world stoop beneath its proud and undivided
sceptre?

Be that as it may. Development is destiny; and why should a
career attended by the applause and adulation of the masses neces-
sarily take the same course as one which does not share the glam-
our and the obligations of fame? Only the incorrigible bohemian
smiles or scoffs when a man of transcendent gifts outgrows his
carefree prentice stage, recognizes his own worth and forces the
world to recognize it too and pay it homage, though he puts on a
courtly bearing to hide his bitter struggles and his loneliness. Again,
the play of a developing talent must give its possessor joy, if of a
wilful, defiant kind. With time, an official note, something almost
expository, crept into Gustave Aschenbach's method. His later
style gave up the old sheer audacities, the fresh and subtle nuances
--it became fixed and exemplary, conservative, formal, even for-
mulated. Like Louis XIV--or as tradition has it of him--Aschen-
bach, as he went on in years, banished from his style every com-
mon word. It was at this time that the school authorities adopted
selections from his works into their text-books. And he found it
inly fitting--and had no thought but to accept--when a German
prince signalized his accession to the throne by conferring upon
the poet-author of the life of Frederick the Great on his fiftieth
birthday the letters-patent of nobility.

He had roved about for a few years, trying this place and that
as a place of residence, before choosing, as he soon did, the city
of Munich for his permanent home. And there he lived, enjoying
among his fellow-citizens the honour which is in rare cases the re-
ward of intellectual eminence. He married young, the daughter of
a university family; but after a brief term of wedded happiness his
wife had died. A daughter, already married, remained to him. A
son he never had.

Gustave von Aschenbach was somewhat below middle height,
dark and smooth-shaven, with a head that looked rather too large
for his almost delicate figure. He wore his hair brushed back; it
was thin at the parting, bushy and grey on the temples, framing a
lofty, rugged, knotty brow--if one may so characterize it. The
nose-piece of his rimless gold spectacles cut into the base of his
thick, aristocratically hooked nose. The mouth was large, often lax,
often suddenly narrow and tense; the cheeks lean and furrowed,
the pronounced chin slightly cleft. The vicissitudes of fate, it
seemed, must have passed over this head, for he held it, plaintively,
rather on one side; yet it was art, not the stern discipline of an ac-
tive career, that had taken over the office of modelling these fea-
tures. Behind this brow were born the flashing thrust and parry of
the dialogue between Frederick and Voltaire on the theme of war;
these eyes, weary and sunken, gazing through their glasses, had
beheld the blood-stained inferno of the hospitals in the Seven
Years' War. Yes, personally speaking too, art heightens life. She
gives deeper joy, she consumes more swiftly. She engraves adven-
tures of the spirit and the mind in the faces of her votaries; let
them lead outwardly a life of the most cloistered calm, she will in
the end produce in them a fastidiousness, an over-refinement, a
nervous fever and exhaustion, such as a career of extravagant pas-
sions and pleasures can hardly show.


Eager though he was to be off, Aschcnbach was kept in Munich
by affairs both literary and practical for some two weeks after
that walk of his. But at length he ordered his country home put
ready against his return within the next few weeks, and on a day
between the middle and the end of May took the evening train for
Trieste, where he stopped only twenty-four hours, embarking
for Pola the next morning but one.

What he sought was a fresh scene, without associations, which
should yet be not too out-of-the-way; and accordingly he chose an
island in the Adriatic, not far off the Istrian coast. It had been well
known some years, for its splendidly rugged cliff formations on
the side next the open sea, and its population, clad in a bright flut-
ter of rags and speaking an outlandish tongue. But there was rain
and heavy air; the society at the hotel was provincial Austrian,
and limited; besides, it annoyed him not to be able to get at the sea
--he missed the close and soothing contact which only a gentle
sandy slope affords. He could not feel this was the place he sought;
an inner impulse made him wretched, urging him on he knew not
whither; he racked his brains, he looked up boats, then all at once
his goal stood plain before his eyes. But of course! When one
wanted to arrive overnight at the incomparable, the fabulous, the
like-nothing-else-in-the-world, where was it one went? Why, ob-
viously; he had intended to go there, what ever was he doing here?
A blunder. He made all haste to correct it, announcing his depar-
ture at once. Ten days after his arrival on the island a swift motor-
boat bore him and his luggage in the misty dawning back across
the water to the naval station, where he landed only to pass over
the landing-stage and on to the wet decks of a ship lying there
with steam up for the passage to Venice.

It was an ancient hulk belonging to an Italian line, obsolete,
dingy, grimed with soot. A dirty hunchbacked sailor, smirkingly
polite, conducted him at once belowships to a cavernous, lamplit
cabin. There behind a table sat a man with a beard like a goat's; he
had his hat on the back of his head, a cigar-stump in the corner of
his mouth; he reminded Aschenbach of an old-fashioned circus-
director. This person put the usual questions and wrote out a
ticket to Venice, which he issued to the traveller with many com-
mercial flourishes.

"A ticket for Venice," repeated he, stretching out his arm to
dip the pen into the thick ink in a tilted ink-stand. "One first-class
to Venice! Here you are, signore mio." He made some scrawls on
the paper, strewed bluish sand on it out of a box, thereafter letting
the sand run off into an earthen vessel, folded the paper with bony
yellow fingers, and wrote on the outside, "An excellent choice,"
he rattled on. "Ah, Venice! What a glorious city! Irresistibly at-
tractive to the cultured man for her past history as well as her
present charm." His copious gesturings and empty phrases gave
the odd impression that he feared the traveller might alter his
mind. He changed Aschenbach's note, laying the money on the
spotted table-cover with the glibness of a croupier. "A pleasant
visit to you, signore," he said, with a melodramatic bow. "De-
lighted to serve you." Then he beckoned and called out: "Next"
as though a stream of passengers stood waiting to be served,
though in point of fact there was not one. Aschenbach returned
to the upper deck.

He leaned an arm on the railing and looked at the idlers loung-
ing along the quay to watch the boat go out. Then he turned his
attention to his fellow-passengers. Those of the second class, both
men and women, were squatted on their bundles of luggage on the
forward deck. The first cabin consisted of a group of lively
youths, clerks from Pola, evidently, who had made up a pleasure
excursion to Italy and were not a little thrilled at the prospect,
bustling about and laughing with satisfaction at the stir they made.
They leaned over the railings and shouted, with a glib command
of epithet, derisory remarks at such of their fellow-clerks as they
saw going to business along the quay; and these in turn shook their
sticks and shouted as good back again. One of the party, in a dandi-
fied buff suit, a rakish panama with a coloured scarf, and a red
cravat, was loudest of the loud: he outcrowed all the rest. Aschen-
bach's eye dwelt on him, and he was shocked to see that the
apparent youth was no youth at all. He was an old man, beyond a
doubt, with wrinkles and crows-feet round eyes and mouth; the
dull carmine of the cheeks was rouge, the brown hair a wig. His
neck was shrunken and sinewy, his turned-up moustaches and
small imperial were dyed, and the unbroken double row of yellow
teeth he showed when he laughed were but too obviously a cheap-
ish false set. He wore a seal ring on each forefinger, but the hands
were those of an old man. Aschenbach was moved to shudder as
he watched the creature and his association with the rest of the
group. Could they not see he was old, that he had no right to wear
the clothes they wore or pretend to be one of them? But they
were used to him, it seemed; they suffered him among them, they
paid back his jokes in kind and the playful pokes in the ribs he
gave them. How could they? Aschenbach put his hand to his
brow, he covered his eyes, for he had slept little, and they smarted.
He felt not quite canny, as though the world were suffering a
dreamlike distortion of perspective which he might arrest by shut-
ting it all out for a few minutes and then looking at it afresh. But
instead he felt a floating sensation, and opened his eyes with unrea-
soning alarm to find that the ship's dark sluggish bulk was slowly
leaving the jetty. Inch by inch, with the to-and-fro motion of her
machinery, the strip of iridescent dirty water widened, the boat
maneuvered clumsily and turned her bow to the open sea. Aschen-
bach moved over to the starboard side, where the hunchbacked
sailor had set up a deck-chair for him, and a steward in a greasy
dress-coat asked for orders.

The sky was grey, the wind humid. Harbour and island dropped
behind, all sight of land soon vanished in mist. Flakes of sodden,
clammy soot fell upon the still undried deck. Before the boat was
an hour out a canvas had to be spread as a shelter from the rain.

Wrapped in his cloak, a book in his lap, our traveller rested;
the hours slipped by unawares. It stopped raining, the canvas was
taken down. The horizon was visible right round: beneath the
sombre dome of the sky stretched the vast plain of empty sea.
But immeasurable unarticulated space weakens our power to meas-
ure time as well: the time-sense falters and grows dim. Strange,
shadowy figures passed and repassed--the elderly coxcomb, the
goat-bearded man from the bowels of the ship--with vague ges-
turings and mutterings through the traveller's mind as he lay. He
fell asleep.

At midday he was summoned to luncheon in a corridor-like
saloon with the sleeping-cabins giving off it. He ate at the head of
the long table; the party of clerks, including the old man, sat with
the jolly captain at the other end, where they had been carousing
since ten o'clock. The meal was wretched, and soon done. Aschen-
bach was driven to seek the open and look at the sky--perhaps it
would lighten presently above Venice.

He had not dreamed it could be otherwise, for the city had ever
given him a brilliant welcome. But sky and sea remained leaden.
with spurts of fine, mistlike rain; he reconciled himself to the
idea of seeing a different Venice from that he had always ap-
proached on the landward side. He stood by the foremast, his gaze
on the distance, alert for the first glimpse of the coast. And he
thought of the melancholy and susceptible poet who had once
seen the towers and turrets of his dreams rise out of these waves;
repeated the rhythms born of his awe, his mingled emotions of
joy and suffering--and easily susceptible to a prescience already
shaped within him, he asked his own sober, weary heart if a new
enthusiasm, a new preoccupation, some late adventure of the feel-
ings could still be in store for the idle traveller.

The flat coast showed on the right, the sea was soon populous
with fishing-boats. The Lido appeared and was left behind as the
ship glided at half speed through the narrow harbour of the same
name, coming to a full stop on the lagoon in sight of garish, badly
built houses. Here it waited for the boat bringing the sanitary
inspector.

An hour passed. One had arrived--and yet not. There was no
conceivable haste--yet one felt harried. The youths from Pola
were on deck, drawn hither by the martial sound of horns coming
across the water from the direction of the Public Gardens. They
had drunk a good deal of Asti and were moved to shout and hur-
rah at the drilling bersaglieri. But the young-old man was a truly
repulsive sight in the condition to which his company with youth
had brought him. He could not carry his wine like them: he was
pitiably drunk. He swayed as he stood--watery-eyed, a cigarette
between his shaking fingers, keeping upright with difficulty. He
could not have taken a step without falling and knew better than
to stir, but his spirits were deplorably high. He buttonholed any-
one who came within reach, he stuttered, he giggled, he leered, he
fatuously shook his beringed old forefinger; his tongue kept seek-
ing the corner of his mouth in a suggestive motion ugly to behold.
Aschenbach's brow darkened as he looked, and there came over
him once more a dazed sense, as though things about him were just
slightly losing their ordinary perspective, beginning to show a dis-
tortion that might merge into the grotesque. He was prevented
from dwelling on the reeling, for now the machinery began .to
thud again, and the ship took up its passage through the Canale di
San Marco which had been interrupted so near the goal.

He saw it once more, that landing-place that takes the breath
away, that amazing group of incredible structures the Republic
set up to meet the awe-struck eye of the approaching seafarer: the
airy splendour of the palace and Bridge of Sighs, the columns of
lion and saint on the shore, the glory of the projecting flank of the
fairy temple, the vista of gateway and clock. Looking, he thought
that to come to Venice by the station is like entering a palace by
the back door. No one should approach, save by the high seas
as he was doing now, this most improbable of cities.

The engines stopped. Gondolas pressed alongside, the landing-
stairs were let down, customs officials came on board and did their
office, people began to go ashore. Aschenbach ordered a gondola.
He meant to take up his abode by the sea and needed to be con-
veyed with his luggage to the landing-stage of the little steamers
that ply between the city and the Lido. They called down his
order to the surface of the water where the gondoliers were quar-
relling in dialect. Then came another delay while his trunk was
worried down the ladder-like stairs. Thus he was forced to endure
the importunities of the ghastly young-old man, whose drunken
state obscurely urged him to pay the stranger the honour of a
formal farewell. "We wish you a very pleasant sojourn," he bab-
bled, bowing and scraping. "Pray keep us in mind. Au revoir,
excusez et bon jour, votre Excellence." He drooled, he blinked, he
licked the corner of his mouth, the little imperial bristled on his
elderly chin. He put the tips of two fingers to his mouth and said
thickly: "Give her our love, will you, the p-pretty little dear"--
here his upper plate came away and fell down on the lower one.
. . . Aschenbach escaped. "Little sweety-sweety-sweetheart" he
heard behind him, gurgled and stuttered, as he climbed down the
rope stair into the boat.

Is there anyone but must repress a secret thrill, on arriving in
Venice for the first time--or returning thither after long absence
--and stepping into a Venetian gondola? That singular convey-
ance, come down unchanged from ballad times, black as nothing
else on earth except a coffin--what pictures it calls up of lawless,
silent adventures in the plashing night; or even more, what visions
of death itself, the bier and solemn rites and last soundless voyage!
And has anyone remarked that the seat in such a bark, the arm-
chair lacquered in coffin-black and dully black-upholstered, is the
softest, most luxurious, most relaxing seat in the world? Aschen-
bach realized it when he had let himself down at the gondolier's
feet, opposite his luggage, which lay neatly composed on the ves-
sel's beak. The rowers still gestured fiercely; he heard their harsh,
incoherent tones. But the strange stillness of the water-city seemed
to take up their voices gently, to disembody and scatter them over
the sea. It was warm here in the harbour. The lukewarm air of the
sirocco breathed upon him, he leaned back among his cushions
and gave himself to the yielding element, closing his eyes for very
pleasure in an indolence as unaccustomed as sweet. "The trip
will be short," he thought, and wished it might last forever. They
gently swayed away from the boat with its bustle and clamour of
voices.

It grew still and stiller all about. No sound but the splash of the
oars, the hollow slap of the wave against the steep, black, halbert-
shaped beak of the vessel, and one sound more--a muttering by
fits and starts, expressed as it were by the motion of his arms, from
the lips of the gondolier. He was talking to himself, between his
teeth, Aschenbach glanced up and saw with surprise that the
lagoon was widening, his vessel was headed for the open sea. Evi-
dently it would not do to give himself up to sweet far niente; he
must see his wishes carried out.

"You are to take me to the steamboat landing, you know," he
said, half turning round towards it. The muttering stopped. There
was no reply.

"Take me to the steamboat landing," he repeated, and this time
turned quite round and looked up into the face of the gondolier
as he stood there on his little elevated deck, high against the pale
grey sky. The man had an unpleasing, even brutish face, and wore
blue clothes like a sailor's, with a yellow sash; a shapeless straw hat
with the braid torn at the brim perched rakishly on his head. His
facial structure, as well as the curling blond moustache under the
short snub nose, showed him to be of non-Italian stock. Physically
rather undersized, so that one would not have expected him to be
very muscular, he pulled vigorously at the oar, putting all his
body-weight behind each stroke. Now and then the effort he made
curled back his lips and bared his white teeth to the gums. He
spoke in a decided, almost curt voice, looking out to sea over his
fare's head: "The signore is going to the Lido."

Aschenbach answered: "Yes, I am. But I only took the gondola
to cross over to San Marco. I am using the vaporetto from there."

"But the signore cannot use the vaporetto."

"And whv not?"

"Because the vaporetto does not take luggage."

It was true. Aschenbach remembered it. He made no answer.
But the man's gruff, overbearing manner, so unlike the usual cour-
tesy of his countrymen towards the stranger, was intolerable.
Aschenbach spoke again: "That is my own affair. I may want to
give my luggage in deposit. You will turn round."

No answer. The oar splashed, the wave struck dull against the
prow. And the muttering began anew, the gondolier talked to
himself, between his teeth.

What should the traveller do? Alone on the water with this
tongue-tied, obstinate, uncanny man, he saw no way of enforcing
his will. And if only he did not excite himself, how pleasantly he
might rest! Had he not wished the voyage might last forever?
The wisest thing--and how much the pleasantest!--was to let
matters take their own course. A spell of indolence was upon him;
it came from the chair he sat in--this low, black-upholstered
arm-chair, so gently rocked at the hands of the despotic boatman
in his rear. The thought passed dreamily through Aschenbach's
brain that perhaps he had fallen into the clutches of a criminal; it
had not power to rouse him to action. More annoying was the
simpler explanation: that the man was only trying to extort
money. A sense of duty, a recollection, as it were, that this ought
to be prevented, made him collect himself to say:

"How much do you ask for the trip?"

And the gondolier, gazing out over his head, replied: "The si-
gnore will pay."

There was an established reply to this; Aschenbach made it,
mechanically:

"I will pay nothing whatever if you do not take me where I
want to go."

"The signore wants to go to the Lido."

"But not with you."

"I am a good rower, signore. I will row you well."

"So much is true," thought Aschenbach, and again he re-
laxed. "That is true, you row me well. Even if you mean to rob
me, even if you hit me in the back with your oar and send me
down to the kingdom of Hades, even then you will have rowed
me well."

But nothing of the sort happened. Instead, they fell in with com-
pany: a boat came alongside and waylaid them, full of men and
women singing to guitar and mandolin. They rowed persistently
bow for bow with the gondola and filled the silence that had rested
on the waters with their lyric love of gain. Aschenbach tossed
money into the hat they held out. The music stopped at once, the)'
rowed away. And once more the gondolier's mutter became audi-
ble as he talked to himself in fits and snatches.

Thus they rowed on, rocked by the wash of a steamer returning
citywards. At the landing two municipal officials were walking up
and down with their hands behind their backs and their faces
turned towards the lagoon. Aschenbach was helped on shore by
the old man with a boat-hook who is the permanent feature of
every landing-stage in Venice; and having no small change to pay
the boatman, crossed over into the hotel opposite. His wants were
supplied in the lobby; but when he came back his possessions were
already on a hand-car on the quay, and gondola and gondolier
were gone.

"He ran away, signore," said the old boatman. "A bad lot, a
man without a licence. He is the only gondolier without one. The
others telephoned over, and he knew we were on the look-out, so
he made off."

Aschenbach shrugged.

"The signore has had a ride for nothing," said the old man, and
held out his hat. Aschenbach dropped some coins. He directed
that his luggage be taken to the Hotel des Bains and followed the
hand-car through the avenue, that white-blossoming avenue with
taverns, booths, and pensions on either side it, which runs across
the island diagonally to the beach.

He entered the hotel from the garden terrace at the back and
passed through the vestibule and hall into the office. His arrival
was expected, and he was served with courtesy and dispatch. The
manager, a small, soft, dapper man with a black moustache and a
caressing way with him, wearing a French frock-coat, himself took
him up in the lift and showed him his room. It was a pleasant
chamber, furnished in cherry-wood, with lofty windows looking
out to sea. It was decorated with strong-scented flowers. Aschen-
bach, as soon as he was alone, and while they brought in his trunk
and bags and disposed them in the room, went up to one of the
windows and stood looking out upon the beach in its afternoon
emptiness, and at the sunless sea, now full and sending long, low
waves with rhythmic beat upon the sand.

A solitary, unused to speaking of what he sees and feels, has
mental experiences which are at once more intense and less articu-
late than those of a gregarious man. They are sluggish, yet more
wayward, and never without a melancholy tinge. Sights and im-
pressions which others brush aside with a glance, a light comment,
a smile, occupy him more than their due; they sink silently in,
they take on meaning, they become experience, emotion, adven-
ture. Solitude gives birth to the original in us, to beauty unfamiliar
and perilous--to poetry. But also, it gives birth to the opposite:
to the perverse, the illicit, the absurd. Thus the traveller's mind
Still dwelt with disquiet on the episodes of his journey hither: on
the horrible old fop with his drivel about a mistress, on the outlaw
boatman and his lost tip. They did not offend his reason, they
hardly afforded food for thought; yet they seemed by their very
nature fundamentally strange, and thereby vaguely disquieting.
Yet here was the sea; even in the midst of such thoughts he saluted
it with his eyes, exulting that Venice was near and accessible. At
length he turned round, disposed his personal belongings and made
certain arrangements with the chambermaid for his comfort,
washed up, and was conveyed to the ground floor by the green-
uniformed Swiss who ran the lift.

He took tea on the terrace facing the sea and afterwards went
down and walked some distance along the shore promenade in the
direction of Hotel Excelsior. When he came back it seemed to be
time to change for dinner. He did so, slowly and methodically as
his way was, for he was accustomed to work while he dressed;
but even so found himself a little early when he entered the hall,
where a large number of guests had collected--strangers to each
other and affecting mutual indifference, yet united in expectancy
of the meal. He picked up a paper, sat down in a leather arm-chair,
and took stock of the company, which compared most favourably
with that he had just left.

This was a broad and tolerant atmosphere, of wide horizons.
Subdued voices were speaking most of the principal European
tongues. That uniform of civilization, the conventional evening
dress, gave outward conformity to the varied types. There were
long, dry Americans, large-familied Russians, English ladies, Ger-
man children with French bonnes. The Slavic element predomi-
nated, it seemed. In Aschenbach's neighbourhood Polish was being
spoken.

Round a wicker table next him was gathered a group of young
folk in charge of a governess or companion--three young girls,
perhaps fifteen to seventeen years old, and a long-haired boy of
about fourteen. Aschenbach noticed with astonishment the lad's
perfect beauty. His face recalled the noblest moment of Greek
sculpture--pale, with a sweet reserve, with clustering honey-
coloured ringlets, the brow and nose descending in one line, the
winning mouth, the expression of pure and godlike serenity. Yet
with all this chaste perfection of form it was of such unique per-
sonal charm that the observer thought he had never seen, either
in nature or art, anything so utterly happy and consummate.
What struck him further was the strange contrast the group af-
forded, a difference in educational method, so to speak, showa in
the way the brother and sisters were clothed and treated. The
girls, the eldest of whom was practically grown up, were dressed
with an almost disfiguring austerity. All three wore half-length
slate-coloured frocks of cloister-like plainness, arbitrarily unbe-
coming in cut, with white turn-over collars as their only adorn-
ment. Every grace of outline was wilfully suppressed; their hair
lay smoothly plastered to their heads, giving them a vacant expres-
sion, like a nun's. All this could only be by the mother's orders;
but there was no trace of the same pedagogic severity in the case
of the boy. Tenderness and softness, it was plain, conditioned his
existence. No scissors had been put to the lovely hair that (like
the Spinnario's) curled about his brows, above his ears, longer still
in the neck. He wore an English sailor suit, with quilted sleeves
that narrowed round the delicate wrists of his long and slender
though still childish hands. And this suit, with its breast-knot, lac-
ings, and embroideries, lent the slight figure something "rich and
strange," a spoilt, exquisite air. The observer saw him in half pro-
file, with one foot in its black patent leather advanced, one elbow
resting on the arm of his basket-chair, the cheek nestled into the
closed hand in a pose of easy grace, quite unlike the stiff subservi-
ent mien which was evidently habitual to his sisters. Was he deli-
cate? His facial tint was ivory-white against the golden darkness
of his clustering locks. Or was he simply a pampered darling, the
object of a .self-willed and partial love? Aschenbach inclined to
think the latter. For in almost every artist nature is inborn a wan-
ton and treacherous proneness to side with the beauty that breaks
hearts, to single out aristocratic pretensions and pay them homage.

A waiter announced, in English, that dinner was served. Gradu-
ally the company dispersed through the glass doors into the dining-
room. late-corners entered from the vestibule or the lifts. Inside,
dinner was being served; but the young Poles still sat and waited
about their wicker table. Aschenbach felt comfortable in his deep
arm-chair, he enjoyed the beauty before his eyes, he waited with
them.

The governess, a short, stout, red-faced person, at length gave
the signal. With lifted brows she pushed back her chair and made
a bow to the tall woman, dressed in palest grey, who now entered
the hall. This lady's abundant jewels were pearls, her manner was
cool and measured; the fashion of her gown and the arrangement
of her lightly powdered hair had the simplicity prescribed in cer-
tain circles whose piety and aristocracy are equally marked. She
might have been, in Germany, the wife of some high official. But
there was something faintly fabulous, after all, in her appearance.
though lent it solely by the pearls she wore: they were well-nigh
priceless, and consisted of ear-rings and a three-stranded necklace,
very long, with gems the size of cherries.

The brother and sisters had risen briskly. They bowed over
their mother's hand to kiss it, she turning away from them, with
a slight smile on her face, which was carefully preserved but
rather sharp-nosed and worn. She addressed a few words in
French to the governess, then moved towards the glass door. The
children followed, the girls in order of age, then the governess,
and last the boy. He chanced to turn before he crossed the thresh-
old, and as there was no one else in the room, his strange, twilit
grey eyes met Aschenbach's, as our traveller sat there with the
paper on his knee, absorbed in looking after the group.

There was nothing singular, of course, in what he had seen.
They had not gone in to dinner before their mother, they had
waited, given her a respectful salute, and but observed the right
and proper forms on entering the room. Yet they had done all
this so expressly, with such self-respecting dignity, discipline, and
sense of duty that Aschenbach was impressed. He lingered still
a few minutes, then he, too, went into the dining-room, where he
was shown a table far off the Polish family, as he noted at once,
with a stirring of regret.

Tired, yet mentally alert, he beguiled the long, tedious meal
with abstract, even with transcendent matters: pondered the mys-
terious harmony that must come to subsist between the individual
human being and the universal law, in order that human beauty
may result; passed on to general problems of form and art, and
came at length to the conclusion that what seemed to him fresh
and happy thoughts were like the flattering inventions of a dream,
which the waking sense proves worthless and insubstantial. He
spent the evening in the park, that was sweet with the odours
of evening--sitting, smoking, wandering about; went to bed be-
times, and passed the night in deep, unbroken sleep, visited, how-
ever, by varied and lively dreams.

The weather next day was no more promising. A land breeze
blew. Beneath a colourless, overcast sky the sea lay sluggish, and
as it were shrunken, so far withdrawn as to leave bare several
rows of long sand-banks. The horizon looked close and prosaic.
When Aschenbach opened his window he thought he smelt the
stagnant odour of the lagoons.

He felt suddenly out of sorts and already began to think of
leaving. Once, years before, after weeks of bright spring weather,
this wind had found him out; it had been so bad as to force him
to flee from the city like a fugitive. And now it seemed beginning
again--the same feverish distaste, the pressure on his temples, the
heavy eyelids. It would be a nuisance to change again; but if the
wind did not turn, this was no place for him. To be on the safe
side, he did not entirely unpack. At nine o'clock he went down
to the buffet, which lay between the hall and the dining-room and
served as breakfast-room.

A solemn stillness reigned here, such as it is the ambition of all
large hotels to achieve. The waiters moved on noiseless feet. A rat-
tling of tea-things, a whispered word--and no other sounds. In a
corner diagonally to the door, two tables off his own, Aschen-
bach saw the Polish girls with their governess. They sat there very
straight, in their stiff blue linen frocks with little turn-over collars
and cuffs, their ash-blond hair newly brushed flat, their eyelids
red from sleep; and handed each other the marmalade. They had
nearly finished their meal. The boy was not there.

Aschcnbach smiled. "Aha, little Phaeax," he thought. "It seems
you are privileged to sleep yourself out." With sudden gaiety he
quoted:

"Oft verdnderten Sclmmck und ivarme Beider und Ruhe."

He took a leisurely breakfast. The porter came up with his
braided cap in his hand, to deliver some letters that had been sent
on. Aschenbach lighted a cigarette and opened a few letters and
thus was still seated to witness the arrival of the sluggard.

He entered through the glass doors and passed diagonally across
the room to his sisters at their table. He walked with extraordi-
nary grace--the carriage of the body, the action of the knee, the
way he set down his foot in its white shoe--it was all so light,
it was at once dainty and proud, it wore an added charm in the
childish shyness which made him twice turn his head as he crossed
the room, made him give a quick glance and then drop his eyes.
He took his seat, with a smile and a murmured word in his soft
and blurry tongue; and Aschenbach, sitting so that he could see
him in profile, was astonished anew, yes, startled, at the godlike
beauty of the human being. The lad had on a light sailor suit of
blue and white striped cotton, with a red silk breast-knot and a
simple white standing collar round the neck--a not very elegant
effect--yet above this collar the head was poised like a flower, in
incomparable loveliness. It was the head of Eros, with the yellow-
ish bloom of Parian marble, with fine serious brows, and dusky
clustering ringlets standing out in soft plenteousness over temples
and ears.

"Good, oh, very good indeed!" thought Aschenbach, assum-
ing the patronizing air of the connoisseur to hide, as artists
will, their ravishment over a masterpiece. "Yes," he went on to
himself, "if it were not that sea and beach were waiting for me,
I should sit here as long as you do." But he went out on that,
passing through the hall, beneath the watchful eye of the func-
tionaries, down the steps and directly across the board walk to the
section of the beach reserved for the guests of the hotel. The
bathing-master, a barefoot old man in linen trousers and sailor
blouse, with a straw hat, showed him the cabin that had been
rented for him, and Aschenbach had him set up table and chair on
the sandy platform before it. Then he dragged the reclining-chair
through the pale yellow sand, closer to the sea, sat down, and
composed himself.

He delighted, as always, in the scene on the beach, the sight of
sophisticated society giving itself over to a simple life at the edge
of the element. The shallow grey sea was already gay with chil-
dren wading, with swimmers, with figures in bright colours lying
on the sand-banks with arms behind their heads. Some were row-
ing in little keelless boats painted red and blue, and laughing when
they capsized. A long row of capanne ran down the beach, with
platforms, where people sat as on verandas, and there was social
life, with bustle and with indolent repose; visits were paid, amid
much chatter, punctilious morning toilettes hob-nobbed with com-
fortable and privileged dishabille. On the hard wet sand close to
the sea figures in white bath-robes or loose wrappings in garish
colours strolled up and down. A mammoth sand-hill had been
built up on Aschenbach's right, the work of children, who had
stuck it full of tiny flags. Vendors of sea-shells, fruitt, and cakes
knelt beside their wares spread out on the sand. A row of cabins
on the left stood obliquely to the others and to the sea, thus form-
ing the boundary of the enclosure on this side; and on the little
veranda in front of one of these a Russian family was encamped;
bearded men with strong white teeth, ripe, indolent women, a
Fraulein from the Baltic provinces, who sat at an easel painting
the sea and tearing her hair in despair; two ugly but good-natured
children and an old maidservant in a head-cloth, with the caress-
ing, servile manner of the born dependent. There they sat to-
gether in grateful enjoyment of their blessings: constantly shout-
ing at their romping children, who paid not the slightest heed;
making jokes in broken Italian to the funny old man who sold
them sweetmeats, kissing each other on the cheeks--no jot con-
cerned that their domesticity was overlooked.

"I'll Stop," thought Aschenbach. "Where could it be better
than here?" With his hands clasped in his lap he let his eyes swim
in the wideness of the sea, his gaze lose focus, blur, and grow
vague in the misty immensity of space. His love of the ocean had
profound sources; the hard-worked artist's longing for rest, his
yearning to seek refuge from the thronging manifold shapes of his
fancy in the bosom of the simple and vast; and another yearning,
opposed to his art and perhaps for that very reason a lure, for
the unorganized, the immeasurable, the eternal--in short, for
nothingness. He whose preoccupation is with excellence longs
fervently to find rest in perfection; and is not nothingness a form
of perfection? As he sat there dreaming thus, deep, deep into the
void, suddenly the margin line of the shore was cut by a human
form. He gathered up his gaze and withdrew it from the illimit-
able, and lo, it was the lovely boy who crossed his vision coming
from the left along the sand. He was barefoot, ready for wading,
the slender legs uncovered above the knee, and moved slowly, yet
with such a proud, light tread as to make it seem he had never
worn shoes. He looked towards the diagonal row of cabins; and
the sight of the Russian family, leading their lives there in joyous
simplicity, distorted his features in a spasm of angry disgust. His
brow darkened, his lips curled, one corner of the mouth was
drawn down in a harsh line that marred the curve of the cheek,
his frown was so heavy that the eyes seemed to sink in as they
uttered beneath the black and vicious language of hate. He looked
down, looked threateningly back once more; then giving it up
with a violent and contemptuous shoulder-shrug, he left his ene-
mies in the rear.

A feeling of delicacy, a qualm, almost like a sense of shame,
made Aschenbach turn away as though he had not seen; he felt
unwilling to take advantage of having been, by chance, privy to
this passionate reaction. But he was in truth both moved and ex-
hilarated--that is to say, he was delighted. This childish exhibi-
tion of fanaticism, directed against the good-naturedest simplicity
in the world--it gave to the godlike and inexpressive the final
human touch. The figure of the half-grown lad, a masterpiece
from nature's own hand, had been significant enough when it
gratified the eye alone; and now it evoked sympathy as well--
the little episode had set it off, lent it a dignity in the onlooker's
eyes that was beyond its years.

Aschenbach listened with still averted head to the boy's voice
announcing his coming to his companions at the sand-heap. The
voice was clear, though a little weak, but they answered, shouting
his name--or his nickname--again and again. Aschenbach was
not without curiosity to learn it, but could make out nothing
more exact than two musical syllables, something like Adgio--or,
oftener still, Adjiu, with a long-drawn-out u at the end. He liked
the melodious sound, and found it fitting; said it over to himself a
few times and turned back with satisfaction to his papers.

Holding his travelling-pad on his knees, he took his fountain-
pen and began to answer various items of his correspondence.
But presently he felt it too great a pity to turn his back, and the
eyes of his mind, for the sake of mere commonplace correspond-
ence, to this scene which was, after all, the most rewarding one
he knew. He put aside his papers and swung round to the sea; in
no long time, beguiled by the voices of the children at play, he
had turned his head and sat resting it against the chair-back, while
he gave himself up to contemplating the activities of the exquisite
Adgio.

His eye found him out at once, the red breast-knot was unmis-
takable. With some nine or ten companions, boys and girls of his
own age and younger, he was busy putting in place an old plank
to serve as a bridge across the ditches between the sand-piles. He
directed the work by shouting and motioning with his head, and
they were all chattering in many tongues--French, Polish, and
even some of the Balkan languages. But his was the name oftenest
on their lips, he was plainly sought after, wooed, admired. One
lad in particular, a Pole like himself, with a name that sounded
something like Jaschiu, a sturdy lad with brilliantined black hair,
in a belted linen suit, was his particular liegeman and friend. Op-
erations at the sand-pile being ended for the time, they two
walked away along the beach, with their arms round each other's
waists, and once the lad Jaschiu gave Adgio a kiss.

Aschenbach felt like shaking a finger at him. "But you, Cri-
tobulus," he thought with a smile, "you I advise to take a year's
leave. That long, at least, you will need for complete recovery."
A vendor came by with strawberries, and Aschenbach made his
second breakfast of the great luscious, dead-ripe fruit. It had
grown very warm, although the sun had not availed to pierce the
heavy layer of mist. His mind felt relaxed, his senses revelled in
this vast and soothing communion with the silence of the sea.
The grave and serious man found sufficient occupation in specu-
lating what name it could be that sounded like Adgio. And with
the help of a few Polish memories he at length fixed on Tadzio,
a shortened form of Thaddeus, which sounded, when called, like
Tadziu or Adziu.

Tadzio was bathing. Aschenbach had lost sight of him for a
moment, then descried him far out in the water, which was shal-
low a very long way--saw his head, and his arm striking out like
an oar. But his watchful family were already on the alert; the
mother and governess called from the veranda in front of their
bathing-cabin, until the lad's name, with its softened consonants
and long-drawn w-sound, seemed to possess the beach like a
rallying-cry; the cadence had something sweet and wild: "Tad-
ziu! Tadziu!" He turned and ran back against the water, churning
the waves to a foam, his head flung high. The sight of this living
figure, virginally pure and austere, with dripping locks, beautiful
as a tender young god, emerging from the depths of sea and sky,
outrunning the element--it conjured up mythologies, it was like
a primeval legend, handed down from the beginning of time, of
the birth of form, of the origin of the gods. With closed lids
Aschenbach listened to this poesy hymning itself silently within
him, and anon he thought it was good to be here and that he
would stop awhile.

Afterwards Tadzio lay on the sand and rested from his bathe,
wrapped in his white sheet, which he wore drawn underneath the
right shoulder, so that his head was cradled on his bare right arm.
And even when Aschenbach read, without looking up, he was
conscious that the lad was there; that it would cost him but the
slightest turn of the head to have the rewarding vision once more
in his purview. Indeed, it was almost as though he sat there to
guard the youth's repose; occupied, of course, with his own af-
fairs, yet alive to the presence of that noble human creature close
at hand. And his heart was stirred, it felt a father's kindness: such
an emotion as the possessor of beauty can inspire in one who has
offered himself up in spirit to create beauty.

At midday he left the beach, returned to the hotel, and was car-
ried up in the lift to his room. There he lingered a little time be-
fore the glass and looked at his own grey hair, his keen and weary
face. And he thought of his fame, and how people gazed respect-
fully at him in the streets, on account of his unerring gift of words
and their power to charm. He called up all the wordly successes
his genius had reaped, all he could remember, even his patent of
nobility. Then went to luncheon down in the dining-room, sat at
his little table and ate. Afterwards he mounted again in the lift, and
a group of young folk, Tadzio among them, pressed with him into
the little compartment. It was the first time Aschenbach had seen
him close at hand, not merely in perspective, and could see and
take account of the details of his humanity. Someone spoke to the
lad, and he, answering, with indescribably lovely smile, stepped
out again, as they had come to the first floor, backwards, with his
eyes cast down. "Beauty makes people self-conscious," Aschen-
bach thought, and considered within himself imperatively why
this should be. He had noted, further, that Tadzio's teeth were im-
perfect, rather jagged and bluish, without a healthy glaze, and
of that peculiar brittle transparency which the teeth of chlorotic
people often show. "He is delicate, he is sickly," Aschenbach
thought. "He will most likely not live to grow old." He did not
try to account for the pleasure the idea gave him.

In the afternoon he spent two hours in his room, then took the
vaporetto to Venice, across the foul-smelling lagoon. He got out
at San Marco, had his tea in the Piazza, and then, as his custom
was, took a walk through the streets. But this walk of his brought
about nothing less than a revolution in his mood and an entire
change in all his plans.

There was a hateful sultriness in the narrow streets. The air was
so heavy that all the manifold smells wafted out of houses, shops,
and cook-shops--smells of oil, perfumery, and so forth--hung
low, like exhalations, not dissipating. Cigarette smoke seemed to
stand in the air, it drifted so slowly away. Today the crowd in
these narrow lanes oppressed the stroller instead of diverting him.
The longer he walked, the more was he in tortures under that
state, which is the product of the sea air and the sirocco and which
excites and enervates at once. He perspired painfully. His eyes
rebelled, his chest was heavy, he felt feverish, the blood throbbed
in his temples. He fled from the huddled, narrow streets of the
commercial city, crossed many bridges, and came into the poor
quarter of Venice. Beggars waylaid him, the canals sickened him
with their evil exhalations. He reached a quiet square, one of those
that exist at the city's heart, forsaken of God and man; there he
rested awhile on the margin of a fountain, wiped his brow, and ad-
mitted to himself that he must be gone.

For the second time, and now quite definitely, the city proved
that in certain weathers it could be directly inimical to his health.
Nothing but sheer unreasoning obstinacy would linger on, hoping
for an unprophesiablc change in the wind. A quick decision was
in place. He could not go home at this stage, neither summer nor
winter quarters would be ready. But Venice had not a monopoly
of sea and shore: there were other spots where these were to be
had without the evil concomitants of lagoon and fever-breeding
vapours. He remembered a little bathing-place not far from
Trieste of which he had had a good report. Why not go thither?
At once, of course, in order that this second change might be
worth the making. He resolved, he rose to his feet and sought the
nearest gondola-landing, where he took a boat and was conveyed
to San Marco through the gloomy windings of many canals, be-
neath balconies of delicate marble traceries flanked by carven
lions; round slippery corners of wall, past melancholy facades with
ancient business shields reflected in the rocking water. It was not
too easy to arrive at his destination, for his gondolier, being in
league with various lace-makers and glass-blowers, did his best to
persuade his. fare to pause, look, and be tempted to buy. Thus the
charm of this bizarre passage through the heart of Venice, even
while it played upon his spirit, yet was sensibly cooled by the
predatory commercial spirit of the fallen queen of the seas.

Once back in his hotel, he announced at the office, even before
dinner, that circumstances unforeseen obliged him to leave early
next morning. The management expressed its regret, it changed
his money and receipted his bill. He dined, and spent the luke-
warm evening in a rocking-chair on the rear terrace, reading the
newspapers. Before he went to bed, he made his luggage ready
against the morning.

His sleep was not of the best, for the prospect of another jour-
ney made him restless. When he opened his window next morning,
the sky was still overcast, but the air seemed fresher--and there
and then his rue began. Had he not given notice too soon? Had he
not let himself be swayed by a slight and momentary indisposition?
If he had only been patient, not lost heart so quickly, tried to
adapt himself to the climate, or even waited for a change in the
weather before deciding! Then, instead of the hurry and flurry of
departure, he would have before him now a morning like yester-
day's on the beach. Too late! He must go on wanting what he had
wanted yesterday. He dressed and at eight o'clock went down to
breakfast.

When he entered the breakfast-room it was empty. Guests came
in while he sat waiting for his order to be filled. As he sipped his
tea he saw the Polish girls enter with their governess, chaste and
morning-fresh, with sleep-reddened eyelids. They crossed the
room and sat down at their table in the window. Behind them
came the porter, cap in hand, to announce that it was time for him
to go. The car was waiting to convey him and other travellers
to the Hotel Excelsior, whence they would go by motor-boat
through the company's private canal to the station. Time pressed.
But Aschenbach found it did nothing of the sort. There still
lacked more than an hour of train-time. He felt irritated at the
hotel habit of getting the guests out of the house earlier than
necessary; and requested the porter to let him breakfast in peace.
The man hesitated and withdrew, only to come back again five
minutes later. The car could wait no longer. Good, then it might
go, and take his trunk with it, Aschenbach answered with some
heat. He would use the public conveyance, in his own time; he
begged them to leave the choice of it to him. The functionary
bowed. Aschenbach, pleased to be rid of him, made a leisurely
meal, and even had a newspaper of the waiter. When at length he
rose, the time was grown very short. And it so happened that at
that moment Tadzio came through the glass doors into the room.

To reach his own table he crossed the traveller's path, and mod-
estly cast down his eyes before the grey-haired man of the loftv
brows--only to lift them again in that sweet way he had and di-
rect his full soft gaze upon Aschenbach's face. Then he was past.
"For the last time, Tadzio," thought the elder man. "It was all too
brief!" Quite unusually for him, he shaped a farewell with his
lips, he actually uttered it, and added: "May God bless you!"
Then he went out, distributed tips, exchanged farewells with the
mild little manager in the frock-coat, and, followed by the porter
with his hand-luggage, left the hotel. On foot as he had come, he
passed through the white-blossoming avenue, diagonally across
the island to the boat-landing. He went on board at once--but the
tale of his journey across the lagoon was a tale of woe, a passage
through the very valley of regrets.

It was the well-known route: through the lagoon, past San
Marco, up the Grand Canal. Aschenbach sat on the circular bench
in the bows, with his elbow on the railing, one hand shading his
eyes. They passed the Public Gardens, once more the princely
charm of the Piazzetta rose up before him and then dropped be-
hind, next came the great row of palaces, the canal curved, and the
splendid marble arches of the Rialto came in sight. The traveller
gazed--and his bosom was torn. The atmosphere of the city, the
faintly rotten scent of swamp and sea, which had driven him to
leave--in what deep, tender, almost painful draughts he breathed
it in! How was it he had not known, had not thought, how much
his heart was set upon it all! What this morning had been slight
regret, some little doubt of his own wisdom, turned now to grief,
to actual wretchedness, a mental agony so sharp that it repeatedly
brought tears to his eyes, while he questioned himself how he
could have foreseen it. The hardest part, the part that more than
once it seemed he could not bear, was the thought that he should
never more see Venice again. Since now for the second time the
place had made him ill, since for the second time he had had to flee
for his life, he must henceforth regard it as a forbidden spot, to be
forever shunned; senseless to try it again, after he had proved him-
self unfit. Yes, if he fled it now, he felt that wounded pride must
prevent his return to this spot where twice he had made actual
bodily surrender. And this conflict between inclination and ca-
pacity all at once assumed, in this middle-aged man's mind, im-
mense weight and importance; the physical defeat seemed a
shameful thing, to be avoided at whatever cost; and he stood
amazed at the ease with which on the day before he had yielded
to it.

Meanwhile the steamer neared the station landing; his anguish
of irresolution amounted almost to panic. To leave seemed to the
sufferer impossible, to remain not less so. Torn thus between two
alternatives, he entered the station. It was very late, he had not a
moment to lose. Time pressed, it scourged him onward. He has-
tened to buy his ticket and looked round in the crowd to find the
hotel porter. The man appeared and said that the trunk had al-
ready gone off. "Gone already?" "Yes, it has gone to Como."
"To Como?" A hasty exchange of words--angry questions from
Aschenbach, and puzzled replies from the porter--at length made
it clear that the trunk had been put with the wrong luggage even
before leaving the hotel, and in company with other trunks was
now well on its way in precisely the wrong direction.

Aschenbach found it hard to wear the right expression as he
heard this news. A reckless joy, a deep incredible mirthfulness
shook him almost as with a spasm. The porter dashed off after the
lost trunk, returning very soon, of course, to announce that his
efforts were unavailing. Aschenbach said he would not travel
without his luggage; that he would go back and wait at the Hotel
des Bains until it turned up. Was the company's motor-boat still
outside? The man said yes, it was at the door. With his native elo-
quence he prevailed upon the ticket-agent to take back the ticket
already purchased; he swore that he would wire, that no pains
should be spared, that the trunk would be restored in the twin-
kling of an eye. And the unbelievable thing came to pass: the
traveller, twenty minutes after he had reached the station, found
himself once more on the Grand Canal on his way back to the
Lido.

What a strange adventure indeed, this right-about face of des-
tiny--incredible, humiliating, whimsical as any dream! To be
passing again, within the hour, these scenes from which in pro-
foundest grief he had but now taken leave forever! The little
swift-moving vessel, a furrow of foam at its prow, tacking with
droll agility between steamboats and gondolas, went like a shot to
its goal; and he, its sole passenger, sat hiding the panic and thrills
of a truant schoolboy beneath a mask of forced resignation. His
breast still heaved from time to time with a burst of laughter over
the contretemps. Things could not, he told himself, have fallen
out more luckily. There would be the necessary explanations, a
few astonished faces--then all would be well once more, a mis-
chance prevented, a grievous error set right; and all he had thought
to have left forever was his own once more, his for as long as he
liked....And did the boat's swift motion deceive him, or was
the wind now coming from the sea?

The waves struck against the tiled sides of the narrow canal.
At Hotel Excelsior the automobile omnibus awaited the returned
traveller and bore him along by the crisping waves back to the
Hotel des Bains. The little mustachioed manager in the frock-
coat came down the steps to greet him.

In dulcet tones he deplored the mistake, said how painful it was
to the management and himself; applauded Aschenbach's resolve
to stop on until the errant trunk came back; his former room, alas,
was already taken, but another as good awaited his approval. "Pas
de chance, monsieur," said the Swiss lift-porter, with a smile, as he
conveyed him upstairs. And the fugitive was soon quartered in
another room which in situation and furnishings almost precisely
resembled the first.

He laid out the contents of his hand-bag in their wonted places;
then, tired out, dazed by the whirl of the extraordinary forenoon,
subsided into the arm-chair by the open window. The sea wore a
pale-green cast, the air felt thinner and purer, the beach with its
cabins and boats had more colour, notwithstanding the sky was
still grey. Aschenbach, his hands folded in his lap, looked out. He
felt rejoiced to be back, yet displeased with his vacillating moods,
his ignorance of his own real desires. Thus for nearly an hour he
sat, dreaming, resting, barely thinking. At midday he saw Tadzio,
in his striped sailor suit with red breast-knot, coming up from the
sea, across the barrier and along the board walk to the hotel. As-
chenbach recognized him, even at this height, knew it was he
before he actually saw him, had it in mind to say to himself.
"Well, Tadzio, so here you are again too!" But the casual greet-
ing died away before it reached his lips, slain by the truth in his
heart. He felt the rapture of his blood, the poignant pleasure, and
realized that it was for Tadzio's sake the leavetaking had been so
hard.

He sat quite still, unseen at his high post, and looked within him-
self. His features were lively, he lifted his brows; a smile, alert,
inquiring, vivid, widened the mouth. Then he raised his head, and
with both hands, hanging limp over the chair-arms, he described
a slow motion, palms outward, a lifting and turning movement, as
though to indicate a wide embrace. It was a gesture of welcome, a
calm and deliberate acceptance of what might come.


Now daily the naked god with cheeks aflame drove his four
fire-breathing steeds through heaven's spaces; and with him
streamed the strong east wind that fluttered his yellow locks. A
sheen, like white satin, lay over all the idly rolling sea's expanse.
The sand was burning hot. Awnings of rust-coloured canvas were
spanned before the bathing-huts, under the ether's quivering silver-
blue; one spent the morning hours within the small, sharp square
of shadow they purveyed. But evening too was rarely lovely: bal-
samic with the breath of flowers and shrubs from the near-by
park, while overhead the constellations circled in their spheres,
and the murmuring of the night-girted sea swelled softly up and
whispered to the soul. Such nights as these contained the joyful
promise of a sunlit morrow, brim-full of sweetly ordered idleness,
studded thick with countless precious possibilities.

The guest detained here by so happy a mischance was far from
finding the return of his luggage a ground for setting out anew.
For two days he had suffered slight inconvenience and had to dine
in the large salon in his travelling-clothes. Then the lost trunk was
set down in his room, and he hastened to unpack, filling presses
and drawers with his possessions. He meant to stay on--and on;
he rejoiced in the prospect of wearing a silk suit for the hot morn-
ing hours on the beach and appearing in acceptable evening dress at
dinner.

He was quick to fall in with the pleasing monotony of this man-
ner of life, readily enchanted by its mild soft brilliance and ease.
And what a spot it is, indeed!--uniting the charms of a luxurious
bathing-resort by a southern sea with the immediate nearness of a
unique and marvellous city. Aschenbach was not pleasure-loving.
Always, wherever and whenever it was the order of the day to be
merry, to refrain from labour and make glad the heart, he would
soon be conscious of the imperative summons--and especially was
this so in his youth--back to the high fatigues, the sacred and
fasting service that consumed his days. This spot and this alone
had power to beguile him, to relax his resolution, to make him
glad. At times--of a forenoon perhaps, as he lay in the shadow of
his awning, gazing out dreamily over the blue of the southern sea,
or in the mildness of the night, beneath the wide starry sky, en-
sconced among the cushions of the gondola that bore him Lido-
wards after an evening on the Piazza, while the gay lights faded
and the melting music of the serenades died away on his ear--he
would think of his mountain home, the theatre of his summer
labours. There clouds hung low and trailed through the garden,
violent storms extinguished the lights of the house at night, and the
ravens he fed swung in the tops of the fir trees. And he would feel
transported to Elysium, to the ends of the earth, to a spot most
carefree for the sons of men, where no snow is, and no winter, no
storms or downpours of rain; where Oceanus sends a mild and
cooling breath, and days flow on in blissful idleness, without effort
or struggle, entirely dedicate to the sun and the feasts of the sun.

Aschenbach saw the boy Tadzio almost constantly. The narrow
confines of their world of hotel and beach, the daily round fol-
lowed by all alike, brought him in close, almost uninterrupted
touch with the beautiful lad. He encountered him everywhere--
in the salons of the hotel, on the cooling rides to the city and back,
among the splendours of the Piazza, and besides all this in many
another going and coming as chance vouchsafed. But it was the
regular morning hours on the beach which gave him his happiest
opportunity to study and admire the lovely apparition. Yes, this
immediate happiness, this daily recurring boon at the hand of cir-
cumstance, this it was that filled him with content, with joy in life,
enriched his stay, and lingered out the row of sunny days that fell
into place so pleasantly one behind the other.

He rose early--as early as though he had a panting press of
work--and was among the first on the beach, when the sun was
still benign and the sea lay dazzling white in its morning slumber.
He gave the watchman a friendly good-morning and chatted with
the barefoot, white-haired old man who prepared his place, spread
the awning, trundled out the chair and table onto the little plat-
form. Then he settled down; he had three or four hours before
the sun reached its height and the fearful climax of its power;
three or four hours while the sea went deeper and deeper blue;
three or four hours in which to watch Tadzio.

He would see him come up, on the left, along the margin of the
sea; or from behind, between the cabins; or, with a start of joyful
surprise, would discover that he himself was late, and Tadzio al-
ready down, in the blue and white bathing-suit that was now his
only wear on the beach; there and engrossed in his usual activities
in the sand, beneath the sun. It was a sweetly idle, trifling, fitful
life, of play and rest, of strolling, wading, digging, fishing, swim-
ming, lying on the sand. Often the women sitting on the platform
would call out to him in their high voices: "Tadziu! Tadziu!"
and he would come running and waving his arms, eager to tell
them what he had done, show them what he had found, what
caught--shells, seahorses, jelly-fish, and sidewards-running crabs.
Aschenbach understood not a word he said; it might be the sheer-
est commonplace, in his ear it became mingled harmonies. Thus
the lad's foreign birth raised his speech to music; a wanton sun
showered splendour on him, and the noble distances of the sea
formed the background which set off his figure.

Soon the observer knew every line and pose of this form that
limned itself so freely against sea and sky; its every loveliness,
though conned by heart, yet thrilled him each day afresh; his ad-
miration knew no bounds, the delight of his eye was unending.
Once the lad was summoned to speak to a guest who was waiting
for his mother at their cabin. He ran up, ran dripping wet out of
the sea, tossing his curls, and put out his hand, standing with his
weight on one leg, resting the other foot on the toes; as he stood
there in a posture of suspense the turn of his body was enchanting,
while his features wore a look half shamefaced, half conscious of
the duty breeding laid upon him to please. Or he would lie at full
length, with his bath-robe around him, one slender young arm
resting on the sand, his chin in the hollow of his hand; the lad they
called Jaschiu squatting beside him, paying him court. There
could be nothing lovelier on earth than the smile and look with
which the playmate thus singled out rewarded his humble friend
and vassal. Again, he might be at the water's edge, alone, removed
from his family, quite close to Aschenbach; standing erect, his
hands clasped at the back of his neck, rocking slowly on the balls
of his feet, day-dreaming away into blue space, while little waves
ran up and bathed his toes. The ringlets of honey-coloured hair
clung to his temples and neck, the fine down along the upper ver-
tebrae was yellow in the sunlight; the thin envelope of flesh cover-
ing the torso betrayed the delicate outlines of the ribs and the
symmetry of the breast-structure. His armpits were still as smooth
as a statue's, smooth the glistening hollows behind the knees, where
the blue network of veins suggested that the body was formed of
some stuff more transparent than mere flesh. What discipline,
what precision of thought were expressed by the tense youthful

Perfection of this form! And yet the pure, strong will which had
aboured in darkness and succeeded in bringing this godlike work
of art to the light of day--was it not known and familiar to him,
the artist? Was not the same force at work in himself when he
strove in cold fury to liberate from the marble mass of language
the slender forms of his art which he saw with the eye of his mind
and would body forth to men as the mirror and image of spiritual
beauty?

Mirror and image! His eyes took in the proud bearing of that
figure there at the blue water's edge; with an outburst of rapture
he told himself that what he saw was beauty's very essence; form
as divine thought, the single and pure perfection which resides in
the mind, of which an image and likeness, rare and holy, was here
raised up for adoration. This was very frenzy--and without a
scruple, nay, eagerly, the aging artist bade it come. His mind was
in travail, his whole mental background in a state of flux. Memory
flung up in him the primitive thoughts which are youth's inher-
itance, but which with him had remained latent, never leaping up
into a blaze. Has it not been written that the sun beguiles our at-
tention from things of the intellect to fix it on things of the sense?
The sun, they say, dazzles; so bewitching reason and memory that
the soul for very pleasure forgets its actual state, to cling with
doting on the loveliest of all the objects she shines on. Yes, and
then it is only through the medium of some corporeal being that it
can raise itself again to contemplation of higher things. Amor, in
sooth, is like the mathematician who in order to give children a
knowledge of pure form must do so in the language of pictures;
so, too, the god, in order to make visible the spirit, avails himself
of the forms and colours of human youth, gilding it with all im-
aginable beauty that it may serve memory as a tool, the very sight
of which then sets us afire with pain and longing.

Such were the devotee's thoughts, such the power of his emo-
tions. And the sea, so bright with glancing sunbeams, wove in his
mind a spell and summoned up a lovely picture: there was the
ancient plane-tree outside the walls of Athens, a hallowed, shady
spot, fragrant with willow-blossom and adorned with images and
votive offerings in honour of the nymphs and Achelous. Clear ran
the smooth-pebbled stream at the foot of the spreading tree. Crick-
ets were fiddling. But on the gentle grassy slope, where one could
lie yet hold the head erect, and shelter from the scorching heat,
two men reclined, an elder with a younger, ugliness paired with
beauty and wisdom with grace. Here Socrates held forth to youth-
ful Phaedrus upon the nature of virtue and desire, wooing him with
insinuating wit and charming turns of phrase. He told him of the
shuddering and unwonted heat that come upon him whose heart
is open, when his eye beholds an image of eternal beauty; spoke of
the impious and corrupt, who cannot conceive beauty though
they see its image, and are incapable of awe; and of the fear and
reverence felt by the noble soul when he beholds a godlike face or
a form which is a good image of beauty: how as he gazes he wor-
ships the beautiful one and scarcely dares to look upon him, but
would offer sacrifice as to an idol or a god, did he not fear to be
thought stark mad. "For beauty, my Phaedrus, beauty alone, is
lovely and visible at once. For, mark you, it is the sole aspect of
the spiritual which we can perceive through our senses, or bear
so to perceive. Else what should become of us, if the divine, if
reason and virtue and truth, were to speak to us through the
senses? Should we not perish and be consumed by love, as Semele
aforetime was by Zeus? So beauty, then, is the beauty-lover's
way to the spirit--but only the way, only the means, my little
Phaedrus."...And then, sly arch-lover that he was, he said the
subtlest thing of all: that the lover was nearer the divine than the
beloved; for the god was in the one but not in the other--perhaps
the tenderest, most mocking thought that ever was thought, and
source of all the guile and secret bliss the lover knows.

Thought that can merge wholly into feeling, feeling that can
merge wholly into thought--these are the artist's highest joy.
And our solitary felt in himself at this moment power to command
and wield a thought that thrilled with emotion, an emotion as pre-
cise and concentrated as thought: namely, that nature herself
shivers with ecstasy when the mind bows down in homage before
beauty. He felt a sudden desire to write. Eros, indeed, we are told,
loves idleness, and for idle hours alone was he created. But in this '
crisis the violence of our sufferer's seizure was directed almost
wholly towards production, its occasion almost a matter of indif-
ference. News had reached him on his travels that a certain prob-
lem had been raised, the intellectual world challenged for its opin-
ion on a great and burning question of art and taste. By nature and
experience the theme was his own; and he could not resist the
temptation to set it off in the glistering foil of his words. He
would write, and moreover he would write in Tadzio's presence.
This lad should be in a sense his model, his style should follow the
lines of this figure that seemed to him divine; he would snatch
up this beauty into the realms of the mind, as once the eagle bore
the Trojan shepherd aloft. Never had the pride of the word been
so sweet to him, never had he known so well that Eros is in the
word, as in those perilous and precious hours when he sat at his
rude table, within the shade of his awning, his idol full in his view
and the music of his voice in his ears, and fashioned his little essay
after the model Tadzio's beauty set: that page and a half of
choicest prose, so chaste, so lofty, so poignant with feeling, which
would shortly be the wonder and admiration of the multitude.
Verily it is well for the world that it sees only the beauty of the
completed work and not its origins nor the conditions whence it
sprang; since knowledge of the artist's inspiration might often but
confuse and alarm and so prevent the full effect of its excellence.
Strange hours, indeed, these were, and strangely unnerving the
labour that filled them! Strangely fruitful intercourse this, be-
tween one body and another mind! When Aschenbach put aside
his work and left the beach he felt exhausted, he felt broken--
conscience reproached him, as it were after a debauch.

Next morning on leaving the hotel he stood at the top of the
stairs leading down from the terrace and saw Tadzio in front of
him on his way to the beach. The lad had just reached the gate in
the railings, and he was alone. Aschenbach felt, quite simply, a
wish to overtake him, to address him and have the pleasure of his
reply and answering look; to put upon a blithe and friendly foot-
ing his relation with this being who all unconsciously had so
greatly heightened and quickened his emotions. The lovely youth
moved at a loitering pace--he might easily be overtaken; and
Aschenbach hastened his own step. He reached him on the board
walk that ran behind the bathing-cabins, and all but put out his
hand to lay it on shoulder or head, while his lips parted to utter a
friendly salutation in French. But--perhaps from the swift pace
of his last few steps--he found his heart throbbing unpleasantly
fast, while his breath came in such quick pants that he could only
have gasped had he tried to speak. He hesitated, sought after
self-control, was suddenly panic-stricken lest the boy notice him
hanging there behind him and look round. Then he gave up, aban-
doned his plan, and passed him with bent head and hurried step.

"Too late! Too late!" he thought as he went by. But was it too
late? This step he had delayed to take might so easily have put
everything in a lighter key, have led to a sane recovery from his
folly. But the truth may have been that the aging man did not
want to be cured, that his illusion was far too dear to him. Who
shall unriddle the puzzle of the artist nature? who understands
that mingling of discipline and licence in which it stands so
deeply rooted? For not to be able to want sobriety is licentious
folly. Aschenbach was no longer disposed to self-analysis. He had
no taste for it; his self-esteem, the attitude of mind proper to his
years, his maturity and single-mindedness, disinclined him to look
within himself and decide whether it was constraint or puerile sen-
suality that had prevented him from carrying out his project. He
felt confused, he was afraid someone, if only the watchman,
might have been observing his behaviour and final surrender--
very much he feared being ridiculous. And all the time he was
laughing at himself for his serio-comic seizure. "Quite crestfal-
len," he thought. "I was like the gamecock that lets his wings
droop in the battle. That must be the Love-God himself, that
makes us hang our heads at sight of beauty and weighs our proud
spirits low as the ground." Thus he played with the idea--he
embroidered upon it, and was too arrogant to admit fear of an
emotion.

The term he had set for his holiday passed by unheeded; he had
no thought of going home. Ample funds had been sent him. His
sole concern was that the Polish family might leave, and a chance
question put to the hotel barber elicited the information that they
had come only very shortly before himself. The sun browned his
face and hands, the invigorating salty air heightened his emotional
energies. Heretofore he had been wont to give out at once, in
some new effort, the powers accumulated by sleep or food or out-
door air; but now the strength that flowed in upon him with each
day of sun and sea and idleness he let go up in one extravagant
gush of emotional intoxication.

His sleep was fitful; the priceless, equable days were divided one
from the next by brief nights filled with happy unrest. He went,
indeed, early to bed, for at nine o'clock, with the departure of
Tadzio from the scene, the day was over for him. But in the faint
greyness of the morning a tender pang would go through him as
his heart was minded of its adventure; he could no longer bear
his pillow and, rising, would wrap himself against the early chill
and sit down by the window to await the sunrise. Awe of the
miracle filled his soul new-risen from its sleep. Heaven, earth, and
its waters yet lay enfolded in the ghostly, glassy pallor of dawn;
one paling star still swam in the shadowy vast. But there came a
breath, a winged word from far and inaccessible abodes, that Eos
was rising from the side of her spouse; and there was that first
sweet reddening of the farthest strip of sea and sky that manifests
creation to man's sense. She neared, the goddess, ravisher of youth,
who stole away Cleitos and Cephalus and, defying all the envious
Olympians, tasted beautiful Orion's love. At the world's edge be-
gan a strewing of roses, a shining and a blooming ineffably pure;
baby cloudlets hung illumined, like attendant amoretti, in the blue
and blushful haze; purple effulgence fell upon the sea, that seemed
to heave it forward on its welling waves; from horizon to zenith
went great quivering thrusts like golden lances, the gleam became
a glare; without a sound, with godlike violence, glow and glare
and rolling flames streamed upwards, and with flying hoof-beats
the steeds of the sun-god mounted the sky. The lonely watcher
sat, the splendour of the god shone on him, he closed his eyes and
let the glory kiss his lids. Forgotten feelings, precious pangs of his
youth, quenched long since by the stern service that had been his
life and now returned so strangely metamorphosed--he recog-
nized them with a puzzled, wondering smile. He mused, he
dreamed, his lips slowly shaped a name; still smiling, his face
turned scawards and his hands lying folded in his lap, he fell
asleep once more as he sat.

But that day, which began so fierily and festally, was not like
other days; it was transmuted and gilded with mythical signifi-
cance. For whence could come the breath, so mild and meaning-
ful, like a whisper from higher spheres, that played about temple
and ear? Troops of small feathery white clouds ranged over the
sky, like grazing herds of the gods. A stronger wind arose, and
Poseidon's horses ran up, arching their manes, among them too
the steers of him with the purpled locks, who lowered their horns
and bellowed as they came on; while like prancing goats the waves
on the farther strand leaped among the craggy rocks. It was a
world possessed, peopled by Pan, that closed round the spell-
bound man, and his doting heart conceived the most delicate
fancies. When the sun was going down behind Venice, he would
sometimes sit on a bench in the park and watch Tadzio, white-
clad, with gay-coloured sash, at play there on the rolled gravel
with his ball; and at such times it was not Tadzio whom he saw,
but Hyacinthus, doomed to die because two gods were rivals for
his love. Ah, yes, he tasted the envious pangs that Zephyr knew
when his rival, bow and cithara, oracle and all forgot, played with
the beauteous youth; he watched the discus, guided by torturing
jealousy, strike the beloved head; paled as he received the broken
body in his arms, and saw the flower spring up, watered by that
sweet blood and signed forevermore with his lament.

There can be no relation more strange, more critical, than that
between two beings who know each other only with their eyes,
who meet daily, yes, even hourly, eye each other with a fixed
regard, and yet by some whim or freak of convention feel con-
strained to act like strangers. Uneasiness rules between them, un-
slaked curiosity, a hysterical desire to give rein to their suppressed
impulse to recognize and address each other; even, actually, a sort
of strained but mutual regard. For one human being instinctively
feels respect and love' for another human being so long as he does
not know him well enough to judge him; and that he does not,
the craving he feels is evidence.

Some sort of relation and acquaintanceship was perforce set up
between Aschenbach and the youthful Tadzio; it was with a thrill
of joy the older man perceived that the lad was not entirely un-
responsive to all the tender notice lavished on him. For instance,
what should move the lovely youth, nowadays when he descended
to the beach, always to avoid the board walk behind the bathing-
huts and saunter along the sand, passing Aschenbach's tent in
front, sometimes so unnecessarily close as almost to graze his table
or chair? Could the power of an emotion so beyond his own so
draw, so fascinate its innocent object? Daily Aschenbach would
wait for Tadzio. Then sometimes, on his approach, he would pre-
tend to be preoccupied and let the charmer pass unregarded by.
But sometimes he looked up, and their glances met; when that
happened both were profoundly serious. The elder's dignified and
cultured mien let nothing appear of his inward state; but in Tad-
zio's eyes a question lay--he faltered in his step, gazed on the
ground, then up again with that ineffably sweet look he had; and
when he was past, something in his bearing seemed to say that
only good breeding hindered him from turning round.

But once, one evening, it fell out differently. The Polish brother
and sisters, with their governess, had missed the evening meal, and
Aschenbach had noted the fact with concern. He was restive over
their absence, and after dinner walked up and down in front of
the hotel, in evening dress and a straw hat; when suddenly he
saw the nunlike sisters with their companion appear in the light
of the arc-lamps, and four paces behind them Tadzio. Evidently
they came from the steamer-landing, having dined for some rea-
son in Venice. It had been chilly on the lagoon, for Tadzio wore
a dark-blue reefer-jacket with gilt buttons, and a cap to match.
Sun and sea air could not burn his skin, it was the same creamy
marble hue as at first--though he did look a little pale, either from
the cold or in the bluish moonlight of the arc-lamps. The shapely
brows were so delicately drawn, the eyes so deeply dark--lovelier
he was than words could say, and as often the thought visited
Aschenbach, and brought its own pang, that language could but
extol, not reproduce, the beauties of the sense.

The sight of that dear form was unexpected, it had appeared
unhoped-for, without giving him time to compose his features.
Joy, surprise, and admiration might have painted themselves quite
openly upon his face--and just at this second it happened that
Tadzio smiled. Smiled at Aschenbach, unabashed and friendly, a
peaking, winning, captivating smile, with slowly parting lips.
With such a smile it might be that Narcissus bent over the mirror-
ing pool, a smile profound, infatuated, lingering, as he put out his
arms to the reflection of his own beauty; the lips just slightly
pursed, perhaps half-realizing his own folly in trying to kiss the
cold lips of his shadow--with a mingling of coquetry and curi-
osity and a faint unease, enthralling and enthralled.

Aschenbach received that smile and turned away with it as
though entrusted with a fatal gift. So shaken was he that he had
to flee from the lighted terrace and front gardens and seek out
with hurried steps the darkness of the park at the rear. Reproaches
strangely mixed of tenderness and remonstrance burst from him:
"How dare you smile like that! No one is allowed to smile like
that!" He flung himself on a bench, his composure gone to the
winds, and breathed in the nocturnal fragrance of the garden. He
leaned back, with hanging arms, quivering from head to foot, and
quite unmanned he whispered the hackneyed phrase of love and
longing--impossible in these circumstances, absurd, abject, ridic-
ulous enough, yet sacred too, and not unworthy of honour even
here: "I love you!"


In the fourth week of his stay on the Lido, Gustave von
Aschenbach made certain singular observations touching the
world about him. He noticed, in the first place, that though the
season was approaching its height, yet the number of guests de-
clined and, in particular, that the German tongue had suffered a
rout, being scarcely or never heard in the land. At table and on
the beach he caught nothing but foreign words. One day at the
barber's--where he was now a frequent visitor--he heard some-
thing rather startling. The barber mentioned a German family
who had just left the Lido after a brief stay, and rattled on in his
obsequious way: "The signore is not leaving--he has no fear of
the sickness, has he?" Aschenbach looked at him. "The sick-
ness?" he repeated. Whereat the prattler fell silent, became very
busy all at once, affected not to hear. When Aschenbach persisted
he said he really knew nothing at all about it, and tried in a fresh
burst of eloquence to drown the embarrassing subject.

That was one forenoon. After luncheon Aschenbach had him-
self ferried across to Venice, in a dead calm, under a burning sun;
driven by his mania, he was following the Polish young folk,
whom he had seen with their companion, taking the way to the
landing-stage. He did not find his idol on the Piazza. But as he sat
there at tea, at a little round table on the shady side, suddenly he
noticed a peculiar odour, which, it seemed to him now, had been
in the air for days without his being aware: a sweetish, medicinal
smell, associated with wounds and disease and suspect cleanliness.
He sniffed and pondered and at length recognized it; finished his
tea and left the square at the end facing the cathedral. In the nar-
row space the stench grew stronger. At the street corners placards
were stuck up, in which the city authorities warned the popula-
tion against the danger of certain infections of the gastric system,
prevalent during the heated season; advising them not to eat
oysters or other shell-fish and not to use the canal waters. The
ordinance showed every sign of minimizing an existing situation.
Little groups of people stood about silently in the squares and on
the bridges; the traveller moved among them, watched and lis-
tened and thought.

He spoke to a shopkeeper lounging at his door among dangling
coral necklaces and trinkets of artificial amethyst, and asked him
about the disagreeable odour. The man looked at him, heavy-
eyed, and hastily pulled himself together. "Just a formal precau-
tion, signore," he said, with a gesture. "A police regulation we
have to put up with. The air is sultry--the sirocco is not whole-
some, as the signore knows. Just a precautionary measure, you
understand--probably unnecessary. . . ." Aschenbach thanked
him and passed on. And on the boat that bore him back to the
Lido he smelt the germicide again.

On reaching his hotel he sought the table in the lobby and
buried himself in the newspapers. The foreign-language sheets had
nothing. But in the German papers certain rumours were men-
tioned, statistics given, then officially denied, then the good faith
of the denials called in question. The departure of the German
and Austrian contingent was thus made plain. As for other na-
tionals, they knew or suspected nothing--they were still undis-
turbed. Aschenbach tossed the newspapers back on the table. "It
ought to be kept quiet," he thought, aroused. "It should not be
talked about." And he felt in his heart a curious elation at these
events impending in the world about him. Passion is like crime: it
does not thrive on the established order and the common round; it
welcomes every blow dealt the bourgeois structure, every weak-
ening of the social fabric, because therein it feels a sure hope of its
own advantage. These things that were going on in the unclean
alleys of Venice, under cover of an official hushing-up policy--
they gave Aschenbach a dark satisfaction. The city's evil secret
mingled with the one in the depths of his heart--and he would
have staked all he possessed to keep it, since in his infatuation he
cared for nothing but to keep Tadzio here, and owned to himself,
not without horror, that he could not exist were the lad to pass
from his sight.

He was no longer satisfied to owe his communion with his
charmer to chance and the routine of hotel life; he had begun to
follow and waylay him. On Sundays, for example, the Polish
family never appeared on the beach. Aschenbach guessed they
went to mass at San Marco and pursued them thither. He passed
from the glare of the Piazza into the golden twilight of the holy
place and found him he sought bowed in worship over a prie-dieu.
He kept in the background, standing on the fissured mosaic pave-
ment among the devout populace, that knelt and muttered and
made the sign of the cross; and the crowded splendour of the
oriental temple weighed voluptuously on his sense. A heavily
ornate priest intoned and gesticulated before the altar, where little
candle-flames flickered helplessly in the reek of incense-breathing
smoke; and with that cloying sacrificial smell another seemed to
mingle--the odour of the sickened city. But through all the
glamour and glitter Aschenbach saw the exquisite creature there
in front turn his head, seek out and meet his lover's eye.

The crowd streamed out through the portals into the brilliant
square thick with fluttering doves, and the fond fool stood aside
in the vestibule on the watch. He saw the Polish family leave the
church. The children took ceremonial leave of their mother, and
she turned towards the Piazzetta on her way home, while his
charmer and the cloistered sisters, with their governess, passed be-
neath the clock tower into the Merceria. When they were a few
paces on, he followed--he stole behind them on their walk
through the city. When they paused, he did so too; when they
turned round, he fled into inns and courtyards to let them pass.
Once he lost them from view, hunted feverishly over bridges and
in filthy culs-de-sac, only to confront them suddenly in a narrow
passage whence there was no escape, and experience a moment of
panic fear. Yet it would be untrue to say he suffered. Mind and
heart were drunk with passion, his footsteps guided by the dae-
monic power whose pastime it is to trample on human reason
and dignity.

Tadzio and his sisters at length took a gondola. Aschenbach hid
behind a portico or fountain while they embarked, and directly
they pushed off did the same. In a furtive whisper he told the boat-
man he would tip him well to follow at a little distance the other
gondola, just rounding a corner, and fairly sickened at the man's
quick, sly grasp and ready acceptance of the go-between's role.

Leaning back among soft, black cushions he swayed gently in
the wake of the other black-snouted bark, to which the strength
of his passion chained him. Sometimes it passed from his view,
and then he was assailed by an anguish or unrest. But his guide
appeared to have long practice in affairs like these; always, by
dint of short cuts or deft manoeuvres, he contrived to overtake the
coveted sight. The air was heavy and foul, the sun burnt down
through a slate-coloured haze. Water slapped gurgling against
wood and stone. The gondolier's cry, half warning, half salute,
was answered with singular accord from far within the silence
of the labyrinth. They passed little gardens, high up the crum-
bling wall, hung with clustering white and purple flowers that
sent down an odour of almonds. Moorish lattices showed shadowy
in the gloom. The marble steps of a church descended into the
canal, and on them a beggar squatted, displaying his misery to
view, showing the whites of his eyes, holding out his hat for alms.
Farther on a dealer in antiquities cringed before his lair, inviting
the passer-by to enter and be duped. Yes, this was Venice, this
the fair frailty that fawned and that betrayed, half fairy-tale, half
snare; the city in whose stagnating air the art of painting once put
forth so lusty a growth, and where musicians were moved to ac-
cords so weirdly lulling and lascivious. Our adventurer felt his
senses wooed by this voluptuousness of sight and sound, tasted
his secret knowledge that the city sickened and hid its sickness
for love of gain, and bent an ever more unbridled leer on the gon-
dola that glided on before him.

It came at last to this - that his frenzy left him capacity for
nothing' else but to pursue his flame; to dream of him absent, to
lavish, loverlike, endearing terms on his mere shadow. He was
alone, he was a foreigner, he was sunk deep in this belated bliss
of his--all which enabled him to pass unblushing through experi-
ences well-nigh unbelievable. One night, returning late from
Venice, he paused by his beloved's chamber door in the second
storey, leaned his head against the panel, and remained there long,
in utter drunkenness, powerless to tear himself away, blind to
the danger of being caught in so mad an attitude.

And yet there were not wholly lacking moments when he
paused and reflected, when in consternation he asked himself what
path was this on which he had set his foot. Like most other men
of parts and attainments, he had an aristocratic interest in his for-
bears, and when he achieved a success he liked to think he had
gratified them, compelled their admiration and regard. He thought
of them now, involved as he was in this illicit adventure, seized
of these exotic excesses of feeling; thought of their stern self-
command and decent manliness, and gave a melancholy smile.
What would they have said? What, indeed, would they have said
to his entire life, that varied to the point of degeneracy from
theirs? This life in the bonds of art, had not he himself, in the days
of his youth and in the very spirit of those bourgeois forefathers,
pronounced mocking judgment upon it? And yet, at bottom, it
had been so like their own! It had been a service, and he a sol-
dier, like some of them; and art was war--a grilling, exhausting
struggle that nowadays wore one out before one could grow old.
It had been a life of self-conquest, a life against odds, dour, stead-
fast, abstinent; he had made it symbolical of the kind of over-
strained heroism the time admired, and he was entitled to call it
manly, even courageous. He wondered if such a life might not
be somehow specially pleasing in the eyes of the god who had
him in his power. For Eros had received most countenance among
the most valiant nations--yes, were we not told that in their cities
prowess made him flourish exceedingly? And many heroes of
olden time had willingly borne his yoke, not counting any hu-
miliation such if it happened by the god's decree; vows, prostra-
tions, self-abasements, these were no source of shame to the lover;
rather they reaped him praise and honour.

Thus did the fond man's folly condition his thoughts; thus did
he seek to hold his dignity upright in his own eyes. And all the
while he kept doggedly on the traces of the disreputable secret
the city kept hidden at its heart, just as he kept his own--and all
that he learned fed his passion with vague, lawless hopes. He
turned over newspapers at cafes, bent on finding a report on the
progress of the disease; and in the German sheets, which had
ceased to appear on the hotel table, he found a series of contradic-
tory statements. The deaths, it was variously asserted, ran to
twenty, to forty, to a hundred or more; yet in the next day's issue
the existence of the pestilence was, if not roundly denied, re-
ported as a matter of a few sporadic cases such as might be
brought into a seaport town. After that the warnings would break
out again, and the protests against the unscrupulous game the
authorities were playing. No definite information was to be had.

And yet our solitary felt he had a sort of first claim on a share
in the unwholesome secret; he took a fantastic satisfaction in put-
ting leading questions to such persons as were interested to con-
ceal it, and forcing them to explicit untruths by way of denial.
One day he attacked the manager, that small, soft-stepping man
in the French frock-coat, who was moving about among the
guests at luncheon, supervising the service and making himself
socially agreeable. He paused at Aschenbach's table to exchange
a greeting, and the guest put a question, with a negligent, casual
air: "Why in the world are they forever disinfecting the city of
Venice?" "A police regulation," the adroit one replied; "a pre-
cautionary measure, intended to protect the health of the public
during this unseasonably warm and sultry weather." "Very
praiseworthy of the police," Aschenbach gravely responded.
After a further exchange of meteorological commonplaces the
manager passed on.

It happened that a band of street musicians came to perform
in the hotel gardens that evening after dinner. They grouped
themselves beneath an iron stanchion supporting an arc-light, two
women and two men, and turned their faces, that shone white in
the glare, up towards the guests who sat on the hotel terrace en-
joying this popular entertainment along with their coffee and iced
drinks. The hotel lift-boys, waiters, and office staff stood in the
doorway and listened; the Russian family displayed the usual Rus-
sian absorption in their enjoyment--they had their chairs put
down into the garden to be nearer the singers and sat there in a
half-circle with gratitude painted on their features, the old serf
in her turban erect behind their chairs.

These strolling players were adepts at mandolin, guitar, har-
monica, even compassing a reedy violin. Vocal numbers alternated
with instrumental, the younger woman, who had a high shrill
voice, joining in a love-duet with the sweetly falsettoing tenor.
The actual head of the company, however, and incontestably its
most gifted member, was the other man, who played the guitar.
He was a sort of baritone buffo; with no voice to speak of, but
possessed of a pantomimic gift and remarkable burlesque elan.
Often he stepped out of the group and advanced towards the
terrace, guitar in hand, and his audience rewarded his sallies with
bursts of laughter. The Russians in their parterre seats were be-
side themselves with delight over this display of southern vivacity;
their shouts and screams of applause encouraged him to bolder
and bolder flights.

Aschenbach sat near the balustrade, a glass of pomegranate-juice
and soda-water sparkling ruby-red before him, with which he now
and then moistened his lips. His nerves drank in thirstily the un-
lovely sounds, the vulgar and sentimental tunes, for passion para-
lyses good taste and makes its victim accept with rapture what a'
man in his senses would either laugh at or turn from with disgust.
Idly he sat and watched the antics of the buffoon with his face
set in a fixed and painful smile, while inwardly his whole being
was rigid with the intensity of the regard he bent on Tadzio,
leaning over the railing six paces off.

He lounged there, in the white belted suit he sometimes wore
at dinner, in all his innate, inevitable grace, with his left arm on
the balustrade, his legs crossed, the right hand on the supporting
hip; and looked down on the strolling singers with an expression
that was hardly a smile, but rather a distant curiosity and polite
toleration. Now and then he straightened himself and with a
charming movement of both arms drew down his white blouse
through his leather belt, throwing out his chest. And sometimes
--Aschenbach saw it with triumph, with horror, and a sense that
his reason was tottering--the lad would cast a glance, that might
be slow and cautious, or might be sudden and swift, as though to
take him by surprise, to the place where his lover sat. Aschenbach
did not meet the glance. An ignoble caution made him keep his
eyes in leash. For in the rear of the terrace sat Tadzio's mother
and governess; and matters had gone so far that he feared to make
himself conspicuous. Several times, on the beach, in the hotel
lobby, on the Piazza, he had seen, with a stealing numbness, that
they called Tadzio away from his neighbourhood. And his pride
revolted at the affront, even while conscience told him it was
deserved.

The performer below presently began a solo, with guitar ac-
companiment, a street song in several stanzas, just then the rage
all over Italy. He delivered it in a striking and dramatic recitative,
and his company joined in the refrain. He was a man of slight
build, with a thin, undernourished face; his shabby felt hat rested
on the back of his neck, a great mop of red hair sticking out in
front; and he stood there on the gravel in advance of his troupe,
in an impudent, swaggering posture, twanging the strings of his
instrument and flinging a witty and rollicking recitative up to
the terrace, while the veins on his forehead swelled with the vio-
lence of his effort. He was scarcely a Venetian tvpe, belonging
rather to the race of Neapolitan jesters, half bully, half comedian,
brutal, blustering, an unpleasant customer, and entertaining to the
last degree. The words of his song were trivial and silly, but
on his lips, accompanied with gestures of head, hands, arms, and
body, with leers and winks and the loose play of the tongue in
the corner of his mouth, they took on meaning; an equivocal
meaning, yet vaguely offensive. He wore a white sports shirt with
a suit of ordinary clothes, and a strikingly large and naked-looking
Adam's apple rose out of the open collar. From that pale, snub-
nosed face it was hard to judge of his age; vice sat on it, it was
furrowed with grimacing, and two deep wrinkles of defiance and
self-will, almost of desperation, stood oddly between the red
brows, above the grinning, mobile mouth. But what more than all
drew upon him the profound scrutiny of our solitary watcher
was that this suspicious figure seemed to carry with it its own
suspicious odour. For whenever the refrain occurred and the
singer, with waving arms and antic gestures, passed in his gro-
tesque march immediately beneath Aschenbach's seat, a strong
smell of carbolic was wafted up to the terrace.

After the song he began to take up money, beginning with the
Russian family, who gave liberally, and then mounting the steps
to the terrace. But here he became as cringing as he had before
been forward. He glided between the tables, bowing and scraping,
showing his strong white teeth in a servile smile, though the two
deep furrows on the brow were still very marked. His audience
looked at the strange creature as he went about collecting his liveli-
hood, and their curiosity was not unmixed with disfavour. They
tossed coins with their finger-tips into his hat and took care not to
touch it. Let the enjoyment be never so great, a sort of embarrass-
ment always comes when the comedian oversteps the physical dis-
tance between himself and respectable people. This man felt it
and sought to make his peace by fawning. He came along the
railing to Aschenbach, and with him came that smell no one else
seemed to notice.

"Listen!" said the solitary, in a low voice, almost mechanically;
"they are disinfecting Venice--why?" The mountebank an-
swered hoarsely: "Because of the police. Orders, signore. On ac-
count of the heat and the sirocco. The sirocco is oppressive. Not
good for the health." He spoke as though surprised that anyone
could ask, and with the flat of his hand he demonstrated how
oppressive the sirocco was. "So there is no plague in Venice?"
Aschenbach asked the question between his teeth, very low. The
man's expressive face fell, he put on a look of comical innocence.
"A plague? What sort of plague? Is the sirocco a plague? Or
perhaps our police are a plague! You are making fun of us, signore!
A plague! Why should there be? The police make regulations on
account of the heat and the weather..." He gestured. "Quite,"
said Aschenbach, once more, soft and low; and dropping an un-
duly large coin into the man's hat dismissed him with a sign. He
bowed very low and left. But he had not reached the steps when
two of the hotel servants flung themselves on him and began to
whisper, their faces close to his. He shrugged, seemed to be giving
assurances, to be swearing he had said nothing. It was not hard to
guess the import of his words. They let him go at last and he went
back into the garden, where he conferred briefly with his troupe
and then stepped forward for a farewell song.

It was one Aschenbach had never to his knowledge heard be-
fore, a rowdy air, with words in impossible dialect. It had a
laughing-refrain in which the other three artists joined at the top
of their lungs. The refrain had neither words nor accompaniment,
it was nothing but rhythmical, modulated, natural laughter,
which the soloist in particular knew how to render with most
deceptive realism. Now that he was farther off his audience, his
self-assurance had come back, and this laughter of his rang with a
mocking note. He would be overtaken, before he reached the end
of the last line of each stanza: he would catch his breath, lay his
hand over his mouth, his voice would quaver and his shoulders
shake, he would lose power to contain himself longer. Just at the
right moment each time, it came whooping, bawling, crashing out
of him, with a verisimilitude that never failed to set his audience
off in profuse and unpremeditated mirth that seemed to add gusto
to his own. He bent his knees, he clapped his thigh, he held his
sides, he looked ripe for bursting. He no longer laughed, but
yelled, pointing his finger at the company there above as though
there could be in all the world nothing so comic as they; until
at last they laughed in hotel, terrace, and garden, down to the
waiters, lift-boys, and servants--laughed as though possessed.

Aschenbach could no longer rest in his chair, he sat poised for
flight. But the combined effect of the laughing, the hospital odour
in his nostrils, and the nearness of the beloved was to hold him in
a spell; he felt unable to stir. Under cover of the general commo-
tion he looked across at Tadzio and saw that the lovely boy re-
turned his gaze with a seriousness that seemed the copy of his
own; the general hilarity, it seemed to say, had no power over
him, he kept aloof. The grey-haired man was overpowered, dis-
armed by this docile, childlike deference; with difficulty he re-
frained from hiding his face in his hands. Tadzio's habit, too, of
drawing himself up and taking a deep sighing breath struck him
as being due to an oppression of the chest. "He is sickly, he will
never live to grow up," he thought once again, with that dispas-
sionate vision to which his madness of desire sometimes so
strangely gave way. And compassion struggled with the reckless
exultation of his heart.

The players, meanwhile, had finished and gone; their leader
bowing and scraping, kissing his hands and adorning his leave-
taking with antics that grew madder with the applause they
evoked. After all the others were outside, he pretended to run
backwards full tilt against a lamp-post and slunk to the gate ap-
parently doubled over with pain. But there he threw off his buf-
foon's mask, stood erect, with an elastic straightening of his whole
figure, ran out his tongue impudently at the guests on the terrace,
and vanished in the night. The company dispersed. Tadzio had
long since left the balustrade. But he, the lonely man, sat for long,
to the waiters' great annoyance, before the dregs of pomegranate-
juice in his glass. Time passed, the night went on. Long ago, in
his parental home, he had watched the sand filter through an hour-
glass--he could still see, as though it stood before him, the fragile,
pregnant little toy. Soundless and fine the rust-red streamlet ran
through the narrow neck, and made, as it declined in the upper
cavity, an exquisite little vortex.

The very next afternoon the solitary took another step in pur-
suit of his fixed policy of baiting the outer world. This time he
had all possible success. He went, that is, into the English travel
bureau in the Piazza, changed some money at the desk, and posing
as the suspicious foreigner, put his fateful question. The clerk
was a tweed-clad young Britisher, with his eyes set close together,
his hair parted in the middle, and radiating that steady reliability
which makes his like so strange a phenomenon in the gamin, agile-
witted south. He began: "No ground for alarm, sir. A mere
formality. Quite regular in view of the unhealthy climatic condi-
tions." But then, looking up, he chanced to meet with his own
blue eyes the stranger's weary, melancholy gaze, fixed on his face.
The Englishman coloured. He continued in a lower voice, rather
confused: "At least, that is the official explanation, which they
see fit to stick to. I may tell you there's a bit more to it than that."
And then, in his good, straightforward way, he told the truth.

For the past several years Asiatic cholera had shown a strong
tendency to spread. Its source was the hot, moist swamps of the
delta of the Ganges, where it bred in the mephitic air of that
primeval island-jungle, among whose bamboo thickets the tiger
crouches, where life of every sort flourishes in rankest abundance,
and only man avoids the spot. Thence the pestilence had spread
throughout Hindustan, raging with great violence; moved east-
wards to China, westward to Afghanistan and Persia; following
the great caravan routes, it brought terror to Astrakhan, terror to
Moscow. Even while Europe trembled lest the spectre be seen
striding westward across country, it was carried by sea from
Syrian ports and appeared simultaneously at several points on the
Mediterranean littoral; raised its head in Toulon ana Malaga, Pa-
lermo and Naples, and soon got a firm hold in Calabria and Apulia.
Northern Italy had been spared--so far. But in May the horrible
vibrions were found on the same day in two bodies: the emaciated,
blackened corpses of a bargee and a woman who kept a green-
grocer's shop. Both cases were hushed up. But in a week there
were ten more--twenty, thirty in different quarters of the town.
An Austrian provincial, having come to Venice on a few days'
pleasure trip, went home and died with all the symptoms of the
plague. Thus was explained the fact that the German-language
papers were the first to print the news of the Venetian outbreak.
The Venetian authorities published in reply a statement to the
effect that the state of the city's health had never been better; at
the same time instituting the most necessary precautions. But by
that time the food supplies--milk, meat, or vegetables--had prob-
ably been contaminated, for death unseen and unacknowledged
was devouring and laying waste in the narrow streets, while a
brooding, unseasonable heat warmed the waters of the canals and
encouraged the spread of the pestilence. Yes, the disease seemed
to flourish and wax strong, to redouble its generative powers. Re-
coveries were rare. Eighty out of every hundred died, and hor-
ribly, for the onslaught was of the extremest violence, and not
infrequently of the "dry" type, the most malignant form of the
contagion. In this form the victim's body loses power to expel
the water secreted by the blood-vessels, it shrivels up, he passes
with hoarse cries from convulsion to convulsion, his blood grows
thick like pitch, and he suffocates in a few hours. He is fortunate
indeed, if, as sometimes happens, the disease, after a slight malaise,
takes the form of a profound unconsciousness, from which the
sufferer seldom or never rouses. By the beginning of June the
quarantine buildings of the ospedale civico had quietly filled up,
the two orphan asylums were entirely occupied, and there was a
hideously brisk traffic between the Nuovo Fundamento and the
island of San Michele, where the cemetery was. But the city was
not swayed by high-minded motives or regard for international
agreements. The authorities were more actuated by fear of being
out of pocket, by regard for the new exhibition of paintings just
opened in the Public Gardens, or by apprehension of the large
losses the hotels and the shops that catered to foreigners would
suffer in case of panic and blockade. And the fears of the people
supported the persistent official policy of silence and denial. The
city's first medical officer, an honest and competent man, had in-
dignantly resigned his office and been privily replaced by a more
compliant person. The fact was known; and this corruption in
high places played its part, together with the suspense as to
where the walking terror might strike next, to demoralize the
baser elements in the city and encourage those antisocial forces
which shun the light of day. There was intemperance, indecency,
increase of crime. Evenings one saw many drunken people, which
was unusual. Gangs of men in surly mood made the streets unsafe,
theft and assault were said to be frequent, even murder; for in
two cases persons supposedly victims of the plague were proved
to have been poisoned by their own families. And professional
vice was rampant, displaying excesses heretofore unknown and
only at home much farther south and in the east.

Such was the substance of the Englishman's tale. "You would
do well," he concluded, "to leave today instead of tomorrow.
The blockade cannot be more than a few days off."

"Thank you," said Aschenbach, and left the office.

The Piazza lay in sweltering sunshine. Innocent foreigners sat
before the cafes or stood in front of the cathedral, the centre of
clouds of doves that, with fluttering wings, tried to shoulder each
other away and pick the kernels of maize from the extended hand.
Aschenbach strode up and down the spacious flags, feverishly ex-
cited, triumphant in possession of the truth at last, but with a
sickening taste in his mouth and a fantastic horror at his heart.
One decent, expiatory course lay open to him; he considered it.
Tonight, after dinner, he might approach the lady of the pearls
and address her in words which he precisely formulated in his
mind: "Madame, will you permit an entire stranger to serve you
with a word of advice and warning which self-interest prevents
others from uttering? Go away. Leave here at once, without de-
lay, with Tadzio and your daughters. Venice is in the grip of
pestilence." Then might he lay his hand in farewell upon the head
of that instrument of a mocking deity; and thereafter himself flee
the accursed morass. But he knew that he was far indeed from any
serious desire to take such a step. It would restore him, would give
him back himself once more; but he who is beside himself revolts
at the idea of self-possession. There crossed his mind the vision
of a white building with inscriptions on it, glittering in the sinking
sun--he recalled how his mind had dreamed away into their
transparent mysticism; recalled the strange pilgrim apparition that
had wakened in the aging man a lust for strange countries and
fresh sights. And these memories, again, brought in their train
the thought of returning home, returning to reason, self-mastery,
an ordered existence, to the old life of effort. Alas! the bare
thought made him wince with a revulsion that was like physical
nausea. "It must be kept quiet," he whispered fiercely. "I will
not speak!" The knowledge that he shared the city's secret, the
city's guilt--it put him beside himself, intoxicated him as a small
quantity of wine will a man suffering from brain-fag. His
thoughts dwelt upon the image of the desolate and calamitous
city, and he was giddy with fugitive, mad, unreasoning hopes
and visions of a monstrous sweetness. That tender sentiment he
had a moment ago evoked, what was it compared with such images
as these? His art, his moral sense, what were they in the balance
beside the boons that chaos might confer? He kept silence, he
stopped on.

That night he had a fearful dream--if dream be the right word
for a mental and physical experience which did indeed befall him
in deep sleep, as a thing quite apart and real to his senses, yet with-
out his seeing himself as present in it. Rather its theatre seemed to
be his own soul, and the events burst in from outside, violently
overcoming the profound resistance of his spirit; passed him
through and left him, left the whole cultural structure of a life-
time trampled on, ravaged, and destroyed.

The beginning was fear; fear and desire, with a shuddering
curiosity. Night reigned, and his senses were on the alert; he heard
loud, confused noises from far away, clamour and hubbub. There
was a rattling, a crashing, a low dull thunder; shrill halloos and a
kind of howl with a long-drawn u-sound at the end. And with all
these, dominating them all, flute-notes of the cruellest sweetness,
deep and cooing, keeping shamelessly on until the listener felt his
very entrails bewitched. He heard a voice, naming, though darkly,
that which was to come: "The stranger god!" A glow lighted
up the surrounding mist and by it he recognized a mountain scene
like that about his country home. From the wooded heights, from
among the tree-trunks and crumbling moss-covered rocks, a troop
came tumbling and raging down, a whirling rout of men and
animals, and overflowed the hillside with flames and human forms,
with clamour and the reeling dance. The females stumbled over
the long, hairy pelts that dangled from their girdles; with heads
flung back they uttered loud hoarse cries and shook their tam-
bourines high in air; brandished naked daggers or torches vomit-
ing trails of sparks. They shrieked, holding their breasts in both
hands; coiling snakes with quivering tongues they clutched about
their waists. Horned and hairy males, girt about the loins with
hides, drooped heads and lifted arms and thighs in unison, as they
beat on brazen vessels that gave out droning thunder, or thumped
madly on drums. There were troops of beardless youths armed
with garlanded staves; these ran after goats and thrust their staves
against the creatures' flanks, then clung to the plunging horns and
let themselves be borne off with triumphant shouts. And one and
all the mad rout yelled that cry, composed of soft consonants with
a long-drawn u-sound at the end, so sweet and wild it was to-
gether, and like nothing ever heard before! It would ring through
the air like the bellow of a challenging stag, and be given back
many-tongued; or they would use it to goad each other on to
dance with wild excess of tossing limbs--they never let it die.
But the deep, beguiling notes of the flute wove in and out and
over all. Beguiling too it was to him who struggled in the grip of
these sights and sounds, shamelessly awaiting the coming feast and
the uttermost surrender. He trembled, he shrank, his will was
steadfast to preserve and uphold his own god against this stranger
who was sworn enemy to dignity and self-control. But the moun-
tain wall took up the noise and howling and gave it back mani-
fold; it rose high, swelled to a madness that carried him away.
His senses reeled in the steam of panting bodies, the acrid stench
from the goats, the odour as of stagnant waters--and another, too
familiar smell--of wounds, uncleanness, and disease. His heart
throbbed to the drums, his brain reeled, a blind rage seized him,
a whirling lust, he craved with all his soul to join the ring that
formed about the obscene symbol of the godhead, which they
were unveiling and elevating, monstrous and wooden, while from
full throats they yelled their rallying-cry. Foam dripped from
their lips, they drove each other on with lewd gesturings and
beckoning hands. They laughed, they howled, they thrust their
pointed staves into each other's flesh and licked the blood as it ran
down. But now the dreamer was in them and of them, the stranger
god was his own. Yes, it was he who was flinging himself upon
the animals, who bit and tore and swallowed smoking gobbets of
flesh--while on the trampled moss there now began the rites in
honour of the god, an orgy of promiscuous embraces--and in his
very soul he tasted the bestial degradation of his fall.

The unhappy man woke from this dream shattered, unhinged,
powerless in the demon's grip. He no longer avoided men's eyes
nor cared whether he exposed himself to suspicion. And anyhow,
people were leaving; many of the bathing-cabins stood empty,
there were many vacant places in the dining-room, scarcely any
foreigners were seen in the streets. The truth seemed to have
leaked out; despite all efforts to the contrary, panic was in the air.
But the lady of the pearls stopped on with her family; whether
because the rumours had not reached her or because she was too
proud and fearless to heed them. Tadzio remained; and it seemed
at times to Aschenbach, in his obsessed state, that death and fear
together might clear the island of all other souls and leave him
there alone with him he coveted. In the long mornings on the
beach his heavy gaze would rest, a fixed and reckless stare, upon
the lad; towards nightfall, lost to shame, he would follow him
through the city's narrow streets where horrid death stalked too,
and at such time it seemed to him as though the moral law were
fallen in ruins and only the monstrous and perverse held out a
hope.

Like any lover, he desired to please; suffered agonies at the
thought of failure, and brightened his dress with smart ties and
handkerchiefs and other youthful touches. He added jewellery
and perfumes and spent hours each day over his toilette, appear-
ing at dinner elaborately arrayed and tensely excited. The pres-
ence of the youthful beauty that had bewitched him filled him
with disgust of his own aging body; the sight of his own sharp
features and grey hair plunged him in hopeless mortification; he
made desperate efforts to recover the appearance and freshness of
his youth and began paying frequent visits to the hotel barber.
Enveloped in the white sheet, beneath the hands of that garrulous
personage, he would lean back in the chair and look at himself in
the glass with misgiving.

"Grey," he said, with a grimace.

"Slightly," answered the man. "Entirely due to neglect, to a
lack of regard for appearances. Very natural, of course, in men of
affairs; but, after all, not very sensible, for it is just such people
who ought to be above vulgar prejudice in matters like these.
Some folk have very strict ideas about the use of cosmetics; but
they never extend them to the teeth, as they logically should. And
very disgusted other people would be if they did. No, we are all
as old as we feel, but no older, and grey hair can misrepresent a
man worse than dyed. You, for instance, signore, have a right to
your natural colour. Surely you will permit me to restore what
belongs to you?"

"How?" asked Aschenbach.

For answer the oily one washed his client's hair in two waters,
one clear and one dark, and lo, it was as black as in the days of his
youth. He waved it with the tongs in wide, flat undulations, and
stepped back to admire the effect.

"Now if we were just to freshen up the skin a little," he said.

And with that he went on from one thing to another, his en-
thusiasm waxing with each new idea. Aschenbach sat there com-
fortably; he was incapable of objecting to the process--rather as
it went forward it roused his hopes. He watched it in the mirror
and saw his eyebrows grow more even and arching, the eyes gain
in size and brilliance, by dint of a little application below the lids.
A delicate carmine glowed on his cheeks where the skin had been
so brown and leathery. The dry, anemic lips grew full, they
turned the colour of ripe strawberries, the lines round eyes and
mouth were treated with a facial cream and gave place to youth-
ful bloom. It was a young man who looked back at him from
the glass--Aschenbach's heart leaped at the sight. The artist in
cosmetic at last professed himself satisfied; after the manner of
such people, he thanked his client profusely for what he had done
himself. "The merest trifle, the merest, signore," he said as he
added the final touches. "Now the signore can fall in love as soon
as he likes." Aschenbach went off as in a dream, dazed between
joy and fear, in his red neck-tie and broad straw hat with its gay
striped band.

A lukewarm storm-wind had come up. It rained a little now
and then, the air was heavy and turbid and smelt of decay. Aschen-
bach, with fevered cheeks beneath the rouge, seemed to hear rush-
ing and flapping sounds in his ears, as though storm-spirits were
abroad--unhallowed ocean harpies who follow those devoted to
destruction, snatch away and defile their viands. For the heat took
away his appetite and thus he was haunted with the idea that his
food was infected.

One afternoon he pursued his charmer deep into the stricken
city's huddled heart. The labyrinthine little streets, squares, canals,
and bridges, each one so like the next, at length quite made him
lose his bearings. He did not even know the points of the compass;
all his care was not to lose sight of the figure after which his eyes
thirsted. He slunk under walls, he lurked behind buildings or
people's backs; and the sustained tension of his senses and emo-
tions exhausted him more and more, though for a long time he
was unconscious of fatigue. Tadzio walked behind the others, he
let them pass ahead in the narrow alleys, and as he sauntered
slowly after, he would turn his head and assure himself with a
glance of his strange, twilit grey eyes that his lover was still
following. He saw him--and he did not betray him. The knowl-
edge enraptured Aschenbach. Lured by those eyes, led on the
leading-string of his own passion and folly, utterly lovesick, he
stole upon the footsteps of his unseemly hope--and at the end
found himself cheated. The Polish family crossed a small vaulted
bridge, the height of whose archway hid them from his sight, and
when he climbed it himself they were nowhere to be seen. He
hunted in three directions--straight ahead and on both sides the
narrow, dirty quay - in vain. Worn quite out and unnerved, he
had to give over the search.

His head burned, his body was wet with clammy sweat, he was
plagued by intolerable thirst. He looked about for refreshment,
of whatever sort, and found a little fruit-shop where he bought
some strawberries. They were overripe and soft; he ate them as
he went. The street he was on opened out into a little square, one
of those charmed, forsaken spots he liked; he recognized it as the
very one where he had sat weeks ago and conceived his abortive
plan of flight. He sank down on the steps of the well and leaned
his head against its stone rim. It was quiet here. Grass grew be-
tween the stones, and rubbish lay about. Tall, weather-beaten
houses bordered the square, one of them rather palatial, with
vaulted windows, gaping now, and little lion balconies. In the
ground floor of another was an apothecary's shop. A waft of
carbolic acid was borne on a warm gust of wind.

There he sat, the master: this was he who had found a way to
reconcile art and honours; who had written The Abject^ and in a
style of classic purity renounced bohemianism and all its works,
all sympathy with the abyss and the troubled depths of the outcast
human soul. This was he who had put knowledge underfoot to
climb so high; who had outgrown the ironic pose and adjusted
himself to the burdens and obligations of fame; whose renown
had been officially recognized and his name ennobled, whose style
was set for a model in the schools. There he sat. His eyelids were
closed, there was only a swift, sidelong glint of the eyeballs now
and again, something between a question and a leer; while the
rouged and flabby mouth uttered single words of the sentences
shaped in his disordered brain by the fantastic logic that governs
our dreams.

"For mark you, Phaedrus, beauty alone is both divine and
visible; and so it is the sense way, the artist's way, little Phaedrus,
to the spirit. But, now tell me, my dear boy, do you believe that
such a man can ever attain wisdom and true manly worth, for
whom the path to the spirit must lead through the senses? Or
do you rather think--for I leave the point to you--that it is a
path of perilous sweetness, a way of transgression, and must surely
lead him who walks in it astray? For you know that we poets
cannot walk the way of beauty without Eros as our companion
and guide. We may be heroic after our fashion, disciplined war-
riors of our craft, yet are we all like women, for we exult in
passion, and love is still our desire--our craving and our shame.
And from this you will perceive that we poets can be neither wise
nor worthy citizens. We must needs be wanton, must needs rove
at large in the realm of feeling. Our magisterial style is all folly
and pretence, our honourable repute a farce, the crowd's belief
in us is merely laughable. And to teach youth, or the populace,
by means of art is a dangerous practice and ought to be forbidden.
For what good can an artist be as a teacher, when from his birth
up he is headed direct for the pit? We may want to shun it and
attain to honour in the world; but however we turn, it draws us
still. So, then, since knowledge might destroy us, we will have
none of it. For knowledge, Phaedrus, does not make him who pos-
sesses it dignified or austere. Knowledge is all-knowing, under-
standing, forgiving; it takes up no position, sets no store by form.
It has compassion with the abyss--it is the abyss. So we reject it,
firmly, and henceforward our concern shall be with beauty only.
And by beauty we mean simplicity, largeness, and renewed se-
verity of discipline; we mean a return to detachment and to form.
But detachment, Phaedrus, and preoccupation with form lead to
intoxication and desire, they may lead the noblest among us to
frightful emotional excesses, which his own stern cult of the
beautiful would make him the first to condemn. So they too,
they too, lead to the bottomless pit. Yes, they lead us thither, I say,
us w ho are poets--who by our natures are prone not to excel-
lence but to excess. And now, Phaedrus, I will go. Remain here;
and only when you can no longer see me, then do you depart
also."

A few days later Gustave Aschenbach left his hotel rather
later than usual in the morning. He was not feeling well and had
to struggle against spells of giddiness only half physical in their
nature, accompanied by a swiftly mounting dread, a sense of
futility and hopelessness--bur whether this referred to himself
or to the outer world he could not tell. In the lobby he saw
a quantity of luggage lying strapped and ready; asked the porter
whose it was, and received in answer the name he already knew
he should hear--that of the Polish family. The expression of his
ravaged features did not change; he only gave that quick lift of
the head with which we sometimes receive the uninteresting an-
swer to a casual query. But he put another: "When?" "After
luncheon," the man replied. He nodded, and went down to the
beach.

It was an unfriendly scene. Little crisping shivers ran all across
the wide stretch of shallow water between the shore and the first
sand-bank. The whole beach, once so full of colour and life,
looked now autumnal, out of season; it was nearly deserted and
not even very clean. A camera on a tripod stood at the edge of
the water, apparently abandoned; its black cloth snapped in the
freshening wind.

Tadzio was there, in front of his cabin, with the three or four
playfellows still left him. Aschenbach set up his chair some half-
way between the cabins and the water, spread a rug over his knees,
and sat looking on. The game this time was unsupervised, the
elders being probably busy with their packing, and it looked
rather lawless and out-of-hand. Jaschiu, the sturdy lad in the
belted suit, with the black, brilliantined hair, became angry at a
handful of sand thrown in his eyes; he challenged Tadzio to a
fight, which quickly ended in the downfall of the weaker. And
perhaps the coarser nature saw here a chance to avenge himself
at last, by one cruel act, for his long weeks of subserviency: the
victor would not let the vanquished get up, but remained kneeling
on Tadzio's back, pressing Tadzio's face into the sand--for so
long a time that it seemed the exhausted lad might even suffocate.
He made spasmodic efforts to shake the other off, lay still, and
then began a feeble twitching. Just as Aschenbach was about to
spring indignantly to the rescue, Jaschiu let his victim go. Tadzio,
very pale, half sat up, and remained so, leaning on one arm, for
several minutes, with darkening eyes and rumpled hair. Then he
rose and walked slowly away. The others called him, at first gaily,
then imploringly; he would not hear. Jaschiu was evidently over-
taken by swift remorse; he followed his friend and tried to make
his peace, but Tadzio motioned him back with a jerk of one shoul-
der and went down to the water's edge. He was barefoot and
wore his striped linen suit with the red breast-knot.

There he stayed a little, with bent head, tracing figures in the
wet sand with one toe; then stepped into the shallow water, which
at its deepest did not wet his knees; waded idly through it and
reached the sand-bar. Now he paused again, with his face turned
seaward; and next began to move slowly leftwards along the nar-
row strip of sand the sea left bare. He paced there, divided by an
expanse of water from the shore, from his mates by his moody
pride; a remote and isolated figure, with floating locks, out there
in sea and wind, against the misty inane. Once more he paused to
look: with a sudden recollection, or by an impulse, he turned from
the waist up, in an exquisite movement, one hand resting on his
hip, and looked over his shoulder at the shore. The watcher sat
just as he had sat that time in the lobby of the hotel when first
the twilit grey eyes had met his own. He rested his head against
the chair-back and followed the movements of the figure out
there, then lifted it, as it were in answer to Tadzio's gaze. It
sank on his breast, the eyes looked out beneath their lids, while
his whole face took on the relaxed and brooding expression of
deep slumber. It seemed to him the pale and lovely Summoner
out there smiled at him and beckoned; as though, with the hand
he lifted from his hip, he pointed outward as he hovered on before
into an immensity of richest expectation.

Some minutes passed before anyone hastened to the aid of the
elderly man sitting there collapsed in his chair. They bore him
to his room. And before nightfall a shocked and respectful world
received the news of his decease.



A MAN AND HIS DOG


He Comes Round the Corner


When spring, the fairest season of the year, does honour to its
name, and when the trilling of the birds rouses me early because
I have ended the day before at a seemly hour, I love to rise be-
times and go for a half-hour's walk before breakfast. Strolling
hatless in the broad avenue in front of my house, or through the
parks beyond, I like to enjoy a few draughts of the young morn-
ing air and taste its blithe purity before I am claimed by the la-
bours of the day. Standing on the front steps of my house, I give
a whistle in two notes, tonic and lower fourth, like the beginning
of the second phrase of Schubert's Unfinished Symphony; it might
be considered the musical setting of a two-syllabled nam e. Next
moment, and while I walk towards the garden gate, the faintest
tinkle sounds from afar, at first scarcely audible, but growing rap-
idly louder and more distinct; such a sound as might be made by a
metal licence-tag clicking against the trimmings of a leather collar.
I face about, to see Bashan rounding the corner of the house at top
speed and charging towards me as though he meant to knock me
down. In the effort he is making he has dropped his lower lip,
baring two white teeth that glitter in the morning sun.

He comes straight from his kennel, which stands at the back of
the house, between the props of the veranda floor. Probably, until
my two-toned call set him in this violent motion, he had been lying
there snatching a nap after the adventures of the night. The ken-
nel has curtains of sacking and is lined with straw; indeed, a
straw or so may be clinging to Bashan's sleep-rumpled coat or even
sticking between his toes--a comic sight, which reminds me of a
painstakingly imagined production of Schiller's Die Rauber that I
once saw, in which old Count Moor came out of the Hunger
Tower tricot-clad, with a straw sticking pathetically between his
toes. Involuntarily I assume a defensive position to meet the
charge, receiving it on my flank, for Bashan shows every sign of
meaning to run between my legs and trip me up. However at the
last minute, when a collision is imminent, he always puts on the
brakes, executing a half-wheel which speaks for both his mental
and his physical self-control. And then, without a sound--for he
makes sparing use of his sonorous and expressive voice--he dances
wildly round me by way of greeting, with immoderate plungings
and waggings which are not confined to the appendage provided
by nature for the purpose but bring his whole hind quarters as far
as his ribs into play. He contracts his whole body into a curve, he
hurtles into the air in a flying leap, he turns round and round on
his own axis--and curiously enough, whichever way I turn, he
always contrives to execute these manoeuvres behind my back.
But the moment I stoop down and put out my hand he jumps to
my side and stands like a statue, with his shoulder against my shin,
in a slantwise posture, his strong paws braced against the ground,
his face turned upwards so that he looks at me upside-down. And
his utter immobility, as I pat his shoulder and murmur encourage-
ment, is as concentrated and fiercely passionate as the frenzy be-
fore it had been.

Bashan is a short-haired German pointer--speaking by and
large, that is, and not too literally. For he is probably not quite
orthodox, as a pure matter of points. In the first place, he is a little
too small. He is, I repeat, definitely undersized for a proper
pointer. And then his forelegs are not absolutely straight, they
have just the suggestion of an outward curve--which also de-.
tracts from his qualifications as a blood-dog. And he has a tend-
ency to a dewlap, those folds of hanging skin under the muzzle,
which in Bashan's case are admirably becoming but again would
be frowned on by your fanatic for pure breeding, as I understand
that a pointer should have taut skin round the neck. Bashan's col-
ouring is very fine. His coat is a rusty brown with black stripes
and a good deal of white on chest, paws, and under side. The
whole of his snub nose seems to have been dipped in black paint.
Over the broad top of his head and on his cool hanging ears the
black and brown combine in a lovely velvety pattern. Quite the
prettiest thing about him, however, is the whorl or stud or little
tuft at the centre of the convolution of white hairs on his chest,
which stands out like the boss on an ancient breastplate. Very
likely even his splendid coloration is a little too marked and would
be objected to by those who put the laws of breeding above the
value of personality, for it would appear that the classic pointer
type should have a coat of one colour or at most with spots of a
different one, but never stripes. Worst of all, from the point of
view of classification, is a hairy growth hanging from his muzzle
and the corners of his mouth; it might with some justice be called
a moustache and goatee, and when you concentrate on it, close at
hand or even at a distance, you cannot help thinking of an airedale
or a schnauzer.

But classifications aside, what a good and good-looking animal
Bashan is, as he stands there straining against my knee, gazing up
at me with all his devotion in his eyes! They are particularly fine
eyes, too, both gentle and wise, if just a little too prominent and
glassy. The iris is the same colour as his coat, a rusty brown; it is
only a narrow rim, for the pupils are dilated into pools of black-
ness and the outer edge merges into the white of the eye wherein
it swims. His whole head is expressive of honesty and intelligence,
of manly qualities corresponding to his physical structure: his
arched and swelling chest where the ribs stand out under the
smooth and supple skin; the narrow haunches, the veined, sinewy
legs, the strong, well-shaped paws. All these bespeak virility and
a stout heart; they suggest hunting blood and peasant stock--yes,
certainly the hunter and game dog do after all predominate in
Bashan, he is genuine pointer, no matter if he does not owe his
existence to a snobbish system of inbreeding. All this, probably, is
what I am really telling him as I pat his shoulder-blade and address
him with a few disjointed words of encouragement.

So he stands and looks and listens, gathering from what I say and
the tone of it that I distinctly approve of his existence--the very
thing which I am at pains to imply. And suddenly he thrusts out
his head, opening and shutting his lips very fast, and makes a snap
at my face as though he meant to bite off my nose. It is a gesture
of response to my remarks, and it always make me recoil with a
laugh, as Bashan knows beforehand that it will. It is a kiss in the
air, half caress, half teasing, a trick he has had since puppyhood,
which I have never seen in any of his predecessors. And he imme-
diately begs pardon for the liberty, crouching, wagging his tail,
and behaving funnily embarrassed. So we go out through the gar-
den gate and into the open.

We are encompassed with a roaring like that of the sea; for we
live almost directly on the swift-flowing river that foams over
shallow ledges at no great distance from the poplar avenue. In be-
tween lie a fenced-in grass plot planted with maples, and a raised
pathway skirted with huge aspen trees, bizarre and willowlike of
aspect. At the beginning of June their seed-pods strew the ground
far and wide with woolly snow. Upstream, in the direction of the
city, construction troops are building a pontoon bridge. Shouts
of command and the thump of heavy boots on the planks sound
across the river; also, from the further bank, the noise of indus-
trial activity, for there is a locomotive foundry a little way down-
stream. Its premises have been lately enlarged to meet increased
demands, and light streams all night long from its lofty windows.
Beautiful glittering new engines roll to and fro on trial runs; a
steam whistle emits wailing head-tones from time to time; muffled
thunderings of unspecified origin shatter the air, smoke pours out
of the many chimneys to be caught up by the wind and borne
away over the wooded country beyond the river, for it seldom or
never blows over to our side. Thus in our half-suburban, half-
rural seclusion the voice of nature mingles with that of man, and
over all lies the bright-eyed freshness of the new day.

It might be about half past seven by official time when I set out;
by sun-time, half past six. With my hands behind my back I stroll
in the tender sunshine down the avenue, cross-hatched by the long
shadows of the poplar trees. From where I am I cannot see the
river, but I hear its broad and even flow. The trees whisper gently,
song-birds fill the air with their penetrating chirps and warbles,
twitters and trills; from the direction of the sunrise a plane is fly-
ing under the humid blue sky, a rigid, mechanical bird with a
droning hum that rises and falls as it steers a free course above
river and fields. And Bashan is delighting my eyes with the beauti-
ful long leaps he is making across the low rail of the grass-plot on
my left. Backwards and forwards he leaps--as a matter of fact he
is doing it because he knows I like it; for I have often urged him
on by shouting and striking the railing, praising him when he fell
in with my whim. So now he comes up to me after nearly every
jump to hear how intrepidly and elegantly he jumps. He even
springs up into my face and slavers all over the arm I put out to
protect it. But the jumping is also to be conceived as a sort of
morning exercise, and morning toilet as well, for it smooths his
ruffled coat and rids it of old Moor's straws.

It is good to walk like this in the early morning, with senses re-
juvenated and spirit cleansed by the night's long healing draught
of Lethe. You look confidently forward to the day, yet pleasantly
hesitate to begin it, being master as you are of this little untroubled
span of time between, which is your good reward for good be-
haviour. You indulge in the illusion that your life is habitually
steady, simple, concentrated, and contemplative, that you belong
entirely to yourself--and this illusion makes you quite happy. For
a human being tends to believe that the mood of the moment, be it
troubled or blithe, peaceful or stormy, is the true, native, and
permanent tenor of his existence; and in particular he likes to
exalt every happy chance into an inviolable rule and to regard it
as the benign order of his life--whereas the truth is that he is con-
demned to improvisation and morally lives from hand to mouth all
the time. So now, breathing the morning air, you stoutly believe
that you are virtuous and free; while you ought to know--and at
bottom do know--that the world is spreading its snares round
your feet, and that most likely tomorrow you will be lying in
your bed until nine, because you sought it at two in the morning
hot and befogged with impassioned discussion. Never mind.
Today you, a sober character, an early riser, you are the right
master for that stout hunter who has just cleared the railings again
out of sheer joy in the fact that today you apparently belong to
him alone and not to the world.

We follow the avenue for about five minutes, to the point
where it ceases to be an avenue and becomes a gravelly waste along
the river-bank. From this we turn away to our right and strike
into another covered with finer gravel, which has been laid out
like the avenue and like it provided with a cycle-path, but is not
yet built up. It runs between low-lying, wooded lots of land, to-
wards the slope which is the eastern limit of our river neighbour-
hood and Bashan's theatre of action. On our way we cross another
road, equally embryonic, running along between fields and mead-
ows. Further up, however, where the tram stops, it is quite built
up with flats. We descend by a gravel path into a well-Iaid-out,
parklike valley, quite deserted, as indeed the whole region is at this
hour. Paths are laid out in curves and rondels, there are benches to
rest on, tidy playgrounds, and wide plots of lawn with fine old
trees whose boughs nearly sweep the grass, covering all but a
glimpse of trunk. They are elms, beeches, limes, and silvery wil-
lows, in well-disposed groups. I enjoy to the full the well-land-
scaped quality of the scene, where I may walk no more disturbed
than if it belonged to me alone. Nothing has been forgotten--
there are even cement gutters in the gravel paths that lead down
the grassy slopes. And the abundant greenery discloses here and
there a charming distant vista of one of the villas that bound the
spot on two sides.

Here for a while I stroll along the paths, and Bashan revels in
the freedom of unlimited level space, galloping across and across
the lawns like mad with his body inclined in a centrifugal plane;
sometimes, barking with mingled pleasure and exasperation, he
pursues a bird which flutters as though spellbound, but perhaps on
purpose to tease him, along the ground just in front of his nose.
But if I sit down on a bench he is at my side at once and takes
up a position on one of my feet. For it is a law of his being that he
only runs about when I am in motion too; that when I settle down
he follows suit. There seems no obvious reason for this practice;
but Bashan never fails to conform to it.

I get an odd, intimate, and amusing sensation from having him
sit on my foot and warm it with the blood-heat of his body. A per-
vasive feeling of sympathy and good cheer fills me, as almost in-
variably when in his company and looking at things from his
angle. He has a rather rustic slouch when he sits down; his shoul-
der-blades stick out and his paws turn negligently in. He looks
smaller and squatter than he really is, and the little white boss on
his chest is advanced with comic effect. But all these faults are
atoned for by the lofty and dignified carriage of the head, so full
of concentration. All is quiet, and we two sit there absolutely
still in our turn. The rushing of the water comes to us faint and
subdued. And the senses become alert for all the tiny, mysterious
little sounds that nature makes: the lizard's quick dart, the note of
a bird, the burrowing of a mole in the earth. Bashan pricks up his
ears--in so far as the muscles of naturally drooping ears will al-
low them to be pricked. He cocks his head to hear the better; and
the nostrils of his moist black nose keep twitching sensitively as
he sniffs.

Then he lies down, but always in contact with my foot. I see
him in profile, in that age-old, conventionalized pose of the beast-
god, the sphinx: head and chest held high, forelegs close to the
body, paws extended in parallel lines. He has got overheated, so
he opens his mouth, and at once all the intelligence of his face gives
way to the merely animal, his eyes narrow and blink and his rosy
tongue lolls out between his strong white pointed teeth.


How We Got Bashan

In the neighbourhood of Tolz there is a mountain inn, kept by
a pleasingly buxom, black-eyed damsel, with the assistance of a
growing daughter, equally buxom and black-eyed. This damsel
it was who acted as go-between in our introduction to Bashan
and our subsequent acquisition of him. Two years ago now that
was; he was six months old at the time. Anastasia--for so the dam-
sel was called--knew that we had had to have our last dog shot;
Percy by name, a Scotch collie by breeding and a harmless,
feeble-minded aristocrat who in his old age fell victim to a painful
and disfiguring skin disease which obliged us to put him away.
Since that time we had been without a guardian. She telephoned
from her mountain height to say that she had taken to board a dog
that was exactly what we wanted and that it might be inspected
at any time. The children clamoured to see it, and our own curi-
osity was scarcely behind theirs; so the very next afternoon we
climbed up to Anastasia's inn, and found her in her roomy kitchen
full of warm and succulent steam, preparing her lodgers' supper.
Her face was brick-red, her brow was wet, the sleeves were rolled
back on her plump arms, and her frock was open at the throat.
Her young daughter went to and fro, an industrious kitchen-maid.
They were glad to see us and thoroughly approved of our having
lost no time in coming. We looked about; whereupon Resi, the
daughter, led us up to the kitchen table and, squatting with her
hands on her knees, addressed a few encouraging words beneath
it. Until then, in the flickering half-light, we had seen nothing; but
now we perceived something standing there, tied by a bit of rope
to the table-leg: an object that must have made any soul alive
burst into half-pitying laughter.

Gaunt and knock-kneed he stood there with his tail between his
hind legs, his four paws planted together, his back arched, shak-
ing. He may have been frightened, but one had the feeling that he
had not enough on his bones to keep him warm; for indeed the
poor little animal was a skeleton, a mere rack of bones with a
spinal column, covered with a rough fell and stuck up on four
sticks. He had laid back his ears--which muscular contraction
never fails to extinguish every sign of intelligence and cheer in the
face of any dog. In him, who was still entirely puppy, the effect
was so consummate that he stood there expressive of nothing but
wretchedness, stupidity, and a mute appeal for our forbearance.
And his hirsute appendages, which he has to this day, were then
out of all proportion to his size and added a final touch of sour
hypochondria to his appearance.

We all stooped down and began to coax and encourage this pic-
ture of misery. The children were delighted and sympathetic at
once, and their shouts mingled with the voice of Anastasia as,
standing by her cooking-stove, she began to furnish us with the
particulars of her charge's origins and history. He was named,
provisionally. Lux, she said, in her pleasant, level voice; and was
the offspring of irreproachable parents. She had herself known the
mother and of the father had heard nothing but good. Lux had
seen the light on a farm in Hugelfing; and it was only due to a
combination of circumstances that his owners were willing to part
with him cheaply. They had brought him to her inn because there
he might be seen by a good many people. They had come in a
cart. Lux bravely running the whole twenty kilometres behind the
wheels. She, Anastasia, had thought of us at once, knowing that
we were on the look-out for a good dog and feeling certain that
we should want him. If we so decided, it would be a good thing
all round. She was sure we should have great joy of him, he in his
turn would have found a good home and be no longer lonely in
the world, and she, Anastasia, would know that he was well taken
care of. We must not be prejudiced by the figure he cut at the
moment; he was upset by his strange surroundings and uncertain
of himself, but his good breeding would come out strong before
long. His father and mother were of the best.

Ye-es--but perhaps not quite well matched?

On the contrary; that is, they were both of them good stock.
He had excellent points--she, Anastasia, would vouch for that.
He was not spoilt, either, his needs were modest--and that meant a
great deal, nowadays. In fact, up to now he had had nothing to
eat but potato-parings. She suggested that we take him home on
trial; if we found that we did not take to him she would receive
him back and refund the modest sum that was asked for him. She
made free to say this, not minding at all if we took her up. Be-
cause, knowing the dog and knowing us, both parties, as it were,
she was convinced that we should grow to love him, and never
dream of giving him up.

All this she said and a great deal more in the same strain in her
easy, comfortable, voluble way, working the while over her stove,
where the flames shot up suddenly now and then as though we
were in a witches' kitchen. She even came and opened Lux's jaws
with both hands to show us his beautiful teeth and--for some rea-
son or other--the pink grooves in the roof of his mouth. We
asked knowingly if he had had distemper; she replied with a little
impatience that she really could not say. Our next question--
how large would he get--she answered more glibly: he would be
about the size of our departed Percy, she said. There were more
questions and answers; a good deal of warm-hearted urging from
Anastasia, prayers and pleas from the children, and on our side a
feeble lack of resolution. At last we begged for a little time to
think things over; she agreed, and we went thoughtfully valley-
wards, exchanging impressions as we went.

But of course the children had lost their hearts to the wretched
little quadruped under the table; in vain we affected to jeer at their
lack of judgment and taste, feeling the pull at our own heart-
strings. We saw that we should not be able to get him out of our
heads; we asked ourselves what would become of him if we
scorned him. Into what hands would he fall? The question called
up a horrid memory, we saw again the knacker from whom we
had rescued Percy with a few timely and merciful bullets and an
honourable grave by the garden fence. If we wanted to abandon
Lux to an uncertain and perhaps gruesome fate, then we should
never have seen him at all, never cast eyes upon his infant whis-
kered face. We knew him now, we felt a responsibility which we
could disclaim only by an arbitrary exercise of authority.

So it was that the third day found us climbing up those same
gentle foothills of the Alps. Not that we had decided to buy--no,
we only saw that, as things stood, the matter could hardly have
any other outcome.

This time we found Frau Anastasia and her daughter drink-
ing coffee, one at each end of the long kitchen table, while be-
tween them he sat who bore provisionally the name of Lux, in his
very attitude as he sits today, slouching over with his shoulder-
blades stuck out and his paws turned in. A bunch of wild flowers
in his worn leather collar gave him a festive look, like a rustic
bridegroom or a village lad in his Sunday best. The daughter, look-
ing very trim herself in the tight bodice of her peasant costume,
said that she had adorned him thus to celebrate his entry into his
new home. Mother and daughter both told us they had never been
more certain of anything in their lives than that we would come
back to fetch him--they knew that we would come this very day.

So there was nothing more to say. Anastasia thanked us in her
pleasant way for the purchase price--ten marks--which we
handed over. It was clear that she had asked it in our interest
rather than in hers or that of the dog's owners; it was by way of
giving Lux a positive value, in terms of money, in our eyes. We
quite understood, and paid it gladly. Lux was untied from his
table-leg and the end of the rope laid in my hand; we crossed
Anastasia's door-step followed by the warmest, most cordial assur-
ances and good wishes.

But the homeward way, which it took us an hour to cover, was
scarcely a triumphal procession. The bridegroom soon lost his
bouquet, while everybody we met either laughed or else jeered at
his appearance--and we met a good many people, for our route
lay through the length of the market town at the foot of the hill.
The last straw was that Lux proved to be suffering from an appar-
ently chronic diarrhoea, which obliged us to make frequent pauses
under the villagers' eyes. At such times we formed a circle round
him to shield his weakness from unfriendly eyes--asking our-
selves whether this was not distemper already making its appear-
ance. Our anxiety was uncalled-for: the future was to prove that
we were dealing with a sound and cleanly constitution, which has
been proof against distemper and all such ailments up to this day.

Directly we got home we summoned the maids to make ac-
quaintance with the new member of the family and express their
modest judgment of his worth. They had evidently been prepared
to praise; but, reading our own insecurity in our eyes, they laughed
loudly, turning their backs upon the appealing object and waving
him off with their hands. We doubted whether they could under-
stand the nature of our financial transaction with the benevolent
Anastasia and in our weakness declared that we had had him as a
present. Then we led Lux into the veranda and regaled him with a
hearty meal of scraps.

He was too frightened to eat. He sniffed at the food we urged
upon him, but was evidently, in his modesty, unable to believe that
these cheese-parings and chicken-bones were meant for him. But
he did not reject the sack stuffed with seaweed which we had pre-
pared for him on the floor. He lay there with his paws drawn up
under him, while within we took counsel and eventually came to a
conclusion about the name he was to bear in the future.

On the following day he still refused to eat; then came a period
when he gulped down everything that came within reach of his
muzzle; but gradually he settled down to a regular and more fas-
tidious regimen, this result roughly corresponding with his ad-
justment to his new life in general, so that I will not dwell further
upon it. The process of adaptation suffered an interruption one
day--Bashan disappeared. The children had taken him into the
garden and let him off the lead for better freedom of action. In
a momentary lapse of vigilance he had escaped through the hole
under the garden gate and gained the outer world. We were
grieved and upset at his loss--at least the masters of the house
were, for the maids seemed inclined to take light-heartedly the
loss of a dog which we had received as a gift; perhaps they did not
even consider it a loss. We telephoned wildly to Anastasia's inn,
hoping he might find his way thither. In vain, nobody had seen
him; two days passed before we heard that Anastasia had word
from Hugelfing that Lux had put in an appearance at his first
home some hour and a half before. Yes, he was there, his native
idealism had drawn him back to the world of his early potato-
parings; through wind and weather he had trotted alone the
twelve or fourteen miles which he had first covered between the
hind wheels of the farmer's cart. His former owners had to use it
again to deliver him into Anastasia's hands once more. On the
second day after that we went up to reclaim the wanderer, whom
we found as before, tied to the table-leg, jaded and dishevelled,
bemired from the mud of the roads. He did show signs of being
glad to see us again--but then, why had he gone away?

The time came when it was plain that he had forgotten the farm
--yet without having quite struck root with us; so that he was a
masterless soul and like a leaf carried by the wind. When we took
him walking we had to keep close watch, for he tended to snap the
frail bond of sympathy which was all that as yet united us and to
lose himself unobtrusively in the woods, where, being quite on
his own, he would certainly have reverted to the condition of his
wild forbears. Our care preserved him from this dark fate, we held
him fast upon his civilized height and to his position as the
comrade of man, which his race in the course of millennia has
achieved. And then a decisive event, our removal to the city--or
a suburb of it--made him wholly dependent upon us and defi-
nitely a member of the family.


Notes on Basharfs Character and Manner of Life

A man in the Isar valley had told me that this kind of dog can
become a nuisance, by always wanting to be with his master. Thus
I was forewarned against taking too personally Bashan's persistent
faithfulness to myself, and it was easier for me to discourage it a
little and protect myself at need. It is a deep-lying patriarchal in-
stinct in the dog which leads him--at least in the more manly,
outdoor breeds--to recognize and honour in the man of the house
and head of the family his absolute master and overlord, protector
of the hearth; and to find in the relation of vassalage to him the
basis and value of his own existence, whereas his attitude towards
the rest of the family is much more independent. Almost from the
very first day Bashan behaved in this spirit towards me, following
me with his trustful eyes that seemed to be begging me to order
him about--which I was chary of doing, for time soon showed
that obedience was not one of his strong points--and dogging my
footsteps in the obvious conviction that sticking to me was the
natural order of things. In the family circle he always sat at my
feet, never by any chance at anyone else's. And when we were
walking, if I struck off on a path by myself, he invariably followed
me and not the others. He insisted on being with me when I
worked; if the garden door was closed he would disconcert me by
jumping suddenly in at the window, bringing much gravel in his
train and flinging himself down panting beneath my desk.

But the presence of any living thing--even a dog--is some-
thing of which we are very conscious; we attend to it in a way
that is disturbing when we want to be alone. Thus Bashan could
become a quite tangible nuisance. He would come up to me wag-
ging his tail, look at me with devouring gaze, and prance provoc-
atively. On the smallest encouragement he would put his fore-
paws on the arm of my chair, lean against me, and make me laugh
with his kisses in the air. Then he would examine the things on my
desk, obviously under the impression that they must be good to
eat since he so often found me stooped above them; and so doing
would smudge my freshly written page with his broad, hairy hunt-
er's paws. I would sharply call him to order and he would lie
down on the floor and go to sleep. But when he slept he dreamed,
making running motions with all four paws and barking in a sub-
terranean but perfectly audible sort of way. I quite comprehen-
sibly found this distracting; in the first place the sound was un-
cannily ventriloquistic, in the second it gave me a guilty feeling.
For this dream life was obviously an artificial substitute for real
running, hunting, and open-air activity; it was supplied to him by
his own nature because his life with me did not give him as much
of it as his blood and his senses required. I felt touched; but since
there was nothing for it, I was constrained in the name of my
higher interests to throw off the incubus, telling myself that
Bashan brought altogether too much mud into the room and also
that he damaged the carpet with his claws.

So then the fiat went forth that he might not be with me or in
the house when I was there--though of course there might be
exceptions to the rule. He was quick to understand and submit to
the unnatural prohibition, as being the inscrutable will of his lord
and master. The separation from me--which in winter often
lasted the greater part of the day--was in his mind only a separa-
tion, not a divorce or severance of connections. He may not be
with me, because I have so ordained. But the not being with me is
a kind of negative being-with-me, just in that it is carrying out my
command. Hence we can hardly speak of an independent existence
carried on by Bashan during the hours when he is not by my side.
Through the glass door of my study I can see him on the grass-
plot in front of the house, playing with the children and putting
on an absurd avuncular air. He repeatedly comes to the door and
sniffs at the crack--he cannot see me through the muslin cur-
tains--to assure himself of my presence within; then he sits down
and mounts guard with his back to the door. Sometimes I see him
from my window prosing along on the elevated path between the
aspen trees; but this is only to pass the time, the excursion is void
of all pride or joy in life; in fact, it is unthinkable that Bashan
should devote himself to the pleasures of the chase on his own ac-
count, though there is nothing to prevent him from doing so and
my presence, as will be seen, is not always an unmixed advantage.

Life for him begins when I issue from the house--though, alas,
it does not always begin even then! For the question is, when I do
go out, which way am I going to turn: to the right, down the
avenue, the road towards the open and our hunting-ground, or
towards the left and the place where the trams stop, to ride into
town? Only in the first case is there any sense in accompanying
me. At first he used to follow me even when I turned left; when
the tram thundered up he would look at it with amazement and
then, suppressing his fears, land with one blind and devoted leap
among the crowd on the platform. Thence being dislodged by the
popular indignation, he would gallop along on the ground behind
the roaring vehicle which so little resembled the cart he once
knew. He would keep up with it as long as he could, his breath
getting shorter and shorter. But the city traffic bewildered his
rustic brains; he got between people's legs, strange dogs fell on his
flank, he was confused by a volume and variety of smells, the like
of which he had never imagined, irresistibly distracted by house-
corners impregnated with lingering ancient scents of old adven-
tures. He would fall behind; sometimes he would overtake the
tram again, sometimes not; sometimes he overtook the wrong one,
which looked just the same, ran blindly in the wrong direction,
further and further into a mad, strange world. Once he only came
home after two days' absence, limping and starved to death, and,
seeking the peace of the last house on the river-bank, found that
his lord and master had been sensible enough to get there before
him.

This happened two or three times. Then he gave it up and defi-
nitely declined to go with me when I turned to the left. He always
knows instantly whether I have chosen the wild or the world, di-
rectly I get outside the door. He springs up from the mat in the
entrance where he has been waiting for me and in that moment
divines my intentions; my clothes betray me, the cane I carry,
probably even my bearing: my cold and negligent glance or on
the other hand the challenging eye I turn upon him. He under-
stands. In the one case he tumbles over himself down the steps, he
whirls round and round like a stone in a sling as in dumb rejoicing
he runs before me to the gate. In the other he crouches, lays back
his ears, the light goes out of his eyes, the fire I have kindled by
my appearance dies down to ashes, and he puts on the guilty look
which men and animals alike wear when they are unhappy.

Sometimes he cannot believe his eyes, even though they plainly
tell him that there is no hope for the chase today. His yearning
has been too strong. He refuses to see the signs, the urban walking-
stick, the careful city clothes. He presses beside me through the
gate, turns round like lightning, and tries to make me turn right,
by running off at a gallop in that direction, twisting his head
round, and ignoring the fatal negative which I oppose to his ef-
forts. When I actually turn to the left he comes back and walks
with me along the hedge, with little snorts and head-tones which
seem to emerge from the high tension of his interior. He takes to
jumping to and fro over the park railings, although they are rather
high for comfort and he gives little moans as he leaps, being evi-
dently afraid of hurting himself. He jumps with a sort of desperate
gaiety which is bent on ignoring reality; also in the hope of be-
guiling me by his performance. For there is still a little--a very
little--hope that I may still leave the highroad at the end of the
park and turn left after all by the roundabout way past the pillar-
box, as I do when I have letters to post. But I do that very seldom;
so when that last hope has fled, then Bashan sits down and lets me
go my way.

There he sits, in that clumsy rustic posture of his, in the middle
of the road and looks after me as far as he can see me. If I turn my
head he pricks up his ears, but he does not follow; even if I whis-
tled he would not, for he knows it would be useless. When I turn
out of the avenue I can still see him sitting there, a small, dark,
clumsy figure in the road, and it goes to my heart, I have pangs of
conscience as I mount the tram. He has waited so long--and we
all know what torture waiting can be! His whole life is a waiting
--waiting for the next walk in the open, a waiting that begins as
soon as he is rested from the last one. Even his night consists of
waiting; for his sleep is distributed throughout the whole twenty-
four hours of the day, with many a little nap on the grass in the
garden, the sun shining down warm on his coat, or behind the
curtains of his kennel, to break up and shorten the empty spaces
of the day. Thus his night sleep is broken too, not continuous,
and manifold instincts urge him abroad in the darkness; he dashes
to and fro all over the garden--and he waits. He waits for the
night watchman to come on his rounds with his lantern and when
he hears the recurrent heavy tread heralds it, against his own bet-
ter knowledge, with a terrific outburst of barking. He waits for
the sky to grow pale, for the cocks to crow at the nursery-
gardener's close by; for the morning breeze to rise among the tree-
tops--and for the kitchen door to be opened, so that he may slip
in and warm himself at the stove.

Still, the night-time martyrdom must be mild compared with
what Bashan has to endure in the day. And particularly when the
weather is fine, either winter or summer, when the sunshine lures
one abroad and all the muscles twitch with the craving for violent
motion--and the master, without whom it is impossible to con-
ceive doing anything--simply will not leave his post behind the
glass door. All that agile little body, feverishly alive with pulsating
life, is rested through and through, is worn out with resting; sleep
is not to be thought of. He comes up on the terrace outside my
door, lets himself down with a sigh that seems to come from his
very heart, and rests his head on his paws, rolling his eyes up pa-
tiently to heaven. That lasts but a few seconds, he cannot stand the
position any more, he sickens of it. One other thing there is to do.
He can go down again and lift his leg against one of the little
formal arbor-vitae trees that flank the rose-bed--it is the one to the
right that suffers from his attentions, wasting away so that it has to
be replanted every year. He does go down, then, and performs this
action, not because he needs to, but just to pass the time. He stands
there a long time, with very little to show for it, however--so
long that the hind leg in the air begins to tremble and he has to
give a little hop to regain his balance. On four legs once more he
is no better off than he was. He stares stupidly up into the boughs
of the ash trees, where two birds are flitting and chirping; watches
them dart off like arrows and turns away as though in contempt
of such light-headedness. He stretches and stretches, fit to tear him-
self apart. The stretching is very thorough; it is done in two sec-
tions, thus: first the forelegs, lifting the hind ones into the air;
second the rear quarters, by sprawling them out on the ground;
both actions being accompanied by tremendous yawning. Then
that is over too, cannot be spun out any longer, and if you have
just finished an exhaustive stretching you cannot do it over again
just at once. He stands still and looks gloomily at the ground.
Then he begins to turn round on himself, slowly and consider-
ingly, as though he wanted to lie down, yet was not quite certain
of the best way to do it. Finally he decides not to; he moves off
sluggishly to the middle of the grass-plot, and once there flings
himself violently on his back and scrubs to and fro as though to
cool off on the shaven turf. Quite a blissful sensation, this, it seems,
for his paws jerk and he snaps in all directions in a delirium of re-
lease and satisfaction. He drains this joy down to its vapid dregs,
aware that it is fleeting, that you cannot roll and tumble more than
ten seconds at most, and that no sound and soul-contenting weari-
ness will result from it, but only a flatness and returning boredom,
such as always follows when one tries to drug oneself. He lies
there on his side with his eyes rolled up, as though he were dead.
Then he gets up and shakes himself, shakes as only his like can
shake without fearing concussion of the brain; shakes until every-
thing rattles, until his ears flop together under his chin and foam
flies from his dazzling white teeth. And then? He stands perfectly
still in his tracks, rigid, dead to the world, without the least idea
what to do next. And then, driven to extremes, he climbs the
steps once more, comes up to the glass door, lifts his paw and
scratches--hesitantly, with his ears laid back, the complete beg-
gar. He scratches only once, quite faintly; but this timidly lifted
paw, this single, faint-hearted scratch, to which he has come be-
cause he simply cannot think of anything else, are too moving, I
get up and open the door, though I know it can lead to no good.
And he begins to dance and jump, challenging me to be a man
and come abroad with him. He rumples the rugs, upsets the whole
room and makes an end of all my peace and quiet. But now judge
for yourself if, after I have seen Bashan wait like this, I can find
it easy to go off in the tram and leave him, a pathetic little dot at
the end of the poplar avenue!

In the long twilights of summer, things are not quite so bad:
there is a good chance that I will take an evening walk in the open
and thus even after long waiting he will come into his own and
with good luck be able to start a hare. But in winter if I go off in
the afternoon it is all over for the day, all hope must be buried
for another four-and-twenty hours. For night will have fallen;
if I go out again our hunting-grounds will lie in inaccessible dark-
ness and I must bend my steps towards the traffic, the lighted
streets, and city parks up the river--and this does not suit Ba-
shan's simple soul. He came with me at first, but soon gave it up
and stopped at home. Not only that space and freedom were lack-
ing; he was afraid of the bright lights in the darkness, he shied at
every bush, at every human form. A policeman's flapping cloak
could make him swerve aside with a yelp or even lead him to attack
the officer with a courage born of desperation; when the latter,
frightened in his turn, would let loose a stream of abuse to our
address. Unfortunate episodes mounted up when Bashan and I
went out together in the dark and the damp. And speaking of
policemen reminds me that there are three classes of human be-
ings whom Bashan does especially abhor: policemen, monks, and
chimney-sweeps. He cannot stand them, he assails them with a
fury of barking wherever he sees them or when they chance to
pass the house.

And winter is of course the time of year when freedom and
sobriety are with most difficulty preserved against snares; when
it is hardest to lead a regular, retired, and concentrated existence;
when I may even seek the city a second time in the day. For the
evening has its social claims, pursuing which I may come back
at midnight, with the last tram, or losing that am driven to return
on foot, my head in a whirl with ideas and wine and smoke, full
of roseate views of the world and of course long past the point
of normal fatigue. And then the embodiment of that other, truer,
soberer life of mine, my own hearthstone, in person, as it were,
may come to meet me; not wounded, not reproachful, but on the
contrary giving me joyous welcome and bringing me back to my
own. I mean, of course, Bashan. In pitchy darkness, the river
roaring in my ears, I turn into the poplar avenue, and after the
first few steps I am enveloped in a soundless storm of prancings
and swishings; on the first occasion I did not know what was
happening. "Bashan?" I inquire into the blackness. The pranc-
ings and swishings redouble--is this a dancing dervish or a Berserk
warrior here on my path? But not a sound; and directly I stand
still, I feel those honest, wet and muddy paws on the lapels of my
raincoat, and a snapping and flapping in my face, which I draw
back even as I stoop down to pat the lean shoulder, equally wet
with snow or rain. Yes, the good soul has come to meet the tram.
Well informed as always upon my comings and goings, he has got
up at what he judged to be the right time, to fetch me from the
station. He may have been waiting a long while, in snow or rain,
yet his joy at my final appearance knows no resentment at my
faithlessness, though I have neglected him all day and brought his
hopes to naught. I pat and praise him, and as we go home to-
gether I tell him what a fine fellow he is and promise him (that
is to say, not so much him as myself) that tomorrow, no matter
what the weather, we two will follow the chase together. And
resolving thus, I feel my worldly preoccupations melt away;
sobriety returns; for the image I have conjured up of our hunting-
ground and the charms of its solitude is linked in my mind with
the call to higher, stranger, more obscure concerns of mine.

There are still other traits of Bashan's character which I should
like to set down here, so that the gentle reader may get as lively
and speaking an image of him as is anyway possible. Perhaps the
best way would be for me to compare him with our deceased
Percy; for a better-defined contrast than that between these two
never existed within the same species. First and foremost we must
remember that Bashan was entirely sound in mind, whereas Percy,
as I have said, and as often happens among aristocratic canines,
had always been mad, through and through, a perfectly typical
specimen of frantic over-breeding. I have referred to this subject
before, in a somewhat wider connection; here I only want, for
purposes of comparison, to speak of Bashan's infinitely simpler,
more ordinary mentality, expressed for instance in the wav he
would greet you, or in his behaviour on our walks. His manifesta-
tions were always within the bounds of a hearty and healthy com-
mon sense; they never even bordered on the hysterical, whereas
Percy's on all such occasions overstepped them in a way that was
at times quite shocking.

And even that does not quite cover the contrast between these
two creatures; the truth is more complex and involved still. Bashan
is coarser-fibred, true, like the lower classes; but like them also he
is not above complaining. His noble predecessor, on the other
hand, united more delicacy and a greater capacity for suffering,
with an infinitely firmer and prouder spirit; despite all his foolish-
ness he far excelled in self-discipline the powers of Bashan's peas-
ant soul. In saying this I am not defending any aristocratic system
of values. It is simply to do honour to truth and actuality that I
want to bring out the mixture of softness and hardiness, delicacy
and firmness in the two natures. Bashan, for instance, is quite able
to spend the coldest winter night out of doors, behind the sacking
curtains of his kennel. He has a weakness of the bladder which
makes it impossible for him to remain seven hours shut up in a
room; we have to fasten him out, even in the most inhospitable
weather, and trust to his robust constitution. Sometimes after a
particularly bitter and foggy winter night he comes into the house
with his moustache and whiskers like delicately frosted wires;
with a little cold, even, and coughing in the odd, one-syllabled
way that dogs have. But in a few hours he has got all over it and
takes no harm at all. Whereas we should never have dared to ex-
pose our silken-haired Percy to such rigours. Yet Bashan is afraid
of the slightest pain, behaving so abjectly that one would feel
disgusted if the plebeian simplicity of his behaviour did not make
one laugh instead. When he goes stalking in the underbrush, I con-
stantly hear him yelping because he has been scratched by a thorn
or a branch has struck him in the face. If he hurts his foot or skins
his belly a little, jumping over a fence, he sets up a cry like an
antique hero in his death-agony; comes to me hobbling on three
legs, howling and lamenting in an abandonment of self-pity--the
more piercingly, the more sympathy he gets--and this although
in fifteen minutes he will be running and jumping again as though
nothing had happened.

With Percival it was otherwise; he clenched his jaws and was
still. He was afraid of the dog-whip, as Bashan is too; and tasted
it, alas, more often than the latter, for in his day I was younger
and quicker-tempered and his witlessness often assumed a vicious
aspect which cried out for chastisement and drove me on to ad-
minister it. When I was quite beside myself and took down the
lash from the nail where it hung, Percy might crawl under a table
or a bench. But not a sound would escape him under punishment;
even at a second flailing he would give vent only to a fervent
moan if it stung worse than usual--whereas the base-born Bashan
will howl abjectly if I so much as raise my arm. In short, no sense
of honour, no strictness with himself. And anyhow, it seldom
comes to corporal punishment, for I long ago ceased to make
demands upon him contrary to his nature, of a kind which would
lead to conflict between us.

For example, I never ask him to learn tricks; it would be of
no use. He is not talented, no circus dog, no trained clown. He is
a sound, vigorous young hunter, not a professor. I believe I re-
marked that he is a capital jumper. No obstacle too great, if the
incentive be present: if he cannot jump it he will scrabble up
somehow and let himseif fall on the other side--at least, he con-
quers it one way or another. But it must be a genuine obstacle, not
to be jumped through or crawled under; otherwise he would
think it folly to jump. A wall, a ditch, a fence, a thickset hedge,
are genuine obstacles; a crosswise bar, a stick held out, are not,
and you cannot jump over them without going contrary to rea-
son and looking silly. Which Bashan refuses to do. He refuses.
Try to make him jump over some such unreal obstacle; in the end
you will be reduced to taking him by the scruff of the neck, in
your anger, and flinging him over, while he whimpers and yaps.
Once on the other side he acts as though he had done just what
you wanted and celebrates the event in a frenzy of barking and
capering. You may coax or you may punish; you cannot break
down his reasonable resistance to performing a mere trick. He
is not unaccommodating, he sets store by his master's approval,
he will jump over a hedge at my will or my command, and not
only when he feels like it himself, and enjoys very much the
praise I bestow. But over a bar or a stick he will not jump, he will
crawl underneath--if he were to die for it. A hundred times he
will beg for forgiveness, forbearance, consideration; he fears pain,
fears it to the point of being abject. But no fear and no pain can
make him capable of a performance which in itself would be
child's-play for him, but for which he obviously lacks all mental
equipment. When you confront him with it, the question is not
whether he will jump or not; that is already settled, and the com-
mand means nothing to him but a beating. To demand of him
what reason forbids him to understand and hence to do is simply
in his eyes to seek a pretext for blows, strife, and disturbance of
friendly relations--it is merely the first step towards all these
things. Thus Bashan looks at it, so far as I can see, and I doubt
whether one may properly charge him with obstinacy. Obstinacy
may be broken down, in the last analysis it cries out to be broken
down; but Bashan's resistance to performing a trick he would
seal with his death.

Extraordinary creature! So close a friend and yet so remote; so
different from us, in certain ways, that our language has not
power to do justice to his canine logic. For instance, what is the
meaning of that frightful circumstantiality--unnerving alike to
the spectator and to the parties themselves--attendant on the
meeting of dog and dog; or on their first acquaintance or even on
their first sight of each other. My excursions with Bashan have
made me witness to hundreds of such encounters, or, I might
better say, forced me to be an embarrassed spectator at them. And
every time, for the duration of the episode, my old familiar Bashan
was a stranger to me, I found it impossible to enter into his feelings
or behaviour or understand the tribal laws which governed them.
Certainly the meeting in the open of two dogs, strangers to each
other, is one of the most painful, thrilling, and pregnant of all
conceivable encounters; it is surrounded by an atmosphere of the
last uncanniness, presided over by a constraint, for which I have
no preciser name; they simply cannot pass each other, their mutual
embarrassment is frightful to behold.

I am not speaking of the case where one of the parties is shut
up behind a hedge or a fence. Even then it is not easy to interpret
their feelings--but at least the situation is less acute. They sniff
each other from far off, and Bashan suddenly seeks shelter in my
neighbourhood, whining a little to give vent to a distress and
oppression which simply no words can describe. At the same time
the imprisoned stranger sets up a violent barking, ostensibly in
his character as a good watch-dog, but passing over unconsciously
into a whimpering much like Bashan's own, an unsatisfied, en-
vious, distressful whine. We draw near. The strange dog is wait-
ing for us, close to the hedge, grousing and bemoaning his im-
potence; jumping at the barrier and giving every sign--how
seriously one cannot tell--of intending to tear Bashan to pieces
if only he could get at him. Bashan might easily stick close to me
and pass him by; but he goes up to the hedge. He has to, he would
even if I forbade him; to remain away would be to transgress a
code older and more inviolable than any prohibition of mine. He
advances, then, and with a modest and inscrutable bearing per-
forms that rite which he knows will soothe and appease the other
--even if temporarily--so long as the stranger performs it too,
though whining and complaining in the act. Then they both chase
wildly along the hedge, each on his own side, as close as possible,
neither making a sound. At the end of the hedge they both face
about and dash back again. But in full career both suddenly halt
and stand as though rooted to the spot; they stand still, facing the
hedge, and put their noses together through it. For some space of
time they stand thus, then resume their curious, futile race shoul-
der to shoulder on either side of the barrier. But in the end my dog
avails himself of his freedom and moves off--a frightful moment
for the prisoner! He cannot stand it, he finds it namelessly hu-
miliating that the other should dream of simply going off like that.
He raves and slavers and contorts himself in his rage; runs like one
mad up and down his enclosure; threatens to jump the hedge and
have the faithless Bashan by the throat; he yells insults behind the
retreating back. Bashan hears it all, it distresses him, as his manner
shows. But he does not turn round, he jogs along beside me, while
the cursings in our rear die down into whinings and are still.

Such the procedure when one of the parties is shut up. Embar-
rassments multiply when both of them are free. I do not relish
describing the scene: it is one of the most painful and equivocal
imaginable. Bashan has been bounding light-heartedly beside me;
he comes up close, he fairly forces himself upon me, with a snif-
fling and whimpering that seem to come from his very depths. I
still do not know what moves his utterance, but I recognize it at
once and gather that there is a strange dog in the offing. I look
about--yes, there he comes, and even at this distance his strained
and hesitating mien betrays that he has already seen Bashan. I am
scarcely less upset than they; I find the meeting most undesirable.
"Go away," I say to Bashan. "Why do you glue yourself to my
leg? Can't you go off and do your business by yourselves?" I
try to frighten him off with my cane. For if they start biting--
which may easily happen, with reason or without--I shall find
it most unpleasant to have them between my feet. "Go away!"
I repeat, in a lower voice. But Bashan does not go away, he sticks
in his distress the closer to me, making as brief a pause as he can
at a tree-trunk to perform the accustomed rite; I can see the other
dog doing the same. We are now within twenty paces, the sus-
pense is frightful. The strange dog is crawling on his belly, like
a cat, his head thrust out. In this posture he awaits Bashan's ap-
proach, poised to spring at the right moment for his throat. But
he does not do it, nor does Bashan seem to expect that he will.
Or at least he goes up to the crouching stranger, though plainly
trembling and heavy-hearted; he would do this, he is obliged to do
it, even though I were to act myself and leave him to face the
situation alone by striking into a side path. However painful the
encounter, he has no choice, avoidance is not to be thought of.
He is under a spell, he is bound to the other dog, they are bound
to each other with some obscure and equivocal bond which may
not be denied. We are now within two paces.

Then the other gets up, without a sound, as though he had
never been behaving like a tiger, and stands there just as Bashan
is standing, profoundly embarrassed, wretched, at a loss. They
cannot pass each other. They probably want to, they turn away
their heads, rolling their eyes sideways; evidently the same sense
of guilt weighs on them both. They edge cautiously up to each
other with a hang-dog air; they stop flank to flank and sniff under
each other's tails. At this point the growling begins, and I speak
to Bashan low-voiced and warn him, for now is the decisive mo-
ment, now we shall know whether it will come to biting or
whether I shall be spared that rude shock. It does come to biting,
I do not know how, still less why: quite suddenly they are noth-
ing but a raging tumult and whirling coil out of which issue the
frightful guttural noises that animals make when they engage.
I may have to engage too, with my cane, to forestall a worse
calamity; I may try to get Bashan by the neck or the collar and
hold him up at arm's length in the air, the stranger dog hanging
on by his teeth. Other horrors there are, too, which I may have
to face--and feel them afterwards in all my limbs during the rest
of our walk. But it may be, too, that after all the preliminaries the
affair will pass tamely off and no harm done. At best it is hard
to part the two; even if they are not clenched by the teeth, they
are held by that inward bond. They may seem to have passed each
other, they are no longer flank to flank, but in a straight line with
their heads in opposite directions; they may not even turn their
heads, but only be rolling their eyes backwards. There may even
be a space between them--and yet the painful bond still holds.
Neither knows if the right moment for release has come, they
would both like to go, yet each seems to have conscientious
scruples. Slowly, slowly, the bond loosens, snaps; Bashan bounds
lightly away, with, as it were, a new lease on life.

I speak of these things only to show how under stress of cir-
cumstance the character of a near friend may reveal itself as
strange and foreign. It is dark to me, it is mysterious; I observe
it with head-shakings and can only dimly guess what it may mean.
And in all other respects I understand Bashan so well, I feel such
lively sympathy for all his manifestations! For example, how
well I know that whining yawn of his when our walk has been
disappointing, too short, or devoid of sporting interest; when I
have begun the day late and only gone out for a quarter of an
hour before dinner. At such times he walks beside me and yawns
--an open, impudent yawn to the whole extent of his jaws, an
animal, audible yawn insultingly expressive of his utter boredom.
"A fine master I have!" it seems to say. "Far in the night last
night I met him at the bridge and now he sits behind his glass door
and I wait for him dying of boredom. And when he does go out
he only does it to come back again before there is time to start
any game. A fine master! Not a proper master at all--really a
rotten master, if you ask me!"

Such was the meaning of his yawn, vulgarly plain beyond all
misunderstanding. And I admit that he is right, that he has a just
grievance, and I put out a hand to pat his shoulder consolingly or
to stroke his head. But he is not, under such circumstances, grate-
ful for caresses; he yawns again, if possible more rudely than be-
fore, and moves away from my hand, although by nature, in
contrast to Percy and in harmony with his own plebeian senti-
mentality, he sets great store by caresses. He particularly likes
having his throat scratched and has a funny way of guiding one's
hand to the right place by energetic little jerks of his head. That
he has no room just now for endearments is partly due to his dis-
appointment, but also to the fact that when he is in motion--and
that means that I also am - he does not care for them. His mood
is too manly; but it changes directly I sit down. Then he is all for
friendliness again and responds to it with clumsy enthusiasm.

When I sit reading in a corner of the garden wall, or on the lawn
with my back to a favourite tree, I enjoy interrupting my intel-
lectual preoccupations to talk and play with Bashan. And what
do I say to him? Mostly his own name, the two syllables which are
of the utmost personal interest because they refer to himself and
have an electric effect upon his whole being. I rouse and stimulate
his sense of his own ego by impressing upon him--varying my
tone and emphasis--that he is Bashan and that Bashan is his name.
By continuing this for a while I can actually produce in him a state
of ecstasy, a sort of intoxication with his own identity, so that he
begins to whirl round on himself and send up loud exultant barks
to heaven out of the weight of dignity that lies on his chest. Or
we amuse ourselves, I by tapping him on the nose, he by snapping
at my hand as though it were a fly. It makes us both laugh, yes,
Bashan has to laugh too; and as I laugh I marvel at the sight, to me
the oddest and most touching thing in the world. It is moving to
see how under my teasing his thin animal cheeks and the corners of
his mouth will twitch, and over his dark animal mask will pass an
expression like a human smile, or at least some ungainly, pathetic
semblance of one. It gives way to a look of startled embarrass-
ment, then transforms the face by appearing again....

But I will go no further nor involve myself in more detail of
the kind. Even so I am dismayed at the space I have been led on
to give to this little description; for what I had in mind to do was
merely to display, as briefly as I might, my hero in his element,
on the scene where he is most at home, most himself, and where
his gifts show to best advantage; I mean, of course, the chase.
But first I must give account to my reader of the theatre of these
delights, my landscape by the river and Bashan's hunting-ground.
It is a strip of land intimately bound up with his personality,
familiar, loved, and significant to me like himself; which fact,
accordingly, without further literary justification or embellish-
ment, must serve as the occasion for my description.


The Hunting-Ground

The spacious gardens of the suburb where we live contain many
large old trees that rise above the villa roofs and form a striking
contrast to the saplings set out at a later period. Unquestionably
they are the earliest inhabitants, the pride and adornment of a
settlement which is still not very old. They have been carefully
protected and preserved, so far as was possible; when any one of
them came into conflict with the boundaries of the parcels of land,
some venerable silvery moss-grown trunk standing exactly on a
border-line, the hedge makes a little curve round it, or an accom-
modating gap is left in a wall, and the ancient towers up half on
public, half on private ground, with bare snow-covered boughs or
adorned with its tiny, late-coming leaves.

They are a variety of ash, a tree that loves moisture more than
most--and their presence here shows what kind of soil we have.
It is not so long since human brains reclaimed it for human habi-
tation; not more than a decade or so. Before that it was a marshy
wilderness, a breeding-place for mosquitoes, where willows, dwarf
poplars, and other stunted growths mirrored themselves in stag-
nant pools. The region is subject to floods. There is a stratum of
impermeable soil a few yards under the surface; it has always been
boggy, with standing water in the hollows. They drained it by
lowering the level of the river--engineering is not my strong
point, but anyhow it was some such device, by means of which
the water which cannot sink into the earth now flows off laterally
into the river by several subterranean channels, and the ground is
left comparatively dry--but only comparatively, for Bashan and
I, knowing it as we do, are acquainted with certain low, retired,
and rushy spots, relics of the primeval condition of the region,
whose damp coolness defies the summer heat and makes them a
grateful place wherein to draw a few long breaths.

The whole district has its peculiarities, indeed, which distinguish
it at a glance from the pine forests and moss-grown meadows
which are the usual setting of a mountain stream. It has preserved
its original characteristics even since it was acquired by the real-
estate company; even outside the gardens the original vegetation
preponderates over the newly planted. In the avenues and parks,
of course, horse-chestnuts and quick-growing maple trees,
beeches, and all sorts of ornamental shrubs have been set out;
also rows of French poplars standing erect in their sterile mascu-
linity. But the ash trees, as I said, are the aborigines; they are every-
where, and of all ages, century-old giants and tender young seed-
lings pushing their way by hundreds, like weeds, through the
gravel. It is the ash, together with the silver poplar, the aspen,
the birch, and the willow, that gives the scene its distinctive look.
All these trees have small leaves, and all this small-leaved foliage
is very striking by contrast with the huge trunks. But there are
elms too, spreading their large, varnished, saw-edged leaves to the
sun. And everywhere too are masses of creeper, winding round
the young trees in the underbrush and inextricably mingling its
leaves with theirs. Little thickets of slim alder trees stand in the
hollows. There are few lime trees, no oaks or firs at all, in our
domain, though there are some on the slope which bounds it to
the east, where the soil changes and with it the character of the
vegetation. There they stand out black against the sky, like sen-
tinels guarding our little valley.

It is not more than five hundred yards from slope to river--I
have paced it out. Perhaps the strip of river-bank widens a little,
further down, but not to any extent; so it is remarkable what land-
scape variety there is in this small area, even when one makes such
moderate use of the playground it affords along the river as do
Bashan and I, who rarely spend more than two hours there, count-
ing our going and coming. There is such diversity that we need
hardly take the same path twice or ever tire of the view or be
conscious of any limitations of space; and this is due to the cir-
cumstance that our domain divides itself into three quite different
regions or zones. We may confine ourselves to one of these or we
may combine all three: they are the neighbourhood of the river
and its banks, the neighbourhood of the opposite slope, and the
wooded section in the middle.

The wooded zone, the parks, the osier brakes, and the river-
side shrubbery take up most of the breadth. I search in vain for a
word better than "wood" to describe this strange tract of land.
For it is no wood in the usual sense of the word: not a pillared hall
of even-sized trunks, carpeted with moss and fallen leaves. The
trees in qur hunting-ground are of uneven growth and size, hoary
giants of willows and poplars, especially along the river, though
also deeper in; others ten or fifteen years old, which are probably
as large as they will grow; and lastly a legion of slender trees,
young ashes, birches, and alders in a nursery garden planted by
nature herself. These look larger than they are; and all, as I said,
are wound round with creepers which give a look of tropical
luxuriance to the scene. But I suspect them of choking the growth
of their hosts, for I cannot see that the trunks have grown any
thicker in all the years I have known them.

The trees are of few and closely related species. The alder be-
longs to the birch family, the poplar is after all not very different
from a willow. And one might say that they all approach the wil-
low type; foresters tell us that trees tend to adapt themselves to
their local conditions, showing a certain conformity, as it were,
to the prevailing mode. It is the distorted, fantastic, witchlike
silhouette of the willow tree, dweller by still and by flowing wa-
ters, that sets the fashion here, with her branches like broom-
splints and her crooked-fingered tips; and all the others visibly
try to be like her. The silver poplar apes her best; but often it is
hard to tell poplar from birch, so much is the latter beguiled by
the spirit of the place to take on mis-shapen forms. Not that there
are not also plenty of very shapely and well-grown single speci-
mens of this lovable tree, and enchanting they look in the favour-
ing glow of the late afternoon sun. In this region the birch appears
as a slender silvery bole with a crown of little, separate leaves atop;
as a lovely, lithe, and well-grown maiden; it has the prettiest of
chalk-white trunks, and its foliage droops like delicate languishing
locks of hair. But there are also birches colossal in size, that no
man could span with his arms, the bark of which is only white
high up, but near the ground has turned black and coarse and is
seamed with fissures.

The soil is not like what one expects in a wood. It is loamy,
gravelly, even sandy. It seems anything but fertile, and yet, within
its nature, is almost luxuriantly so; for it is overgrown with tall,
rank grass, often the dry, sharp-cornered kind that grows on
dunes. In winter it covers the ground like trampled hay; not sel-
dom it cannot be distinguished from reeds, but in other places it
is soft and fat and juicy, and among it grow hemlock, coltsfoot,
nettles, all sorts of low-growing things, mixed with tall thistles
and tender young tree shoots. Pheasants and other wildfowl hide
in this vegetation, which rolls up to and over the gnarled roots
of the trees. And everywhere the wild grape and the hop-vine
clamber out of the thicket to twine round the trunks in garlands
of flapping leaves, or in winter with bare stems like the toughest
sort of wire.

Now, all this is not a wood, it is not a park, it is simply an en-
chanted garden, no more and no less. I will stand for the word--
though of course nature here is stingy and sparse and tends to the
deformed; a few botanical names exhausting the catalogue of her
performance. The ground is rolling, it constantly rises and falls
away, so that the view is enclosed on every hand, with a lovely
effect of remoteness and privacy. Indeed, if the wood stretched
for miles to. right and left, as far as it reaches lengthwise, instead
of only a hundred and some paces on each side from the middle,
one could not feel more secluded. Only by the sense of sound is
one made aware of the friendly nearness of the river; you cannot
see it, but it whispers gently from the west. There are gorges
choked with shrubbery--elder, privet, jasmine, and wild cherry
--on close June days the scent is almost overpowering. And again
there are low-lying spots, regular gravel-pits, where nothing but
a few willow-shoots and a little sage can grow, at the bottom or
on the sides.

And all this scene never ceases to exert a strange influence upon
me, though it has been my almost daily walk for some years. The
fine massed foliage of the ash puts me in mind of a giant fern;
these creepers and climbers, this barrenness and this damp, this
combination of lush and dry, has a fantastic effect; to convey my
whole meaning, it is a little as though I were transported to an-
other geological period, or even to the bottom of the sea--and
the fantasy has this much of fact about it, that water did stand
here once, for instance in the square low-lying meadow basins
thick with shoots of self-sown ash, which now serve as pasture
for sheep. One such lies directly behind my house.

The wilderness is crossed in all directions by paths, some of
them only lines of trodden grass or gravelly trails, obviously born
of use and not laid out--though it would be hard to say who trod
them, for only by way of unpleasant exception do Bashan and I
meet anyone here. When that happens he stands stock still and
gives a little growl which very well expresses my own feelings
too. Even on the fine summer Sunday afternoons which bring
crowds of people to walk in these parts--for it is always a few
degrees cooler here--we remain undisturbed in our fastness. They
know it not; the water is the great attraction, as a rule, the river
in its course; the human stream gets as close as it can, down to
the very edge if there is no flood, rolls along beside it, and then
back home again. At most we may come on a pair of lovers in the
shrubbery; they look at us wide-eyed and startled out of their
nest, or else defiantly as though to ask what objection we have to
their presence or their behaviour. All which we disclaim by beat-
ing swift retreat, Bashan with the indifference he feels for every-
thing that does not smell like game; I with a face utterly devoid
of all expression, either approving or the reverse.

But these woodland paths are not the only way we have of
reaching my park. There are streets as well--or rather there are
traces, which once were streets, or which once were to have been
streets, or which, by God's will, may yet become streets. In other
words: there are signs that the pickaxe has been at work, signs
of a hopeful real-estate enterprise for some distance beyond the
built-up section and the villas. There has been some far-sighted
planning on the part of the company which some years ago ac-
quired the land; but their plans went beyond their capacity for
carrying them out, for the villas were only a part of what they
had in mind. Building-lots were laid out; an area extending for
nearly a mile down the river was prepared, and doubtless still re-
mains prepared, to receive possible purchasers and home-loving
settlers. The building society conceived things on a rather large
scale. They enclosed the river between dykes, they built quays
and planted gardens, and, not content with that, they had em-
barked on clearing the woods, dumped piles of gravel, cut roads
through the wilderness, one or two lengthwise and several across
the width; fine, well-planned roads, or at least the first steps to-
wards them, made of coarse gravel, with a wide foot-path and
indications of a curb-stone. But no one walks there save Bashan
and myself, he on the good stout leather of his four paws, I in
hobnailed boots on account of the gravel. For the stately villas
projected by the company are still non-existent, despite the good
example I set when I built my own house. They have been, I say,
non-existent for ten, no, fifteen years; it is no wonder that a kind
of blight has settled upon the enterprise and discouragement
reigns in the bosom of the building society, a disinclination to go
on with their project.

However, things had got so far forward that these streets,
though not built up, have all been given names, just as though
they were in the centre of the town or in a suburb. I should very
much like to know what sort of speculator he was who named
them; he seems to have been a literary chap with a fondness for
the past: there is an Opitzstrasse, a Flemmingstrasse, a B11rger-
strasse, even an Adalbert-Stifterstrasse--I walk on the last-named
with especial reverence in my hobnailed boots. At all the corners
stakes have been driven in the ground with street signs affixed to
them, as is usual in suburbs where there are no house-corners to re-
ceive them; they are the usual little blue enamel plates with white
lettering. But alas, they are rather the worse for wear. They have
stood here far too long, pointing out the names of vacant sites
where nobody wants to live; they are monuments to the failure,
the discouragement, and the arrested development of the whole
enterprise.- They have not been kept up or renewed, the climate
has done its worst by them. The enamel has scaled off, the letter-
ing is rusty, there are ugly broken-edged gaps which make the
names sometimes almost illegible. One of them, indeed, puzzled
me a good deal when I first came here and was spying about the
neighbourhood. It was a long name, and the word "street" was
perfectly clear, but most of the rest was eaten by rust; there re-
mained only an S at the beginning, an E somewhere about the
middle, and another E at the end. I could not reckon with so many
unknown quantities. I studied the sign a long time with my hands
behind my back, then continued along the foot-path with Bashan.
I thought I was thinking about something else, but all the time my
brains were privately cudgelling themselves, and suddenly it came
over me. I stopped with a start, stood still, and then hastened back,
took up my former position, and tested my guess. Yes, it fitted.

The name of the street where I was walking was Shakespeare
Street.

The streets suit the signboards and the signboards suit the
streets--it is a strange and dreamlike harmony in decay. The
streets run through the wood they have broken into; but the wood
does not remain passive. It does not let the streets stop as
they were made, through decade after decade, until at last people
come and settle on them. It takes every step to close them again;
for what grows here does not mind gravel, it flourishes in it.
Purple thistles, blue sage, silvery shoots of willow, and green ash
seedlings spring up all over the road and even on the pavement;
the streets with the poetic names are going back to the wilder-
ness, whether one likes it or not; in another ten years Opitzstrasse,
Flemmingstrasse, and the rest will be closed, they will probably
as good as disappear. There is at present no ground for complaint;
for from the romantic and picturesque point of view there are
no more beautiful streets in the world than they are now. Noth-
ing could be more delightful than strolling through them in their
unfinished, abandoned state, if one has on stout boots and does not
mind the.gravel. Nothing more agreeable to the eye than looking
from the wild garden beneath one's feet to the humid massing of
fine-leafed foliage that shuts in the view--foliage such as Claude
Lorrain used to paint, three centuries ago. Such as he used to
paint, did I say? But surely he painted this. He was here, he knew
this scene, he studied it. If my building-society man had not con-
fined himself to the literary field, one of these rusty street signs
might have borne the name of Claude.

Well, that is our middle or wooded region. But the eastern slope
has its own charms not to be despised, either by me or by Bashan,
who has his own reasons, which will appear hereafter. I might call
this region the zone of the brook; for it takes its idyllic character
as landscape from the stream that flows through it, and the peace-
ful loveliness of its beds of forgetmenot makes it a fit companion-
piece to the zone on the other side with its rushing river, whose
flowing, when the west wind blows, can be faintly heard even all
the way across our hunting-ground. The first of the made cross-
roads through the wood runs like a causeway from the poplar
avenue to the foot of the hillside, between low-lying pasture-
ground on one side and wooded lots of land on the other. And from
there a path descends to the left, used by the children to coast on
in winter. The brook rises in the level ground at the bottom of this
descent. We love to stroll beside it, Bashan and I, on the right
or the left bank at will, through the varied territory of our eastern
zone. On our left is an extent of wooded meadow, and a nursery-
gardening establishment; we can see the backs of the buildings,
and sheep cropping the clover, presided over by a rather stupid
little girl in a red frock. She keeps propping her hands on her
knees and screaming at her charges at the top of her lungs in a
harsh, angry, and imperious voice. But she seems to be afraid of
the majestic old ram, who looks enormously fat in his thick fleece
and who does as he likes regardless of her bullying ways. The
child's screams rise to their height when the sheep are thrown into
a panic by the appearance of Bashan; and this almost always hap-
pens, quite against his will or intent, for he is profoundly indiffer-
ent to their existence, behaves as though they were not there, or
even deliberately and contemptuously ignores them in an effort
to forestall an attack of panic folly on their part. Their scent is
strong enough to me, though not unpleasant; but it is not a scent
of game, so Bashan takes no interest in harrying them. But let him
make a single move, or merely appear on the scene, and the whole
flock, but now grazing peacefully over the meadow and bleating
in their curiously human voices, some bass, some treble, suddenly
collect in a huddled mass of backs and go dashing off, while the
imbecile child stoops over and screams at them until her voice
cracks and her eyes pop out of her head. Bashan looks up at me
as though to say: Am I to blame, did I do anything at all?

But once something quite the opposite happened, that was even
more extraordinary and distressing than any panic. A sheep, a quite
ordinary specimen, of medium size and the usual sheepish race,
save for a narrow-lipped little mouth turned up at the corners
into a smile which gave the creature an uncommonly sly and
fatuous look--this sheep appeared to be smitten with Bashan's
charms. It followed him; it left the flock and the pasture-ground
and followed at his heels, wherever he went, smiling with ex-
travagant stupidity. He left the path, and it followed. He ran, it
galloped after. He stopped, it did the same, close behind him
and smiling its inscrutable smile. Embarrassment and dismay were
painted on Bashan's face, and certainly his position was highly
distasteful. For good or for ill it lacked any kind of sense or reason.
Nothing so consummately silly had ever happened to either of us.
The sheep got further and further away from its base, but it
seemed not to care for that; it followed the exasperated Bashan
apparently resolved to part from him nevermore, but to be at his
side whithersoever he went. He stuck close at my side; not so
much alarmed--for the which there was no cause--as ashamed
of the disgraceful situation. At last, as though he had had enough
of it, he stood still, turned round, and gave a menacing growl.
The sheep bleated--it was like a man's laugh, a spiteful laugh--
and put poor Bashan so beside himself that he ran away with his
tail between his legs, the sheep bounding absurdly behind him.

Meanwhile we had got a good way from the flock; the addle-
pated little girl was screaming fit to burst, and not only bending
her knees but jerking them up and down as she screamed till they
touched her face, and she looked from a distance like a demented
dwarf. A dairymaid in an apron came running, her attention being
drawn by the shrieks or in some other way. She had a pitchfork
in one hand; with the other she held her breasts, that shook up and
down as she ran. She tried to drive back the sheep with the pitch-
fork--it had started after Bashan again--but unsuccessfully. The
sheep did indeed spring away from the fork in the right direction,
but then swung round again to follow Bashan's trail. It seemed no
power on earth would divert it. But at last I saw what had to be
done and turned round. We all marched back, Bashan beside me,
behind him the sheep, behind the sheep the maid with the pitch-
fork, th^ child in the red frock bouncing and stamping at us all
the while. It was not enough to go back to the flock, we had to do
the job thoroughly. We went into the farmyard and to the sheep-
pen, where the farm girl rolled back the big door with her strong
right arm. We all went inside, all of us; and then the rest of us
had to slip out again and shut the door in the face of the poor
deluded sheep, so that it was taken prisoner. And then, after re-
ceiving the farm girl's thanks, Bashan and I might resume our
interrupted walk, to the end of which Bashan preserved a sulky
and humiliated air.

So much for the sheep. Beyond the farm buildings is an ex-
tensive colony of allotments, that looks rather like a cemetery,
with its arbours and little summer-houses like chapels and each
tiny garden neatly enclosed. The whole colony has a fence round
it, with a latticed gate, through which only the owners of the
plots have admission. Sometimes I have seen a man with his sleeves
rolled up digging his few yards of vegetable-plot--he looked as
though he were digging his own grave. Beyond this come open
meadows full of mole-hills, reaching to the edge of the middle
wooded region; besides the moles, the place abounds in field-mice
--I mention them on account of Bashan and his multifarious joy
of the chase.

But on the other, the right side, the brook and the hillside con-
tinue, the latter, as I said, with great variety in its contours. The
first part is shadowed and gloomy and set with pines. Then comes
a sand-pit which reflects the warm rays of the sun; then a gravel-
pit, then a cataract of bricks, as though a house had been demol-
ished up above and the rubble simply flung down the hill, dam-
ming the brook at the bottom. But the brook rises until its waters
flow over the obstacle and go on, reddened with brick-dust and
dyeing the grass along its edge, to flow all the more blithely and
pellucidly further on, with the sun making diamonds sparkle on its
surface.

I am very fond of brooks, as indeed of all water, from the ocean
to the smallest reedy pool. If in the mountains in the summertime
my ear but catch the sound of plashing and prattling from afar,
I always go to seek out the source of the liquid sounds, a long
way if I must; to make the acquaintance and to look in the face
of that conversable child of the hills, where he hides. Beautiful
are the torrents that come tumbling with mild thunderings down
between evergreens and over stony terraces; that form rocky
bathing-pools and then dissolve in white foam to fall perpendicu-
larly to the next level. But I have pleasure in the brooks of the
flatland too, whether they be so shallow as hardly to cover the
slippery, silver-gleaming pebbles in their bed, or as deep as small
rivers between overhanging, guardian willow trees, their current
flowing swift and strong in the centre, still and gently at the edge.
Who would not choose to follow the sound of running waters?
Its attraction for the normal man is of a natural, sympathetic sort.
For man is water's child, nine-tenths of our body consists of it,
and at a certain stage the foetus possesses gills. For my part I freely
admit that the sight of water in whatever form or shape is my
most lively and immediate kind of natural enjoyment; yes, I would
even say that only in contemplation of it do I achieve true self-
forgetfulness and feel my own limited individuality merge into
the universal. The sea, still-brooding or coming on in crashing
billows, can put me in a state of such profound organic dreami-
ness, such remoteness from myself, that I am lost to time. Boredom
is unknown, hours pass like minutes, in the unity of that com-
panionship. But then, I can lean on the rail of a little bridge over
a brook and contemplate its currents, its whirlpools, and its steady
flow for as long as you like; with no sense or fear of that other
flowing within and about me, that swift gliding away of time.
Such love of water and understanding of it make me value the
circumstance that the narrow strip of ground where I dwell is
enclosed on both sides by water.

But my little brook here is the simplest of its kind, it has no
particular or unusual characteristics, it is quite the average brook.
Clear as glass, without any guile, it does not dream of seeming
deep by being turbid. It is shallow and candid and makes no bones
of betraying that there are old tins and the mouldering remains
of a laced shoe in its bed. But it is deep enough to serve as a home
for pretty, lively, silver-grey little fish, which dart away in zig-
zags at our approach. In some places it broadens into a pool, and
it has willows on its margin, one of which I love to look at as I
pass. It stands on the hillside, a little removed from the water; but
one of the boughs has bent down and reached across and actually
succeeded in plunging its silvery tip into the flowing water. Thus
it stands revelling in the pleasure of this contact.

It is pleasant to walk here in the warm breeze of summer. If
the weather is very warm Bashan goes into the stream to cool his
belly; not more than that, for he never of his own free will wets
the upper parts. He stands there with his ears laid back and a look
of virtue on his face and lets the water stream round and over
him. Then he comes back to me to shake himself, being convinced
that this can only be accomplished in my vicinity--although he
docs it so thoroughly that I receive a perfect shower-bath in the
process. It is no good waving him off with my stick or with
shoutings. Whatever seems to him natural and right and necessary,
that he will do.

The brook flows on westward to a little hamlet that faces north
between the wood and the hillside. At the beginning of this hamlet
is an inn, and at this point the brook widens into another pool
where women kneel to wash their clothes. Crossing the little foot-
bridge, you strike into a road going back towards the city between
wood and meadow. But on the right of the road is another
through the wood, by which in a few minutes you can get back
to the river.

And so here we are at the river zone, and the river itself is in
front of us, green and roaring and white with foam. It is really
nothing more than a mountain torrent; but its ceaseless roaring
pervades the whole region round, in the distance subdued, but here
a veritable tumult which--if one cannot have the ocean itself--
is quite a fair substitute for its awe-inspiring swell. Numberless
gulls fill the air with their cries; autumn, winter, and spring they
circle screaming round the mouths of the drain-pipes which issue
here, seeking their food. In summer they depart once more for the
lakes higher up. Wild and half-wild duck also take refuge here
in the neighbourhood of the town for the winter months. They
rock on the waves, are whirled round and carried off by the
current, rise into the air to escape being engulfed, and then settle
again on quieter water.

And this river tract also is divided into areas of varying char-
acter. At the edge of the wood is .the gravelly expanse into which
the poplar avenue issues; it extends for nearly a mile downstream,
as far as the ferry-house, of which I will speak presently. At this
point the underbrush comes nearly down to the river-bed. And
all the gravel, as I am aware, constitutes the beginnings of the first
and most important of the lengthwise streets, magnificently
conceived by the real-estate company as an esplanade, a carriage-
road bordered by trees and flowers--where elegantly turned-
out riders were to hold sweet converse with ladies leaning
back in shiny landaus. Beside the ferry-house, indeed, is a sign,
already rickety and rotting, from which one can gather that the
site was intended for the erection of a cafe. Yes, there is the sign
--and there it remains, but there is no trace of the little ta-
bles, the hurrying waiters and coffee-sipping guests; nobody has
bought the site, and the esplanade is nothing but a desert of gravel,
where sage and willow-shoots are almost as thick as in Opitz-
and Flemmingstrasse.

Down close to the river is another, narrower gravel waste, as
full of weeds as the bigger one. Along it are grassy mounds sup-
porting telegraph poles. I like to use this as a path, by way of
variety--also because it is cleaner, though more difficult, to walk
on it than on the actual foot-path, which in bad weather is often
very muddy, though it is actually the proper path, extending for
miles along the river, finally going off into trails along the bank.
It is planted on the river side with young maple and birch trees;
on the other side the original inhabitants stand in a row--willows,
aspens, and silver poplars of enormous size. The river-bank is steep
and high and is ingeniously shored up with withes and concrete to
prevent the flooding which threatens two or three times in the
year, after heavy rains or when the snows melt in the hills. At sev-
eral points there are ladderlike wooden steps leading down to the
river-bed--an extent of mostly dry gravel, six or eight yards wide.
For this mountain torrent behaves precisely as its like do, whether
large or small: it may be, according to the conditions up above,
either the merest green trickle, hardly covering the stones, where
long-legged birds seem to be standing on the water; or it may be
a torrent alarming in its power and extent, filling the wide bed
with raging fury, whirling round tree-branches and old baskets
and dead cats and threatening to commit much damage. Here, too,
there is protection against floods in the shape of woven hurdles
put in slanting to the stream. When dry, the bed is grown up with
wiry grass and wild oats, as well as that omnipresent shrub the blue
sage; there is fairly good walking, on the strip of flat stones at the
extreme outer edge, and it affords me a pleasant variety, for though
the stone is not of the most agreeable to walk on, the close prox-
imity of the river atones for much, and there is even sometimes
sand between the gravel and the grass; true, it is mixed with clay,
it has not the exquisite cleanness of sea-sand, but after all it is sand.
I am taking a walk on the beach that stretches into the distance at
the edge of the wave, and there is the sound of the surge and the
cry of the gulls, there is that monotony that swallows time and
space and shuts one up as in a dream. The river roars eddying over
the stones, and half-way to the ferry-house the sound is aug-
mented by a waterfall that comes down by a diagonal canal and
tumbles into the larger stream, arching as it falls, shining glassily
like a leaping fish, and seething perpetually at its base.

Lovely to walk here when the sky is blue and the ferry-boat
flies a flag, perhaps in honour of the fine weather or because it is
a feast-day of some sort. There are other boats here too, but the
ferry-boat is fast to a wire cable attached to another, thicker cable
that is spanned across the stream and runs along it on a little pulley.
The current supplies the motive power, the steering is done by
hand. The ferryman lives with his wife and child in the ferry-
house, which is a little higher up than the upper foot-path; the
house has a kitchen-garden and a chicken-house and the man un-
doubtedly gets it rent-free in his office as ferryman. It is a sort of
dwarf villa, rather flimsy, with funny little outcroppings of bal-
conies and bay-windows, and seems to have two rooms below and
two above. I like to sit on the little bench on the upper foot-path
close to the tiny garden--with Bashan squatting on my foot and
the ferryman's chickens stalking round about me, jerking their
heads forward with each step. The cock usually comes and
perches on the back of the bench with his green bersaglieri tail-
feathers hanging down behind; he sits thus beside me and measures
me with a fierce side-glance of his red eye. I watch the traffic; it is
not crowded, hardly even lively; indeed, the ferry-boat runs only
at considerable intervals. The more do I enjoy it when on one side
or the other a man appears, or a woman with a basket, and wants
to be put across; the "Boat ahoy!" is an age-old, picturesque cry,
with a poetry not impaired by the fact that the business is done
somewhat differently nowadays. Double flights of steps for those
coming and going lead down to the river-bed and to the landings,
and there is an electric push-button at the side of each. So when a
man appears on the opposite bank and stands looking across the
water, he does not put his hands round his mouth and call. He goes
up to the push-button, puts out his hand, and pushes. The bell
rings shrilly in the ferryman's villa; that is the "Boat ahoy!"
even so, and it is poetic still. Then the man waits and looks about.
And almost at the moment when the bell rings, the ferryman comes
out of his little official dwelling, as though he had been standing
behind the door or sitting on a chair waiting for the signal. He
comes out, and the way he walks suggests that he has been me-
chanically put in motion by the ringing of the bell. It is like a
shooting-booth when you shoot at the door of a little house and
if you hit it a figure comes out, a sentry or a cow-girl. The ferry-
man crosses his garden at a measured pace, his arms swinging regu-
larly at his sides; over the path and down the steps to the river,
where he pushes off the ferry-boat and holds the steering-gear
while the little pulley runs along the wire above the stream and
the boat is driven across. The man springs in, and once safely on
this side hands over his penny and runs briskly up the steps, going
off right or left. Sometimes, when the ferryman is not well or is
very busy in the house, his wife or even his little child comes out
to ferry the stranger across. They can do it as well as he, and so
could I, for it is an easy office, requiring no special gift or training.
He can reckon himself lucky to have the job and live in the dwarf
villa. Anyone, however stupid, could do what he does, and he
knows this, of course, and behaves with becoming modesty. On
the way back to his house he very politely says: "Gruss Gott" to
me as I sit there on the bench between Bashan and the cock; you
can see that he likes to be on good terms with everybody.

There is a tarry smell, a breeze off the water, a slapping sound
against the ferry-boat. What more can one want? Sometimes these
things call up a familiar memory: the water is deep, it has a smell
of decay--that is the Lagoon, that is Venice. But sometimes there
is a heavy storm, a deluge of rain; in my macintosh, my face
streaming with wet, I take the upper path, leaning against the
strong west wind, which in the poplar avenue has tom the saplings
away from their supports. Now one can see why all the trees are
bent in one direction and have somewhat lop-sided tops. Bashan
has to stop often to shake himself, the water flies off him in every
direction. The river is quite changed: swollen and dark yellow it
rolls threateningly along, rushing and dashing in a furious hurry
this way and that; its muddy tide takes up the whole extra bed up
to the edge of the undergrowth, pounding against the cement and
the willow hurdles--until one is glad of the forethought that put
them there. The strange thing about it is that the water is quiet; it
makes almost no noise at all. And there are no rapids in its course
now, the stream is too high for that. You can only see where they
were by the fact that its waves are higher and deeper there than
elsewhere, and that their crests break backwards instead of for-
wards like the surf on a beach. The waterfall is insignificant now,
its volume is shrunken, no longer vaulted, and the boiling water at
its base is almost obliterated by the height of the flood. Bashan's
reaction to all this is simple unmitigated astonishment that things
can be so changed. He cannot get over it, cannot understand how
it is that the dry territory where he is wont to run about has dis-
appeared, is covered by water. He flees up into the undergrowth
to get away from the lashing of the flood; looks at me and wags his
tail, then back at the water, and has a funny, puzzled way of open-
ing his jaws crookedly, shutting them again and running his
tongue round the corner of his mouth. It is not a very refined
gesture, in fact rather common, but very speaking, and as human
as it is animal--in fact it is just what an ordinary simple-minded
man might do in face of a surprising situation, very likely scratch-
ing his neck at the same time.

Having gone into some detail in describing the river zone, I
believe I have covered the whole region and done all I can to bring
it before my reader's eye. I like my description pretty well, but I
like the reality of nature even better. It is more vivid and various;
just as Bashan himself is warmer, more living and hearty than
his imaginary presentment. I am attached to this landscape, I owe
it something, and am grateful, therefore, I have described it. It is
my park and my solitude; my thoughts and dreams are mingled
and interwoven with images from it, as the tendrils of climbing
plants are with the boughs of its trees. I have seen it at all times
of day and all seasons of the year: in autumn, when the chemical
odour of decaying vegetation fills the air, when all the thistles
have shed their down, when the great beeches in my park have
spread a rust-coloured carpet of leaves on the meadow and the
liquid golden afternoons merge into romantic, theatrical early
evenings, with the moon's sickle swimming in the sky, when a
milk-brewed mist floats above the lowlands and a crimson sunset
burns through the black silhouettes of the tree-branches. In
autumn, but in winter too, when the gravel is covered with snow
and softly levelled off so that one can walk on it in overshoes;
when the river looks black as it flows between sallow frost-bound
banks, and the cries of hundreds of gulls fill the air from morning
to night. But my freest and most familiar intercourse with it is in
the milder months, when no extra clothing is required, to dash
out quickly, between two showers, for a quarter of an hour; to
bend aside in passing a bough of black alder and get a glimpse of
the river as it flows. We may have had guests, and I am left some-
what worn down by conversation, between my four walls, where
it seems the breath of the strangers still hovers on the air. Then it
is good not to linger but to go out at once and stroll in Gellert-
strasse or Stifterstrasse, to draw a long breath and get the air into
one's lungs. I look up into the sky, I gaze into the tender depths of
the masses of green foliage, and peace returns once more and
dwells within my spirit.

And Bashan is always with me. He had not been able to prevent
the influx of strange persons into our dwelling though he had
lifted up his voice and objected. But it did no good, so he had
withdrawn. Now he rejoices to be with me again in our hunting-
ground. He runs before me on the gravel path, one ear negligently
cocked, with that sidewise gait dogs have, the hind legs not just
exactly behind the forelegs. And suddenly I see him gripped, as it
were, body and soul, his stump of tail switching furiously, erect in
the air. His head goes forward and down, his body lengthens out,
he makes short dashes in several directions, and then shoots off in
one of them with his nose to the ground. He has struck a scent.
He is off after a hare.


The Chase

The region round is full of game, and we hunt it; that is, Bashan
does and I look on. Thus we go hunting: hares, partridges, field-
mice, moles, ducks, and gulls. Neither do we shrink from larger
game, we stalk pheasant, even deer, if one of them, in winter, hap-
pens to stray into our preserve. It is quite a thrilling sight to see
the slender long-legged creature, yellow against the snow, run-
ning away, with its white buttocks bobbing up and down, in flight
from my little Bashan. He strains every nerve, I look on with the
greatest sympathy and suspense. Not that anything would ever
come of it, nothing ever has or will. But the lack of concrete re-
sults does not affect Bashan's passionate eagerness or mar my own
interest at all. We pursue the chase for its own sake, not for the
prey nor for any other material advantage. Bashan is, as I have
said, the active partner. He does not expect from me anything
more than my moral support, having no experience, immediate and
personal, that is, of more direct co-operation. I say immediate and
personal for it is more than likely that his forbears, at least on the
pointer side, know what the chase should really be like. I have
sometimes asked myself whether some memory might still linger
in him, ready to be awakened by a chance sight or sound. At his
level the life of the individual is certainly less sharply distinguished
from the race than is the case with human beings, birth and death
must be a less far-reaching shock; perhaps the traditions of the
stock are preserved unimpaired, so that it would only be an ap-
parent contradiction to speak of inborn experiences, unconscious
memories which, when summoned up, would have the power to
confuse the creature as to what were its own individual experi-
ences or give rise to dissatisfaction with them. I indulged in this
thought, but finally put it from me, as Bashan obviously put from
him the rather brutal episode which gave rise to my speculations.

When we go out to follow the chase it is usually midday, half
past eleven or twelve; sometimes, on particularly warm summer
days, we go late in the afternoon, six o'clock or so--or perhaps we
go then for the second time. But on the afternoon walk things are
very different with me--not at all as they were on my careless
morning stroll. My freshness and serenity have departed long
since, I have been struggling and taking thought, I have overcome
difficulties, have had to grit my teeth and tussle with a single detail
while at the same time holding a more extended and complex con-
text firmly in mind, concentrating my mental powers upon it
down to its furthermost ramifications. And mv head is tired. It is
the chase with Bashan that relieves and distracts me, gives me new
life, and puts me back into condition for the rest of the day, in
which there is still something to be done.

Of course we do not select each day a certain kind of game to
hunt--only hares, for instance, or only ducks. Actually we hunt
everything that comes--I was going to say, within reach of our
guns. So that we do not need to go far before starting something,
actually the hunt can begin just outside the garden gate; for there
are quantities of moles and field-mice in the meadow bottom be-
hind the house. Of course these fur-bearing little creatures are not
properly game at all. But their mysterious, burrowing little ways,
and especially the slyness and dexterity of the field-mice, which
are not blind by day like their brethren the moles, but scamper
discreetly about on the ground, whisking into their holes at the ap-
proach of danger, so that one cannot even see their legs moving--
all this works powerfully upon Bashan's instincts. Besides, they are
the only wild creatures he ever catches. A field-mouse, a mole,
makes a morsel not to be despised, in these lean days, when he
often finds nothing more appetizing than porridge in the dish be-
side his kennel.

So then I and my walking-stick will scarcely have taken two or
three steps up the poplar avenue, and Bashan will have scarcely
opened the ball with his usual riotous plunges, when I see him ca-
pering off to my right--already he is in the grip of his passion,
sees and hears nothing but the maddening invisible activities of the
creatures all round him. He slinks through the grass, his whole
body tense, wagging his tail and lifting his legs with great caution;
stops, with one foreleg and one hind leg in the air, eyes the ground
with his head on one side, muzzle pointed, ear muscles stiffly
erected--so that his ear-laps fall down in front, each side of his
eyes. Then with both fore-paws raised he makes a sudden for-
wards plunge, and another; looking with a puzzled air at the place
where something just now was but is not any more. Then he be-
gins to dig. I feel a strong desire to follow him and see what he
gets. But if I did we should never get further, his whole zeal for the
chase would be expended here on the spot. So I go on. I need not
worry about his losing me. Even if he stops behind a long time
and has not seen which way I turned, my trail will be as clear to
him as though I were the game he seeks, and he will follow it, head
between his paws, even if I am out of sight; already I can hear his
licence-tag clinking and his stout paws thudding in my rear. He
shoots past me, turns round, and wags his tail to announce that he
is on the spot.

But in the woods, or out on the meadows by the brook, I do stop
often and watch him digging for a mouse, even though the time
allotted for my walk is nearly over. It is so fascinating to see his
passionate concentration, I feel the contagion myself and cannot
help a fervent wish that he may catch something and I be there to
see. The spot where he has chosen to dig looks like any other--
perhaps a mossy little mound among the roots at the foot of a birch
tree. But he has heard and scented something at that spot, perhaps
even viewed it as it whisked away; he is convinced that it is there
in its burrow underground, he has only to get at it--and he digs
away for dear life, oblivious of all else, not angry, but with the
professional passion of the sportsman--it is a magnificent sight.
His little striped body, the ribs showing and muscles playing un-
der the smooth skin, is drawn in at the middle, his hind quarters
stand up in the air, the stump of a tail vibrating in quick time; his
head with his fore-paws is down in the slanting hole he has dug
and he turns his face aside as he plies his iron-shod paws. Faster
and faster, till earth and little stones and tufts of grass and frag-
ments of tree-roots fly up almost into my face. Sometimes he
snorts in the silence, when he has burrowed his nose well into the
earth, trying to smell out the motionless, clever, frightened little
beast that is besieged down there. It is a muffled snorting; he draws
in the air hastily and empties his lungs again the better to scent the
fine, keen, far-away, and buried effluvium. How does the creature
feel when he hears the snorting? Ah, that is its own affair, or
God's, who has made Bashan the enemy of field-mice. Even the
emotion of fear is an enhancement of life; and who knows, if there
were no Bashan the mouse might find time hang heavy on its
hands. Besides, what would be the use of all its beady-eyed clever-
ness and mining skill, which more than balance what Bashan can
do, so that the attacker's success is always more than problemati-
cal? In short, I do not feel much pity for the mouse, privately I
am on Bashan's side and cannot always stick to my role of on-
looker. I take my walking-stick and dig out some pebble or
gnarled piece of root that is too firmly lodged for him to move.
And he sends up a swift, warm glance of understanding to me as
he works. With his mouth full of dirt, he chews away at the stub-
born earth and the roots running through it, tears out whole
chunks and throws them aside, snorts again into his hole and is
encouraged by the freshened scent to renewed attack on it with
his claws.

In nearly every case all this labour is vain. Bashan will give one
last cursory look at the scene and then with soil sticking to his
nose, and his legs black to the shoulder, he will give it up and trot
off indifferently beside me. "No go, Bashan," I say when he looks
up at me. "Nothing there," I repeat, shaking my head and shrug-
ging my shoulders to make my meaning clear. But he needs no
consolation, he is not in the least depressed by his failure. The
chase is the thing, the quarry a minor matter. It was a good effort,
he thinks, in so far as he casts his mind back at all to his recent
strenuous performance--for already he is bent on a new one, and
all three of our zones will furnish him plenty of opportunity.

But sometimes he actually catches the mouse. I have my emo-
tions when that happens, for he gobbles it alive, without com-
punction, with the fur and the bones. Perhaps the poor little thing
was not well enough advised by its instincts, and chose for its hole
a place where the earth was too soft and loose and easy to dig.
Perhaps its gallery was not long enough and it was too terrified to
go on digging, but simply crouched there with its beady eyes pop-
ping out of its head for fright, while the horrible snorting came
nearer and nearer. And so at last the iron-shod paw laid it bare and
scooped it up--out into the light of day, a lost little mouse! It was
justified of its fears; luckily these most likely reduced it to a semi-
conscious state, so that it will hardly have noticed being converted
into porridge.

Bashan holds it by the tail and dashes it against the ground, once,
twice, thrice; there is the faintest squeak, the very last sound
which the god-forsaken little mouse is destined to make on this
earth, and now Bashan snaps it up in his jaws, between his strong
white teeth. He stands with his forelegs braced apart, his neck
bent, and his head stuck out while he chews, shifting the morsel in
his mouth and then beginning to munch once more. He crunches
the tiny bones, a shred of fur hangs from the corner of his mouth,
it disappears and all is over. Bashan begins to execute a dance of
joy and triumph round me as I stand leaning on my stick as I have
been standing to watch the whole procedure. "You are a fine
one!" I say, nodding in grim tribute to his prowess. "You are a
murderer, you know, a cannibal!" He only redoubles his activity
--he does everything but laugh aloud. So I walk on, feeling rather
chilled by what I have seen, yet inwardly amused by the crude hu-
mours of life. The event was in the natural order of things, and a
mouse lacking in the instinct of self-preservation is on the way to
be turned into pulp. But I feel better if I happen not to have
assisted the natural order with my stick but to have preserved
throughout my attitude of onlooker.

It is startling to have a pheasant burst out of the undergrowth
where it was perched asleep or else hoping to be undiscovered,
until Bashan's unerring nose ferreted it out. The big, rust-coloured,
long-tailed bird rises with a great clapping and flapping and a
frightened, angry, cackling cry. It drops its excrement into the
brush and takes flight with the absurd headlessness of a chicken
to the nearest tree, where it goes on shrieking murder, while
Bashan claws at the trunk and barks furiously up at it. "Get up,
get up!" he is saying. "Fly away, you silly object of my sporting
instincts, that I may chase you!" And the bird cannot resist his
loud voice, it rises rustling from the bough and flies on heavy wing
through the tree-tops, squawking and complaining, Bashan fol-
lowing below, with ardour, but preserving a stately silence.

This is his joy. He wants and knows no other. For what would
happen if he actually caught the pheasant? Nothing at all: I have
seen him with one in his claws--he may have stolen upon it while
it slept so that the awkward bird could not rise--and he stood
over it embarrassed by his triumph, without an idea what to do.
The pheasant lay in the grass with its neck and one wing sprawled
out and shrieked without stopping--it sounded as though an old
woman were being murdered in the bushes, and I hastened up to
prevent, if I could, something frightful happening. But I quickly
convinced myself that there was no danger. Bashan's obvious help-
lessness, the half curious, half disgusted look he bent on his cap-
ture, with his head on one side, quite reassured me. The old-
womanish screaming at his feet got on his nerves, the whole affair
made him feel more bothered than triumphant. Perhaps, for his
honour as a sportsman, he plucked at the bird--I think I saw him
pulling out a couple of feathers with his lips, not using his teeth,
and tossing them to one side with an angry shake of the head. But
then he moved away and let it go. Not out of magnanimity, but
because the affair seemed not to have anything to do with the joy-
ous hunt and so was merely stupid. Never have I seen a more non-
plussed bird. It had given itself up for lost, and appeared not to be
able to convince itself to the contrary: awhile it lay in the grass as
though it were dead. Then it staggered along the ground a little
way, fluttered up on a tree, looked like falling off it, but pulled
itself together and flew away heavily, with dishevelled plumes. It
did not squawk, it kept its bill shut. Without a sound it flew across
the park, the river, the woods on the other side, as far away as
possible, and certainly it never came back.

But there are plenty of its kind in our hunting-ground and
Bashan hunts them in all honour and according to the rules of the
game. Eating mice is the only blood-guilt he has on his head and
even that is incidental and superfluous. The tracking out, the driv-
ing up, the chasing--these are ends in themselves to the sporting
spirit, and are plainly so to him, as anybody would see who
watched him at his brilliant performance. How beautiful he be-
comes, how consummate, how ideal! Like a clumsy peasant lad,
who will look perfect and statuesque as a huntsman among his na-
tive rocks. All that is best in Bashan, all that is genuine and fine,
comes out and reaches its flower at these times. Hence his yearning
for them, his repining when they fruitlessly slip away. He is no
terrier, he is true hunter and pointer, and joy in himself as such
speaks in every virile, valiant, native pose he assumes. Not many
other things rejoice my eye as does the sight of him going through
the brush at a swinging trot, then standing stock-still, with one
paw daintily raised and turned in, sagacious, serious, alert, with all
his faculties beautifully concentrated. Then suddenly he whim-
pers. He has trod on a thorn and cries out. Ah, yes, that too is
natural, it is amusing to see that he has the courage of his sim-
plicity. It could only passingly mar his dignity, next moment his
posture is as fine as ever.

I look at him and recall a time when he lost all his nobility and
distinction and reverted to the low physical and moral state in
which we found him in the kitchen of that mountain inn and from
which he climbed painfully enough to some sort of belief in him-
self and the world. I do not know what ailed him; he had bleeding
from the mouth or nose or throat, I do not know which to this
day. Wherever he went he left traces of blood behind: on the
grass in our hunting-ground, the straw in his kennel, on the floor
in the house--though we could not discover any wound. Some-
times his nose looked as though it had been dipped in red paint.
When he sneezed he showered blood all over, and then trod in it
and left the marks of his paws about. He was carefully examined
without result, and we felt more and more disturbed. Was he
tubercular? Or had he some other complaint to which his species
was prone? When the mysterious affliction did not pass off after
some days, we decided to take him to a veterinary clinic.

Next day at about noon I kindly but firmly adjusted his muzzle,
the leather mask which Bashan detests as he does few other things,
always trying to get rid of it by shaking his head or rubbing it
with his paws. I put him on the plaited leather lead and led him
thus harnessed up the poplar avenue, through the English Gar-
dens, and along a city street to the Academy, where we went
under the arch and crossed the courtyard. We were received into
a waiting-room where several people sat, each holding like me a
dog on a lead. They were dogs of all sizes and kinds, gazing de-
jectedly at each other over their muzzles. There was a matron with
her apoplectic pug, a liveried manservant with a tall, snow-white
Russian greyhound, which from time to time gave a hoarse,
aristocratic cough; a country man with a dachshund which seemed
to need orthopiedic assistance, its legs being entirely crooked and
put on all wrong. And many more. The attendant let them in one
by one into the consulting-room, and after a while it became the
turn of Bashan and me.

The Professor was a man in advanced years, wearing a white
surgeon's coat and a gold eye-glass. His hair was curly, and he
seemed so mild, expert, and kindly that I would have unhesitat-
ingly entrusted myself and all my family to him in any emergency.
During my recital he smiled benevolently at his patient, who sat
there looking up at him with equal trustfulness. "He has fine
eyes," said he, passing over Bashan's moustaches in silence. He
said he would make an examination at once, and poor Bashan, too
astounded to offer any resistance, was with the attendant's help
stretched out on the table forthwith. And then it was touching
to see the physician apply his black stethoscope and auscultate my
little man just as I have more than once had it done to me. He
listened to his quick-breathing doggish heart, listened to all his
organs, in various places. Then with his stethoscope under his arm
he examined Bashan's eyes and nose and the cavity of his mouth,
and gave a temporary opinion. The dog was a little nervous and
anaemic, he said, but otherwise in good condition. The origin of
the bleeding was unclear. It might be an epistaxis or a haematemesis,
But equally well it might be tracheal or pharyngeal haemorrhage,
Perhaps for the present one might characterize it as a case of
haemoptysis. It would be best to keep the animal under careful
observation. I might leave it with them and look in at the end of
a week.

Thus instructed, I expressed my thanks and took my leave, pat-
ting Bashan on the shoulder by way of good-bye. I saw the attend-
ant take the new patient across the courtyard to some back build-
ings opposite the entrance, Bashan looking back at me with a
frightened and bewildered face. And yet he might have felt flat-
tered, as I could not help feeling myself, at having the Professor
call him nervous and anaemic. No one could have foretold of him
in his cradle that he would one day be called those things or dis-
cussed with such gravity and expert knowledge.

But after that my walks abroad were as unseasoned food to the
palate; I had little relish of them. No dumb paean of joy accom-
panied my going out, no glorious excitement of the chase sur-
rounded my footsteps. The park was a desert, time hung on my
hands. During the period or waiting I telephoned several times
for news. Answer came through a subordinate that the patient was
doing as well as possible under the circumstances--but the cir-
cumstances--for better or worse--were never described in more
detail. So when the week came round again, I betook myself to
the clinic.

Guided by numerous signs and arrows I arrived without diffi-
culty before the entrance of the department where Bashan was
lodged, and, warned by another sign on the door, forbore to
knock and went straight in. The medium-sized room I found my-
self in reminded me of a carnivora-house--a similar atmosphere
prevailed. Only here the menagerie odour seemed to be kept down
by various sweetish-smelling medicinal fumes--a disturbing and
oppressive combination. Wire cages ran round the room, most of
them occupied. Loud baying greeted me from one of these, at the
open door of which a man, who seemed to be the keeper, was
busy with rake and shovel. He contented himself with returning
my greeting whilst going on with his work, and left me to my
own devices.

I had seen Bashan directly I entered the door, and went up to
him. He was lying behind his bars on a pile of tan-bark or some
such stuff, which contributed its own special odour to the animal
and chemical smells in the room. He lay there like a leopard--
but a very weary, sluggish, and disgusted leopard. I was startled
by the sullen indifference with which he met me. His tail thumped
the floor once or twice, weakly; only when I spoke to him did
he lift his head from his paws, and even then he let it fall again at
once and blinked gloomily to one side. There was an earthenware
dish of water at the back of his pen. A framed chart, partly printed
and partly written, was fastened to the bars, giving his name,
species, sex, and age and showing his temperature curve. "Bastard
pointer," it said, "named Bashan. Male. Two years old. Admitted
on such and such a day of the month and the year, for observation
of occult blood." Underneath followed the fever curve, drawn
with a pen and showing small variations; also daily entries of his
pulse. Yes, his temperature was taken, and his pulse felt, by a
doctor; in this direction everything was being done. But I was dis-
tressed about his state of mind.

"Is that one yours?" asked the keeper, who had now come up,
his tools in his hands. He had on a sort of gardening apron and was
a squat red-faced man with a round beard and rather bloodshot
brown eyes that were quite strikingly like a dog's in their humid
gaze and faithful expression.

I answered in the affirmative, referred to my telephone conver-
sations and the instructions I had had to come back today, and
said I should like to hear how things stood. The man looked at
the chart. Yes, the dog was suffering from occult blood, that was
always a long business, especially when one did not know where
it came from. But was not that always the case? No, they did not
really know yet. But the dog was there to be observed, and he
would be. And did he still bleed? Yes, now and then he did. And
had he fever? I asked, trying to read the chart. No, no fever. His
temperature and pulse were quite normal, about ninety beats a
minute, he ought to have that much, and if he had not, then they
would have to observe him even more carefully. Except for the
bleeding, the dog was really doing all right. He had howled at
first, of course; he had howled for twenty-four hours, but after
that he was used to it. He didn't eat much, for a fact, but then he
hadn't much exercise, and perhaps he wasn't a big eater. What did
they give him? Soup, said the man. But as he had said, the dog
didn't eat much at all. "He seems depressed," I remarked with an
assumption of objectivity. Yes, that was true, but it didn't mean
much. After all it wasn't very much fun for a dog to lie cooped
up like that under observation. They were all depressed, more or
less. That is, the good-natured ones, some dogs got mean and
treacherous. He could not say that of Bashan. He was a good dog,
he would not get mean if he stayed there all his days. I agreed
with the man, but I did so with pain and rebellion in my heart.
How long then, I asked, did they reckon to keep him here? The
man looked at the chart again. Another week, he said, would be
needed tor the observation, the Herr Professor had said. I'd better
come and ask again in another week; that would be two weeks
in all, then they would be able to say more about the possibility
of getting rid of the haemorrhages.

I went away, after trying once more to rouse up Bashan by
renewed calls and encouragement. In vain. He cared as little for
my going as for my coming. He seemed weighed down by bitter
loathing and despair. He had the air of saying: "Since you were
capable of having me put in this cage, I expect nothing more from
you." And, actually, had he not enough ground to despair of rea-
son and justice? What had he done that this should happen to him
and that I not only let it happen but took steps to bring it about?
And yet my intentions had been of the best. He had bled, and
though it seemed to make no difference to him, I thought it sen-
sible that we should call in medical advice, he being a dog in good
circumstances. And then we had learned that he was anaemic and
nervous--as though he were the daughter of some upper-class
family. And then it had to come out like this! How could I ex-
plain to him we were treating him with great distinction, in shut-
ting him up like a jaguar, without sun, air, or exercise, and pla-
guing him every day with a thermometer?

On the way home I asked myself these things; and if before then
I had missed Bashan, now worry about him was added to my dis-
tress: worry over his state and reproaches to my own address.
Perhaps after all I had taken him to the clinic only out of vanitv'
and arrogance. And added to that may I not have secretly wished
to get rid of him for a while? Perhaps I had a craving to see what
it would be like to be free of his incessant watching of me; to be
able to turn calmly to right or left as I pleased, without having
to realize that I had been to another living creature the source of
joy or of bitter disappointment. Certainly while Bashan was in-
terned I felt a certain inner independence which had long been
strange to me. No one exasperated me by looking through the
glass door with the air of a martyr. No one put up a hesitating paw
to move me to laughter and relenting and persuade me to go out
sooner than I wished. Whether I sought the park or kept my room
concerned no one at all. It was quiet, pleasant, and had the charm
of novelty. But lacking the accustomed spur I hardly went out
at all. My health suffered, gradually I approached the condition
of Bashan in his cage; and the moral reflection occurred to me
that the bonds of sympathy were probably more conducive to my
own well-being than the selfish independence for which I had
longed.

The second week went by, and on the appointed day I stood
with the round-bearded keeper before Bashan's cage. Its inmate
lay on his side on the tan-bark, there were bits of it on his coat. He
had his head flung back as he lay and was staring with dull, glazed
eyes at the bare whitewashed wall. He did not stir. I could scarcely
see him breathe; but now and then his chest rose in a long sigh
that made the ribs stand out, and fell again with a faint, heart-
rending resonance from the vocal cords. His legs seemed to have
grown too long, and his paws large out of all proportion, as a
result of his extraordinary emaciation. His coat was rough and
dishevelled and had, as I said, tan-bark sticking in it. He did not
look at me, he seemed not to want to look at anything ever any
more.

The bleeding, so the keeper said, had not altogether and entirely
disappeared, it came back now and again. Where it came from
was still not quite clear; in any case it was harmless. If I liked I
could leave the dog here for further observation, to be quite cer-
tain, or I could take him home, because the bleeding might disap-
pear just as well there as here. I drew the plaited lead out of my
pocket--I had brought it with me--and said that I would take
him with me. The keeper thought that was a sensible thing to do.
He opened the grating and we summoned Bashan by name, both
together and in turn, but he did not come, he kept on staring at the
whitewashed wall. But he did not struggle when I put my arm into
the cage and pulled him out by the collar. He gave a spring and
landed with his four feet on the floor, where he stood with his tail
between his legs and his ears laid back, the picture of wretched-
ness. I picked him up, tipped the keeper, and went to the front
office to pay my debt; at the rate of seventy-five pfennigs a day
plus the medical examination it came to twelve marks fifty. I led
Bashan home, breathing the animal-chemical odours which still
clung to his coat.

He was broken, in body and in spirit. Animals are more primi-
tive and less inhibited in giving expression to their mental state--
there is a sense in which one might say they are more human:
descriptive phrases which to us have become mere metaphor still
fit them literally, we get a fresh and diverting sense of their mean-
ing when we see it embodied before our eyes. Bashan, as we say,
"hung his head"; that is, he did it literally and visibly, till he
looked like a worn-out cab-horse, with sores on its legs, standing
at the cab-rank, its skin twitching and its poor fly-infested nose
weighed down towards the pavement. It was as I have said: those
two weeks at the clinic had reduced him to the state he had been
in at the beginning. He was the shadow of his former self--if
that does not insult the proud and joyous shadow our Bashan once
cast. The hospital smell he had brought with him wore off after
repeated soapy baths till you got only an occasional whiff; but it
was not with him as with human beings: he got no symbolic re-
freshment from the physical cleansing. The very first day, I took
him out to our hunting-grounds, but he followed at my heel with
his tongue lolling out; even the pheasants perceived that it was
the close season. For days he lay as he had lain in his cage at the
clinic, staring with glazed eyes, flabby without and within. He
showed no healthy impatience for the chase, did not urge me to
go out--indeed it was rather I who had to go and fetch him from
his kennel. Even the reckless and indiscriminate way he wolfed
his food recalled those early unworthy days. But what a joy to
see him slowly finding himself again! Little by little he began to
greet me in the morning in his old naive, impetuous way, storming
upon me at my first whistle instead of limping morosely up;
putting his fore-paws on my chest and snapping playfully at my
face. Gradually there returned to him his old out-of-doors pride
and joy in his own physical prowess; once more he delighted my
eyes with the bold and beautiful poses he took, the sudden bounds
with his feet drawn up, after some creature stirring in the long
grass....He forgot. The ugly and to Bashan senseless episode
sank into the past, unresolved indeed, unclarified by comprehen-
sion, that being of course impossible; it was covered by the lapse
of time, as must happen sometimes to human beings. We went on
living and what had not been expressed became by degrees for-
gotten....For several weeks, at lengthening intervals, Bashan's
nose showed red. Then the phenomenon disappeared, it was no
more, it only had been, and so it was no matter whether it had
been an epistaxis or a haematemesis.

Well, there! Contrary to my own intentions, I have told the
story of the clinic. Perhaps my reader will forgive the lengthy
digression and come back to the park and the pleasures of the
chase, where we were before the interruption. Do you know that
long-drawn wailing howl to which a dog gives vent when he sum-
mons up his utmost powers to give chase to a flying hare? In it
rage and rapture mingle, desire and the ecstasy of despair. How
often have I heard it from Bashan! It is passion itself, deliberate,
fostered passion, drunkenly revelled in, shrilling through our
woodland scene, and every time I hear it near or far a fearful thrill
of pleasure shoots through my limbs. Rejoiced that Bashan will
come into his own today, I hasten to his side, to see the chase if I
can; when it roars past me I stand spellbound--though the futility
of it is clear from the first--and look on with an agitated smile
on my face.

And the hare, the common, frightened little hare? The air
whistles through its ears, it lays back its head and runs for its life,
it scrabbles and bounds with Bashan behind it yelling all he can;
its yellow-white scut flies up in the air. And yet at the bottom of
its soul, timid as that is and acquainted with fear, it must know
that its peril cannot be grave, that it will get away, as its brothers
and sisters have done before it, and itself too under like circum-
stances. Never in his life has Bashan caught one of them, nor will
he ever; the thing is as good as impossible. Many dogs, they say,
are the death of a hare, a single dog cannot achieve it, even one
much speedier and more enduring than Bashan. The hare can
"double" and Bashan cannot--and that is all there is to it. For
the double is the unfailing natural weapon of those born to seek
safety in flight; they always have it by them, to use at the decisive
moment; when Bashan's hopes are highest--then they are dashed
to the ground, and he is betrayed.

There they come, dashing diagonally through the brush, across
the path in front of me, and on towards the river: the hare silently
hugging his little trick in his heart, Bashan giving tongue in high
head-tones. “Be quiet!" I think. “You are wasting your wind
and your lung-power and you ought to save them if you want to
catch him up." Thus I think becausein my heart I am on Bashan's
side, some of his fire has kindled me, I fervently hope he may
catch the hare--even at the risk of seeing it torn to shreds be-
fore my eyes. How he runs! It is beautiful to see a creature ex-
pending the utmost of its powers. He runs better than the hare
does, he has stronger muscles, the distance between them visibly
diminishes before I lose sight of them. And I make haste too,
leaving the path and cutting across the park towards the river-
bank, reaching the gravelled street in time to see the chase come
raging on--the hopeful, thrilling chase, with Bashan on the hare's
very heels; he is still, he runs with his jaw set, the scent just in
front of his nose urges him to a final effort.--"One more push,
Bashan!" I think, and feel like shouting: "Well run, old chap, re-
member the double!" But there it is; Bashan does make one more
push, and the misfortune is upon us: at that moment the hare gives
a quick, easy, almost malicious twitch at right angles to the course,
and Bashan shoots past from his rear, howling helplessly and
braking his very best so that dirt and pebbles fly into the air.
Before he can stop, turn round, and get going in the other direc-
tion, yelling all the time as in great mental torment, the hare has
gained so much ground that it is out of sight; for while he was
braking so desperately Bashan could not watch where it went.

It is no use, I think; it is beautiful but futile; this while the chase
fades away through the park. It takes a lot of dogs, five or six,
a whole pack. Some of them to take it on the flank, some to cut
off its way in front, some to corner it, some to catch it by the
neck. And in my excited fancy I see a whole pack of bloodhounds
with their tongues out rushing on the hare in their midst.

It is my passion for the chase makes me have these fancies, for
what has the hare done to me that I should wish him such a hor-
rible death? Bashan is nearer to me, of course, it is natural that I
should feel with him and wish for his success. But the hare is
after all a living creature too, and he did not play his trick on my
huntsman out of malice, but only from the compelling desire to
live yet awhile, nibble young tree-shoots, and beget his kind. It
would be different, I go on in my mind, if this cane of mine--
I lift it and look at it--were not a harmless stick, but a more seri-
ous weapon, effective like lightning and at a distance, with which
I could come to Bashan's assistance and hold up the hare in mid
career, so that it would turn a somersault and lie dead on the
ground. Then we should not need another dog, and it would be
Bashan's only task to rouse the game. Whereas as things stand it
is Bashan who sometimes rolls over and over in his effort to brake.
The hare sometimes does too, but it is nothing to it, it is used to
such things, they do not make it feel miserable, whereas it is a
shattering experience for Bashan, and might even quite possibly
break his neck.

Often such a chase is all over in a few minutes; that is, when
the hare succeeds after a short length in ducking into the bushes
and hiding, or else by doubling and feinting in throwing off its
pursuer, who stands still, hesitating, or makes short springs in this
and that direction, while I in my bloodthirstiness shout encourage-
ment and try to show him with my stick the direction the hare
took. But often the hunt sways far and wide across the landscape
and Bashan's furious baying sounds like a distant bugle-horn, now
near, now remote; I go my own way, knowing that he will re-
turn. But in what a state he does return, at last! Foam drips
from his lips, his ribs flutter, and his loins are lank and expended,
his tongue lolls out of his jaws, which yawn so wide as to distort
his features and give his drunken, swimming eyes a weird Mon-
golian slant. His breath goes like a trip-hammer. "Lie down and
rest, Bashan," say I, "or your lungs will burst'" and I wait to
give him time to recover. I am alarmed for him when it is cold,
when he pumps the air by gasps into his overheated insides and
it gushes out again in a white steam; when he swallows whole
mouthfuls of snow to quench his furious thirst. He lies there look-
ing helplessly up at me, now and then licking up the slaver from
his lips, and I cannot help teasing him a bit about the invariable
futility of all his exertions. "Where is the hare, Bashan?" I ask.
"Why don't you bring it to me?" He thumps with his tail on the
ground when I speak; his sides pump in and out less feverishly,
and he gives a rather embarrassed snap--for how can he know
that I am mocking him because I feel guilty myself and want to
conceal it? For I did nor play my part in his enterprise, I was not
man enough to hold the hare, as a proper master should have done.
He does not know this, and so I can make fun of him and behave
as though it were all his fault.

Strange things sometimes happen on these occasions. Never
shall I forget the day when the hare ran into my arms. It was on
the narrow clayey path above the river. Bashan was in full cry; I
came from the wood into the river zone, struck across through
the thistles of the gravelly waste, and jumped down the grassy
slope to the path just in time to see the hare, with Bashan fifteen
paces behind it, come bounding from the direction of the ferry-
house towards which I was facing. It leaped right into the path
and came towards me. My first impulse was that of the hunter
towards his prey: to take advantage of the situation and cut off
its escape, driving it back if possible into the jaws of the pursuer
joyously yelping behind. I stood fixed to the spot, quite aban-
doned to the fury of the chase, weighing my cane in my hand as
the hare came towards me. A hare's sight is poor, that I knew;
hearing and smell are the senses that guide and preserve it. It
might have taken me for a tree as I stood there; I hoped and fore-
saw it would do so and thus fall victim to a frightful error, the
possible consequences of which were not very clear to me, though
I meant to turn them to our advantage. Whether it did at any time
make this mistake is unclear. I think it did not see me at all until
the last minute, and what it did was so unexpected as to upset all
my plans in a trice and cause a complete and sudden revulsion in
my feelings. Was it beside itself with fright? Anyhow, it jumped
straight at me, like a dog, ran up my overcoat with its fore-paws
and snuggled its head into me, me whom it should most fear, the
master of the chase! I stood bent back with my arms raised, I
looked down at the hare and it looked up at me. It was only a
second, perhaps only part of a second, that this lasted. I saw the
hare with such extraordinary distinctness, its long ears, one of
which stood up, the other hung down; its large, bright, short-
sighted, prominent eyes, its cleft lip and the long hairs of its
moustache, the white on its breast and little paws; I felt or thought
I felt the throbbing of its hunted heart. And it was strange to see
it so clearly and have it so close to me, the little genius of the
place, the inmost beating heart of our whole region, this ever-
fleeing little being which I had never seen but for brief moments
in our meadows and bottoms, frantically and drolly getting out
of the way--and now, in its hour of need, not knowing where
to turn, it came to me, it clasped as it were my knees, a human
being's knees: not the knees, so it seemed to me, of Bashan's mas-
ter, but the knees of a man who felt himself master of hares and
this hare's master as well as Bashan's. It was, I say, only for the
smallest second. Then the hare had dropped off, taken again to its
uneven legs, and bounded up the slope on my left; while in its
place there was Bashan, Bashan giving tongue in all the horrid
head-tones of his hue-and-cry. When he got within reach he was
abruptly checked by a deliberate and well-aimed blow from the
stick of the hare's master, which sent him yelping down the slope
with a temporarily disabled hind quarter. He had to limp painfully
back again before he could take up the trail of his by this time
vanished prey.

Finally, there are the waterfowl, to our pursuit of which I must
devote a few lines. We can only go after them in winter and early
spring, before they leave their, town quarters--where they stay
for their food's sake, and return to their lakes in the mountains.
They furnish, of course, much less exciting sport than can be got
out of the hares; still, it has its attractions for hunter and hound--
or, rather, for the hunter and his master. For me the charm lies
in the scenery, the intimate bond with living water; also it is
amusing and diverting to watch the creatures swimming and fly-
ing and try provisionally to exchange one's personality for theirs
and enter into their mode of life.

The ducks lead a quieter, more comfortable, more bourgeois life
than do the gulls. They seem to have enough to eat, on the whole,
and not to be tormented by the pangs of hunger--their kind of
food is regularly to be had, the table, so to speak, always laid.
For everything is fish that comes to their net: worms, snails, in-
sects--even the ooze of the river-bed. So they have plenty of time
to sit on the stones in the sun, doze with their bills tucked under
one wing, and preen their well-oiled plumes, off which the water
rolls in drops. Sometimes they take a pleasure-ride on the waves,
with their pointed rumps in the air; paddling this way and that
and giving little self-satisfied shrugs.

But the nature of gulls is wilder and more strident; there is a
dreary monotony about what they do, they are the eternally
hungry bird of prey, swooping all day long in hordes across
the waterfall, croaking about the drain-pipes that disgorge their
brown streams into the river. Single gulls hover and pounce down
upon a fish now and then, but this does not go far to satisfy their
inordinate mass hunger; they have to fill in with most unappetiz-
ing-looking morsels from the drains, snatching them from the
water in flight and carrying them off in their crooked beaks. They
do not like the river-bank. But when the river is low, they huddle
together on the rocks that stick out of the water--the scene is
white with them, as the cliffs and islets of northern oceans are
white with hosts of nesting eider-duck. I like to watch them rise
all together with a great cawing and take to the air, when Bashan
barks at them from the bank, across the intervening stream. They
need not be frightened, certainly they are in no danger. He has
a native aversion to water; but aside from that he would never
trust himself to the current, and he is quite right, it is much
stronger than he and would soon sweep him away and carry him
God knows where. Perhaps into the Danube--but he would only
arrive there after having suffered a river-change of a very drastic
kind, as we know from seeing the bloated corpses of cats on their
way to some distant bourne. Bashan never goes further into the
water than the point where it begins to break over the stones.
Even when he seems most tense with the pleasure of the chase
and looks exactly as though he meant to jump in the very next
minute, one knows that under all the excitement his sense of cau-
tion is alert and that the dashings and rushings are pure theatre--
empty threats, not so much dictated by passion as cold-bloodedly
undertaken in order to terrify the web-footed tribe.

But the gulls are too witless and poor-spirited to make light of
his performance. He cannot get to them himself, but he sends his
voice thundering across the water; it reaches them, and it, too, has
actuality; it is an attack which they cannot long resist. They try to
at first, they sit still, but a wave of uneasiness goes through the
host, they turn their heads, a few lift their wings, and suddenly
they all rush up into the air, like a white cloud, whence issue the
bitterest, most fatalistic screams, Bashan springing hither and
thither on the rocks, to scatter their flight and keep them in mo-
tion, for it is motion that he wants, they are not to sit quiet, they
must fly, fly up and down the river so that he may chase them.

He scampers along the shore far and wide, for everywhere there
are ducks, sitting with their bills tucked in homely comfort under
their wings; and wherever he comes they fly up before him. He
is like a jolly little hurricane making a clean sweep of the beach.
Then they plump down on the water again, where they rock and
ride in comfort and safety, or else they fly away over his head
with their necks stretched out, while below on the shore he meas-
ures the strength of his leg-muscles quite creditably against those
of their wings.

He is enchanted, and really grateful to them if they will only
fly and give him occasion for this glorious race up and down the
beach. It may be that they know what he wants and turn the fact
to their own advantage. I saw a mother duck with her brood--
this was in spring, all the birds had forsaken the river and only
this one was left with her fledglings, not yet able to fly. She had
them in a stagnant puddle left by the last flood in the low-lying bed
of the shrunken river, and there Bashan found them, while I
watched the event from the upper path. He jumped into the pud-
dle and lashed about, furiously barking, driving the family of duck-
lings into wild disorder. He did them no harm, of course, but he
frightened them beyond measure; the ducklings flapped their
stumps of wings and scattered in all directions, and the duck was
overtaken by an attack of the maternal heroism which will hurl
itself blind with valour upon the fiercest foe to protect her brood;
more, will even by a frenzied and unnatural display of intrepidity
bully the attacker into surrender. She opened her beak to a hor-
rific extent, she ruffled up her feathers, she flew repeatedly into
Bashan's face, she made onslaught after onslaught, hissing all the
while. The grim seriousness of her behaviour was so convincing
that Bashan actually gave ground in confusion, though without
definitely retiring from the field, for each time after retreating he
would bark and advance anew. Then the mother duck changed
her tactics: heroics having failed, she took refuge in strategy.
Probably she knew Bashan already and was aware of his foibles
and the childish nature of his desires. She left her children in the
lurch--or she pretended to; she took to flight, she flew up above
the river, "pursued" by Bashan. At least, he thought he was pur-
suing her, in reality it was she who was leading him on, playing
on his childish passion, leading him by the nose. She flew down-
stream, then upstream, she flew further and further away, Bashan
racing equal with her along the bank; they left the pool with the
ducklings far behind, and at length both dog and duck disappeared
from my sight. Bashan came back to me after a while; the simple-
ton was quite winded and panting for dear life. But when we
passed the pool again on our homeward way, it was empty of its
brood.

So much for the mother duck. As for Bashan, he was quite
grateful for the sport she had given him. For he hates the ducks
who selfishly prefer their bourgeois comfort and refuse to play
his game with him, simply gliding off into the water when he
comes rushing along, and rocking there in base security before
his face and eyes, heedless of his mighty barking, heedless too--
unlike the nervous gulls--of all his feints and plungings. We stand
there, Bashan and I, on the stones at the water's edge, and two
paces away a duck floats on the wave, floats impudently up and
down, her beak pressed coyly against her breast; safe and un-
touched and sweetly reasonable she bobs up and down out there,
let Bashan rave as he will. Paddling against the current, she keeps
abreast of us fairly well; yet she is being slowly carried down,
closer and closer to one of those beautiful foaming eddies in the
stream. In her folly she rides with her tail turned towards it--
and now it is only a yard away. Bashan loudly gives tongue, stand-
ing with his forelegs braced against the stones; and in my heart I
am barking with him, I am on his side and against that impudent,
self-satisfied floating thing out there. I wish her ill. Pay attention
to our barking, I address her mentally; do not hear the whirlpool
roar--and then presently you will find yourself in an unpleasant
and undignified situation and I shall be glad! But my malicious
hopes are not fulfilled. For at the rapid's very edge she flutters up
into the air, flies a few yards upstream, and then, oh, shameless
hussy, settles down again.

I recall the feelings of baffled anger with which we looked at
that duck--and I am reminded of another occasion, another and
final episode in this tale of our hunting-ground. It was attended
by a certain satisfaction for my companion and me, but had its
painful and disturbing side as well; yes, it even gave rise to some
coolness between us, and if I could have foreseen it I would have
avoided the spot where it took place.

It was a long way out, beyond the ferry-house, downstream,
where the wilds that border the river approach the upper road
along the shore. We were going along this, I at an easy pace,
Bashan in front with his easy, lop-sided lope. He had roused a hare
--or, if you like, it had roused him--had stirred up four pheas-
ants, and now was minded to give his master a little attention. A
small bevy of ducks were flying above the river, in v-formation,
their necks stretched out. They flew rather high and closer to the
other shore, so that they were out of our reach as game, but mov-
ing in the same direction as ourselves. They paid no attention to
us and we only cast casual glances at them now and then.

Then it happened that opposite to us on the other bank, which
like ours was steep here, a man struck out of the bushes, and
directly he appeared upon the scene he took up a position which
fixed our attention, Bashan's no loss than mine, upon him at once.
We stopped in our tracks and faced him. He was a fine figure of
a man, though rather rough-looking; with drooping moustaches,
wearing puttees, a frieze hat cocked down over his forehead, wide
velveteen trousers and jerkin to match, over which hung numer-
ous leather straps, for he had a rucksack slung on his back and a
gun over his shoulder. Or rather he had had it over his shoulder;
for he no sooner appeared than he took it in his hand, laid his
cheek along the butt, and aimed it diagonally upwards at the sky.
He took a step forwards with one putteed leg, the gun-barrel
rested in the hollow of his left hand, with the arm stretched out
and the elbow against his side. The other elbow, with the hand
on the trigger, stuck out at his side, and we could see his bold,
foreshortened face quite clearly as he sighted upwards. It looked
somehow very theatrical, this figure standing out above the boul-
ders on the bank, against a background of shrubbery, river, and
open sky. But we could have gazed for only a moment when the
dull sound of the explosion made me start, I had waited for it with
such inward tension. There was a tiny flash at the same time; it
looked pale in the broad daylight; a puff of smoke followed, the
man took one slumping pace forwards, like an operatic star, with
his face and chest lifted towards the sky, his gun hanging from
the strap in his right fist. Something was going on up there where
he was looking and where we now looked too. There was a great
confusion and scattering, the ducks flew in all directions wildly
flapping their wings with a noise like wind in the sails, they tried
to volplane down--then suddenly a body fell like a stone onto the
water near the other shore.

This was only the first half of the action. But I must interrupt
my narrative here to turn the vivid light of my memory upon the
figure of Bashan. I can think of large words with which to de-
scribe it, phrases we use for great occasions: I. could say that he
was thunderstruck. But I do not like them, I do not want to use
them. The large words are worn out, when the great occasion
comes they do not describe it. Better use the small ones and put
into them every ounce of their weight. I will simply say that
when Bashan heard the explosion, saw its meaning and conse-
quence, he started; and it was the same start which I have seen him
give a thousand times when something surprises him, only raised
to the nth degree. It was a start which flung his whole body back-
wards with a right-and-left motion, so sudden that it jerked his
head against his chest and almost bounced it off his shoulders with
the shock; a start which made his whole body seem to be crying
out: What! What! What was that? Wait a minute, in the devil's
name! What was that? He looked and listened with that sort
of rage in which extreme astonishment expresses itself; listened
within himself and heard things that had always been there, how-
ever novel and unheard-of the present form they took. Yes, from
this start, which flung him to right and left and half-way round
on his axis, I got the impression that he was trying to look at him-
self, trying to ask: What am I? Who am I? Is this me? At the
moment when the duck's body plopped on the water he bounded
forwards to the edge of the bank, as though he were going to
jump down to the river-bed and plunge in. But he bethought him-
self of the current and checked his impulse; then, rather shame-
faced, devoted himself to staring, as before.

I looked at him, somewhat disturbed. After the duck had fallen
I felt that we had had enough and suggested that we go on our
way. But he had sat down on his haunches, facing the other
shore, his ears erected as high as they would go. When I said:
"Well, Bashan, shall we go on?" he turned his head only the
briefest second as though saying, with some annoyance: Please
don't disturb me! And kept on looking. So I resigned myself,
crossed my legs, leaned on my cane, and watched to see what
would happen.

The duck--no doubt one of those that had rocked in such pert
security on the water in front of our noses--went driving like a
wreck on the water, you could not tell which was head and which
tail. The river is quieter at this point, its rapids are not so swift
as they are further up. But even so, the body was seized by the
current, whirled round, and swept away. If the man was not
concerned only with sport but had a practical goal in view, then
he would better act quickly. And so he did, not losing a moment
--it all went very fast. Even as the duck fell he had rushed for-
ward stumbling and almost falling down the slope, with his gun
held out at arm's length. Again I was struck with the picturesque-
ness of the sight, as he came down the slope like a robber or smug-
gler in a melodrama, in the highly effective scenery of boulder
and bush. He held somewhat leftwards, allowing for the current,
for the duck was drifting away and he had to head it off. This
he did successfully, stretching out the butt end of the gun and
bending forward with his feet in the water. Carefully and pains-
takingly he piloted the duck towards the stones and drew it to
shore.

The job was done, the man drew a long breath. He put down
his weapon against the bank, took his knapsack from his shoul-
ders, and stuffed the duck inside; buckled it on again, and thus
satisfactorily laden and using his gun as a stick, he clambered over
the boulders and up the slope.

"Well, he got his Sunday joint," thought I, half enviously, half
approvingly. "Come, Bashan, let's go now, it's all over." Bashan
got up and turned round on himself, but then he sat down again
and looked after the man, even after he had left the scene and
disappeared among the bushes. It did not occur to me to ask him
twice. He knew where we lived, and he might sit here goggling,
after it was all over, as long as he thought well. It was quite a long
walk home and I meant to be stirring. So then he came.

He kept beside me on our whole painful homeward way, and
did not hunt. Nor did he run diagonally a little ahead, as he does
as a rule when not in a hunting mood; he kept behind me, at a
jog-trot, and put on a sour face, as I could see when I happened
to turn round. I could have borne with that and should not have
dreamed of being drawn; I was rather inclined to laugh and shrug
my shoulders. But every thirty or forty paces he yawned--and
that I could not stand. It was that impudent gape of his, expressing
the extreme of boredom, accompanied by a throaty little whine
which seems to say: Fine master I've got! No master at all! Rotten
master, if you ask me!--I am always sensitive to the insulting
sound, and this time it was almost enough to shake our friendship
to its foundations.

"Go away!" said I. "Get out with you! Go to your new friend with
the blunderbuss and attach yourself to him! He does not seem to
have a dog, perhaps he could use you in his business. He is only
a man in velveteens, to be sure, not a gentleman, but in your
eyes he may be one; perhaps he is the right master for you,
and I honestly recommend you to suck up to him--now that he
has put a flea in your ear to go with your others." (Yes, I actually
said that!) “We'll not ask if he has a hunting-licence, or if you
won't both get into fine trouble some day at your dirty game--
that is your affair, and, as I tell you, my advice is perfectly sincere.
You think so much of yourself as a hunter! Did you ever bring
me a hare of all those I let you chase? Is it my fault that you do
not know how to double, but must come down with your nose
in the gravel at the moment when agility is required? Or a pheas-
ant, which in these lean times would be equally welcome? And
now you yawn! Get along, I tell you. Go to your master with the
puttees and see if he knows how to scratch your neck and make
you laugh. I'll wager he does not know how to laugh a decent
laugh himself. Do you think he is likely to have you put under
scientific observation when you decide to suffer from occult
blood, or that when you are his dog you will be pronounced
nervous and anaemic? If you do, then you'd better get along. But
you may be overestimating the respect which that kind of master
would have for you. There are certain distinctions--that kind of
man with a gun is very keen on them: native advantages or dis-
advantages, to make my meaning clearer, troublesome questions
of pedigree and breeding, if I must be plain. Not everybody passes
these over on grounds of humanity and fine feeling; and if your
wonderful master reproaches you with your moustaches the first
time you and he have a difference of opinion, then you may re-
member me and what I am telling you now."

With such biting words did I address Bashan as he slunk be-
hind me on our way home. And though I did not utter but only
thought them, for I did not care to look as though I were mad,
yet I am convinced that he got my meaning perfectly, at least in
its main lines. In short, it was a serious quarrel, and when we got
home I deliberately let the gate latch behind me so that he could
not slip through and had to climb over the fence. I went into the
house without even looking round, and shrugged my shoulders
when I heard him yelp because he scratched his belly on the rail.

But all that is long ago, more than six months. Now, like our
little clinical episode, it has dropped into the past. Time and for-
getfulness have buried it, and on their alluvial deposit where all
life lives, we too live on. For a few days Bashan appeared to mope.
But long ago he recovered all his joy in the chase, in mice and
moles and pheasant, hares and waterfowl. When we return home,
at once begins his period of waiting for the next time. I stand at
the house door and turn towards him; upon that signal he bounds
in two great leaps up the steps and braces his fore-paws against
the door, reaching as far up as he can that I may pat him on the
shoulder. "Tomorrow, Bashan," say I; "that is, if I am not obliged
to pay a visit to the outer world." Then I hasten inside, to take off
my hobnailed boots, for the soup stands waiting on the table.

1918



DISORDER AND EARLY SORROW



The principal dish at dinner had been croquettes made of turnip
greens. So there follows a trifle, concocted out of one of those
dessert powders we use nowadays, that taste like almond soap.
Xaver, the youthful manservant, in his outgrown striped jacket,
white woollen gloves, and yellow sandals, hands it round, and the
"big folk" take this opportunity to remind their father, tactfully,
that company is coming today.

The "big folk" are two, Ingrid and Bert. Ingrid is brown-eyed,
eighteen, and perfectly delightful. She is on the eve of her exams,
and will probably pass them, if only because she knows how to
wind masters, and even headmasters, round her finger. She does
not, however, mean to use her certificate once she gets it; having
leanings towards the stage, on the ground of her ingratiating
smile, her equally ingratiating voice, and a marked and irresistible
talent for burlesque. Bert is blond and seventeen. He intends to
get done with school somehow, anyhow, and fling himself into
the arms of life. He will be a dancer, or a cabaret actor, possibly
even a waiter--but not a waiter anywhere else save at the Cairo,
the night-club, whither he has once already taken flight, at five
in the morning, and been brought back crestfallen. Bert bears a
strong resemblance to the youthful manservant Xaver Kleinsgutl,
of about the same age as himself; not because he looks common--
in features he is strikingly like his father, Professor Cornelius--
but by reason of an approximation of types, due in its turn to
far-reaching compromises in matters of dress and bearing gen-
erally. Both lads wear their heavy hair very long on top, with a
cursory parting in the middle, and give their heads the same char-
acteristic toss to throw it off the forehead. When one of them
leaves the house, by the garden gate, bareheaded in all weathers,
in a blouse rakishly girt with a leather strap, and sheers off bent
well over with his head on one side; or else mounts his push-bike
--Xaver makes free with his employers', of both sexes, or even,
in acutely irresponsible mood, with the Professor's own--Dr.
Cornelius from his bedroom window cannot, for the life of him.
tell whether he is looking at his son or his servant. Both, he thinks,
look like young moujiks. And both are impassioned cigarette-
smokers, though Bert has not the means to compete with Xaver,
who smokes as many as thirty a day, of a brand named after a
popular cinema star. The big folk call their father and mother the
"old folk"--not behind their backs, but as a form of address and
in all affection: "Hullo, old folks," they will say; though Cornelius
is only forty-seven years old and his wife eight years younger. And
the Professor's parents, who lead in his household the humble and
hesitant life of the really old, are on the big folk's lips the "an-
cients." As for the "little folk," Ellie and Snapper, who take their
meals upstairs with blue-faced Ann--so-called because of her pre-
vailing facial hue--Ellie and Snapper follow their mother's exam-
ple and address their father by his first name, Abel. Unutterably
comic it sounds, in its pert, confiding familiarity; particularly on
the lips, in the sweet accents, of five-year-old Eleanor, who is the
image of Frau Cornelius's baby pictures and whom the Professor
loves above everything else in the world.

"Darling old thing," says Ingrid affably, laying her large but
shapely, hand on his, as he presides in proper middle-class style
over the family table, with her on his left and the mother opposite:
"Parent mine, may I ever so gently jog your memory, for you
have probably forgotten: this is the afternoon we were to have
our little jollification, our turkey-trot with cats to match. You
haven't a thing to do but just bear up and not funk it; everything
will be over by nine o'clock."

"Oh--ah!" says Cornelius, his face falling. "Good!" he goes
on, and nods his head to show himself in harmony with the in-
evitable. "I only meant--is this really the day? Thursday, yes.
How time flies! Well, what time are they coming?"

"Half past four they'll be dropping in, I should say," answers
Ingrid, to whom her brother leaves the major role in all dealings
with the father. Upstairs, while he is resting, he will hear scarcely
anything, and from seven to eight he takes his walk. He can slip
out by the terrace if he likes.

"Tut!" says Cornelius deprecatingly, as who should say: "You
exaggerate." But Bert puts in: "It's the one evening in the week
Wanja doesn't have to plav. Any other night he'd have to leave
by half past six, which would be painful for all concerned."

Wanja is Ivan Herzl, the celebrated young leading man at the
Stadttheater. Bert and Ingrid are on intimate terms with him, they
often visit him in his dressing-room and have tea. He is an artist
of the modern school, who stands on the stage in strange and.
to the Professor's mind, utterly affected dancing attitudes, and
shrieks lamentably. To a professor of history, all highly repug-
nant; but Bert has entirely succumbed to Herzl's influence, black-
ens the lower rim of his eyelids--despite painful but fruitless
scenes with the father--and with youthful carelessness of the
ancestral anguish declares that not only will he take Herzl for his
model if he becomes a dancer, but in case he turns out to be a
waiter at the Cairo he means to walk precisely thus.

Cornelius slightly raises his brows and makes his son a little bow
--indicative of the unassumingness and self-abnegation that befits
his age. You could not call it a mocking bow or suggestive in any
special sense. Bert may refer it to himself or equally to his so
talented friend.

"Who else is coming?" next inquires the master of the house.
They mention various people, names all more or less familiar,
from the city, from the suburban colony, from Ingrid's school.
They still have some telephoning to do, they say. They have to
phone Max. This is Max Hergesell, an engineering student; Ingrid
utters his name in the nasal drawl which according to her is the
traditional intonation of all the Hergesells. She goes on to parody
it in the most abandonedly funny and lifelike way, and the parents
laugh until they nearly choke over the wretched trifle. For even
in these times when something funny happens people have to
laugh.

From time to time the telephone bell rings in the Professor's
study, and the big folk run across, knowing it is their affair. Many
people had to give up their telephones the last time the price rose,
But so far the Corneliuses have been able to keep theirs, just as
they have kept their villa, which was built before the war, by dint
of the salary Cornelius draws as professor of history--a million
marks, and more or less adequate to the chances and changes of
post-war life. The house is comfortable, even elegant, though
sadly in need of repairs that cannot be made for lack of materials,
and at present disfigured by iron stoves with long pipes. Even so,
it is still the proper setting of the upper middle class, though they
themselves look odd enough in it, with their worn and turned
clothing and altered way of life. The children, of course, know
nothing else; to them it is normal and regular, they belong by
birth to the "villa proletariat." The problem of clothing troubles
them not at all. They and their like have evolved a costume to fit
the time, by poverty out of taste for innovation: in summer it
consists of scarcely more than a belted linen smock and sandals.
The middle-class parents find things rather more difficult.

The big folk's table-napkins hang over their chair-backs, they
talk with their friends over the telephone. These friends are the
invited guests who have rung up to accept or decline or arrange;
and the conversation is carried on in the jargon of the clan, full
of slang and high spirits, of which the old folk understand hardly
a word. These consult together meantime about the hospitality
to be offered to the impending guests. The Professor displays a
middle-class ambitiousness: he wants to serve a sweet--or some-
thing that looks like a sweet--after the Italian salad and brown-
bread sandwiches. But Frau Cornelius says that would be going
too far. The guests would not expect it, she is sure--and the big
folk, returning once more to their trifle, agree with her.

The mother of the family is of the same general type as Ingrid,
though not so tall. She is languid; the fantastic difficulties of the
housekeeping have broken and worn her. She really ought to go
and take a cure, but feels incapable; the floor is always swaying
under her feet, and everything seems upside down. She speaks of
what is uppermost in her mind: the eggs, they simply must be
bought today. Six thousand marks apiece they are, and just so
many are to be had on this one day of the week at one single shop
fifteen minutes' journey away. Whatever else they do, the big
folk must go and fetch them immediately after luncheon, with
Danny, their neighbour's son, who will soon be calling for them;
and Xaver Kleinsgutl will don civilian garb and attend his young
master and mistress. For no single household is allowed more than
five eggs a week; therefore the young people will enter the shop
singly, one after another, under assumed names, and thus wring
twenty eggs from the shopkeeper for the Cornelius family. This
enterprise is the sporting event of the week for all participants,
not excepting the moujik Kleinsgutl, and most of all for Ingrid
and Bert, who delight in misleading and mystifying their fellow-
men and would revel in the performance even if it did not achieve
one single egg. They adore impersonating fictitious characters;
they love to sit in a bus and carry on long lifelike conversations
in a dialect which they otherwise never speak, the most common-
place dialogue about politics and people and the price of food,
while the whole bus listens open-mouthed to this incredibly or-
dinary prattle, though with a dark suspicion all the while that
something is wrong somewhere. The conversation waxes ever
more shameless, it enters into revolting detail about these people
who do not exist. Ingrid can make her voice sound ever so com-
mon and twittering and shrill as she impersonates a shop-girl with
an illegitimate child, said child being a son with sadistic tendencies.
who lately out in the country treated a cow with such unnatural
cruelty that no Christian could have borne to see it. Bert nearly
explodes at her twittering, but restrains himself and displays a
grisly sympathy; he and the unhappy shop-girl entering into a
long, stupid, depraved, and shuddery conversation over the par-
ticular morbid cruelty involved; until an old gentleman opposite,
sitting with his ticket folded between his index finger and his
seal ring, can bear it no more and makes public protest against the
nature of the themes these young folk are discussing with such
particularity. He uses the Greek plural: "themata." Whereat In-
grid pretends to be dissolving in tears, and Bert behaves as though
his wrath against the old gentleman was with difficulty being held
in check and would probably burst out before long. He clenches
his fists, he gnashes his teeth, he shakes from head to foot; and
the unhappy old gentleman, whose intentions had been of the
best, hastily leaves the bus at the next stop.

Such are the diversions of the big folk. The telephone plays a
prominent part in them: they ring up any and everybody--
members of government, opera singers, dignitaries of the Church
--in the character of shop assistants, or perhaps as Lord or Lady
Doolittle. They are only with difficulty persuaded that they have
the wrong number. Once they emptied their parents' card-tray
and distributed its contents among the neighbours' letter-boxes,
wantonly, yet, not without enough impish sense of the fitness of
things to make it highly upsetting, God only knowing why cer-
tain people should have called where they did.

Xaver comes in to clear away, tossing the hair out of his eyes.
Now that he has taken off his gloves you can see the yellow chain-
ring on his left hand. And as the Professor finishes his watery
eight-thousand-mark beer and lights a cigarette, the little folk can
be heard scrambling down the stair, coming, by established cus-
tom, for their after-dinner call on Father and Mother. They storm
the dining-room, after a struggle with the latch, clutched by both
pairs of little hands at once; their clumsy small feet twinkle over
the carpet, in red felt slippers with the socks falling down on
them. With prattle and shoutings each makes for his own place:
Snapper to Mother, to climb on her lap, boast of all he has eaten,
and thump his fat little tum; Ellie to her Abel, so much hers be-
cause she is so very much his; because she consciously luxuriates
in the deep tenderness--like all deep feeling, concealing a melan-
choly strain--with which he holds her small form embraced; in
the love in his eyes as he kisses her little fairy hand or the sweet
brow with its delicate tracery of tiny blue veins.

The little folk look like each other, with the strong undefined
likeness of brother and sister. In clothing and hair-cut they are
twins. Yet they are sharply distinguished after all, and quite on sex
lines. It is a little Adam and a litde Eve. Not only is Snapper the
sturdier and more compact, he appears consciously to emphasize
his four-year-old masculinity in speech, manner, and carriage,
lifting his shoulders and letting the little arms hang down quite
like a young American athlete, drawing down his mouth when he
talks and seeking to give his voice a gruff and forthright ring. But
all this masculinity is the result of effort rather than natively his.
Born and brought up in these desolate, distracted times, he has
been endowed by them with an unstable and hypersensitive nerv-
ous system and suffers greatly under life's disharmonies. He is
prone to sudden anger and outbursts of bitter tears, stamping his
feet at every trifle; for this reason he is his mother's special nurs-
ling and care. His round, round eyes are chestnut brown and
already inclined to squint, so that he will need glasses in the near
future. His little nose is long, the mouth small--the father's nose
and mouth they are, more plainly than ever since the Professor
shaved his pointed beard and goes smooth-faced. I'he pointed
beard had become impossible--even professors must make some
concession to the changing times.

But the little daughter sits on her father's knee, his Eleonorchen,
his little Eve, so much more gracious a little being, so much
sweeter-faced than her brother--and he holds his cigarette away
from her while she fingers his glasses with her dainty wee hands.
The lenses are divided for reading and distance, and each day
they tease her curiosity afresh.

At bottom he suspects that his wife's partiality may have a
firmer basis than his own: that Snapper's refractory masculinity
perhaps is solider stuff than his own little girl's more explicit
charm and grace. But the heart will not be commanded, that he
knows; and once and for all his heart belongs to the little one,
as it has since the day she came, since the first time he saw her.
Almost always when he holds her in his arms he remembers that
first time: remembers the sunny room in the Women's Hospital,
where Ellie first saw the light, twelve years after Bert was born.
He remembers how he drew near, the mother smiling the while,
and cautiously put aside the canopy of the diminutive bed that
stood beside the large one. There lay the little miracle among the
pillows: so well formed, so encompassed, as it were, with the
harmony of sweet proportions, with little hands that even then,
though so much tinier, were beautiful as now; with wide-open
eyes blue as the sky and brighter than the sunshine--and almost
in that very second he felt himself captured and held fast. This
was love at first sight, love everlasting: a feeling unknown, un-
hoped for, unexpected--in so far as it could be a matter of con-
scious awareness; it took entire possession of him, and he under-
stood, with joyous amazement, that this was for life.

But he understood more. He knows, does Dr. Cornelius, that
there is something not quite right about this feeling, so unaware,
so undreamed of, so involuntary. He has a shrewd suspicion that
it is not by accident it has so utterly mastered him and bound
itself up with his existence; that he had--even subconsciously--
been preparing for it, or, more precisely, been prepared for it.
There is, in short, something in him which at a given moment was
ready to issue in such a feeling; and this something, highly ex-
traordinary to relate, is his essence and quality as a professor of
history. Dr. Cornelius, however, does not actually say this, even to
himself; he merely realizes it, at odd times, and smiles a private
smile. He knows that history professors do not love history be-
cause it is something that comes to pass, but only because it is
something that has come to pass; that they hate a revolution like
the present one because they feel it is lawless, incoherent, irrele-
vant--in a word, unhistoric; that their hearts belong to the co-
herent, disciplined, historic past. For the temper of timelessness,
the temper of eternity--thus the scholar communes with himself
when he takes his walk by the river before supper--that temper
broods over the past; and it is a temper much better suited to the
nervous system of a history professor than are the excesses of the
present. The past is immortalized; that is to say, it is dead; and
death is the root of all godliness and all abiding significance. Dr.
Cornelius, walking alone in the dark, has a profound insight into
this truth. It is this conservative instinct of his, his sense of the eter-
nal, that has found in his love for his little daughter a way to save
itself from the wounding inflicted by the times. For father love,
and a little child on its mother's breast--are not these timeless, and
thus very, very holy and beautiful? Yet Cornelius, pondering
there in the dark, descries something not perfectly right and good
in his love. Theoretically, in the interests of science, he admits it to
himself. There is something ulterior about it, in the nature of it;
that something is hostility, hostility against the history of today,
which is still in the making and thus not history at all, in behalf of
the genuine history that has already happened--that is to say,
death. Yes, passing strange though all this is, yet it is true; true in
a sense, that is. His devotion to this priceless little morsel of life and
new growth has something to do with death, it clings to death as
against life; and that is neither right nor beautiful--in a sense.
Though only the most fanatical asceticism could be capable, on
no other ground than such casual scientific perception, of tearing
this purest and most precious of feelings out of his heart.

He holds his darling on his lap and her slim rosy legs hang
down. He raises his brows as he talks to her, tenderly, with a half-
teasing note of respect, and listens enchanted to her high, sweet
little voice calling him Abel. He exchanges a look with the
mother, who is caressing her Snapper and reading him a gentle
lecture. He must be more reasonable, he must learn self-control;
today again, under the manifold exasperations of life, he has given
way to rage and behaved like a howling dervish. Cornelius casts a
mistrustful glance at the big folk now and then, too; he thinks
it not unlikely they are not unaware of those scientific preoccupa-
tions of his evening walks. If such be the case they do not show
it. They stand there leaning their arms on their chair-backs and
with a benevolence not untinctured with irony look on at the
parental happiness.

The children's frocks are of a heavy, brick-red stuff, embroid-
ered in modern "arty" style. They once belonged to Ingrid and
Bert and are precisely alike, save that little knickers come out be-
neath Snapper's smock. And both have their hair bobbed. Snap-
per's is a streaky blond, inclined to turn dark. It is bristly and
sticky and looks for all the world like a droll, badly fitting wig.
But Ellie's is chestnut brown, glossy and fine as silk, as pleasing
as her whole little personality. It covers her ears--and these ears
are not a pair, one of them being the right size, the other distinctly
too large. Her father will sometimes uncover this little abnormal-
ity and exclaim over it as though he had never noticed it before,
which both makes Ellie giggle and covers her with shame. Her
eyes are now golden brown, set far apart and with sweet gleams
in them--such a clear and lovely look! The brows above are
blond; the nose still unformed, with thick nostrils and almost cir-
cular holes; the mouth large and expressive, with a beautifully
arching and mobile upper lip. When she laughs, dimples come in
her cheeks and she shows her teeth like loosely strung pearls. So
far she has lost but one tooth, which her father gently twisted out
with his handkerchief after it had grown very wobbling. During
this small operation she had paled and trembled very much. Her
cheeks have the softness proper to her years, but they are not
chubby; indeed, they are rather concave, due to her facial struc-
ture, with its somewhat prominent jaw. On one, close to the soft
fall of her hair, is a downy freckle.

Ellie is not too well pleased with her looks--a sign that already
she troubles about such things. Sadly she thinks it is best to admit
it once for all, her face is "homely"; though the rest of her, "on
the other hand," is not bad at all. She loves expressions like "on
the other hand"; they sound choice and grown-up to her, and she
likes to string them together, one after the other: "very likely,"
"probably," "after all." Snapper is self-critical too, though more
in the moral sphere: he suffers from remorse for his attacks of
rage and considers himself a tremendous sinner. He is quite cer-
tain that heaven is not for such as he; he is sure to go to "the bad
place" when he dies, and no persuasions will convince him to the
contrary--as that God sees the heart and gladly makes allow-
ances. Obstinately he shakes his head, with the comic, crooked lit-
tle peruke, and vows there is no place for him in heaven. When
he has a cold he is immediately quite choked with mucus; rattles
and rumbles from top to toe if you even look at him; his tempera-
ture flies up at once and he simply puffs. Nursy is pessimistic on
the score of his constitution: such fat-blooded children as he
might get a stroke any minute. Once she even thought she saw the
moment at hand: Snapper had been in one of his berserker rages,
and in the ensuing fit of penitence stood himself in the corner with
his back to the room. Suddenly Nursy noticed that his face had
gone all blue, far bluer, even, than her own. She raised the alarm,
crying out that the child's all too rich blood had at length brought
him to his final hour; and Snapper, to his vast astonishment, found
himseff, so far from being rebuked for evil-doing, encompassed in
tenderness and anxiety--until it turned out that his colour was
not caused by apoplexy but by the distempering on the nursery
wall, which had come off on his tear-wet face.

Nursy has come downstairs too, and stands by the door, sleek-
haired, owl-eyed, with her hands folded over her white apron,
and a severely dignified manner born of her limited intelligence.
She is very proud of the care and training she gives her nurslings
and declares that they are "enveloping wonderfully." She has had
seventeen suppurated teeth lately removed from her jaws and been
measured for a set of symmetrical yellow ones in dark rubber
gums; these now embellish her peasant face. She is obsessed with
the strange conviction that these teeth of hers are the subject of
general conversation, that, as it were, the sparrows on the house-
tops chatter of them. "Everybody knows I've had a false set put
in," she will say; "there has been a great deal of foolish talk about
them." She is much given to dark hints and veiled innuendo:
.speaks, for instance, of a certain Dr. Bleifuss, whom every child
knows, and "there arc even some in the house who pretend to be
him." All one can do witli talk like this is charitably to pass it over
in silence. But she teaches the children nursery rhymes: gems like:

"Puff, puff, here comes the train!
Puff, puff, toot, toot.
Away it goes again."

Or that gastronomical jingle, so suited, in its sparsencss, to the
times, and yet seemingly with a blitheness of its own:

"Monday we begin the week,
Tuesday there's a bone to pick.
Wednesday we're half way through,
I'hursday what a great to-do!
Friday we eat what fish we're able,
Saturday we dance round the table.
Sunday brings us pork and greens--
Here's a feast for kings and queens!"

Also a certain four-line stanza with a romantic appeal, unut-
terable and unuttered;

"Open the gate, open the gate
And let the carriage drive in.
Who is it in the carriage sits?
A lordly sir with golden hair."

Or, finally that ballad about golden-haired Marianne who sat on
a, sat on a, sat on a stone, and combed out her, combed out her,
combed out her hair; and about bloodthirsty Rudolph, who pulled
out a, pulled out a, pulled out a knife--and his ensuing direful
end. Ellie enunciates all these ballads charmingly, wdth her mobile
little lips, and sings them in her sweet little voice--much better
than Snapper. She does everything better than he does, and he
pays her honest admiration and homage and obeys her in all things
except when visited by one of his attacks. Sometimes she teaches
him, instructs him upon the birds in the picture-book and tells him
their proper names; "This is a chaffinch. Buddy, this is a bullfinch,
this is a cowfinch." He has to repeat them after her. She gives
him medical instruction too, teaches him the names of diseases,
such as inflammation of the lungs, infammation of the blood, in-
fammation of the air. If he does not pay attention and cannot say
the words after her, she stands him in the corner. Once she even
boxed his ears, but was so ashamed that she stood herself in the
corner for a long time. Yes, they are fast friends, two souls with
but a single thought, and have all their adventures in common.
They come home from a walk and relate as with one voice that
they have seen two moollies and a teenty-weenty baby calf. They
are on familiar terms with the kitchen, which consists of Xaver
and the ladies Hinterhofer, two sisters once of the lower middle
class who, in these evil days, are reduced to living "au pair" as
the phrase goes and officiating as cook and housemaid for their
board and keep. The little ones have a feeling that Xaver and the
Hinterhofers are on much the same footing with their father and
mother as they are themselves. At least sometimes, when they have
been scolded, they go downstairs and announce that the master
and mistress are cross. But playing with the servants lacks charm
compared with the joys of playing upstairs. The kitchen could
never rise to the height of the games their father can invent. For
instance, there is "four gentlemen taking a walk." When they
play it Abel will crook his knees until he is the same height with
themselves and go walking with them, hand in hand. They never
get enough of this sport; they could walk round and round the
dining-room a whole day on end, five gentlemen in all, counting
the diminished Abel.

Then there is the thrilling cushion game. One of the children,
usually Ellie, seats herself, unbeknownst to Abel, in his seat at
table. Still as a mouse she awaits his coming. He draws near with
his head in the air, descanting in loud, clear tones upon the surpass-
ing comfort of his chair; and sits down on top of Ellie. "What's
this, what's this?" says he. And bounces about, deaf to the smoth-
ered giggles exploding behind him. "Why have they put a cushion
in my chair? And what a queer, hard, awkward-shaped cushion it
is!" he goes on. "Frightfully uncomfortable to sit on!" And keeps
pushing and bouncing about more and more on the astonishing
cushion and clutching behind him into the rapturous giggling and
squeaking, until at last he turns round, and the game ends with a
magnificent climax of discovery and recognition. They might go
through all this a hundred times without diminishing by an iota its
power to thrill.

Today is no time for such joys. The imminent festivity disturbs
the atmosphere, and besides there is work to be done, and, above
all, the eggs to be got. Ellie has just time to recite "Puff, puff," and
Cornelius to discover that her ears are not mates, when they are
interrupted by the arrival of Danny, come to fetch Bert and Ingrid.
Xaver, meantime, has exchanged his striped livery for an ordinary
coat, in which he looks rather rough-and-ready, though as brisk
and attractive as ever. So then Nursy and the children ascend to the
upper regions, the Professor withdraws to his study to read, as al-
ways after dinner, and his wife bends her energies upon the sand-
wiches and salad that must be prepared. And she has another errand
as well. Before the young people arrive she has to take her shop-
ping-basket and dash into town on her bicycle, to turn into pro-
visions a sum of money she has in hand, which she dares not keep
lest it lose all value.

Cornelius reads, leaning back in his chair, with his cigar between
his middle and index fingers. First he reads Macaulay on the origin
of the English public debt at the end of the seventeenth century;
then an article in a French periodical on the rapid increase in the
Spanish debt towards the end of the sixteenth. Both these for his
lecture on the morrow. He intends to compare the astonishing
prosperity which accompanied the phenomenon in England with
its fatal effects a hundred years earlier in Spain, and to analyse the
ethical and psychological grounds of the difference in results. For
that will give him a chance to refer back from the England of
William III, which is the actual subject in hand, to the time of
Philip II and the Counter-Reformation, which is his own special
field. He has already written a valuable work on this period; it is
much cited and got him his professorship. While his cigar burns
down and gets strong, he excogitates a few pensive sentences in
a key of gentle melancholy, to be delivered before his class next
day: about the practically hopeless struggle carried on by the be-
lated Philip against the whole trend of history: against the new,
the kingdom-disrupting power of the Germanic ideal of freedom
and individual liberty. And about the persistent, futile struggle of
the aristocracy, condemned by God and rejected of man, against
the forces of progress and change. He savours his sentences; keeps
on polishing them while he puts back the books he has been using;
then goes upstairs for the usual pause in his day's work, the hour
with drawn blinds and closed eyes, which he so imperatively needs.
But today, he recalls, he will rest under disturbed conditions, amid
the bustle of preparations for the feast. He smiles to find his heart
giving a mild flutter at the thought. Disjointed phrases on the
theme of black-clad Philip and his times mingle with a confused
consciousness that they will soon be dancing down below. For five
minutes or so he falls asleep.

As he lies and rests he can hear the sound of the garden gate and
the repeated ringing at the bell. Each time a little pang goes
through him, of excitement and suspense, at the thought that the
young people have begun to fill the floor below. And each time
he smiles at himself again, though even his smile is slightly nerv-
ous, is tinged with the pleasurable anticipations people always feel
before a party. At half past four--it is already dark--he gets up
and washes at the wash-stand. The basin has been out of repair for
two years. It is supposed to tip, but has broken away from its socket
on one side and cannot be mended because there is nobody to mend
it; neither replaced because no shop can supply another. So it has
to be hung up above the vent and emptied by lifting in both hands
and pouring out the water. Cornelius shakes his head over this
basin, as he does several times a day--whenever, in fact, he has
occasion to use it. He finishes his toilet with care, standing under
the ceiling light to polish his glasses till they shine. I hen he goes
downstairs.

On his way to the dining-room he hears the gramophone already
going, and the sound of voices. He puts on a polite, society air;
at his tongue's end is the phrase he means to utter: "Pray don't let
me dismrb you," as he passes directly into the dining-room for his
tea. "Pray don't let me disturb you"--it seems to him precisely
the mot juste; towards the guests cordial and considerate, for him-
self a very bulwark.

The lower floor is lighted up, all the bulbs in the chandelier are
burning save one that has burned out. Cornelius pauses on a lower
step and surveys the entrance hall. It looks pleasant and cosy in the
bright light, with its copy of Marees over the brick chimney-piece,
its wainscoted walls--wainscoted in soft wood--and red-carpeted
floor, where the guests stand in groups, chatting, each with his
tea-cup and slice of bread-and-butter spread with anchovy paste.
There is a festal haze, faint scents of hair and clothing and human
breath come to him across the room, it is all characteristic and
familiar and highly evocative. The door into the dressing-room is
open, guests are still arriving.

A large group of people is rather bewildering at first sight. The
Professor takes in only the general scene. He does not see Ingrid,
who is standing just at the foot of the steps, in a dark silk frijck
with a pleated collar falling softly over the shoulders, and bare
arms. She smiles up at him, nodding and showing her lovely teeth.

"Rested?" she asks, for his private ear. With a quite unwar-
ranted start he recognizes her, and she presents some of her friends.

"May I introduce Herr Zuber?" she says. "And this is Fraulein
Plaichinger."

Herr Zuber is insignificant. But Fraulein Plaichinger is a perfect
Germania, blond and voluptuous, arrayed in floating draperies.
She has a snub nose, and answers the Professor's salutation in the
high, shrill pipe so many stout women have.

"Delighted to meet you," he says. "How nice of you to come!
A classmate of Ingrid's, I suppose?"

And Herr Zuber is a golfing partner of Ingrid's. He is in busi-
ness; he works in his uncle's brewery. Cornelius makes a few jokes
about the thinness of the beer and professes to believe that Herr
Zuber could easily do something about the quality if he would.
"But pray don't let me disturb you," he goes on, and turns towards
the dining-room.

"There comes Max," says Ingrid. "Max, you sweep, what do
you mean by rolling up at this time of day?" For such is the way
they talk to each other, offensively to an older ear; of social forms,
of hospitable warmth, there is no faintest trace. They all call each
other by their first names.

A young man comes up to them out of the dressing-room and
makes his bow; he has an expanse of white shirt-front and a little
black spring tie. He is as pretty as a picture, dark, with rosy cheeks,
clean-shaven of course, but with just a sketch of side-whisker. Not
a ridiculous or flashy beauty, not like a gypsy fiddler, but just
charming to look at, in a winning, well-bred way, with kind dark
eyes. He even wears his dinner-jacket a little awkwardly.

"Please don't scold me, Cornelia," he says; "it's the idiotic lec-
tures." And Ingrid presents him to her father as Herr Hergesell.

Well, and so this is Herr Hergesell. He knows his manners, does
Herr Hergesell, and thanks the master of the house quite ingra-
tiatingly for his invitation as they shake hands. "I certainly seem
to have missed the bus," says he jocosely. "Of course I have lec-
tures today up to four o'clock; I would have; and after that I had
to go home to change." Then he talks about his pumps, with which
he has just been struggling in the dressing-room.

"I brought them with me in a bag," he goes on. "Mustn't tramp
all over the carpet in our brogues--it's not done. Well, I was ass
enough not to fetch along a shoe-horn, and I find I simply can't
get in! Wliat a sell! They are the tightest I've ever had, the num-
bers don't tell you a thing, and all the leather today is just cast iron.
It's not leather at all. My poor finger"--he confidingly displays
a reddened digit and once more characterizes the whole thing as a
"sell," and a putrid sell into the bargain. He really does talk just
as Ingrid said he did, with a peculiar nasal drawl, nor affectedly in
the least, but merely because that is the way of all the Hergesells.
Dr. Cornelius says it is very careless of them not to keep a shoe-
horn in the cloak-room and displays proper sympathy with the
mangled finger. "But now you really must not let me disturb you
any longer," he goes on. "Auf wiedersehen!" And he crosses the
hall into the dining-room.

There are guests there too, drinking tea; the family table is
pulled out. But the Professor goes at once to his own little up-
holstered corner with the electric light bulb above it--the nook
where he usually drinks his tea. His wife is sitting there talking
with Bert and two other young men, one of them Herzl, whom
Cornelius knows and greets; the other a typical "Wandervogel"
named Moller, a youth who obviously neither owns nor cares to
own the correct evening dress of the middle classes (in fact, there
is no such thing any more), nor to ape the manners of a gentleman
(and, in fact, there is no such thing any more either). He has a
wilderness of hair, horn spectacles, and a long neck, and wears
golf stockings and a belted blouse. His regular occupation, the
Professor learns, is banking, but he is by way of being an amateur
folk-lorist and collects folk-songs from all localities and in all lan-
guages. He sings them, too, and at Ingrid's command has brought
his guitar; it is hanging in the dressing-room in an oilcloth case.
Herzl, the actor, is small and slight, but he has a strong growth of
black beard, as you can tell by the thick coat of powder on his
cheeks. His eyes are larger than life, with a deep and melancholy
glow. He has put on rouge besides the powder--those dull carmine
high-lights on the cheeks can be nothing but a cosmetic. "Queer,"
thinks the Professor. "You would think a man would be one thing
or the other--not melancholic and use face paint at the same time.
It's a psychological contradiction. How can a melancholy man
rouge? But here we have a perfect illustration of the abnormality
of the artist soul-form. It can make possible a contradiction like
this--perhaps it even consists in the contradiction. All very in-
teresting--and no reason whatever for not being polite to him.
Politeness is a primitive convention--and legitimate....Do
take some lemon, Herr Hofschauspieler!"

Court actors and court theatres--there are no such things any
more, really. But Herzl relishes the sound of the title, notwith-
standing he is a revolutionary artist. This must be another contra-
diction inherent in his soul-form; so, at least, the Professor assumes,
and he is probably right. The flattery he is guilty of is a sort of
atonement for his previous hard thoughts about the rouge.

"Thank you so much--it's really too good of you, sir," says
Herzl, quite embarrassed. He is so overcome that he almost stam-
mers; only his perfect enunciation saves him. His whole bearing
towards his hostess and the master of the house is exaggeratedly
polite. It is almost as though he had a bad conscience in respect of
his rouge; as though an inward compulsion had driven him to put
it on, but now, seeing it through the Professor's eyes, he disap-
proves of it himself, and thinks, by an air of humility toward the
whole of unrouged society, to mitigate its effect.

They drink their tea and chat: about Moller's folk-songs, about
Basque folk-songs and Spanish folk-songs; from which they pass
to the new production or Don Carlos at the Stadttheater, in which
Herzl plays the title-role. He talks about his own rendering of the
part and says he hopes his conception of the character has unity.
They go on to criticize the rest of the cast, the setting, and the
production as a whole; and Cornelius is struck, rather painfully, to
find the conversation trending towards his own special province,
back to Spain and the Counter-Reformation. He has done nothing
at all to give it this turn, he is perfectly innocent, and hopes it does
not look as though he had sought an occasion to play the professor.
He wonders, and falls silent, feeling relieved when the little folk
come up to the table. Ellie and Snapper have on their blue velvet
Sunday frocks; they are permitted to partake in the festivities up
to bed-time. They look shy and large-eyed as they say how-do-
you-do to the strangers and, under pressure, repeat their names
and ages. Herr Moller does nothing but gaze at them solemnly, but
Herzl is simply ravished. He rolls his eyes up to heaven and puts
his hands over his mouth; he positively blesses them. It all, no
doubt, comes from his heart, but he is so addicted to theatrical
methods of making an impression and getting an effect that both
words and behaviour ring frightfully false. And even his enthu-
siasm for the little folk looks too much like part of his general
craving to make up for the rouge on his cheeks.

The tea-table has meanwhile emptied of guests, and dancing is
going on in the hall. The children run off, the Professor prepares
to retire. "Go and enjoy yourselves," he says to Moller and Herzl,
who have sprung from their chairs as he rises from his. They shake
hands and he withdraws into his study, his peaceful kingdom,
where he lets down the blinds, turns on the desk lamp, and sits
down to his work.

It is work which can be done, if necessary, under disturbed con-
ditions: nothing but a few letters and a few notes. Of course,
Cornelius's mind wanders. Vague impressions float through it:
Herr Hergesell's refractory pumps, the high pipe in that plump
body of the Plaichinger female. As he writes, or leans back in his
chair and stares into space, his thoughts go back to Herr Moller's
collection of Basque folk-songs, to Herzl's posings and humility,
to "his" Carlos and the court of Philip II. There is something
strange, he thinks, about conversations. They are so ductile, they
will flow of their own accord in the direction of one's dominating
interest. Often and often he has seen this happen. And while he is
thinking, he is listening to the sounds next door--rather subdued,
he finds them. He hears only voices, no sound of footsteps. The
dancers do not glide or circle round the room; they merely walk
about over the carpet, which does not hamper their movements
in the least. Their way of holding each other is quite different and
strange, and they move to the strains of the gramophone, to the
weird music of the new world. He concentrates on the music and
makes out that it is a jazz-band record, with various percussion
instruments and the clack and clatter of castanets, which, however,
are not even faintly suggestive of Spain, but merely jazz like the
rest. No, not Spain. . , . His thoughts are back at their old round.

Half an hour goes by. It occurs to him it would be no more than
friendly to go and contribute a box of cigarettes to the festivities
next door. Too bad to ask the young people to smoke their own
--though they have probably never thought of it. He goes into the
empty dining-room and takes a box from his supply in the cup-
board: not the best ones, nor yet the brand he himself prefers, but
a certain long, thin kind he is not averse to getting rid of--after
all, they are nothing but youngsters. He takes the box into the
hall, holds it up with a smile, and deposits it on the mantel-shelf.
After which he gives a look round and returns to his own room.

There comes a lull in dance and music. The guests stand about
the room in groups or round the table at the window or are seated
in a circle by the fireplace. Even the built-in stairs, with their worn
velvet carpet, are crowded with young folk as in an amphitheatre:
Max Hergescll is there, leaning back with one elbow on the step
above and gesticulating with his free hand as he talks to the shrill,
voluptuous Plaichinger. The floor of the hall is nearly empty, save
just in the centre: there, directly beneath the chandelier, the two
little ones in their blue velvet frocks clutch each other in an awk-
ward embrace and twirl silently round and round, oblivious of all
else. Cornelius, as he passes, strokes their hair, with a friendly word;
it does not distract them from their small solemn preoccupation.
But at his own door he turns to glance round and sees young
Hergesell push himself off the stair by his elbow--probably be-
cause he noticed the Professor. He comes down into the arena,
takes Ellie out of her brother's arms, and dances with her himself.
It looks very comic, without the music, and he crouches down just
as Cornelius does when he goes walking with the four gentlemen,
holding the fluttered Ellie as though she were grown up and taking
little "shimmying" steps. Everybody watches with huge enjoy-
ment, the gramophone is put on again, dancing becomes general.
The Professor stands and looks, with his hand on the door-knob.
He nods and laughs; when he finally shuts himself into his study
the mechanical smile still lingers on his lips.

Again he turns over pages by his desk lamp, takes notes, attends
to a few simple matters. After a while he notices that the guests
have forsaken the entrance hall for his wife's drawing-room, into
which there is a door from his own study as well. He hears their
voices and the sounds of a guitar being tuned. Herr Mollcr, it
seems, is to sing--and does so. He twangs the strings of his instru-
menr and sings in a powerful bass a ballad in a strange tongue,
possibly Swedish. The Professor does not succeed in identifying
it, though he listens attentively to the end, after which there is
great applause. The sound is deadened by the portiere that hangs
over the dividing door. The young bank-clerk begins another song.
Cornelius goes softly in.

It is half-dark in the drawing-room; the only light is from the
shaded standard lamp, beneath which Moller sits, on the divan,
with his legs crossed, picking his strings. His audience is grouped
easily about; as there are not enough seats, some stand, and more,
among them many young ladies, are simply sitting on the floor
with their hands clasped round their knees or even with their legs
stretched out before them. Hergesell sits thus, in his dinner jacket,
next the piano, with Fraulein Plaichingcr beside him. Frau Corne-
lius is holding both children on her lap as she sits in her easy-chair
opposite the singer. Snapper, the Boeotian, begins to talk loud and
clear in the middle of the song and has to be intimidated with hush-
ings and finger-shakings. Never, never would Ellie allow herself
to be guilty of such conduct. She sits there daintily erect and still
on her mother's knee. The Professor tries to catch her eye and ex-
change a private signal with his little girl; but she does not see him.
Neither does she seem to be looking at the singer. Her gaze is
directed lower down.

Moller sings the "joli tambour

"Sire, mon roi, donnez-vioi votre
fille--"

They are all enchanted. "How good!" Hergesell is heard to
say, in the odd, nasally condescending Hergesell tone. The next
one is a beggar ballad, to a tune composed by young Moller him-
self; it elicits a storm of applause:

"Gypsy lassie a-goin' to the fair,
Huzza!
Gypsy laddie a-goin' to be
there--
Huzza, diddlety umpty dido!"

Laughter and high spirits, sheer reckless hilarity, reigns after this
jovial ballad. "Frightfully good!" Hergesell comments again, as
before. Follows another popular song, this time a Hungarian one;
Moller sings it in its own outlandish tongue, and most effectively.
The Professor applauds with ostentation. It warms his heart and
does him good, this outcropping of artistic, historic, and cultural
elements all amongst the shimmying. He goes up to young Moller
and congratulates him, talks about the songs and their sources, and
Moller promises to lend him a certain annotated book of folk-
songs. Cornelius is the more cordial because all the time, as fathers
do, he has been comparing the parts and achievements of this
young stranger with those of his own son, and being gnawed by
envy and chagrin. This young Moller, he is thinking, is a capable
bank-clerk (though about Moller's capacity he knows nothing
whatever) and has this special gift besides, which must have taken
talent and energy to cultivate. "And here is my poor Bert, who
knows nothing and can do nothing and thinks of nothing except
playing the clown, without even talent for that!" He tries to be
just; he tells himself that, after all, Bert has innate refinement; that
probably there is a good deal more to him than there is to the suc-
cessful Moller; that perhaps he has even something of the poet in
him, and his dancing and table-waiting are due to mere boyish
folly and the distraught times. But paternal envy and pessimism
win the upper hand; when Moller begins another song. Dr. Corne-
lius goes back to his room.

He works as before, with divided attention, at this and that, while
it gets on for seven o'clock. Then he remembers a letter he may
just as well write, a short letter and not very important, but letter-
writing is wonderful for the way it takes up the time, and it is
almost half past when he has finished. At half past eight the Italian
salad will be served; so now is the prescribed moment for the
Professor to go out into the wintry darkness to post his letters
and take his daily quantum of fresh air and exercise. They are
dancing again, and he will have to pass through the hall to get his
hat and coat; but they are used to him now, he need not stop and
beg them not to be disturbed. He lays away his papers, takes up
the letters he has written, and goes out. But he sees his wife sitting
near the door of his room and pauses a little by her easy-chair.

She is watching the dancing. Now and then the big folk or some
of their guests stop to speak to her; the party is at its height, and
there are more onlookers than these two; blue-faced Ann is stand-
ing at the bottom of the stairs, in all the dignity of her limitations.
She is waiting for the children, who simply cannot get their fill
of these unwonted festivities, and watching over Snapper, lest his
all too rich blood be churned to the danger-point by too much
twirling round. And not only the nursery but the kitchen takes
an interest: Xaver and the two ladies Hinterhofer are standing by
the pantry door looking on with relish. Fraulein Walburga, the
elder of the two sunken sisters (the culinary section--she objects
to being called a cook), is a whimsical, good-natured sort, brown-
eyed, wearing glasses with thick circular lenses; the nose-piece is
wound with a bit of rag to keep it from pressing on her nose.
Fraulein Cecilia is younger, though not so precisely young either.
Her bearing is as self-assertive as usual, this being her way of sus-
taining her dignity as a former member of the middle class. For
Fraulein Cecilia feels acutely her descent into the ranks of domestic
service. She positively declines to wear a cap or other badge of
servitude, and her hardest trial is on the Wednesday evening when
she has to serve the dinner while Xaver has his afternoon out. She
hands the dishes with averted face and elevated nose--a fallen
queen; and so distressing is it to behold her degradation that one
evening when the little folk happened to be at table and saw her
they both with one accord burst into tears. Such anguish is un-
known to young Xaver. He enjoys serving and does it with an
ease born of practice as well as talent, for he was once a "piccolo."
But otherwise he is a thorough-paced good-for-nothing and wind-
bag--with quite distinct traits of character of his own, as his
long-suffering employers are always ready to concede, but per-
fectly impossible and a bag of wind for all that. One must just take
him as he is, they think, and not expect figs from thistles. He is
the child and product of the disrupted times, a perfect specimen
of his generation, follower of the revolution, Bolshevist sympa-
thizer. The Professor's name for him is the "minute-man," be-
cause he is always to be counted on in any sudden crisis, if only it
address his sense of humour or love of novelty, and will display
therein amazing readiness and resource. But he utterly lacks a sense
of duty and can as little be trained to the performance of the daily
round and common task as some kinds of dog can be taught to
jump over a stick. It goes so plainly against the grain that criticism
is disarmed. One becomes resigned. On grounds that appealed to
him as unusual and amusing he would be ready to turn out of his
bed at any hour of the night. But he simply cannot get up before
eight in the morning, he cannot do it, he will not jump over the
stick. Yet all day long the evidence of this free and untrammelled
existence, the sound of his mouth-organ, his joyous whistle, or his
raucous but expressive voice lifted in song, rises to the hearing of
the world above-stairs; and the smoke of his cigarettes fills the
pantry. While the Hinterhofer ladies work he stands and looks on.
Of a morning while the Professor is breakfasting, he tears the leaf
off the study calendar--but does not lift a finger to dust the room.
Dr. Cornelius has often told him to leave the calendar alone, for he
tends to tear off two leaves at a time and thus to add to the general
confusion. But young Xaver appears to find joy in this activity,
and will not be deprived of it.

Again, he is fond of children, a winning trait. He will throw
himself into games with the little folk in the garden, make and
mend their toys with great ingenuity, even read aloud from their
books--and very droll it sounds in his thick-lipped pronunciation.
With his whole soul he loves the cinema; after an evening spent
there he inclines to melancholy and yearning and talking to him-
self. Vague hopes stir in him that some day he may make his fortune
in that gay world and belong to it by rights--hopes based on his
shock of hair and his physical agility and daring. He likes to climb
the ash tree in the front garden, mounting branch by branch to the
very top and frightening everybody to death who sees him. Once
there he lights a cigarette and smokes it as he sways to and fro,
keeping a look-out for a cinema director who might chance to
come along and engage him.

If he changed his striped jacket for mufti, he might easily dance
with the others and no one would notice the difference. For the big
folk's friends are rather anomalous in their clothing: evening dress
is worn by a few, but it is by no means the rule. There is quite a
sprinkling of guests, both male and female, in the same general style
as Moller the ballad-singer. The Professor is familiar with the
circumstances of most of this young generation he is watching as
he stands beside his wife's chair; he has heard them spoken of by
name. They are students at the high school or at the School of
Applied Art; they lead, at least the masculine portion, that precari-
ous and scrambling existence which is purely the product of the
time. There is a tall, pale, spindling youth, the son of a dentist,
who lives by speculation. From all the Professor hears, he is a per-
feet Aladdin. He keeps a car, treats his friends to champagne sup-
pers, and showers presents upon them on every occasion, costly
little trifles in mother-of-pearl and gold. So today he has brought
gifts to the young givers of the feast: for Bert a gold lead-pencil,
and for Ingrid a pair of ear-rings of barbaric size, great gold circlets
that fortunately do not have to go through the little ear-lobe, but
are fastened over it by means of a clip. The big folk come laughing
to their parents to display these trophies; and the parents shake
their heads even while they admire--Aladdin bowing over and
over from afar.

The young people appear to be absorbed in their dancing--if
the performance they are carrying out with so much still concen-
tration can be called dancing. They stride across the carpet, slowly,
according to some unfathomable prescript, strangely embraced;
in the newest attitude, tummy advanced and shoulders high, wag-
gling the hips. They do not get tired, because nobody could. There
is no such thing as heightened colour or heaving bosoms. Two
girls may dance together or two young men--it is all the same.
They move to the exotic strains of the gramophone, played with
the loudest needles to procure the maximum of sound: shimmies,
foxtrots, one-steps, double foxes, African shimmies, Java dances,
and Creole polkas, the wild musky melodies follow one another,
now furious, now languishing, a monotonous Negro programme
in unfamiliar rhythm, to a clacking, clashing, and strumming or-
chestral accompaniment.

"What is that record?" Cornelius inquires of Ingrid, as she passes
him by in the arms of the pale young speculator, with reference
to the piece then plaving, whose alternate languors and furies he
finds comparatively pleasing and showing a certain resourceful-
ness in detail.

"Prince of Pappenheim: 'Console thee, dearest child,'" she
answers, and smiles pleasantly back at him with her white teeth.

The cigarette smoke wreathes beneath the chandelier. The air
is blue with a festal haze compact of sweet and thrilling ingredients
that stir the blood with memories of green-sick pains and are par-
ticularly poignant to those whose youth--like the Professor's own
-- has been over-sensitive....The little folk are still on the floor.
They are allowed to stop up until eight, so great is their delight
in the party. The guests have got used to their presence; in their
own way, they have their place in the doings of the evening. They
have separated, anyhow: Snapper revolves all alone in the middle
of the carpet, in his little blue velvet .smock, while Ellie is running
after one of the dancing couples, trying to hold the man fast by
his coat. It is Max Hergesell and Fraulein Plaichinger. They dance
well, it is a pleasure to watch them. One has to admit that these mad
modern dances, when the right people dance them, are not so bad
after all--they have something quite taking. Young Hergesell is a
capital leader, dances according to rule, yet with individuality.
So it looks. With what aplomb can he walk backwards--when
space permits! And he knows how to be graceful standing still in
a crowd. And his partner supports him well, being unsuspectedly
lithe and buoyant, as fat people often are. They look at each other,
they are talking, paying no heed to Ellie, though others are smiling
to see the child's persistence. Dr. Cornelius tries to catch up his
little sweetheart as she passes and draw her to him. But Ellie eludes
him, almost peevishly; her dear Abel is nothing to her now. She
braces her little arms against his chest and turns her face away with
a persecuted look. Then escapes to follow her fancy once more.

The Professor feels an involuntary twinge. Uppermost in his
heart is hatred for this party, with its power to intoxicate and
estrange his darling child. His love for her--that not quite
disinterested, not quite unexceptionable love of his--is easily
wounded. He wears a mechanical smile, but his eyes have clouded,
and he stares fixedly at a point in the carpet, between the dancers'
feet.

"The children ought to go to bed," he tells his wife. But she
pleads for another quarter of an hour; she has promised already,
and they do love it so! He smiles again and shakes his head, stands
so a moment and then goes across to the cloak-room, which is full
of coats and hats and scarves and overshoes. He has trouble in
rummaging out his own coat, and Max Hergesell comes out of the
hall, wiping his brow.

"Going out, sir?" he asks, in Hergesellian accents, dutifully
helping the older man on with his coat. "Silly business this, with
my pumps," he says. "They pinch like hell. The brutes are simply
too tight for me, quite apart from the bad leather. They press just
here on the ball of my great toe"--he stands on one foot and
holds the other in his hand--“it's simply unbearable. There's
nothing for it but to take them off; my brogues will have to do the
business....Oh, let me help you, sir."

"Thanks," says Cornelius. "Don't trouble. Get rid of your own
tormentors....Oh, thanks very much!" For Hergesell has gone
on one knee to snap the fasteners of his snow-boots.

Once more the Professor expresses his gratitude; he is pleased
and touched by so much sincere respect and youthful readiness
to serve. "Go and enjoy yourself," he counsels. "Change your
shoes and make up for what you have been suffering. Nobody can
dance in shoes that pinch. Good-bye, I must be off to get a breath
of fresh air."

"I'm going to dance with Ellie now," calls Hergesell after him.
"She'll be a first-rate dancer when she grows up, and that I'll
swear to."

"Think so?" Cornelius answers, already half out. "Well, you are
a connoisseur, I'm sure. Don't get curvature of the spine with
stooping."

He nods again and goes. "Fine lad," he thinks as he shuts the
door. "Student of engineering. Knows what he's bound for, got
a good clear head, and so well set up and pleasant too." And again
paternal envy rises as he compares his poor Bert's status with this
young man's, which he puts in the rosiest light that his son's may
look the darker. Thus he sets out on his evening walk.

He goes up the avenue, crosses the bridge, and walks along the
bank on the other side as far as the next bridge but one. The air is
wet and cold, with a little snow now and then. He turns up his
coat-collar and slips the crook of his cane over the arm behind his
back. Now and then he ventilates his lungs with a long deep breath
of the night air. As usual when he walks, his mind reverts to his
professional preoccupations, he thinks about his lectures and the
things he means to say tomorrow about Philip's struggle against
the Germanic revolution, things steeped in melancholy and pene-
tratingly just. Above all just, he thinks. For in one's dealings with
the young it behoves one to display the scientific spirit, to exhibit
the principles of enlightenment--not only for purposes of mental
discipline, but on the human and individual side, in order not to
wound them or indirectly offend their political sensibilities; par-
ticularly in these days, when there is so much tinder in the air,
opinions are so frightfully split up and chaotic, and you may so
easily incur attacks from one party or the other, or even give rise
to scandal, by taking sides on a point of history. "And taking sides
is unhistoric anyhow," so he muses. "Only justice, only impar-
tiality is historic." And could not, properly considered, be other-
wise....For justice can have nothing of youthful fire and blithe,
fresh, loyal conviction. It is by nature melancholy. And, being so,
has secret affinity with the lost cause and the forlorn hope rather
than with the fresh and blithe and loyal--perhaps this affinity is
its very essence and without it it would not exist at all!..."And
is there then no such thing as justice?" the Professor asks himself,
and ponders the question so deeply that he absently posts his letters
in the next box and turns round to go home. This thought of his
is unsettling and disturbing to the scientific mind--but is it not
after all itself scientific, psychological, conscientious, and therefore
to be accepted without prejudice, no matter how upsetting? In
the midst of which musings Dr. Cornelius finds himself back at
his own door.

On the outer threshold stands Xaver, and seems to be looking
for him.

"Herr Professor," says Xaver, tossing back his hair, "go up-
stairs to Ellie straight off. She's in a bad way."

"What's the matter?" asks Cornelius in alarm. "Is she ill?"

"No-o, not to say ill," answers Xaver. "She's just in a bad way
and crying fit to bust her little heart. It's along o' that chap with
the shirt-front that danced with her--Herr Hergesell. She couldn't
be got to go upstairs peaceably, not at no price at all, and she's
been crying bucketfuls."

"Nonsense," says the Professor, who has entered and is tossing
off his things in the cloak-room. He says no more; opens the glass
door and without a glance at the guests turns swiftly to the stairs.
Takes them two at a time, crosses the upper hall and the small room
leading into the nursery. Xaver follows at his heels, but stops at
the nursery door.

A bright light still burns within, showing the gay frieze that
runs all round the room, the large row of shelves heaped with a
confusion of toys, the rocking-horse on his swaying platform, with
red-varnished nostrils and raised hoofs. On the linoleum lie other
toys--building blocks, railway trains, a little trumpet. The two
white cribs stand not far apart, Ellie's in the window corner, Snap-
per's out in the room.

Snapper is asleep. He has said his prayers in loud, ringing tones,
prompted by Nurse, and gone off at once into vehement, pro-
found, and rosy slumber--from which a cannon-ball fired at close
range could not rouse him. He lies with both fists flung back on
the pillows on either side of the tousled head with its funny
crooked little slumber-tossed wig.

A circle of females surrounds Ellie's bed: not only blue-faced
Ann is there, but the Hinterhofer ladies too, talking to each other
and to her. They make way as the Professor comes up and reveal
the child sitting all pale among her pillows, sobbing and weeping
more bitterly than he has ever seen her sob and weep in her life.
Her lovely little hands be on the coverlet in front of her, the night-
gown with its narrow lace border has slipped down from her
shoulder--such a thin, birdbke little shoulder--and the sweet
head Cornelius loves so well, set on the neck like a flower on its
Stalk, her head is on one side, with the eyes rolled up to the comer
between wall and ceiling above her head. For there she seems to
envisage the anguish of her heart and even to nod to it--either on
purpose or because her head wobbles as her body is shaken with
the violence of her sobs. Her eyes rain down tears. The bow-
shaped lips are parted, like a little mater dolorosa's, and from them
issue long, low wails that in nothing resemble the unnecessary and
exasperating shrieks of a naughty child, but rise from the deep
extremity of her heart and wake in the Professor's own a sym-
pathy that is well-nigh intolerable. He has never seen his darling
so before. His feelings find immediate vent in an attack on the
ladies Hinterhofer.

"What about the supper?" he asks sharply, "There must be a
great deal to do. Is my wife being left to do it alone?"

For the acute sensibilities of the former middle class this is quite
enough. The ladies withdraw in righteous indignation, and Xaver
Kleingutl jeers at them as they pass out. Having been born to low
life instead of achieving it, he never loses a chance to mock at their
fallen state.

"Childie, childie," murmurs Cornelius, and sitting down by the crib
enfolds the anguished Ellie in his arms. “What is the trouble with
my darling?"

She bedews his face with her tears.

“Abel...Abel . . she stammers between sobs. “Why--isn't Max--
my brother? Max ought to be--my brother!"

Alas, alas! What mischance is this? Is this what the party has
wrought, with its fatal atmosphere? Cornelius glances helplessly
up at blue-faced Ann standing there in all the dignity of her
limitations with her hands before her on her apron. She purses up
her mouth and makes a long face. "It's pretty young," she says,
"for the female instincts to be showing up."

"Hold your tongue," snaps Cornelius, in his agony. He has this
much to be thankful for, that Ellie does not turn from him now;
she does not push him away as she did downstairs, but clings to
him in her need, while she reiterates her absurd, bewildered prayer
that Max might be her brother, or with a fresh burst of desire de-
mands to be taken downstairs so that he can dance with her again.
But Max, of course, is dancing with Fraulein Plaichinger, that be-
hemoth who is his rightful partner and has every claim upon him;
whereas Ellie--never, thinks the Professor, his heart torn with
the violence of his pity, never has she looked so tiny and birdlike
as now, when she nestles to him shaken with sobs and all unaware
of what is happening in her little soul. No, she does not know.
She does not comprehend that her suffering is on account of Frau-
lein Plaichinger, fat, overgrown, and utterly within her rights in
dancing with Max Hergesell, whereas Ellie may only do it once,
by way of a joke, although she is incomparably the more charming
of the two. Yet it would be quite mad to reproach young Hergesell
with the state of affairs or to make fantastic demands upon him.
No, Ellie's suffering is without help or healing and must be covered
up. Yet just as it is without understanding, so it is also without re-
straint-- and that is what makes it so horribly painful. Xaver and
blue-faced Ann do not feel this pain, it does not affect them--
either because of native callousness or because they accept it as
the way of nature. But the Professor's fatherly heart is quite torn
by it, and by a distressful horror of this passion, so hopeless and
so absurd.

Of no avail to hold forth to poor Ellie on the subject of the
perfectly good little brother she already has. She only casts a dis-
traught and scornful glance over at the other crib, where Snapper
lies vehemently slumbering, and with fresh tears calls again for
Max. Of no avail either the promise of a long, long walk tomorrow,
all five gentlemen, round and round the dining-room table; or a
dramatic description of the thrilling cushion games they will play.
No, she will listen to none of all this, nor to lying down and going
to sleep. She will not sleep, she will sit bolt upright and suffer. . . .
But on a sudden they stop and listen, Abel and Ellie; listen to some-
thing miraculous that is coming to pass, that is approaching by
strides, two strides, to the nursery door, that now overwhelmingly
appears....

It is Xaver's work, not a doubt of that. He has not remained by
the door where he stood to gloat over the ejection of the Hinter-
hofers. No, he has bestirred himself, taken a notion; likewise steps
to carry it out. Downstairs he has gone, twitched Herr Hergesell's
sleeve, and made a thick-lipped request. So here they both are.
Xaver, having done his part, remains by the door; but Max Herge-
sell comes up to Ellie's crib; in his dinner-jacket, with his sketchy
side-whisker and charming black eyes; obviously quite pleased
with his role of swan knight and fairy prince, as one who should
say: "See, here am I, now all losses are restored and sorrows end."

Cornelius is almost as much overcome as Ellie herself.

"Just look," he says feebly, "look who's here. This is uncommonly
good of you, Herr Hergesell."

"Not a bit of it," says Hergesell. "Why shouldn't I come to say
good-night to my fair partner?"

And he approaches the bars of the crib, behind which Ellie sits
struck mute. She smiles blissfully through her tears. A funny, high
little note that is half a sigh of relief comes from her lips, then she
looks dumbly up at her swan knight with her golden-brown eyes
--tear-swollen though they are, so much more beautiful than the
fat Plaichinger's. She does not put up her arms. Her joy, like her
grief, is without understanding; but she does not do that. The
lovely little hands lie quiet on the coverlet, and Max Hergesell
stands with his arms leaning over the rail as on a balcony.

"And now," he says smartly, "she need not sit the livelong
night and weep upon her bed'!" He looks at the Professor to make
sure he is receiving due credit for the quotation. "Ha ha!" he
laughs, "she's beginning young. 'Console thee, dearest child!'
Never mind, you're all right! Just as you are you'll be wonderful!
You've only got to grow up. . . . And you'll lie down and go to
sleep like a good girl, now I've come to say good-night? And not
crv any more, little Lorelei?"

Ellie looks up at him, transfigured. One birdlike shoulder is bare;
the Professor draws the lace-trimmed nighty over it. There comes
into his mind a sentimental story he once read about a dying child
who longs to see a clown he had once, with unforgettable ecstasy,
beheld in a circus. And they bring the clown to the bedside mar-
vellously arrayed, embroidered before and behind with silver
butterflies; and the child dies happy. Max Elergesell is not em-
broidered, and Ellie, thank God, is not going to die, she has only
"been in a bad way." But, after all, the effect is the same. Young
Hergesell leans over the bars of the crib and rattles on, more for
the father's ear than the child's, but Ellie does not know that--
and the father's feelings towards him are a most singular mixture
of thankfulness, embarrassment, and hatred.

"Good night, little Lorelei," says Hergesell, and gives her his
hand through the bars. Her pretty, soft, white little hand is swal-
lowed up in the grasp of his big, strong, red one. "Sleep well," he
says, "and sweet dreams! But don't dream about me--God forbid!
Not at your age--ha ha!" And then the fairy clown's visit is at
an end. Cornelius accompanies him to the door. "No, no, posi-
tively, no thanks called for, don't mention it," he large-heartedly
protests; and Xaver goes downstairs wfith him, to help serve the
Italian salad.

But Dr. Cornelius returns to Ellie, who is now lying down, with
her cheek pressed into her flat little pillow.

"Well, wasn't that lovely?" he says as he smooths the covers.
She nods, with one last little sob. For a quarter of an hour he sits
beside her and watches while she falls asleep in her turn, beside
the little brother who found the right way so much earlier than she.
Her silky brown hair takes the enchanting fall it always does when
she sleeps; deep, deep lie the lashes over the eyes that late so
abundantly poured forth their sorrow; the angelic mouth with its
bowed upper lip is peacefully relaxed and a little open. Only now
and then comes a belated catch in her slow breathing.

And her small hands, like pink and white flowers, lie so quietly,
one on the coverlet, the other on the pillow by her face--Dr.
Cornelius, gazing, feels his heart melt with tenderness as with
strong wine.

"How good," he thinks, "that she breathes in oblivion with
every breath she draws! That in childhood each night is a deep,
wide gulf between one day and the next. Tomorrow, beyond all
doubt, young Hergesell will be a pale shadow, powerless to darken
her little heart. Tomorrow, forgetful of all but present joy, she
will walk with Abel and Snapper, all five gentlemen, round and
round the table, will play the ever-thrilling cushion game."
Heaven be praised for that!

1920



MARIO AND THE MAGICIAN



The atmosphere of Torre di Venere remains unpleasant in the
memory. From the first moment the air of the place made us un-
easy, we felt irritable, on edge; then at the end came the shocking
business of Cipolla, that dreadful being who seemed to incorporate,
in so fateful and so humanly impressive a way, all the peculiar
evilness of the situation as a whole. Looking back, we had the feel-
ing that the horrible end of the affair had been preordained and
lay in the nature of things; that the children had to be present at
it was an added impropriety, due to the false colours in which the
weird creature presented himself. Luckily for them, they did not
know where the comedy left off and the tragedy began; and we
let them remain in their happy belief that the whole thing had been
a play up till the end.

Torre di Venere lies some fifteen kilometres from Portocle-
mente, one of the most popular summer resorts on the Tyrrhenian
Sea. Portoclemente is urban and elegant and full to overflowing for
months on end. Its gay and busy main street of shops and hotels
runs down to a wide sandy beach covered with tents and pennanted
sand-castles and sunburnt humanity, where at all times a lively
social bustle reigns, and much noise. But this same spacious and
inviting fine-sanded beach, this same border of pine grove and near,
presiding mountains, continues all the way along the coast. No
wonder then that some competition of a quiet kind should have
sprung up further on. Torre di Venere--the tower that gave the
town its name is gone long since, one looks for it in vain--is an
offshoot of the larger resort, and for some years remained an idyll
for the few, a refuge for more unworldly spirits. But the usual
history of such places repeated itself: peace has had to retire further
along the coast, to Marina Petriera and dear knows where else. We
all know how the world at once seeks peace and puts her to flight
--rushing upon her in the fond idea that they two will wed, and
where she is, there it can be at home. It will even set up its Vanity
Fair in a spot and be capable of thinking that peace is still by its
side. Thus Torre--though its atmosphere so far is more modest
and contemplative than that of Portoclemente--has been quite
taken up, by both Italians and foreigners. It is no longer the thing
to go to Portoclemente--though still so much the thing that it
is as noisy and crowded as ever. One goes next door, so to speak:
to Torre. So much more refined, even, and cheaper to boot. And
the attractiveness of these qualities persists, though the qualities
themselves long ago ceased to be evident. Torre has got a Grand
Hotel. Numerous pensions have sprung up, some modest, some
pretentious. The people who own or rent the villas and pinetas
overlooking the sea no longer have it all their own way on the
beach. In July and August it looks just like the beach at Portocle-
mente: it swarms with a screaming, squabbling, merrymaking
crowd, and the sun, blazing down like mad, peels the skin off their
necks. Garish little flat-bottomed boats rock on the glittering
blue, manned by children, whose mothers hover afar and fill the air
with anxious cries of Nino! and Sandro! and Bice! and Maria!
Pedlars step across the legs of recumbent sun-bathers, selling flow-
ers and corals, oysters, lemonade, and cornetti al burro, and crying
their wares in the breathy, full-throated southern voice.

Such was the scene that greeted our arrival in Torre: pleasant
enough, but after all, we thought, we had come too soon. It was
the middle of August, the Italian season was still at its height,
scarcely the moment for strangers to learn to love the special
charms of the place. What an afternoon crowd in the cafes on the
front! For instance, in the Esquisito, where we sometimes sat and
were served by Mario, that very Mario of whom I shall have pres-
ently to tell. It is well-nigh impossible to find a table; and the vari-
ous orchestras contend together in the midst of one's conversation
with bewildering effect. Of course, it is in the afternoon that peo-
ple come over from Portoclemente. The excursion is a favourite
one for the restless denizens of that pleasure resort, and a Fiat
motor-bus plies to and fro, coating inch-thick with dust the
oleander and laurel hedges along the highroad--a notable if re-
pulsive sight.

Yes, decidedly one should go to Torre in September, when the
great public has left. Or else in May, before the water is warm
enough to tempt the Southerner to bathe. Even in the before and
after seasons Torre is not empty, but life is less national and more
subdued. English, French, and German prevail under the tent-
awnings and in the pension dining-rooms; whereas in August--in
the Grand Hotel, at least, where, in default of private addresses, we
had engaged rooms--the stranger finds the field so occupied by
Florentine and Roman society that he feels quite isolated and even
temporarily declasse.

We had, rather to our annoyance, this experience on the evening
we arrived, when we went in to dinner and were shown to our table
by the waiter in charge. As a table, it had nothing against it, save
that we had already fixed our eyes upon those on the veranda be-
yond, built out over the water, where little red-shaded lamps
glowed--and there were still some tables empty, though it was as
full as the dining-room within. The children went into raptures at
the festive sight, and without more ado we announced our inten-
tion to take our meals by preference in the veranda. Our words, it
appeared, were prompted by ignorance; for we were informed,
with somewhat embarrassed politeness, that the cosy nook outside
was reserved for the clients of the hotel: ai nostri clienti. Their
clients? But we were their clients. We were not tourists or trippers,
but boarders for a stay of some three or four weeks. However, we
forbore to press for an explanation of the difference between the
likes of us and that clientele to whom it was vouchsafed to eat our
there in the glow of the red lamps, and took our dinner by the
prosaic .common light of the dining-room chandelier--a thor-
ouehly ordinary and monotonous hotel bill of fare, be it said. In
Pensione Eleonora, a few steps landward, the table, as we were to
discover, was much better.

And thither it was that we moved, three or four days later, before
we had had time to settle in properly at the Grand Hotel. Not on
account of the veranda and the lamps. The children, straightway
on the best of terms with waiters and pages, absorbed in the joys of
life on the beach, promptly forgot those colourful seductions. But
now there arose, between ourselves and the veranda clientele--or
perhaps more correctly with the compliant management--one of
those little unpleasantnesses which can quite spoil the pleasure of a
holiday. Among the guests were some high Roman aristocracy, a
Principe X and his family. These grand folk occupied rooms close
to our own, and the Principessa, a great and a passionately maternal
lady, was thrown into a panic by the vestiges of a whooping-
cough which our little ones had lately got over, but which now
and then still faintly troubled the unshatterable slumbers of our
youngest-born. The nature of this illness is not clear, leaving some
play for the imagination. So we took no offence at our elegant
neighbour for clinging to the widely held view that whooping-
cough is acoustically contagious and quite simply fearing lest her
children yield to the bad example set by ours. In the fullness of her
feminine self-confidence she protested to the management, which
then, in the person of the proverbial frock-coated manager, has-
tened to represent to us, with many expressions of regret, that un-
der the circumstances they were obliged to transfer us to the
annexe. We did our best to assure him that the disease was in its
very last stages, that it was actually over, and presented no danger
of infection to anybody. All that we gained was permission to bring
the case before the hotel physician--not one chosen by us--by
whose verdict we must then abide. We agreed, convinced that thus
we should at once pacify the Princess and escape the trouble of
moving. The doctor appeared, and behaved like a faithful and hon-
est servant of science. He examined the child and gave his opinion;
the disease was quite over, no danger of contagion was present. We
drew a long breath and considered the incident closed--until the
manager announced that despite the doctor's verdict it would still
be necessary for us to give up our rooms and retire to the depen-
dance. Byzantinism like this outraged us. It is not likely that the
Principessa was responsible for the wilful breach of faith. Very
likely the fawning management had not even dared to tell her what
the physician said. Anyhow, we made it clear to his understanding
that we preferred to leave the hotel altogether and at once--and
packed our trunks. We could do so with a light heart, having al-
ready set up casual friendly relations with Casa Eleonora. We had
noticed its pleasant exterior and formed the acquaintance of its pro-
prietor, Signora Angiolieri, and her husband: she slender and black-
haired, Tuscan in type, probably at the beginning of the thirties,
with the dead ivory complexion of the southern woman, he quiet
and bald and carefully dressed. They owned a larger establish-
ment in Florence and presided only in summer and early autumn
over the branch in Torre di Venere. But earlier, before her mar-
riage, our new landlady had been companion, fellow-traveller,
wardrobe mistress, yes, friend, of Eleonora Duse and manifestly
regarded that period as the crown of her career. Even at our first
visit she spoke of it with animation. Numerous photographs of the
great actress, with affectionate inscriptions, were displayed about
the drawing-room, and other souvenirs of their life together
adorned the little tables and etageres. This cult of a so interesting
past was calculated, of course, to heighten the advantages of the
signora's present business. Nevertheless our pleasure and interest
were quite genuine as we were conducted through the house by its
owner and listened to her sonorous and staccato Tuscan voice re-
lating anecdotes of that immortal mistress, depicting her suffering
saintliness, her genius, her profound delicacy of feeling.

Thither, then, we moved our effects, to the dismay of the staff
of the Grand Hotel, who, like all Italians, were very good to chil-
dren. Our new quarters were retired and pleasant, we were within
easy reach of the sea through the avenue of young plane trees that '
ran down to the esplanade. In the clean, cool dining-room Signora
Angiolieri daily served the soup with her own hands, the service
was attentive and good, the table capital. We even discovered
some Viennese acquaintances, and enjoyed chatting with them
after luncheon, in front of the house. They, in their turn, were the
means of our finding others--in short, all seemed for the best, and
we were heartily glad of the change we had made. Nothing was
now wanting to a holiday of the most gratifying kind.

And yet no proper gratification ensued. Perhaps the stupid oc-
casion of our change of quarters pursued us to the new ones we
had found. Personally, I admit that I do not easily forget these
collisions with ordinary humanity, the naive misuse of power, the
injustice, the sycophantic corruption. I dwelt upon the incident
too much, it irritated me in retrospect--quite futilely, of course,
since such phenomena are only all too natural and all too much
the rule. And we had not broken off relations with the Grand
Hotel. The children were as friendly as ever there, the porter
mended their toys, and we sometimes took tea in the garden. We
even saw the Principessa. She would come out, with her firm and
delicate tread, her lips emphatically corallined, to look after her
children, playing under the supervision of their English governess.
She did not dream that we were anywhere near, for so soon as she
appeared in the offing we sternly forbade our little one even to
clear his throat.

The heat--if I may bring it in evidence--was extreme. It was
African. The power of the sun, directly one left the border of the
indigo-blue wave, was so frightful, so relentless, that the mere
thought of the few steps between the beach and luncheon was a
burden, clad though one might be only in pyjamas. Do you care
for that sort of thing? Weeks on end? Yes, of course, it is proper
to the south, it is classic weather, the sun of Homer, the climate
wherein human culture came to flower--and all the rest of it. But
after a while it is too much for me, I reach a point where I begin
to find it dull. The burning void of the sky, day after day, weighs
one down; the high coloration, the enormous naivete of the unre-
fracted light--they do, I dare say, induce light-heartedness, a care-
free mood born of immunity from downpours and other meteoro-
logical caprices. But slowly, slowly, there makes itself felt a lack:
the deeper, more complex needs of the northern soul remain un-
satisfied. You are left barren--even, it may be, in time, a little con-
temptuous. True, without that stupid business of the whooping-
cough I might not have been feeling these things. I was annoyed,
very likely I wanted to feel them and so half-unconsciously seized
upon an idea lying ready to hand to induce, or if not to induce,
at least to justify and strengthen, my attitude. Up to this point,
then, if you like, let us grant some ill will on our part. But the sea;
and the mornings spent extended upon the fine sand in face of its
eternal splendours--no, the sea could not conceivably induce
such feelings. Yet it was none the less true that, despite all previous
experience, we were not at home on the beach, we were not happy.

It was too soon, too soon.. The beach, as I have said, was still in
the hands of the middle-class native. It is a pleasing breed to look
at, and among the young we saw much shapeliness and charm.
Still, we were necessarily surrounded by a great deal of very
average humanity--a middle-class mob, which, you will admit, is
not more charming under this sun than under one's own native sky.
The voices these women have! It was sometimes hard to believe
that we were in the land which is the western cradle of the art of
song. "Fuggiero!" I can still hear that cry, as for twenty morn-
ings long I heard it close behind me, breathy, full-throated, hide-
ously stressed, with a harsh open e, uttered in accents of mechani-
cal despair. "Fuggiero! Rispondi almeno!" Answer when I call
you! The sp in rispondi was pronounced like shp, as Germans pro-
nounce it; and this, on top of what I felt already, vexed my sensi-
tive soul. The cry was addressed to a repulsive youngster whose
sunburn had made disgusting raw sores on his shoulders. He out-
did anything I have ever seen for ill-breeding, refractoriness, and
temper and was a great coward to boot, putting the whole beach
in an uproar, one day, because of his outrageous sensitiveness to
the slightest pain. A sand-crab had pinched his toe in the water,
and the minute injury made him set up a cry of heroic proportions
--the shout of an antique hero in his agony--that pierced one to
the marrow and called up visions of some frightful tragedy. Evi-
dently he considered himself not only wounded, but poisoned as
well; he crawled out on the sand and lay in apparently intolerable
anguish, groaning "Ohi!" and "Ohime!" and threshing about
with arms and legs to ward off his mother's tragic appeals and the
questions of the bystanders. An audience gathered round. A doc-
tor was fetched--the same who had pronounced objective judg-
ment on our whooping-cough--and here again acquitted himself
like a man of science. Good-naturedly he reassured the boy, telling
him that he was not hurt at all, he should simply go into the water
again to relieve the smart. Instead of which, Fuggiero was borne
off the beach, followed by a concourse of people. But he did not
fail to appear next morning, nor did he leave off spoiling our chil-
dren's sand-castles. Of course, always by accident. In short, a per-
fect terror.

And this twelve-year-old lad was prominent among the influ-
ences that, imperceptibly at first, combined to spoil our holiday
and render it unwholesome. Somehow or other, there was a stiff-
ness, a lack of innocent enjoyment. These people stood on their
dignity--just why, and in what spirit, it was not easy at first to
tell. They displayed much self-respectingness; towards each other
and towards the foreigner their bearing was that of a person newly
conscious of a sense of honour. And wherefore? Gradually we
realized the political implications and understood that we were in
the presence of a national ideal. The beach, in fact, was alive with
patriotic children--a phenomenon as unnatural as it was depress-
ing. Children are a human species and a society apart, a nation of
their own, so to speak. On the basis of their common form of life,
they find each other out with the greatest ease, no matter how
different their small vocabularies. Ours soon played with natives
and foreigners alike. Yet they were plainly both puzzled and dis-
appointed at times. There were wounded sensibilities, displays of
assertiveness--or rather hardly assertiveness, for it was too self-
conscious and too didactic to deserve the name. There were quar-
rels over flags, disputes about authority and precedence. Grown-
ups joined in, not so much to pacify as to render judgment and
enunciate principles. Phrases were dropped about the greatness
and dignity of Italy, solemn phrases that spoilt the fun. We saw
our two little ones retreat, puzzled and hurt, and were put to it to
explain the situation. These people, we told them, w'ere just passing
through a certain stage, something rather like an illness, perhaps;
not very pleasant, but probably unavoidable.

We had only our own carelessness to thank that 'we came to
blows in the end with this "stage"--which, after all, we had seen
and sized up long before now. Yes, it came to another "cross-
purposes," so evidently the earlier ones had not been sheer acci-
dent. In a word, we became an offence to the public morals. Our
small daughter--eight years old, but in physical development a
good year younger and thin as a chicken--had had a good long
bathe and gone playing in the warm sun in her wet costume. We
told her that she might take off her bathing-suit, which was stiff
with sand, rinse it in the sea, and put it on again, after which she
must take care to keep it cleaner. Off goes the costume and she
runs down naked to the sea, rinses her little jersey, and comes
back. Ought we to have foreseen the outburst of anger and resent-
ment which her conduct, and thus our conduct, called forth?
Without delivering a homily on the subject, I may say that in the
last decade our attitude towards the nude body and our feelings
regarding it have undergone, all over the world, a fundamental
change. There are things we "never think about" any more, and
among them is the freedom we had permitted to this by no means
provocative little childish body. But in these parts it was taken as
a challenge. The patriotic children hooted. Fuggicro whistled on
his fingers. The sudden buzz of conversation among the grown
people in our neighbourhood boded no good. A gentleman in city
togs, with a not very apropos bowler hat on the back of his head,
was assuring his outraged womenfolk that he proposed to take
punitive measures; he stepped up to us, and a philippic descended
on our unworthy heads, in which all the emotionalism of the sense-
loving south spoke in the service of morality and discipline. The
offence against decency of which we had been guilty was, he said,
the more to be condemned because it was also a gross ingratitude
and an insulting breach of his country's hospitality. We had crimi-
nally injured not only the letter and spirit of the public bathing
regulations, but also the honour of Italy; he, the gentleman in the
city togs, knew how to defend that honour and proposed to see to
it that our offence against the national dignity should not go un-
punished.

We did our best, bowing respectfully, to give ear to this elo-
quence. To contradict the man, overheated as he was, would
probably be to fall from one error into another. On the tips of our
tongues we had various answers; as, that the word "hospitality,"
in its strictest sense, was not quite the right one, taking all the
circumstances into consideration. We were not literally the guests
of Italy, but of Signora Angiolieri, who had assumed the role of
dispenser of hospitality some years ago on laying down that of
familiar friend to Eleonora Duse. We longed to say that surely
this beautiful country had not sunk so low as to be reduced to a
state of hypersensitive prudishness. But we confined ourselves to
assuring the gentleman that any lack of respect, any provocation
on our parts, had been the furthest from our thoughts. And as a
mitigating circumstance we pointed out the tender age and physi-
cal slightness of the little culprit. In vain. Our protests were waved
away, he did not believe in them; our defence would not hold
water. We must be made an example of. The authorities were
notified, by telephone, I believe, and their representative appeared
on the beach. He said the case was "molto grave." We had to go
with him to the Municipio up in the Piazza, where a higher official
confirmed the previous verdict of "molto grave," launched into a
stream of the usual didactic phrases--the selfsame tune and words
as the man in the bowler hat--and levied a fine and ransom of
fifty lire. We felt that the adventure must willy-nilly be worth
to us this much of a contribution to the economy of the Italian
government; paid, and left. Ought we not at this point to have
left Torre as well?

If we only had! We should thus have escaped that fatal Cipolla.
But circumstances combined to prevent us from making up our
minds to a change. A certain poet says that it is indolence that
makes us endure uncomfortable situations. The apercu may serve
as an explanation for our inaction. Anyhow, one dislikes voiding
the field immediately upon such an event. Especially if sympathy
from other quarters encourages one to defy it. And in the Villa
Eleonora they pronounced as with one voice upon the injustice of
our punishment. Some Italian after-dinner acquaintances found
that the episode put their country in a very bad light, and pro-
posed taking the man in the bowler hat to task, as one fellow-
citizen to another. But the next day he and his party had vanished
from the beach. Not on our account, of course. Though it might
be that the consciousness of his impending departure had added
energy to his rebuke; in any case his going was a relief. And, fur-
thermore, we stayed because our stay had by now become re-
markable in our own eyes, which is worth something in itself,
quite apart from the comfort or discomfort involved. Shall we
strike sail, avoid a certain experience so soon as it seems not ex-
pressly calculated to increase our enjoyment or our self-esteem?
Shall we go away whenever life looks like turning in the slightest
uncanny, or not quite normal, or even rather painful and mortify-
ing? No, surely not. Rather stay and look matters in the face,
brave them out; perhaps precisely in so doing lies a lesson for us
to learn. We stayed on and reaped as the awful reward of our
constancy the unholy and staggering experience with Cipolla.

I have not mentioned that the after season had begun, almost on
the very day we were disciplined by the city authorities. The
worshipful gentleman in the bowler hat, our denouncer, was not
the only person to leave the resort. There was a regular exodus,
on every hand you saw luggage-carts on their way to the station.
The beach denationalized itself. Life in Torre, in the cafes and the
pinetas, became more homelike and more European. Very likely
we might even have eaten at a table in the glass veranda, but we
refrained, being content at Signora Angiolieri's--as content, that
is, as our evil star would let us be. But at the same time with this
turn for the better came a change in the weather; almost to an
hour it showed itself in harmony with the holiday calendar of the
general public. The sky was overcast; not that it grew any cooler,
but the unclouded heat of the entire eighteen days since our ar-
rival, and probably long before that, gave place to a stifling sirocco
air, while from time to time a little ineffectual rain sprinkled the
velvety surface of the beach. Add to which, that two-thirds of our
intended stay at Torre had passed. The colourless, lazy sea, with
sluggish jellyfish floating in its shallows, was at least a change.
And it would have been silly to feel retrospective longings after a
sun that had caused us so many sighs when it burned down in all
its arrogant power.

At this juncture, then, it was that Cipolla announced himself.
Cavaliere Cipolla he was called on the posters that appeared one
day stuck up everywhere, even in the dining-room of Pensione
Eleonora. A travelling virtuoso, an entertainer, "forzatore, illii-
sionista, prestidigatore," as he called himself, who proposed to
wait upon the highly respectable population of Torre di Venere
with a display of extraordinary phenomena of a mysterious and
staggering kind. A conjuror! The bare announcement was enough
to turn our children's heads. They had never seen anything of the
sort, and now our present holiday was to afford them this new
excitement. From that moment on they besieged us with prayers
to take tickets for the performance. We had doubts, from the
first, on the score of the lateness of the hour, nine o'clock; but
gave way, in the idea that we might see a little of what Cipolla
had to offer, probably no great matter, and then go home. Besides,
of course, the children could sleep late next day. We bought four
tickets of Signora Angiolieri herself, she having taken a number
of the stalls on commission to sell them to her guests. She could
not vouch for the man's performance, and we had no great expec-
tations. But we were conscious of a need for diversion, and the
children's violent curiosity proved catching.

The Cavaliere's performance was to take place in a hall where
during the season there had been a cinema with a weekly pro-
gramme. We had never been there. You reached it by following
the main street under the wall of the "palazzo" a ruin with a
"For sale" sign, that suggested a castle and had obviously been
built in lordlier days. In the same street were the chemist, the
hairdresser, and all the better shops; it led, so to speak, from the
feudal past the bourgeois into the proletarian, for it ended off
between two rows of poor fishing-huts, where old women sat
mending nets before the doors. And here, among the proletariat,
was the hall, not much more, actually, than a wooden shed, though
a large one, with a turreted entrance, plastered on either side with
layers of gay placards. Some while after dinner, then, on the ap-
pointed evening, we wended our way thither in the dark, the chil-
dren dressed in their best and blissful with the sense of so much
irregularity. It was sultry, as it had been for days; there was heat
lightning now and then, and a little rain; we proceeded under um-
brellas. It took us a quarter of an hour.

Our tickets were collected at the entrance, our places we had to
find ourselves. They were in the third row left, and as we sat down
we saw that, late though the hour was for the performance, it was
to be interpreted with even more laxity. Only very slowly did an
audience--who seemed to be relied upon to come late--begin to
fill the stalls. These comprised the whole auditorium; there were
no boxes. This tardiness gave us some concern. The children's
cheeks were already flushed as much with fatigue as with excite-
ment. But even when we entered, the standing-room at the back
and in the side aisles was already well occupied. There stood the
manhobd of Torre di Venere, all and sundry, fisherfolk, rough-
and-ready youths with bare forearms crossed over their striped
jerseys. We were well pleased with the presence of this native as-
semblage, which always adds colour and animation to occasions
like the present; and the children were frankly delighted. For they
had friends among these people--acquaintances picked up on af-
ternoon strolls to the further ends of the beach. We would be
turning homeward, at the hour when the sun dropped into the sea,
spent with the huge effort it had made and gilding with reddish
gold the oncoming surf; and we would come upon bare-legged
fisherfolk standing in rows, bracing and hauling with long-drawn
cries as they drew in the nets and harvested in dripping baskets
their catch, often so scanty, of frutta di mare. The children looked
on, helped to pull, brought out their little stock of Italian words,
made friends. So now they exchanged nods with the "standing-
room" clientele; there was Guiscardo, there Antonio, they knew
them by name and waved and called across in half-whispers, get-
ting answering nods and smiles that displayed rows of healthy
white teeth. Look, there is even Mario, Mario from the Esquisito,
who brings us the chocolate. He wants to see the conjuror, too,
and he must have, come early, for he is almost in front; but he does
not see us, he is not paying attention; that is a way he has, even
though he is a waiter. So we wave instead to the man who lets
out the little boats on the beach; he is there too, standing at the
back.

It had got to a quarter past nine, it got to almost half past. It was
natural that we should be nervous. When would the children get
to bed? It had been a mistake to bring them, for now it would be
very hard to suggest breaking off their enjoyment before it had
got well under way. The stalls had filled in time; all Torre, appar-
ently, was there: the guests of the Grand Hotel, the guests of Villa
Eleonora, familiar faces from the beach. We heard English and
German and the sort of French that Rumanians speak with Italians.
Madame Angiolieri herself sat two rows behind us, with her quiet,
bald-headed spouse, who kept stroking his moustache with the
two middle fingers of his right hand. Everybody had come late,
but nobody too late. Cipolla made us wait for him.

He made us wait. That is probably the way to put it. He height-
ened the suspense by his delay in appearing. And we could see the
point of this, too--only not when it was carried to extremes.
Towards half past nine the audience began to clap--an amiable
way of expressing justifiable impatience, evincing as it does an ea-
gerness to applaud. For the little ones, this was a joy in itself--all
children love to clap. From the popular sphere came loud Cries of
"Pronti!" "Cominciamo!" And lo, it seemed now as easy to
begin as before it had been hard. A gong sounded, greeted by the
standing rows with a many-voiced "Ah-h!" and the curtains
parted. They revealed a platform furnished more like a school-
room than like the theatre of a conjuring performance--largely
because of the blackboard in the left foreground. There was a
common yellow hat-stand, a few ordinary straw-bottomed chairs,
and further back a little round table holding a water carafe and
glass, also a tray with a liqueur glass and a flask of pale yellow
liquid. We had still a few seconds of time to let these things sink
in. Then, with no darkening of the house, Cavaliere Cipolla made
his entry.

He came forward with a rapid step that expressed his eagerness
to appear before his public and gave rise to the illusion that he had
already come a long way to put himself at their service--whereas,
of course, he had only been standing in the wings. His costume
supported the fiction. A man of an age hard to determine, but by
no means young; with a sharp, ravaged face, piercing eves, com-
pressed lips, small black waxed moustache, and a so-called imperial
in the curve between mouth and chin. He was dressed for the street
with a sort of complicated evening elegance, in a wide black pel-
erine with velvet collar and satin lining; which, in the hampered
state of his arms, he held together in front with his white-gloved
hands. He had a white scarf round his neck; a top hat with a curv-
ing brim sat far back on his head. Perhaps more than anywhere else
the eighteenth century is still alive in Italy, and with it the charla-
tan and mountebank type so characteristic of the period. Only
there, at any rate, does one still encounter really well-preserved'
specimens. Cipolla had in his whole appearance much of the his-
toric type; his very clothes helped to conjure up the traditional
figure with its blatantly, fantastically foppish air. His pretentious
costume sat upon him, or rather hung upon him, most curiously,
being in one place drawn too tight, in another a mass of awkward
folds. There was something not quite in order about his figure,
both front and back--that was plain later on. But I must empha-
size the fact that there was not a trace of personal jocularity or
clownishness in his pose, manner, or behaviour. On the contrary,
there was complete seriousness, an absence of any humorous ap-
peal; occasionally even a cross-grained pride, along with that
curious, self-satisfied air so characteristic of the deformed. None
of all this, however, prevented his appearance from being greeted
with laughter from more than one quarter of the hall.

All the eagerness had left his manner. The swift entry had been
merely an expression of energy, not of zeal. Standing at the foot-
lights he negligently drew off his gloves, to display long yellow
hands, one of them adorned with a seal ring with a lapis-lazuli in
a high setting. As he stood there, his small hard eyes, with flabby
pouches beneath them, roved appraisingly about the hall, not
quickly, rather in a considered examination, pausing here and there
upon a face with his lips clipped together, not speaking a word.
Then with a display of skill as surprising as it was casual, he rolled
his gloves into a ball and tossed them across a considerable distance
into the glass on the table. Next from an inner pocket he drew
forth a packet of cigarettes; you could see bv the wrapper that
they were the cheapest sort the government sells. With his finger-
tips he pulled out a cigarette and lighted it, without looking, from
a quick-firing benzine lighter. He drew the smoke deep into his
lungs and let it out again, tapping his foot, with both lips drawn
in an arrogant grimace and the grey smoke streaming out between
broken and saw-edged teeth.

With a keenness equal to his own his audience eyed him. The
youths at the rear scowled as they peered at this cocksure creature
to search out his secret weaknesses. He betrayed none. In fetching
out and putting back the cigarettes his clothes got in his way.
He had to turn back his pelerine, and in so doing revealed a riding-
whip with a silver claw-handle that hung by a leather thong from
his left forearm and looked decidedly out of place. You could see
that he had on not evening clothes but a frock-coat, and under
this, as he lifted it to get at his pocket, could be seen a striped sash
worn about the body. Somebody behind me whispered that this
sash went with his title of Cavaliere. I give the information for
what it may be worth--personally, I never heard that the title
carried such insignia with it. Perhaps the sash was sheer pose, like
the way he stood there, without a word, casually and arrogantly
puffing smoke into his audience's face.

People laughed, as I said. The merriment had become almost
general when somebody in the “standing seats," in a loud, dry
voice, remarked: "Buona sera.^

Cipolla cocked his head. "Who was that?" asked he, as though
he had been dared. "Who was that just spoke? Well? First so bold
and now so modest? Paura, eh?" He spoke with a rather high,
asthmatic voice, which yet had a metallic quality. He waited.

"That was me," a youth at the rear broke into the stillness, see-
ing himself thus challenged. He was not far from us, a handsome
fellow in a woollen shirt, with his coat hanging over one shoulder.
He wore his curly, wiry hair in a high, dishevelled mop, the style
affected by the youth of the awakened Fatherland; it gave him
an African appearance that rather spoiled his looks. "Be! That
was me. It was your business to say it first, but I was trying to be
friendly."

More laughter. The chap had a tongue in his head. "Ha sciolto
la scilingudgnolo," I heard near me. After all, the retort was
deserved.

"Ah, bravo!" answered Cipolla. "I like you, giovanotto. Trust
me. I've had my eye on you for some time. People like you are
just in my line. I can use them. And you are the pick of the lot,
that's plain to see. You do what you like. Or is it possible you have
ever not done what you liked--or even, maybe, what you didn't
like? What somebody else liked, in short? Hark ye, my friend,
that might be a pleasant change for you, to divide up the willing
and the doing and stop tackling both jobs at once. Division of
labour, sistema americano, sa'! For instance, suppose you were to
show your tongue to this select and honourable audience here--
your whole tongue, right down to the roots?"

"No, I won't," said the youth, hostilely. "Sticking out your
tongue shows a bad bringing-up."

"Nothing of the sort," retorted Cipolla. "You would only be
doing it. With all due respect to your bringing-up, I suggest that
before I count ten, you will perform a right turn and stick out
your tongue at the company here further than you knew your-
self that you could stick it out."

He gazed at the youth, and his piercing eyes seemed to sink
deeper into their sockets. "Uno!" said he. He had let his riding-
whip slide down his arm and made it whistle once through the air.
The boy faced about and put out his tongue, so long, so ex-
tendedly, that you could see it was the very uttermost in tongue
which he had to offer. Then turned back, stony-faced, to his for-
mer position.

"That was me," mocked Cipolla, with a jerk of his head towards
the youth. "Be! That was me." Leaving the audience to enjoy its
sensations, he turned towards the little round table, lifted the bot-
tle, poured out a small glass of what was obviously cognac, and
tipped it up with a practised hand.

The children laughed with all their hearts. They had under-
stood practically nothing of what had been said, but it pleased
them hugely that something so funny should happen, straighta-
way, between that queer man up there and somebody out of the
audience. They had no preconception of what an "evening"
would be like and were quite ready to find this a priceless begin-
ning. As for us, we exchanged a glance and I remember that invol-
untarily I made with my lips the sound that Cipolla's whip had
made when it cut the air. For the rest, it was plain that people did
not know what to make of a preposterous beginning like this to a
sleight-of-hand performance. They could not see why the gio-
vanotto, who after all in a wav' had been their spokesman, should
suddenly have turned on them to vent his incivility. They felt that
he had behaved like a silly ass and withdrew their countenances
from him in favour of the artist, who now came back from his
refreshment table and addressed them as follows:

"Ladies and gentlemen," said he, in his wheezing, metallic
voice, "you saw just now that I was rather sensitive on the score
of the rebuke this hopeful young linguist saw fit to give me"--
"questo linguista di belle speranze" was what he said, and we all
laughed at the pun. "I am a man who sets some store by himself,
you may take it from me. And I see no point in being wished a
good-evening unless it is done courteously and in all seriousness.
For anything else there is no occasion. When a man wishes me a
good-evening he wishes himself one, for the audience will have
one only if I do. So this lady-killer of Torre di Venere" (another
thrust) "did well to testify that I have one tonight and that I can
dispense with any wishes of his in the matter. I can boast of having
good evenings almost without exception. One not so good does
come my way now and again, but very seldom. My calling is hard
and my health not of the best. I have a little physical defect which
prevented me from doing my bit in the war for the greater glory
of the Fatherland. It is perforce with my mental and spiritual parts
that I conquer life--which after all only means conquering one-
self. And I flatter myself that my achievements have aroused inter-
est and respect among the educated public. The leading news-
papers have lauded me, the Corriere della Sera did me the courtesy
of calling me a phenomenon, and in Rome the brother of the Duce
honoured me by his presence at one of my evenings. I should not
have thought that in a relatively less important place" (laughter
here, at the expense of poor little Torre) "I should have to give
up the small personal habits which brilliant and elevated audiences
had been ready to overlook. Nor did I think I had to stand being
heckled by a person who seems to have been rather spoilt by the
favours of the fair sex." All this of course at the expense of the
youth whom Cipolla never tired of presenting in the guise of
donnaiuolo and rustic Don Juan. His persistent thin-skinnedness
and animosity were in striking contrast to the self-confidence and
the worldly success he boasted of. One might have assumed that
the giovanotto was merely the chosen butt of Cipolla's customary
professional sallies, had not the verv pointed witticisms betrayed a
genuine antagonism. No one looking at the physical parts of the
two men need have been at a loss for the explanation, even if the
deformed man had not constantly played on the other's supposed
success with the fair sex. "Well," Cipolla went on, "before be-
ginning our entertainment this evening, perhaps you will permit
me to make myself comfortable."

And he went towards the hat-stand to take off his things.

"Parla benissimo," asserted somebody in our neighbourhood.
So far, the man had done nothing; but what he had said was ac-
cepted as an achievement, by means of that he had made an im-
pression. Among southern peoples speech is a constituent part of
the pleasure of living, it enjoys far livelier social esteem than in
the north. That national cement, the mother tongue, is paid sym-
bolic honours down here, and there is something blithely symboli-
cal in the pleasure people take in their respect for its forms and
phonetics. They enjoy speaking, they enjoy listening; and they
listen with discrimination. For the way a man speaks serves as a
measure of his personal rank; carelessness and clumsiness are
greeted with scorn, elegance and mastery are rewarded with social
eclat. Wherefore the small man too, where it is a question of get-
ing his effect, chooses his phrase nicely and turns it with care. On
this count, then, at least, Cipolla had won his audience; though he
by no means belonged to the class of men which the Italian,
in a singular mixture of moral and aesthetic judgments, labels
"simpatico."

After removing his hat, scarf, and mantle he came to the front
of the stage, settling his coat, pulling down his cuffs with their
large cuff-buttons, adjusting his absurd sash. He had very ugly
hair; the top of his head, that is, was almost bald, while a narrow,
black-varnished frizz of curls ran from front to back as though
stuck on; the side hair, likewise blackened, was brushed forward
to the corners of the eyes--it was, in short, the hairdressing of an
old-fashioned circus-director, fantastic, but entirely suited to his
outmoded personal type and worn with so much assurance as to
take the edge off the public's sense of humour. The little physical
defect of which he had warned us was now all too visible, though
the nature of it was even now not very clear: the chest was too
high, as is usual in such cases; but the corresponding malformation
of the back did not sit between the shoulders, it took the form of
a sort of hips or buttocks hump, which did not indeed hinder his
movements but gave him a grotesque and dipping stride at every
step he took. However, by mentioning his deformity beforehand
he had broken the shock of it, and a delicate propriety of feeling
appeared to reign throughout the hall.

"At your service," said Cipolla. "With your kind permission,
we will begin the evening with some arithmetical tests."

Arithmetic? That did not sound much like sleight-of-hand. We
began to have our suspicions that the man was sailing under a false
flag, only we did not yet know which was the right one. I felt
sorry on the children's account; but for the moment they were
content simply to be there.

The numerical test which Cipolla now introduced was as simple
as it was baffling. He began by fastening a piece of paper to the
upper right-hand corner of the blackboard; then lifting it up, he
wrote something underneath. He talked all the while, relieving
the dryness of his offering by a constant flow of words, and
showed himself a practised speaker, never at a loss for conversa-
tional turns of phrase. It was in keeping with the nature of his
performance, and at the same time vastly entertained the children,
that he went on to eliminate the gap between stage and audience,
which had already been bridged over by the curious skirmish
with the fisher lad: he had representatives from the audience
mount the stage, and himself descended the wooden steps to seek
personal contact with his public. And again, with individuals, he
fell into his former taunting tone. I do not know how far that was
a deliberate feature of his system; he preserved a serious, even a
peevish air, but his audience, at least the more popular section,
seemed convinced that that was all part of the game. So then, after
he had written something and covered the writing by the paper,
he desired that two persons should come up on the platform and
help to perform the calculations. They would not be difficult,
even for people not clever at figures. As usual, nobody volun-
teered, and Cipolla took care not to molest the more select portion
of his audience. He kept to the populace. Turning to two sturdy
young louts standing behind us, he beckoned them to the front,
encouraging and scolding by turns. They should not stand there
gaping, he said, unwilling to oblige the company. Actually, he got
them in motion; with clumsy tread they came down the middle
aisle, climbed the steps, and stood in front of the blackboard, grin-
ning sheepishly at their comrades' shouts and applause. Cipolla
joked with them for a few minutes, praised their heroic firmness
of limb and the size of their hands, so well calculated to do this
service for the public. Then he handed one of them the chalk and
told him to write down the numbers as they were called out. But
now the creature declared that he could not write! "Non so
scrivere," said he in his gruff voice, and his companion added that
neither did he.

God knows whether they told the truth or whether they wanted
to make game of Cipolla. Anyhow, the latter was far from sharing
the general merriment which their confession aroused. He was
insulted and disgusted. He sat there on a straw-bottomed chair
in the centre of the stage with his legs crossed, smoking a fresh
cigarette out of his cheap packet; obviously it tasted the better for
the cognac he had indulged in while the yokels were stumping up
the steps. Again he inhaled the smoke and let it stream out be-
tween curling lips. Swinging his leg, with his gaze sternly averted
from the two shamelessly chuckling creatures and from the audi-
ence as well, he stared into space as one who withdraws himself
and his dignity from the contemplation of an utterly despicable
phenomenon.

"Scandalous," said he, in a sort of icy snarl. "Go back to your
places! In Italy everybody can write--in all her greatness there
is no room for ignorance and unenlightenment. To accuse her of
them, in the hearing of this international company, is a cheap joke,
in which you yourselves cut a very poor figure and humiliate the
government and the whole country as well. If it is true that Torre
di Venere is indeed the last refuge of such ignorance, then I must
blush to have visited the place--being, as I already was, aware of
its inferiority to Rome in more than one respect--"

Here Cipolla was interrupted by the youth with the Nubian
coiffure and his jacket across his shoulder. His fighting spirit, as
we now saw, had only abdicated temporarily, and he now flung
himself into the breach in defence of his native heath. "That will
do," said he loudly. "That's enough jokes about Torre. We all
come from the place and we won't stand strangers making fun of
it. These two chaps are our friends. Maybe they are no scholars,
but even so they may be straighter than some folks in the room
who are so free with their boasts about Rome, though they did not
build it either."

That was capital. The young man had certainly cut his eye-
teeth. And this sort of spectacle was good fun, even though it still
further delayed the regular performance. It is always fascinating
to listen to an altercation. Some people it simply amuses, they take
a sort of kill-joy pleasure in not being principals. Others feel upset
and uneasy, and my sympathies are with these latter, although on
the present occasion I was under the impression that all this was
part of the show--the analphabetic yokels no less than the gio-
vanotto with the jacket. The children listened well pleased. They
understood not at all, but the sound of the voices made them hold
their breath. So this was a "magic evening"--at least it was the
kind they have in Italy. They expressly found it "lovely."

Cipolla had stood up and with two of his scooping strides was at
the footlights.

"Well, well, see who's here'" said he with grim cordiality. "An
old acquaintance! A young man with his heart at the end of his
tongue" (he used the word linguaccia, which means a coated
tongue, and gave rise to much hilarity). “That will do, my
friends," he turned to the yokels. "I do not need you now, I have
business with this deserving young man here, con questo tor-
regiano di Venere, this tower of Venus, who no doubt expects the
gratitude of the fair as a reward for his prowess"

"Ah, non scherziamo! We're talking earnest," cried out the
youth. His eyes flashed, and he actually made as though to pull
off his jacket and proceed to direct methods of settlement.

Cipolla did not take him too seriously. We had exchanged ap-
prehensive glances; but he was dealing with a fellow-countryman
and had his native soil beneath his feet. He kept quite cool and
showed complete mastery of the situation. He looked at his audi-
ence, smiled, and made a sideways motion of the head towards the
young cockerel as though calling the public to witness how the
man's bumptiousness only served to betray the simplicity of his
mind. And then, for the second time, something strange hap-
pened, which set Cipolla's calm superiority in an uncanny light,
and in some mysterious and irritating way turned all the explosive-
ness latent in the air into matter for laughter.

Cipolla drew still nearer to the fellow, looking him in the eye
with a peculiar gaze. He even came half-way down the steps that
led into the auditorium on our left, so that he stood directly in
front of the trouble-maker, on slightly higher ground. The riding-
whip hung from his arm.

"My son, you do not feel much like joking," he said. "It is only
too natural, for anyone can see that you are not feeling too well.
Even your tongue, which leaves something to be desired on the
score of cleanliness, indicates acute disorder of the gastric system.
An evening entertainment is no place for people in your state; you
yourself, I can tell, were of several minds whether you would not
do better to put on a flannel bandage and go to bed. It was not
good judgment to drink so much of that very sour white wine this
afternoon. Now you have such a colic you would like to double up
with the pain. Go ahead, don't be embarrassed. There is a distinct
relief that comes from bending over, in cases of intestinal cramp."

He spoke thus, word for word, with quiet impressiveness and a
kind of stern sympathy, and his eyes, plunged the while deep in the
young man's, seemed to grow very tired and at the same time
burning above their enlarged tear-ducts--they were the strangest
eyes, you could tell that not manly pride alone was preventing the
young adversary from withdrawing his gaze. And presently, in-
deed, all trace of its former arrogance was gone from the bronzed
young face. He looked open-mouthed at the Cavaliere and the
open mouth was drawn in a rueful smile.

"Double over," repeated Cipolla. "What else can you do? With
a colic like that you must bend. Surely you will not struggle
against the performance of a perfectly natural action just because
somebody suggests it to you?"

Slowly the youth lifted his forearms, folded and squeezed them
across his body; it turned a little sideways, then bent, lower and
lower, the feet shifted, the knees turned inward, until he had be-
come a picture of writhing pain, until he all but grovelled upon
the ground. Cipolla let him stand for some seconds thus, then made
a short cut through the air with his whip and went with his scoop-
ing stride back to the little table, where he poured himself out a
cognac.

"Il boit beaucoup," asserted a lady behind us. Was that the only
thing that struck her? We could not tell how far the audience
grasped the situation. The fellow was standing upright again, with
a sheepish grin--he looked as though he scarcely knew how it
had all happened. The scene had been followed with tense interest
and applauded at the end; there were shouts of "Bravo Cipolla!"
and "Bravo, giovanotto!" Apparently the issue of the duel was
not looked upon as a personal defeat for the young man. Rather
the audience encouraged him as one does an actor who succeeds
in an unsympathetic role. Certainly his way of screwing himself
up with cramp had been highly picturesque, its appeal was
directly calculated to impress the gallery--in short, a fine dra-
matic performance. But I am not sure how far the audience were
moved by that natural tactfulness in which the south excels, or
how far it penetrated into the nature of what was going on.

The Cavaliere, refreshed, had lighted another cigarette. The
numerical tests might now proceed. A young man was easily
found in the back row who was willing to write down on the
blackboard the numbers as they were dictated to him. Him too we
knew, the whole entertainment had taken on an intimate char-
acter through our acquaintance with so many of the actors. This
was the man who worked at the greengrocer's in the main street;
he had served us several times, with neatness and dispatch. He
wielded the chalk with clerkly confidence, while Cipolla de-
scended to our level and walked with his deformed gait through
the audience, collecting numbers as they were given, in two,
three, and four places, and calling them out to the grocer's assist-
ant, who wrote them down in a column. In all this, everything on
both sides was calculated to amuse, with its jokes and its oratorical
asides. The artist could not fail to hit on foreigners, who were not
ready with their figures, and with them he was elaborately pa-
tient and chivalrous, to the great amusement of the natives, whom
he reduced to confusion in their turn, by making them translate
numbers that were given in English or French. Some people gave
dates concerned with great events in Italian history. Cipolla took
them up at once and made patriotic comments. Somebody shouted
“Number one!" The Cavaliere, incensed at this as at every at-
tempt to make game of him, retorted over his shoulder that he
could not take less than two-place figures. Whereupon another
joker cried out "Number two!" and was greeted with the ap-
plause and laughter which every reference to natural functions
is sure to win among southerners.

When fifteen numbers stood in a long straggling row on the
board, Cipolla called for a general adding-match. Ready reckoners
might add in their heads, but pencil and paper were not forbidden.
Cipolla, while the work went on, sat on his chair near the black-
board, smoked and grimaced, with the complacent, pompous air
cripples so often have. The five-place addition was soon done.
Somebody announced the answer, somebody else confirmed it, a
third had arrived at a slightly different result, but the fourth
agreed with the first and second. Cipolla got up, tapped some ash
from his coat, and lifted the paper at the upper right-hand corner
of the board to display the writing. The correct answer, a sum
close on a million, stood there; he had written it down beforehand.

Astonishment, and loud applause. The children were over-
whelmed. How had he done that, they wanted to know. We told
them it was a trick, not easily explainable offhand. In short, the
man was a conjuror. This was what a sleight-of-hand evening was
like, so now they knew. First the fisherman had cramp, and then
the right answer was written down beforehand--it was all simply
glorious, and we saw with dismay that despite the hot eyes and
the hand of the clock at almost half past ten, it would be very hard
to get them away. There would be tears. And yet it was plain
that this magician did not "magick"--at least not in the accepted
sense, of manual dexterity--and that the entertainment was not
at all suitable for children. Again, I do not know, either, what
the audience really thought. Obviously there was grave doubt
whether its answers had been given of "free choice here and
there an individual might have answered of his own motion, but
on the whole Cipolla certainly selected his people and thus kept
the whole procedure in his own hands and directed it towards
the given result. Even so, one had to admire the quickness of his
calculations, however much one felt disinclined to admire any-
thing else about the performance. Then his patriotism, his irri-
table .sense of dignity--the Cavaliere's own countrymen might
feel in their element with all that and continue in a laughing mood;
but the combination certainly gave us outsiders food for thought.

Cipolla himself saw to it--though without giving them a name
--that the nature of his powers should be clear beyond a doubt
to even the least-instructed person. He alluded to them, of course,
in his talk--and he talked without stopping--but only in vague,
boastful, self-advertising phrases. He went on awhile with ex-
periments on the same lines as the first, merely making them more
complicated by introducing operations in multiplying, subtract-
ing, and dividing; then he simplified them to the last degree in
order to bring out the method. He simply had numbers "guessed"
which were previously written under the paper; and the guess
was nearly always right. One guesser admitted that he had had in
mind to give a certain number, when Cipolla's whip went whis-
tling through the air, and a quite different one slipped out, which
proved to be the "right" one. Cipolla's shoulders shook. He pre-
tended admiration for the powers of the people he questioned.
But in all his compliments there was something fleering and de-
rogatory; the victims could scarcely have relished them much,
although they smiled, and although they might easily have set
down some part of the applause to their own credit. Moreover,
I had not the impression that the artist was popular with his
public. A certain ill will and reluctance were in the air, but cour-
tesy kept such feelings in check, as did Cipolla's competency and
his stern self-confidence. Even the riding-whip, I think, did much
to keep rebellion from becoming overt.

From tricks with numbers he passed to tricks with cards. There
were two packs, which he drew out of his pockets, and so much
I still remember, that the basis of the tricks he played with them
was as follows: from the first pack he drew three cards and thmst
them without looking at them inside his coat. Another person
then drew three out of the second pack, and these turned out to
be the same as the first three--not invariably all the three, for it
did happen that only two were the same. But in the majority of
cases Cipolla triumphed, showing his three cards with a little bow
in acknowledgment of the applause with which his audience
conceded his possession of strange powers--strange whether for
good or evil. A young man in the front row, to our right, an
Italian, with proud, finely chiselled features, rose up and said that
he intended to assert his own will in his choice and consciously to
resist any influence, of whatever sort. Under these circumstances,
what did Cipolla think would be the result.^ "You will," an-
swered the Cavaliere, "make my task somewhat more difficult
thereby. As for the result, your resistance will not alter it in the
least. Freedom exists, and also the will exists; but freedom of the
will does not exist, for a will that aims at its own freedom aims
at the unknown. You are free to draw or not to draw. But if you
draw, you will draw the right cards--the more certainly, the
more wilfully obstinate your behaviour."

One must admit that he could not have chosen his words bet-
ter, to trouble the waters and confuse the mind. The refractory
youth hesitated before drawing. Then he pulled out a card and at
once demanded to see if it was among the chosen three. "But
why?" queried Cipolla. "Why do things by halves?" Then, as
the other defiantly insisted, "E servito," said the juggler, with a
gesture of exaggerated servility; and held out the three cards fan-
wise, without looking at them himself. The left-hand card was
the one drawn.

Amid general applause, the apostle of freedom sat down. How
far Cipolla employed small tricks and manual dexterity to help
out his natural talents, the deuce only knew. But even without
them the result would have been the same: the curiosity of the
entire audience was unbounded and universal, everybody both
enjoyed the amazing character of the entertainment and unani-
mously conceded the professional skill of the performer. "Lavora
bene," we heard, here and there in our neighbourhood; it signified
the triumph of objective judgment over antipathy and repressed
resentment.

After his last, incomplete, yet so much the more telling success,
Cipolla had at once fortified himself with another cognac. Truly
he did "drink a lot," and the fact made a bad impression. But
obviously he needed the liquor and the cigarettes for the replen-
ishment of his energy, upon which, as he himself said, heavy
demands were made in all directions. Certainly in the intervals he
looked very ill, exhausted and hollow-eyed. Then the little glass-
ful would redress the balance, and the flow of lively, self-confident
chatter run on, while the smoke he inhaled gushed out grey from
his lungs. I clearly recall that he passed from the card-tricks to
parlour games--the kind based on certain powers which in human
nature are higher or else lower than human reason: on intuition
and "magnetic" transmission; in short, upon a low type of mani-
festation. What I do not remember is the precise order things
came in. And I will not bore you with a description of these ex-
periments; everybody knows them, everybody has at one time or
another taken part in this finding of hidden articles, this blind
carrying out or a series of acts, directed by a force that proceeds
from organism to organism by unexplored paths. Everybody has
had his little glimpse into the equivocal, impure, inexplicable na-
ture of the occult, has been conscious of both curiosity and con-
tempt, has shaken his head over the human tendency of those
who deal in it to help themselves out with humbuggery, though,
after all, the humbuggery is no disproof whatever of the genuine-
ness of the other elements in the dubious amalgam. I can only say
here that each single circumstance gains in weight and the whole
greatly in impressiveness when it is a man like Cipolla who is the
chief actor and guiding spirit in the sinister business. He sat smok-
ing at the rear of the stage, his back to the audience while they
conferred. The object passed from hand to hand which it was
his task to find, with which he was to perform some action agreed
upon beforehand. Then he would start to move zigzag through
the hall, with his head thrown back and one hand outstretched,
the other clasped in that of a guide who was in the secret but en-
joined to keep himself perfectly passive, with his thoughts di-
rected upon the agreed goal. Cipolla moved with the bearing
typical in these experiments: now groping upon a false start, now
with a quick forward thrust, now pausing as though to listen and
by sudden inspiration correcting his course. The roles seemed
reversed, the stream of influence was moving in the contrary
direction, as the artist himself pointed out, in his ceaseless flow
of discourse. The suffering, receptive, performing part was now
his, the will he had before imposed on others was shut out, he
acted in obedience to a voiceless common will which was in the
air. But he made it perfectly clear that it all came to the same
thing. The capacity for self-surrender, he said, for becoming a
tool, for the most unconditional and utter self-abnegation, was
but the reverse side of that other power to will and to command.
Commanding and obeying formed together one single principle,
one indissoluble unity; he who knew how to obey knew also how
to command, and conversely; the one idea was comprehended in
the other, as people and leader were comprehended in one an-
other. But that which was done, the highly exacting and exhaust-
ing performance, was in every case his, the leader's and mover's,
in whom the will became obedience, the obedience will, whose
person was the cradle and womb of both, and who thus suffered
enormous hardship. Repeatedly he emphasized the fact that his
lot was a hard one--presumably to account for his need of stimu-
lant and his frequent recourse to the little glass.

Thus he groped his way forward, like a blind seer, led and
sustained by the mysterious common will. He drew a pin set with
a stone out of its hiding-place in an Englishwoman's shoe, carried
it, halting and pressing on by turns, to another lady--Signora
Angiolieri--and handed it to her on bended knee, with the words
it had been agreed he was to utter. "I present you with this in
token of my respect," was the sentence. Their sense was obvious,
but the words themselves not easy to hit upon, for the reason that
they had been agreed on in French; the language complication
seemed to us a little malicious, implying as it did a conflict be-
tween the audience's natural interest in the success of the miracle,
and their desire to witness the humiliation of this presumptuous
man. It was a strange sight: Cipolla on his knees before the signora.
wrestling, amid efforts at speech, after knowledge of the pre-
ordained words. “I must say something," he said, “and I feel
clearly what it is I must say. But I also feel that if it passed my
lips it would be wrong. Be careful not to help me unintention-
ally!" he cried out, though very likely that was precisely what
he was hoping for. "Pensez tres fort" he cried all at once, in bad
French, and then burst out with the required words--in Italian,
indeed, but with the final substantive pronounced in the sister
tongue, in which he was probably far from fluent: he said venera-
tion instead of venerazione, with an impossible nasal. And this
partial success, after the complete success before it, the finding of
the pin, the presentation of it on his knees to the right person--
was almost more impressive than if he had got the sentence exactly
right, and evoked bursts of admiring applause.

Cipolla got up from his knees and wiped the perspiration front
his brow. You understand that this experiment with the pin was
a single case, which I describe because it sticks in my memory.
But he changed his method several times and improvised a number
of variations suggested by his contact with his audience; a good
deal of time thus went by. He seemed to get particular inspiration
from the person of our landlady; she drew him on to the niost ex-
traordinary displays of clairvoyance. "It does not escape me,
madame," he said to her, "that there is something unusual about
you, some special and honourable distinction. He who has eyes to
see descries about your lovely brow an aureola--if I mistake not,
it once was stronger than now--a slowly paling radiance...hush,
not a word! Don't help me. Beside you sits your husband --yes?"
He turned towards the silent Signor Angiolieri. “You are the
husband of this lady, and your happiness is complete. But
in the midst of this happiness memories rise...the past, signora,
so it seems to me, plays an important part in your present. You
knew a king...has not a king crossed your path in bygone days?"

"No," breathed the dispenser of our midday soup, her golden-
brown eyes gleaming in the noble pallor of her face.

"No? No, not a king; I meant that generally, I did not mean
literally a king. Not a king, not a prince, and a prince after all,
a king of a loftier realm; it was a great artist, at whose side you
once--you would contradict me, and yet I am not wholly wrong.
Well, then! It was a woman, a great, a world-renowned woman
artist, whose friendship you enjoyed in your tender years, whose
sacred memory overshadows and transfigures your whole exist-
ence. Her name? Need I utter it, whose fame has long been bound
up with the Fatherland's, immortal as its own? Eleonora Duse,"
he finished, softly and with much solemnity.

The little woman bowed her head, overcome. The applause was
like a patriotic demonstration. Nearly everyone there knew about
Signora Angiolieri's wonderful past; they were all able to confirm
the Cavaliere's intuition--not least the present guests of Casa
Eleonora. But we wondered how much of the truth he had learned
as the result of professional inquiries made on his arrival. Yet I see
no reason at all to cast doubt, on rational grounds, upon powers
which, before our very eyes, became fatal to their possessor.

At this point there was an intermission. Our lord and master
withdrew. Now I confess that almost ever since the beginning of
my tale I have looked forward with dread to this moment in it.
The thoughts of men are mostly not hard to read; in this case
they are very easy. You are sure to ask why we did not choose this
moment to go away--and I must continue to owe you an answer.
I do not know why. I cannot defend myself. By this time it was
certainly eleven, probably later. The children were asleep. The
last series of tests had been too long, nature had had her way.
They were sleeping in our laps, the little one on mine, the boy on
his mother's. That was, in a way, a consolation; but at the same
time it was also ground for compassion and a clear leading to take
them home to bed. And I give you my word that we wanted
to obey this touching admonition, we seriously wanted to. We
roused the poor things and told them it was now high time to go.
But they were no sooner conscious than they began to resist and
implore--you know how horrified children are at the thought
of leaving before the end of a thing. No cajoling has any effect,
you have to use force. It was so lovely, they wailed. How did we
know what was coming next? Surely we could not leave until
after the intermission; they liked a little nap now and again--
only not go home, only not go to bed, while the beautiful evening
was still going on!

We yielded, but only for the moment, of course--so far as we
knew--only for a little while, just a few minutes longer. I cannot
excuse our staying, scarcely can I even understand it. Did we
think, having once said A, we had to say B--having once brought
the children hither we had to let them stay? No, it is not good
enough. Were we ourselves so highly entertained? Yes, and no.
Our feelings for Cavaliere Cipolla were of a very mixed kind, but
so were the feelings of the whole audience, if I mistake not, and
nobody left. Were we under the sway of a fascination which
emanated from this man who took so strange a way to earn his
bread; a fascination which he gave out independently of the pro-
gramme and even between the tricks and which paralysed our
resolve? Again, sheer curiosity may account for something. One
was curious to know how such an evening turned out; Cipolla in
his remarks having all along hinted that he had tricks in his bag
stranger than any he had yet produced.

But all that is not it--or at least it is not all of it. More correct
it would be to answer the first question with another. Why had
we not left Torre di Venere itself before now? To me the two
questions are one and the same, and in order to get out of the im-
passe I might simply say that I had answered it already. For, as
things had been in Torre in general: queer, uncomfortable, trou-
blesome, tense, oppressive, so precisely they were here in this hall
tonight. Yes, more than precisely. For it seemed to be the fountain-
head of all the uncanniness and all the strained feelings which had
oppressed the atmosphere of our holiday. This man whose, return
to the stage we were awaiting was the personification of all that;
and, as we had not gone away in general, so to speak, it would
have been inconsistent to do it in the particular case. You may call
this an explanation, you may call it inertia, as you see fit. Any ar-
gument more to the purpose I simply do not know how to adduce.

Well, there was an interval or ten minutes, which grew into
nearly twenty. The children remained awake. They were en-
chanted by our compliance, and filled the break to their own
satisfaction by renewing relations with the popular sphere, with
Antonio, Guiscardo, and the canoe man. They put their hands
to their mouths and called messages across, appealing to us for the
Italian words. "Hope you have a good catch tomorrow, a whole
netful!" They called to Mario, Esquisito Mario: "Mario, una
cioccolata e biscotti!" And this time he heeded and answered with
a smile: "Subito, signorini!" Later we had reason to recall this
kindly, if rather absent and pensive smile.

Thus the interval passed, the gong sounded. The audience,
which had scattered in conversation, took their places again, the
children sat up straight in their chairs with their hands in their
laps. The curtain had not been dropped. Cipolla came forward
again, wdth his dipping stride, and began to introduce the second
half of the programme with a lecture.

Let me state once for all that this self-confident cripple was the
most powerful hypnotist I have ever seen in my life. It was pretty
plain now that he threw dust in the public eye and advertised him-
self as a prestidigitator on account of police regulations which
would have prevented him from making his living by the exercise
of his powers. Perhaps this eye-wash is the usual thing in Italy;
it may be permitted or even connived at by the authorities. Cer-
tainly the man had from the beginning made little concealment of
the actual nature of his operations; and this second half of the
programme was quite frankly and exclusively devoted to one sort
of experiment. While he still practised some rhetorical circumlo-
cutions, the tests themselves were one long series of attacks upon
the will-power, the loss or compulsion of volition. Comic, excit-
ing, amazing by turns, by midnight they were still in full swing;
we ran the gamut of all the phenomena this natural-unnatural
field has to show, from the unimpressive at one end of the scale to
the monstrous at the other. The audience laughed and applauded
as they followed the grotesque details; shook their heads, clapped
their knees, fell very frankly under the spell of this stern, self-
assured personality. At the same time I saw signs that they were
not quite complacent, not quite unconscious of the peculiar ig-
nominy which lay, for the individual and for the general, in
Cipolla's triumphs.

Two main features were constant in all the experiments: the
liquor glass and the claw-handled riding-whip. The first was al-
ways invoked to add fuel to his demoniac fires; without it, appar-
ently, they might have burned out. On this score we might even
have felt pity for the man; but the whistle of his scourge, the in-
sulting symbol of his domination, before which we all cowered,
drowned out every sensation save a dazed and outbraved submis-
sion to his power. Did he then lay claim to our sympathy to boot?
I was struck by a remark he made--it suggested no less. At the
climax of his experiments, by stroking and breathing upon a cer-
tain young man who had offered himself as a subject and already
proved himself a particularly susceptible one, he had not only put
him into the condition known as deep trance and extended his
insensible body by neck and feet across the backs of two chairs,
but had actually sat down on the rigid form as on a bench, without
making it yield. The sight of this unholy figure in a frock-coat
squatted on the stiff body was horrible and incredible; the audi-
ence, convinced that the victim of this scientific diversion must
be suffering, expressed its sympathy: "Ah, poveretto!" Poor
soul, poor soul! "Poor soul!" Cipolla mocked them, with some
bitterness. "Ladies and gentlemen, you are barking up the wrong
tree. Sono io il poveretto. I am the person who is suffering, I am
the one to be pitied." We pocketed the information. Very good.
Maybe the experiment was at his expense, maybe it was he who
had suffered the cramp when the giovanotto over there had made
the faces. But appearances were all against it; and one does not feel
like saying poveretto to a man who is suffering to bring about the
humiliation of others.

I have got ahead of my story and lost sight of the sequence of
events. To this day my mind is full of the Cavaliere's feats of en-
durance; only I do not recall them in their order--which does
not matter. So much I do know: that the longer and more cir-
cumstantial tests, which got the most applause, impressed me less
than some of the small ones which passed quickly over. I remem-
ber the young man whose body Cipolla converted into a board,
only because of the accompanying remarks which I have quoted.
An elderly lady in a cane-seated chair was lulled by Cipolla in
the delusion that she was on a voyage to India and gave a voluble
account of her adventures by land and sea. But I found this
phenomenon less impressive than one which followed immediately
after the intermission. A tall, well-built, soldierly man was unable
to lift his arm, after the hunchback had told him that he could
not and given a cut through the air with his whip. I can still see
the face of that stately, mustachioed colonel smiling and clench-
ing his teeth as he struggled to regain his lost freedom of action.
A staggering performance! He seemed to be exerting his will,
and in vain; the trouble, however, was probably simply that he
could not will. There was involved here that recoil of the will
upon itself which paralyses choice--as our tyrant had previously
explained to the Roman gentleman.

Still less can I forget the touching scene, at once comic and
horrible, with Signora Angiolieri. The Cavaliere, probably in his
first bold survey of the room, had spied out her ethereal lack of
resistance to his power. For actually he bewitched her, literally
drew her out of her seat, out of her row, and away with him
whither he willed. And in order to enhance his effect, he bade
Signor Angiolieri call upon his wife by her name, to throw, as it
were, all the weight of his existence and his rights in her into the
scale, to rouse by the voice of her husband everything in his
spouse's soul which could shield her virtue against the evil assaults
of magic. And how vain it all was! Cipolla was standing at some
distance from the couple, when he made a single cut with his whip
through the air. It caused our landlady to shudder violently and
turn her face towards him. "Sofronia!" cried Signor Angiolieri--
we had not known that Signora Angiolieri's name was Sofronia.
And he did well to call, everybody saw that there was no time to
lose. His wife kept her face turned in the direction of the diabo-
lical cavaliere, who with his ten long yellow fingers was mak-
ing passes at his victim, moving backwards as he did so, step by
step. Then Signora Angiolieri, her pale face gleaming, rose up
from her seat, turned right round, and began to glide after him.
Fatal and forbidding sight! Her face as though moonstruck, stiff-
armed, her lovely hands lifted a little at the wrists, the feet as it
were together, she seemed to float slowly out of her row and after
the tempter. “Call her, sir, keep on calling," prompted the re-
doubtable man. And Signor Angiolieri, in a weak voice, called:
"Sofronia!" Ah, again and again he called; as his wife went
further off he even curved one hand round his lips and beckoned
with the other as he called. But the poor voice of love and duty
echoed unheard, in vain, behind the lost one's back; the signora
swayed along, moonstruck, deaf, enslaved; she glided into the
middle aisle and down it towards the fingering hunchback, to-
wards the door. We were convinced, we were driven to the con-
viction, that she would have followed her master, had he so willed
it, to the ends of the earth.

"Accidente!" cried out Signor Angiolieri, in genuine affright,
springing up as the exit was reached. But at the same moment the
Cavaliere put aside, as it were, the triumphal crown and broke off.
"Enough, signora, I thank vou," he said, and offered his arm
to lead her back to her husband. "Signor," he greeted the latter,
"here is your wife. Unharmed, with my compliments, I give
her into your hands. Cherish with all the strength of your man-
hood a treasure which is so wholly yours, and let your zeal be
quickened by knowing that there are powers stronger than reason
or virtue, and not always so magnanimously ready to relinquish
their prey!"

Poor Signor Angiolieri, so quiet, so bald! He did not look as
though he would know how to defend his happiness, even against
powers much less demoniac than these which were now adding
mockery to frightfulness. Solemnly and pompously the Cavaliere
retired to the stage, amid applause to which his eloquence gave
double strength. It was this particular episode, I feel sure, that
set the seal upon his ascendancy. For now he made them dance,
yes, literally; and the dancing lent a dissolute, abandoned, topsy-
turvy air to the scene, a drunken abdication of the critical spirit
which had so long resisted the spell of this man. Yes, he had had
to fight to get the upper hand--for instance against the animosity
of the young Roman gentleman, whose rebellious spirit threat-
ened to serve others as a rallying-point. But it was precisely upon
the importance of example that the Cavaliere was so strong. He
had the wit to make his attack at the weakest point and to choose
as his first victim that feeble, ecstatic youth whom he had pre-
viously made into a board. The master had but to look at him,
when this young man would fling himself back as though struck
by lightning, place his hands rigidly at his sides, and rail into a
state of military somnambulism, in which it was plain to any eye
that he was open to the most absurd suggestion that might be
made to him. He seemed quite content in his abject state, quite
pleased to be relieved of the burden of voluntary choice. Again
and again he offered himself as a subject and gloried in the model
facility he had in losing consciousness. So now he mounted the
platform, and a single cut of the whip was enough to make him
dance to the Cavalicre's orders, in a kind of complacent ecstasy,
eyes closed, head nodding, lank limbs flying in all directions.

It looked unmistakably like enjoyment, and other recruits were
not long in coming forward: two other young men, one humbly
and one well dressed, were soon jigging alongside the first. But
now the gentleman from Rome bobbed up again, asking defiantly
if the Cavaliere would engage to make him dance too, even. against
his will.

"Even against your will," answered Cipolla, in unforgettable
accents. That frightful "anche se non vuole" still rings in my ears.
The struggle began. After Cipolla had taken another little glass
and lighted a fresh cigarette he stationed the Roman at a point in
the middle aisle and himself took up a position some distance be-
hind him, making his whip whistle through the air as he gave
the order: "Balla!" His opponent did not stir. "Balla!" repeated
the Cavaliere incisively, and snapped his whip. You saw the young
man move his neck round in his collar; at the same time one hand
lifted slightly at the wrist, one ankle turned outward. But that
was all, for the time at least; merely a tendency to twitch, now
sternly repressed, now seeming about to get the upper hand. It
escaped nobody that here a heroic obstinacy, a fixed resolve to
resist, must needs be conquered; we were beholding a gallant
effort to strike out and save the honour of the human race. He
twitched but danced not; and the struggle was so prolonged rhat
the Cavaliere had to divide his attention between it and the stage,
turning now and then to make his riding-whip whistle in the
direction of the dancers, as it were to keep them in leash. At the
same time he advised the audience that no fatigue was involved
in such activities, however long they went on, since it was not
the automatons up there who danced, but himself. Then once
more his eye would bore itself into the back of the Roman's neck
and lay siege to the strength of purpose which defied him.

One saw it waver, that strength of purpose, beneath the re-
peated summons and whip-crackings. Saw with an objective in-
terest which yet was not quite free from traces of sympathetic
emotion--from pity, even from a cruel kind of pleasure. If I
understand what was going on, it was the negative character of
the young man's fighting position which was his undoing. It is
likely that not willing is not a practicable state of mind; not to
want to do something may be in the long run a mental content
impossible to subsist on. Between not willing a certain thing and
not willing at all--in other words, yielding to another person's
will--there may lie too small a space for the idea of freedom to
squeeze into. Again, there were the Cavaliere's persuasive words,
woven in among the whip-crackings and commands, as he mingled
effects that were his own secret with others of a bewilderingly
psychological kind. "Balla!" said he. “Who wants to torture
himself like that.^ Is forcing yourself your idea of freedom? Una
ballatina! Why, your arms and legs are aching for it. What a relief
to give way to them--there, you are dancing already! That is
no struggle any more, it is a pleasure!" And so it was. The jerking
and twitching of the refractory youth's limbs had at last got the
upper hand; he lifted his arms, then his knees, his joints quite
suddenly relaxed, he flung his legs and danced, and amid bursts of
applause the Cavaliere led him to join the row of puppets on the
stage. Up there we could see his face as he "enjoyed" himself;
it was clothed in a broad grin and the eyes were half-shut. In a
way, it was consoling to see that he was having a better time than
he had had in the hour of his pride.

His "fall" was, I may say, an epoch. The ice was completely
broken, Cipolla's triumph had reached its height. The Circe's
wand, that whistling leather whip with the cljiw handle, held
absolute sway. At one time--it must have been well after mid-
night--not only were there eight or ten persons dancing on the
little stage, but in the hall below a varied animation reigned, and
a long-toothed Anglo-Saxoness in a pince-nez left her seat of her
own motion to perform a tarantella in the centre aisle. Cipolla was
lounging in a cane-seated chair at the left of the stage, gulping
down the smoke of a cigarette and breathing it impudently out
through his bad teeth. He tapped his foot and shrugged his shoul-
ders, looking down upon the abandoned scene in the hall; now
and then he snapped his whip backwards at a laggard upon the
stage. The children were awake at the moment. With shame I
speak of them. For it was not good to be here, least of all for
them; that we had not taken them away can only be explained by
saying that we had caught the general devil-may-careness of the
hour. By that time it was all one. Anyhow, thank goodness, they
lacked understanding for the disreputable side of the entertain-
ment, and in their innocence were perpetually charmed by the
unheard-of indulgence which permitted them to be present at
such a thing as a magician's "evening." Whole quarter-hours at
a time they drowsed on our laps, waking refreshed and rosy-
cheeked, with sleep-drunken eyes, to laugh to bursting at the leaps
and jumps the magician made those people up there make. They
had not thought it would be so jolly; they joined with their
clumsy little hands in every round of applause. And jumped for
jov upon their chairs, as was their wont, when Cipolla beckoned
to their friend Mario from the Esquisito, beckoned to him just like
a picture in a book, holding his hand in front of his nose and
bending and straightening the forefinger by turns.

Mario obeyed. I can see him now going up the stairs to Cipolla,
who continued to beckon him, in that droll, picture-book sort of
way. He hesitated for a moment at first; that, too, I recall quite
clearly. During the whole evening he had lounged against a
wooden pillar at the side entrance, with his arms folded, or else
with his hands thrust into his jacket pockets. He was on our left,
near the youth with the militant hair, and had followed the per-
formance attentively, so far as we had seen, if with no particular
animation and God knows how much comprehension. He could
not much relish being summoned thus, at the end of the evening.
But it was only too easy to see why he obeyed. After all, obedi-
ence was his calling in life; and then, how should a simple lad like
him find it within his human capacity to refuse compliance to a
man so throned and crowned as Cipolla at that hour? Willy-nilly
he left his column and with a word of thanks to those making way
for him he mounted the steps with a doubtful smile on his full lips.

Picture a thickset youth of twenty years, with clipt hair, a low
forehead, and heavy-lidded eyes of an indefinite grey, shot with
green and yellow. These things I knew from having spoken with
him, as we often had. There was a saddle of freckles on the flat
nose, the whole upper half of the face retreated behind the lower,
and that again was dominated by thick lips that parted to show
the salivated teeth. These thick lips and the veiled look of the eyes
lent the whole face a primitive melancholy--it was that which
had drawn us to him from the first. In it was not the faintest trace
of brutality--indeed, his hands would have given the lie to such
an idea, being unusually slender and delicate even for a southerner.
They were hands by which one liked being served.

We knew him humanly without knowing him personally, if I may
make that distinction. We saw him nearly every day, and felt
a certain kindness for his dreamy ways, which might at times be
actual inattentiveness, suddenly transformed into a redeeming zeal
to serve. His mien was serious, only the children could bring a
smile to his face. It was not sulky, but uningratiating, without
intentional effort to please--or, rather, it seemed to give up being
pleasant in the conviction that it could not succeed. We should
have remembered Mario in any case, as one of those homely recol-
lections of travel which often stick in the mind better than more
important ones. But of his circumstances wc knew no more than
that his father was a petty clerk in the Municipio and his mother
took in washing.

His white waiter's-coat became him better than the faded
striped suit he wore, with a gay coloured scarf instead of a collar,
the ends tucked into his jacket. He neared Cipolla, who however
did not leave off that motion of his finger before his nose, so that
Mario had to come still closer, right up to the chair-seat and the
master's legs. Whereupon the latter spread out his elbows and
seized the lad, turning him so that we had a view of his face. Then
gazed him briskly up and down, with a careless, commanding eye.

"Well, ragazzo mio, how comes it we make acquaintance so
late in the day? But believe me, I made yours long ago. Yes, yes.
I've had you in my eye this long while and known what good stuff
you were made of. How could I go and forget you again? Well,
I've had a good deal to think about....Now tell me, what is
your name? The first name, that's all I want."

"My name is Mario," the young man answered, in a low voice.

“Ah, Mario. Very good. Yes, yes, there is such a name, quite a
common name, a classic name too, one of those which preserve the
heroic traditions of the Fatherland. Bravo! Salve!" And he flung
up his arm slantingly above his crooked shoulder, palm outward,
in the Roman salute. He may have been slightly tipsy by now,
and no wonder; but he spoke as before, clearly, fluently, and with
emphasis. Though about this time there had crept into his voice
a gross, autocratic note, and a kind of arrogance was in his sprawl.

"Well, now, Mario mio," he went on, "it's a good thing you
came this evening, and that's a pretty scarf you've got on; it is
becoming to your style of beauty. It must stand you in good
stead with the girls, the pretty pretty girls of Torre--"

From the row of youths, close by the place where Mario had
been standing, sounded a laugh. It came from the youth with the
militant hair. He stood there, his jacket over his shoulder, and
laughed outright, rudely and scornfully.

Mario gave a start. I think it was a shrug, but he may have
started and then hastened to cover the movement by shrugging his
shoulders, as much as to say that the neckerchief and the fair sex
were matters of equal indifference to him.

The Cavaliere gave a downward glance.

"We needn't trouble about him," he said. "He is jealous, be-
cause your scarf is so popular with the girls, maybe partly because
you and I are so friendly up here. Perhaps he'd like me to put
him in mind of his colic--I could do it free of charge. Tell me,
Mario. You've come here this evening for a bit of fun--and in
the daytime you work in an ironmonger's shop?"

"In a cafe," corrected the youth.

"Oh, in a cafe. That's where Cipolla nearly came a cropper!
What you are is a cup-bearer, a Ganymede--I like that, it is an-
other classical allusion--Salvietta!" Again the Cavaliere saluted,
to the huge gratification of his audience.

Mario smiled too. "But before that," he interpolated, in the in-
terest of accuracy, "I worked for a while in a shop in Porto-
clemente." He seemed visited by a natural desire to assist the
prophecy by dredging out its essential features.

" There, didn't I say so? In an ironmonger's shop?"

"They kept combs and brushes," Mario got round it.

"Didn't I say that you were not always a Ganymede? Not al-
ways at the sign of the serviette? Even when Cipolla makes a
mistake, it is a kind that makes you believe in him. Now tell me:
Do you believe in me?"

An indefinite gesture.

"A half-way answer," commented the Cavaliere. "Probably it
is not easy to win your confidence. Even for me, I can see, it is
not so easy. I see in your features a reserve, a sadness, un tratto di
malinconia...tell me" (he seized Mario's hand persuasively) "have
you troubles?"

"Nossignore" answered Mario, promptly and decidedly.

"You have troubles," insisted the Cavaliere, bearing down the
denial by the weight of his authority. "Can't I see? Trying to
pull the wool over Cipolla's eyes, are you? Of course, about the
girls--it is a girl, isn't it? You have love troubles?"

Mario gave a vigorous head-shake. And again the giovanotto' s
brutal laugh rang out. The Cavaliere gave heed. His eyes were
roving about somewhere in the air; but he cocked an ear to the
sound, then swung his whip backwards, as he had once or twice
before in his conversation with Mario, that none of his puppets
might flag in their zeal. The gesture had nearly cost him his new
prey; Mario gave a sudden start in the direction of the steps. But
Cipolla had him in his clutch.

"Not so fast," said he. "That would be fine, wouldn't it? So
you want to skip, do you, Granymede, right in the middle of the
fun, or, rather, when it is just beginning? Stay with me. I'll show
you something nice. I'll convince you. You have no reason to
worry, I promise you. This girl--you know her and others know
her too--what's her name? Wait! I read the name in your eyes,
it is on the tip of my tongue and yours too--"

"Silvestra!" shouted the giovanotto from below.

The Cavaliere's face did not change.

"Aren't there the forward people?" he asked, not looking
down, more as in undisturbed converse with Mario. "Aren't there
the young fighting-cocks that crow in season and out? Takes the
word out of your mouth, the conceited fool, and seems to think
he has some special right to it. Let him be. But Silvestra, your
Silvestra--ah, what a girl that is! What a prize! Brings your heart
into your mouth to see her walk or laugh or breathe, she is so
lovely. And her round arms when she washes, and tosses her head
back to get the hair out of her eyes! An angel from paradise!"

Mario stared at him, his head thrust forward. He seemed to have
forgotten the audience, forgotten where he was. The red rings
round his eyes had got larger, they looked as though they were
painted on. His thick lips parted.

"And she makes you suffer, this angel," went on Cipolla, "or,
rather, you make yourself suffer for her--there is a difference,
my lad, a most important difference, let me tell you- There arc
misunderstandings in love, maybe nowhere else in the world are
there so many. I know what you are thinking: what does this
Cipolla, with his little physical defect, know about love? Wrong,
all wrong, he knows a lot. He has a wide and powerful under-
standing of its workings, and it pays to listen to his advice. But
let's leave Cipolla out, cut him out altogether and think only of
Silvestra, your peerless Silvestra! What! Is she to give any young
gamecock the preference, so that he can laugh while you cry? To
prefer him to a chap like you, so full of feeling and so sympa-
thetic? Not very likely, is it? It is impossible--we know better,
Cipolla and she. If I were to put myself in her place and choose
between the two of you, a tarry lout like that--a codfish, a sea-
urchin--and a Mario, a knight of the serviette, who moves among
gentlefolk and hands round refreshments with an air--my word,
but my heart would speak in no uncertain tones--it knows to
whom I gave it long ago. It is time that he should see and under-
stand, my chosen one! It is time that you see me and recognize
me, Mario, my beloved! Tell me, who am I?"

It was grisly, the way the betrayer made himself irresistible,
wreathed and coquetted with his crooked shoulder, languished
with the puffy eyes, and showed his splintered teeth in a sickly
smile. And alas, at his beguiling words, what was come of our
Mario? It is hard for me to tell, hard as it was for me to see; for
here was nothing less than an utter abandonment of the inmost
soul, a public exposure of timid and deluded passion and rapture.
He put his hands across his mouth, his shoulders rose and fell with
his pantings. He could not, it was plain, trust his eyes and ears
for joy, and the one thing he forgot was precisely that he could
not trust them. "Silvestra!" he breathed, from the very depths
of his vanquished heart.

"Kiss me!" said the hunchback. "Trust me, I love thee. Kiss
me here." And with the tip of his index finger, hand, arm, and
little finger outspread, he pointed to his cheek, near the mouth.
And Mario bent and kissed him.

It had grown very still in the room. That was a monstrous mo-
ment, grotesque and thrilling, the moment of Mario's bliss. In
that evil span of time, crowded with a sense of the illusiveness of
all jov, one sound became audible, and that not quite at once, but
on the instant of the melancholy and ribald meeting between
Mario's lips and the repulsive flesh which thrust itself forward
for his caress. It was the sound of a laugh, from the giovanotto on
our left. It broke into the dramatic suspense of the moment,
coarse, mocking, and yet--or I must have been grossly mistaken
-- with an undertone of compassion for the poor bewildered, vic-
timized creature. It had a faint ring of that "Poveretto" which
Cipolla had declared was wasted on the wrong person, when he
claimed the pity for his own.

The laugh still rang in the air when the recipient of the caress
gave his whip a little swish, low down, close to his chair-leg, and
Mario started up and flung himself back. He stood in that posture
staring, his hands one over the other on those desecrated lips. Then
he beat his temples with his clenched fists, over and over; turned
and staggered down the steps, while the audience applauded, and
Cipolla sat there with his hands in his lap, his shoulders shaking.
Once below, and even while in full retreat, Mario hurled himself
round with legs flung wide apart; one arm flew up, and two flat
shattering detonations crashed through applause and laughter.

There was instant silence. Even the dancers came to a full stop
and stared about, struck dumb. Cipolla bounded from his seat. He
stood with his arms spread out, slanting as though to ward every-
body off, as though next moment he would cry out: "Stop! Keep
back! Silence! What was that?" Then, in that instant, he sank
back in his seat, his head rolling on his chest; in the next he had
fallen sideways to the floor, where he lay motionless, a huddled
heap of clothing, with limbs awry.

The commotion was indescribable. Ladies hid their faces, shud-
dering, on the breasts of their escorts. There were shouts for a
doctor, for the police. People flung themselves on Mario in a mob,
to disarm him, to take away the weapon that hung from his fingers
--that small, dull-metal, scarcely pistol-shaped tool with hardly
any barrel--in how strange and unexpected a direction had fate
levelled it!

And now--now finally, at last--we took the children and led
them towards the exit, past the pair of carabinieri just entering.
Was that the end, they wanted to know, that they might go in
peace? Yes, we assured them, that was the end. An end of horror,
a fatal end. And yet a liberation--for I could not, and I cannot,
but find it so!