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 PHANTOM
 
 PHANTOM 
 
 A NOVEL 
 
 BY 
 
 GERHART HAUPTMANN 
 
 TRANSLATED BY 
 
 BAYARD QUINCY MORGAN 
 
 NEW YORK B. W. HUEBSCH, Inc. mcmxxii
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1922. BY 
 B. W. HUEBSCH, INC. 
 
 PRINTED 
 
 V, S. A.
 
 < 
 
 
 PHANTOM 
 
 My wife has furnished for me the tiny corner- 
 room in the front, and I am now sitting in it. 
 Across the way the village brook murmurs un- 
 der ash and willow. Below me I hear the tin- 
 kling bell of the little shop which my wife tends 
 It does well and supplies our modest demands 
 completely. 
 
 But I shall have to undertake something be- 
 sides. First, I have time to spare, and then I 
 have spiritual cravings. Otherwise I am quite 
 content and feel as happy as a king. 
 
 I smoke a pipe. That costs me virtually noth- 
 ing, for we have cheap tobacco in the shop. 
 Smoking stimulates the fancy. It also quiets. 
 I get by it, for example, the opportunity to feel 
 a state of agreeable leisure and at the same time 
 to set down my thoughts in writing. "Why 
 
 [1] 
 
 335'1£2
 
 don't you write," says my wife, "perhaps it may 
 turn out to be a book, you know." 
 
 I just simply write down everything that 
 passes through my mind. 
 
 And if I should succeed in making a book, why 
 shouldn't I be able to write a second, a third? 
 Then I should be an author. In the most nat- 
 ural way I should then have found my desired 
 avocation. 
 
 This house, which my father-in-law bought 
 six months ago, together with the shop, did once 
 belong to the widow of such a person. Her 
 name was Mrs. Wander. Wander was a school- 
 master who had had to give up his position on 
 account of certain views. After long wander- 
 ings he found this asylum, like me, and had a 
 livelihood in it. His life-work, which he may 
 have begun and completed in this very room, is 
 a German dictionary of proverbs in five volumes. 
 
 [2]
 
 II 
 
 I AM unknown here so far. My wife and her 
 father picked out this little village in the Hirsch- 
 berg Valley, because they did not wish people 
 to have constant occasion to talk about my "aim- 
 less journeys," ^ but also for the sake of with- 
 drawing me from an environment which at every 
 step must waken recollections in me, and keep 
 them awake. 
 
 Just here it occurs to me: am I not on the 
 point of thwarting their intention*? 
 
 Yes and no. 
 
 If I reflect here upon my destiny, seek to gain 
 a comprehensive view of my past, and endeavor 
 to set down veraciously all that seems memo- 
 rable to me, it is for one thing an attempt to free 
 myself from the spell of my recollections, and 
 something very different from unwillingly fall- 
 ing under their spell once more, which would 
 probably happen in Breslau. 
 
 I never wish to see that place again. 
 
 Perhaps a man would no longer be able to 
 live after such experiences as mine, if all past 
 
 1 Translator's note. Title of a popular novel by Gerstäcker. 
 
 [3]
 
 events were not actually unreal. In no case does 
 the past any longer affect us with the power of 
 reality. I must proceed with great calmness, pa- 
 tience, and care, if I would still recall to my 
 mind the details of my great experience. The 
 last are of course the most vivid, whereas all 
 those that precede my entrance into prison are 
 much less clear, although much more important. 
 
 t4]
 
 Ill 
 
 I SPENT six years, four months, and twenty-one 
 days in prison. That is a hard fact, which I 
 had rather put down at the outset. It would be 
 more than disagreeable to me to have fraudu- 
 lently won myself readers by concealing it, if a 
 complete book should some day actually be born 
 of the faded dream of my life. It will then 
 remain a fact, and be it here expressly stated, 
 that the writer has been a convict. 
 
 [5]
 
 IV 
 
 I SHOULD quite certainly not be writing these 
 lines, indeed quite certainly no longer be living, 
 but for my present wife Marie, nee Stark. 
 Stark is a common name. But it is natural to 
 say, as is the fact, that my present wife is not 
 only called Stark [i.e. strong], but is so, al- 
 though in pure externals she is characterized by 
 a gentle and amiable nature. Her father was a 
 bookbinder. If his daughter has been strong, 
 she has also had in him and at all times a strong 
 support. 
 
 My father-in-law is eighty. He clerks in the 
 shop below. He is an admirable man. 
 
 We have here in the village a strange school- 
 master : a baptized Jew, Dr. Levine. His father 
 was a banker in Berlin and very wealthy. They 
 say that Dr. Levine renounced the greatest part 
 of his fortune in favor of his brothers and sisters. 
 He was state's attorney, and was to be promoted 
 to Attorney-General, when he suddenly resigned 
 and after suitable preparation was appointed 
 here as teacher in the grammar-school. Only 
 thus could he appease his social conscience, as 
 
 [6]
 
 he puts it. As a favor my father-in-law still 
 occasionally binds a book for Dr. Levine. 
 
 I have sometimes told Dr. Levine this and 
 that about my past. He encourages me to write 
 it down. 
 
 He has furnished a comfortable study in the 
 gable of the schoolhouse. When I recently re- 
 turned to him some bound volumes, he detained 
 me. I had to smoke a cigar and drink a cup of 
 coffee with him. It was then I showed him the 
 picture. 
 
 My wife knows nothing of the picture. 
 
 I received this picture from Melitta. 
 
 You see, when my relations with Melitta were 
 at their zenith, I had told her in a confidential 
 hour of my weakness for Veronica Harlan, the 
 daughter of the hardware-merchant. Melitta 
 was good-natured. One day she was having her 
 picture taken and saw this picture in the pho- 
 tographer's studio. It was not hard to persuade 
 him to let her have it, as she found the child- 
 face in the picture so uncommonly beautiful. 
 Dr. Levine also found it uncommonly beautiful. 
 
 It is beautiful, truly, but thank God it has 
 no more power over me. 
 
 [7]
 
 "No more power over me." 
 
 This assertion must be modified. 
 
 To-day with God's aid I enjoy perfect health. 
 This health I attained in three years of utter soli- 
 tude in my prison cell, and subsequently, when 
 I was employed in the prison library through 
 the kindness of the chief warden. There I could 
 also complete my education. 
 
 Since I am now enjoying perfect health, the 
 little picture has no more power over me. When 
 the original of this picture entered into her power 
 over me I was twenty-eight years old, and, be- 
 cause sickly from childhood, still older in spirit. 
 From childfiood I have been sickly, I said; I 
 became really sick about in my twenty-second 
 year. I coughed much and for several years the 
 cough always left blood on my handkerchief. 
 This had however passed when my spiritual sick- 
 ness began. 
 
 They say that the so-called "consumption," 
 that is the lung-disease, intensifies the craving 
 for love. But I can perhaps return to that later. 
 Anyway, it is the affair of medical science to de- 
 
 [8]
 
 termine what influence the body has upon the 
 soul» 
 
 So much I think I can say, that when the spark 
 fell upon my soul, a vast pile of fuel had col- 
 lected in both soul and body. 
 
 Now what sort of spark was it, and of what 
 origin was that spark"? Here I could choose be- 
 tween having it consist of divine or devilish fire, 
 tracing its origin from heaven or hell. Strictly 
 speaking, if I were still in a position to operate 
 with these concepts, I should have no choice at 
 all. For since this spark gave rise to a truly 
 hellish conflagration, a Christian could never ad- 
 mit that it was a heavenly spark. And so indeed 
 the prison chaplain, the Reverend Mr. Walkmil- 
 ler, called it a hellish spark, and thereupon of 
 course found it very easy to trace all the terrible 
 consequences for me and others back to this in- 
 cendiarism of Satan. 
 
 Such a simplification would not be in the in- 
 terest of truth, which is my purpose. 
 
 Just now I have once more scanned attentively 
 the picture of the thirteen-year-old daughter of 
 the hardware-dealer, and I must say that it is 
 of captivating charm. "Virgin, mother, queen I" 
 
 [9]
 
 the Master ^ would say. A sacred image in it- 
 self. It would not be strange if pilgrimages 
 were made to it from far and near. 
 
 An orthodox Catholic might object that the 
 guile of the devil may have occasionally made 
 use even of the unsuspecting Virgin Mother, in 
 order to lure souls to destruction. 
 
 So when I said : the picture has no more power 
 over me, I meant that in the sense of its misuse 
 by the devil it has no more power over me. 
 
 1 Translator's note: i. e. Goethe, see Faust II, 12102. 
 
 [10]
 
 VI 
 
 So much for Satan; to trouble him again will 
 I hope be unnecessary. 
 
 I was simply burned to ashes, as it were, by 
 a conflagration, because I was absolutely defense- 
 less, after my mole-like existence, before the in- 
 rush of the divine flame. 
 
 But in so far as this picture is the reflection 
 of the divine flame, it still has power over me, 
 and will retain it until my death. 
 
 I first saw Veronica Harlan one noon, when I, 
 a poor municipal clerk, was walking home as 
 usual. Before the city hall of Breslau stands 
 the whipping-post. There are rings on it, with 
 which the child was playing. It was the twenty- 
 eighth of May, a date which for many reasons, 
 as you will understand, I cannot forget. Even 
 when the passers-by began to notice her, the gov- 
 erness could not divert the interest of the child 
 from the whipping-post. She tried repeatedly to 
 lure away from the steps the strikingly beautiful 
 creature with the flying, saffron-yellow hair. In 
 vain. I only know that my hat flew from my 
 head — some one had jostled me — and recall how 
 
 [11]
 
 the child burst into an irresistibly hearty laugh 
 at it. 
 
 Without the experience of that moment, I 
 should probably be to this day without reproach 
 before the world, and sorrow upon sorrow would 
 have been spared me. But there is a proverb, 
 to be sure not a German one, in the collection 
 of the excellent Wander: "Even my own sor- 
 row is dearer to me than the happiness of an- 
 other." And if I were asked whether I would 
 rather not have had that morning's adventure, 
 seemingly so harmless, yet so pregnant with con- 
 sequences, I must needs reply: 
 
 I would rather yield up my life than that ex- 
 perience. 
 
 [12]
 
 VII 
 
 This confession, to my former judges, would be 
 equivalent to the expression of basest obduracy, 
 to a man of average common sense, the expression 
 of highest folly. If I live long enough and 
 abide by my desire and present ability, untili all 
 has been said that can make a frank and full 
 confession wholly frank and full, and if my 
 judges shall one day read it, it may be that they 
 will change their minds. They will perhaps rec- 
 ognize how distorted, how incomplete, how false 
 my confession in the protocols really is. The 
 man of average common sense, on the other hand, 
 who has already declared me foolish, will in the 
 end regard his opinion as confirmed. For my 
 part, as I reflect on my task, reflect superficially 
 to be sure, I cannot help seeing in it the problem 
 of weaving together the story of a dunce, a fool, 
 and a criminal. 
 
 Of course, in doing this, I myself hope to be 
 able to rise above the dunce, the fool, and the 
 criminal — or let us say, to cast off all three. 
 
 [13]
 
 VIII 
 
 A WORD about my extraction. 
 
 My father was a tax-collector, and had under 
 him the supervision of the brandy-distilleries. 
 In his duties he was frequently treated to liquor, 
 and had eventually become a pronounced toper. 
 
 As he was seldom at home, traveling about on 
 business and dependent on hotels, the greatest 
 part of his income was squandered, in addition 
 to his travel allowance. Had he not had a 
 stroke of apoplexy in the very nick of time, they 
 would probably have driven him out of office, 
 and mother would have lost her pension. She 
 had already made up several deficits in the ac- 
 counts, having to beg the necessary sums of Aunt 
 Schwab, which was not easy. 
 
 My mother had a hard life. 
 
 Wholly disappointed by my father, almost 
 wholly abandoned, and made wholly unhappy 
 by him, she found solace in her children, as is 
 common in such cases. She had two sons and a 
 daughter. I was the oldest. As long as my 
 brother and my sister, the youngest among us, 
 were children, things went well enough. When 
 
 [14]
 
 they had passed their seventeenth or eighteenth 
 year, it became absolutely clear that one could 
 not rely on them any more. That was at the 
 time when my mother was already in the fifth 
 year of her widowhood. 
 
 I had always been on especially good terms 
 with my mother. When this had begun, I do 
 not know. I think very early. It was already 
 so when I first observed that my father could 
 not endure me. As he was also mostly at odds 
 with my mother, I naturally took sides with her. 
 
 I cannot say when I became her avowed fa- 
 vorite. It must have been before father's death. 
 Even then she often would call me her only com- 
 fort. Later, when I had become a solicitor's 
 clerk and always put my whole pay into her 
 hands on the first of the month, I would not in- 
 frequently hear her say that I was her only sup- 
 port. 
 
 The flat into which we moved after father's 
 death was in the second story of an old-fashioned 
 little house in Pocket Street. We kept it until 
 the catastrophe came, that is for about eight 
 years. It was very small, very dark, but never- 
 theless not uncomfortable. Such quaint little 
 
 [15]
 
 city houses, with their small windows and low- 
 ceiled rooms, usually have great charm. I had 
 no idea but that I and my mother should live 
 in those rooms till the end of our days. 
 
 I assumed in the little household the position 
 of father, of head of the family. Considerably 
 older than the other children, I was an authority 
 to them for that reason alone. But more than 
 this, my mother took every occasion to affirm my 
 paternal power over them in their presence. It 
 fell to me for another reason too, because I had 
 long been the sole bread-winner. When my 
 brother and my sister occasionally earned some- 
 thing themselves, they never turned over so much 
 as a red cent to my mother. 
 
 This paternal authority I never misused, to my 
 knowledge. 
 
 To spare my lungs and larynx I had accus- 
 tomed myself to speak in a low voice. It became 
 second nature with me. It is still clear in my 
 mind how at the trial several of the jurors cried 
 to me, "Louder, Louder!" This restrained man- 
 ner of speech I never needed to accelerate or in- 
 tensify in intercourse with my brother and sister, 
 even when I had occasion to admonish or repri- 
 
 [16]
 
 mand them. I may say that I enjoyed from 
 them esteem mingled with admiration, and had 
 a more unrestricted authority than even my 
 father had ever possessed. 
 
 "You ought to teach, or rather, you ought to 
 have become a teacher," my mother would say 
 at times, when she noticed how I would take the 
 trouble to hear my brother and sister recite dates 
 in history, Bible verses, and the like. I am 
 surely under no delusion in crediting myself with 
 always having been to them a willing and pa- 
 tient adviser, helper, and teacher. And I took 
 real pleasure^in teaching. 
 
 Once when my mother had repeated her "You 
 should have become a teacher," it occurred to me 
 to wonder, I being then twenty-five, whether that 
 were not still possible. The idea aroused my in- 
 terest, nay my enthusiasm, in so far as one can 
 call enthusiasm any one of the less depressed 
 moods of which I was capable. Within a short 
 time I had secured sufficient information, used for 
 the first time a part of my wages to purchase 
 books, and begun to spend every free hour in pre- 
 paring myself to take the teacher's examination 
 for secondary schools. 
 
 [•7]
 
 Until then I had lived along in a state of 
 natural resignation, without thinking. While I 
 was studying English, French, and the other sub- 
 jects, both winter and summer in my cosy little 
 room, the door of which opened on a wooden 
 gallery above the little court, I was for the first 
 time doing something which originated in a 
 genuine initiative of my own. Hence I had a 
 special gratification in it, and felt my self-con- 
 fidence increasing. 
 
 I have not yet mentioned the double bone- 
 fracture which I had had the misfortune to suffer 
 as a child. My father had a military way of 
 dealing with me which was hardly very appro- 
 priate in view of my gentle nature, with its 
 tendency to subordination. When the name Lo- 
 renz, for so I was named, rang through the house 
 in his accents, I almost always lost my head com- 
 pletely. Hurrying down a staircase in such a 
 state of mind, I slipped and broke my leg. The 
 bones were badly set by a quack, so that the af- 
 fected leg became shorter. In order to repair 
 the damage the leg was once more forcibly 
 broken by another quack, whereupon it ulti- 
 mately became still shorter. After that I limped, 
 
 [18]
 
 and that affected my way of life not a little, 
 more especially at that time. For obvious rea- 
 sons I avoided the children's games, in which I 
 had so far taken part with enthusiasm, and turned 
 to quiet occupations, preferably indoors and al- 
 ways where there was nobody present. 
 
 I think it was not until my trial that I really 
 learned to think and to realize the blessing of 
 independent thinking. Yet a beginning had been 
 made when I formed the resolve to work towards 
 the teaching profession, and as I have said, an in- 
 dubitably increased self-confidence was the bene- 
 ficial result of it. 
 
 [19]
 
 IX 
 
 Indeed the self -instruction I had begun was 
 beneficial to me in every respect, and I think back 
 with pleasure on the hours I devoted to it. (My 
 wife knows that, and has therefore tried to make 
 this room as similar as possible to that in which 
 I used to pursue my studies. The old tile-stove, 
 against which I had shoved up my little study- 
 table, was chocolate-brown. Perhaps at the ad- 
 vice of her father she has had this very similar 
 stove set up for me, and by it stands the little 
 old table once more.) Courses of instruction I 
 procured by instalments. One by one I also pur- 
 chased the other indispensable text-books. My 
 mother vacillated the while between anxiety and 
 approval. Her father was a prosperous citizen 
 of Breslau, a furrier by trade, and the last four 
 years before his death he had even been in the 
 Council. Now to be sure she had resigned her- 
 self in every respect, but still it did flatter her self- 
 esteem to see in me no longer the miserable clerk 
 of a lawyer, but the future schoolmaster. On the 
 other hand, the diminution of the household 
 money, which she suffered in consequence of the 
 
 [20]
 
 book-buying, made itself painfully felt. Later, 
 when my interest in literature and hence also for 
 books developed beyond the range of teachers' 
 courses, and I began to buy Reclam ^ editions and 
 also somewhat more expensive editions of the 
 classics, I sometimes found my mother in tears 
 and had much difficulty in comforting and quiet- 
 ing her. To be sure I was never able to convince 
 her that money spent for books not absolutely re- 
 quired for the examination was not thrown away. 
 Needless to say, through Schiller and Goethe 
 my intellectual horizon was extended, the world 
 of my ideas infinitely enriched. But my then 
 incipient weakness for books, so much bewailed by 
 my mother, had another advantage for me, which 
 cannot be overvalued: without it I should never 
 have come to know my father-in-law and my 
 present wife, and I think I have already stated 
 that in that case I should no longer be living. 
 
 1 Translator's note. Philipp Reclam began in 1867 the pub- 
 lication of his "Universal Library," offering the best of the 
 world's literature in tiny unbound volumes at about 5 cents 
 each. 
 
 [21]
 
 X 
 
 I STILL remember just how startled I was when 
 Marie Stark stepped into my room one day, 
 bringing me the Uhland which her father had 
 just bound. She is just my age, and we were 
 then twenty- four. She came without a hat, her 
 dark hair simply parted in the middle; she had 
 brown eyes and wore a blue shawl over her should- 
 ers. Our position in life had a certain similarity, 
 in that I took the place of breadwinner for 
 my mother and she had to act as housekeeper 
 for her father. Her appearance was somewhat 
 womanly even at that time. She looked like a 
 pretty young matron. 
 
 I was startled, because I had at that time a 
 quite inexplicable fear of women. Aside from 
 my mother and sister, and not forgetting Aunt 
 Schwab, I had made the acquaintance of neither 
 maid nor matron. Of course I had occasionally 
 exchanged words in shops with proprietress or 
 sales-girl, but that is a matter which alters noth- 
 ing in the above-mentioned circumstance. Even 
 with harlots I have never had anything to do, 
 [22]
 
 less out of chastity than fear. Besides, that was 
 much too expensive anyway. 
 
 Marie Stark had a very natural, frank, and un- 
 embarrassed manner. I was myself agreeably 
 surprised to see how quickly I was rid of my own 
 fear and constraint. I have forgotten what may 
 have been talked about at this first visit of hers. 
 At any rate, she soon recognized that my fore- 
 most care was as much my mother as hers was 
 her father. She fairly idolized her father, as I 
 really almost idolized my mother. 
 
 Such were the conditions under which we met. 
 
 We also rejoiced at many another common in- 
 terest, and strangely enough at the fact that 
 neither of us wished to marry, but that we felt 
 ourselves called upon, she to care for her father, I 
 for my mother, till the end of their lives. 
 
 [23]
 
 XI 
 
 We understood each other, then, and had the 
 impression that we had found each other. And 
 this finding was a stroke of good luck. Two iso- 
 lated people, alike in age, had met and were en- 
 joying together the happiness of natural com- 
 radeship. It became customary for us to discuss 
 with each other the most important matters, i. e., 
 whatever seemed important to us in the care both 
 of our aged charges and of our households. In- 
 formal calls on the always good-humored old 
 bookbinder became a habit with me, and Marie 
 too visited me not infrequently. 
 
 That mother liked to see Marie Stark come, I 
 doubt. She could not really say anything against 
 the girl, but I assume that she saw as it were 
 a rival in her, that is, she was disquieted by the 
 thought that Marie might take me from her. I 
 know that her plan of life was absolutely based 
 on my remaining single. 
 
 My mother clung to me like a drowning per- 
 son. I often felt this with almost terrifying 
 clearness. She was distrustful of everybody who 
 
 [24]
 
 came near me or preferred any sort of claim on 
 me, not merely of Marie. 
 
 The clerk Lorenz Lubota — the sonorous name 
 Lubota is my just heritage from my father — this 
 clerk, then, who limped as if he had a club-foot, 
 and who, when he saw himself in the mirror, 
 could never get an approximately satisfactory im- 
 pression of himself, was at that time not far from 
 being vain of himself and his value. Besides his 
 mother and Marie Stark, there was still a third 
 woman. Aunt Schwab, whom I have already 
 named several times, who idolized him as a model 
 of virtue. 
 
 [25]
 
 XII 
 
 Before I speak of Aunt Schwab, the only sister 
 of my mother, it may be well to recall that I 
 have landed in a quiet haven. Also I will take 
 a few puffs at my pipe, in order to calm myself 
 in every respect. It can do no harm to ascertain 
 that down below, the little shop-bell tinkles 
 again and again, the evidence of a decent and 
 honest livelihood. I grafted roses this spring, 
 painted my seven pear-trees and fourteen apple- 
 trees with lime, prepared my vegetable garden, 
 hung up starling-boxes, even put two bee-hives 
 in operation . . . good, enough of that. 
 
 Aunt Schwab, who had a pawn-shop, was 
 hated by my mother for several reasons. She 
 had increased tenfold the property inherited from 
 her father, whereas the fortune of my mother had 
 been used up in her marriage. A life of work 
 and care had made my mother poor; a life of 
 enjoyment, free from care in the main, had made 
 Aunt Schwab rich. Mother could not forgive 
 her that. 
 
 But mother even thought herself overreached 
 by her sister in the regulation of their parents' 
 
 [26]
 
 heritage. In her direst need she urgently begged 
 Aunt Schwab for a loan in order to save her hus- 
 band from prison, and when the latter at first re- 
 fused it, she came out with this conviction, which 
 naturally resulted in an embittered wrangle. 
 However, this once Aunt Schwab gave her the 
 money, as I have already said. 
 
 The dislike of my mother for my aunt had been 
 considerably intensified by the entire transaction, 
 as also by the debt, which she obviously could 
 not pay off. 
 
 My aunt passed far more gentle judgment on 
 my mother, than my mother on her. "She has 
 brought the honest name of Schwab," so my 
 mother would say, "into disgrace and shame as a 
 usurious witch. When one considers that our 
 father was in the city council. ..." She was 
 surely not wrong, my good mother, in viewing 
 as a decline the development of a councilor's 
 daughter into a pawn-broker. But she called 
 her "usurious witch" and other worse names, 
 pointing to a connection with elements that find 
 a home in thieves' dens and houses of ill fame. 
 
 Aunt Schwab's opinion of me and preference 
 for me resembled my mother's. Doubtless she 
 
 [27]
 
 knew what the love of man signifies, but she had 
 never in her life got beyond one or two engage- 
 ments, and for the rest had remained unmarried. 
 Her business she had always conducted alone, in 
 view of her peculiar talent for figures. After 
 passing the age of forty-five, when small disabili- 
 ties of old age began to appear, she often needed 
 help, and it was only natural that she should be- 
 think herself of her nephew, whom she could 
 quite justly regard at that time as a painfully 
 honest person. 
 
 Now the circumstance that I regularly spent an 
 evening twice a week with Aunt Schwab, in order 
 to chat with her, drink a cup of tea, and at the 
 same time look over her books, once more in- 
 creased Mother's dislike of aunt, of whom she 
 said that she was capping the climax by trying 
 to rob her of her own blood. But she was on 
 the other hand shrewd enough, too, not to op- 
 pose any obstacle to my calls on the supposed 
 testatrix. However, it was not hard to conceal 
 her jealousy and her hatred from her sister, since 
 they had not laid eyes on each other for years. 
 
 [28]
 
 XIII 
 
 The position which I occupied between the 
 hostile or at least estranged sisters is of decisive 
 importance in that chain of events which led to 
 the dire catastrophe of my life. I saw my aunt 
 with the eyes of my mother and learned to hate 
 and despise her. I saw her with my own eyes 
 and learned to judge her most leniently, to un- 
 derstand her somewhat, but not to love and 
 esteem her. My mother was not wrong in fear- 
 ing that by becoming involved in her business 
 circles my soul might come to harm. 
 
 I graft roses and fruit-trees, bisect worms 
 with my spade, live peaceably with my wife and 
 my father-in-law, have found an inner harmony, 
 a settlement and a conclusion, and am certain 
 of ending my life as a contemplator, without 
 further engaging in a "deed" — deeds dull the 
 wits! — of any sort. We must then take it into 
 the bargain, if Aunt Schwab really does occasion- 
 ally visit me in my dreams. 
 
 [29]
 
 XIV 
 
 I HAVE hitherto mentioned my own brother and 
 sister only in passing. They are outwardly very 
 different from me. So marked is the difference 
 between us that not even a so-called family re- 
 semblance can be ascertained. But my brother 
 and my sister are also outwardly very different. 
 Both are unqualifiedly beautiful, yet the beauty 
 of my brother is more of a delicate and spiritual 
 •nature, whereas the charm of my sister consists 
 in a certain primitiveness which is at the same 
 time rather bizarre. 
 
 She has the head of a youth. As she wears 
 her hair bobbed, this intensifies the masculine im- 
 pression she makes. She resembles the head of 
 Praxiteles' Hermes, which is so widely dissem- 
 inated as a plaster cast. Her neck is very sturdy, 
 her breast broad, but, with your permission, like- 
 wise not very womanly. She is slender and firm 
 in build. Her movements are large and free. 
 That her hips are not broad is self-evident, after 
 the above. Her voice is deep, her speech brus- 
 que and unconventional. She had great confi- 
 dence in me, as I have said, whereas my influence 
 
 [30]
 
 upon her was slight. From her fifteenth year 
 she consistently went her own way, which again 
 agreed perfectly with her self-willed, mannish 
 habits. Her name was Melanie, but it did not 
 suit her. She might have been named Konrad, 
 Jungsiegfried, or the like. 
 
 My brother Hugo attended the art-school. My 
 nature was much too steady-going, my spirit much 
 too weighed down, to possess in the beginning any 
 appreciation of what he brought home with him 
 from there. The world of artists, of painters 
 and sculptors, remained alien to me at that time. 
 I never looked into it, although an unwearying 
 enthusiasm sought to open it for me. 
 
 I had indeed already heard the opinion uttered 
 that he who did not believe in Jesus Christ was 
 lost both here and yonder, in this world and the 
 next, but not, as my brother maintained, that it 
 was the same with those who had no appreciation 
 of the music of a Beethoven, the lyrics of a Höl- 
 derlin, the painting of a Rembrandt, or the plastic 
 art of the Greeks. 
 
 I was not envious of my brother because he was 
 as handsome as a young god and was smiled at 
 by all the young girls when he passed by, but 
 
 [31]
 
 I should not have been sorry to be as fortunate, 
 and when he spoke of the power of beauty, which 
 one must feel in order to begin to live, I did not 
 indeed understand him then, but his words gave 
 me food for thought, as the saying is. Long be- 
 fore I really felt the power of beauty, I pondered 
 on it, stimulated by him. He was wont to say, 
 using the words of Christ, but in reference to 
 beauty: "Unless ye be born again, ye cannot 
 enter into the kindom of heaven." 
 
 And so I have once more arrived at Veronica 
 Harlan and her wonder-working picture. 
 
 [32]
 
 XV 
 
 In this picture and still more in its original, 
 whom I saw by accident by the whipping-post 
 before the city hall of Breslau, as already re- 
 corded, the power of beauty dawned upon me. It 
 dawned upon me in a way and manner of which 
 my dear brother Hugo, the painter, hardly 
 dreamed. A certain Melitta, I said, had given me 
 the picture. Melitta was a girl whom I loved 
 only because a certain resemblance to Veronica 
 endowed her with a faint reflection of Veronica's 
 beauty, so that in her, too, the terrible power of 
 beauty was operative. But enough of Melitta, I 
 shall not anticipate. 
 
 I have already written, "So much I think I 
 can say, that when the spark fell upon my soul, 
 a vast pile of fuel had collected in both soul 
 and body." With respect to that spark the ques- 
 tion has been asked : divine or devilish? Suffi- 
 cient if this spark, taken by and large, is equiva- 
 lent to "power of beauty." 
 
 [33]
 
 XVI 
 
 It was on the 28th of May 1900, at twelve 
 o'clock noon, that I first set eyes on Veronica 
 Harlan and that my destiny thus took its great 
 turn, which might never again be reversed. 
 
 I was just coming home that day, and I shall 
 never forget that an inconceivable alteration had 
 taken place there, without there being in fact 
 the slightest change. It seemed to me as if one 
 must perforce stifle in such mole-runs and holes 
 as these narrow corridors and little rooms, al- 
 though I had lived in them for many years with 
 great contentment. The ill repair of the floor 
 in my room struck me, the spots of mould on the 
 faded, flowered wall-paper, the great cracks in the 
 tile-stove, the ink-blots on the table-top and 
 around the table, the cobwebs in the corners, the 
 lime-twigs black with dead and dying flies, and 
 other things besides. 
 
 My condition was incomprehensible and pain- 
 ful even to myself. As when Bottom, the weaver, 
 in ''A Midsummer Night's Dream>" being turned 
 into an ass, suddenly has a craving for oats, so 
 I seemed to have the fastidious senses of a royal 
 
 [34]
 
 being, whose eyes are wont to gloat upon marble 
 and gold. I had the impression of a positively 
 insulting, wholly repellent ugliness. 
 
 It hurt me, twice and thrice over, that I likewise 
 got this impression during the usual noon meals 
 in our little kitchen, that I even found my eyes 
 and ears offended by the appearance, the speech, 
 and the behavior of my own dear mother. Fuzz 
 adhered to her venerable grey hair, her teeth 
 were neglected. I felt that she dumped my food 
 before me as if I were one of those creatures 
 that eat out of mangers and troughs. In short, 
 whatever she did, whatever she said, although it 
 was nothing but what she daily said and did, I 
 found myself offended and tortured by every de- 
 tail. 
 
 [35]
 
 XVII 
 
 This manner of seeing and feeling was new to 
 me, and wholly perplexing. It extended to all 
 the daily and common things that came before 
 my eyes in and out of the house. I had perceived 
 something that had now entered my soul, as it 
 were, and was dwelling in it: a something, a 
 sainted image if you will, whereby the lowly and 
 pitiful hut of my soul was transformed into 
 a hallowed cathedral. But this cathedral and 
 this image were now in the wash of an unspeak- 
 ably base, unspeakably ugly, everyday world, 
 which I had till now really not seen at all. 
 
 The highly surcharged state into which I had 
 fallen gave me concern. For although it in- 
 wardly renewed and exalted me in an undreamed- 
 of manner, yet I was not unlike a ship that has 
 been torn loose from its safe anchorage. At the 
 same time, my new way of seeing people and 
 things made me unhappy in itself. I knew well 
 that I had previously seen men and things with 
 other eyes and had felt myself in harmony with 
 them. But that was ended; I could now no 
 longer see anything with those lost eyes, or re- 
 
 [36]
 
 cover that lost harmony. Had I perhaps fallen 
 a victim to some severe psychic disease, which had 
 as it were poisoned the sight of my eyes? Was 
 this disease perhaps even a physical one? 
 
 How shall one live in a world in which every- 
 thing, everything is indifferent or nauseous to 
 him? 
 
 [37] 
 
 335423
 
 XVIII 
 
 I HAD such a feeling, as I can clearly recall, 
 as one very likely has after the bite of a serpent, 
 whose poison has made its way into one's body. 
 It circulates in the blood, do what one will to 
 extract it. I had without doubt had a poison- 
 ous bite or had been infected by the poison of 
 some disease. One need not die of it by any 
 means; but I could feel that a possibly fatal 
 illness involving unspeakable suffering would in- 
 fallibly result from it. Should one submit one- 
 self to it with patience, await the possibly infer- 
 nal crisis in the hope of eventual healing, which 
 was perhaps worse than death? 
 
 Some days after the occurrence at the whip- 
 ping-post, the distraction and derangement of my 
 spirit was so great that several times I barely re- 
 sisted the violent impulse to throw myself under 
 a passing truck. 
 
 [38]
 
 XIX 
 
 Had I said this before my judges, they would 
 probably have regarded it as an exaggeration very 
 transparent in its intent. This intent is done 
 away, since I am at most my own judge now and 
 have nothing more to do with other judges, ex- 
 cepting God. But to pull the wool over the eyes 
 of God and myself can not possibly be my intent. 
 
 However, I do not say that in my extremity 
 I saw only this one expedient, namely : suicide. I 
 weighed it and inclined to it when at certain 
 moments the thought of hopelessness had united, 
 I might say victoriously, with weariness of life. 
 But the fuel in my soul which the spark had 
 kindled into a fire that now smouldered, now 
 merely crackled, now lifted tongues of flame, but 
 at times burst into a roaring blaze — that dis- 
 played countless variegated phenomena which I 
 will describe as well as may be. 
 
 [39]
 
 XX 
 
 Even on the very day when I had first seen 
 little Veronica Harlan, and, on arriving at home, 
 was forced to attest the alteration of my visual 
 power, I awaited with impatience the beginning 
 of my duties. The mere walk to the office as- 
 suaged the high-strung condition from which I 
 was suffering, because it brought me closer to the 
 spot where I had seen the child. Incidentally, 
 I exchanged at once, and with a positiveness 
 which was not otherwise in keeping with my re- 
 tiring nature, my seat in the municipal office for 
 that of another clerk, a seat by the window, from 
 which one could keep the whipping-post in view. 
 On one of these days my office chief informed me 
 that an increase in salary had been granted me. 
 This was a recognition of my competence which 
 coming one day earlier, would have transported 
 me into a delirium of happiness. To-day I only 
 half listened. Then three or four days passed be- 
 fore I informed my mother of the fact, which I 
 should formerly have done, most likely, in the 
 selfsame hour. 
 
 [40]
 
 Of course I did not yet know the girl's name, 
 nor whose daughter she was. 
 
 I felt very clearly that in knowing her surname, 
 but especially her given name, I should possess 
 an inestimable treasure, a part of her; that must 
 be balm for my wounds, refreshment for my 
 torturing sensations of hunger and thirst. For 
 as I now saw with terrror, I, an unassuming 
 person who had so far lacked nothing, one might 
 say, that made for a comfortable and modest 
 pursuance of my existence, began to feel the 
 want of the most needful thing of all: light 
 for my eyes, air for my lungs, music for my 
 ears, spring-water and bread. All this could only 
 be granted me graciously by the favor of my indis- 
 pensable mediator. My state was pitiable. 
 
 As I read this over, it sounds high-flown to the 
 last degree. Well, I will by no means maintain 
 that I was at that time a man with a pulse-beat 
 of 58 and a temperature of 95 degrees. Nor 
 should it be thought that I had not tried every- 
 thing to free myself from the state of dependence 
 into which I had fallen. To the burning mania 
 of all my senses, which craved satiety and rcvivi- 
 
 [41]
 
 fication in the girl's presence, I opposed ever a- 
 new the attempt to satisfy their morbid appetites 
 in other ways. 
 
 In the first days I weighed every possible man- 
 ner of flight, not only that of suicide. I resolved 
 to put an end to this with a firm, powerful deci- 
 sion of my will, and to free myself from the sense- 
 less power of this imagination. I did not suc- 
 ceed. Often I thought I had succeeded, when 
 for example I had spent whole nights cramming 
 for my teacher's examination, with redoubled 
 effort in comparison to my former zeal. But ul- 
 timately I had always to recognize that the dis- 
 ease had progressed unremittingly, that the fever 
 had become more intense, the complication more 
 inextricable. 
 
 And so the other possible method of deliver- 
 ance was once more undertaken. That meant 
 the attempt to afford these senses, which had now 
 become awakened and greedy, at least partial sat- 
 isfaction. 
 
 My deliberations were about like this : Try to 
 get her given name into your power. You will 
 chew upon it like a cud, and with it quench your 
 thirst as the desert wanderer, if you like, does 
 
 [42]
 
 with a stone. You will at all events experience 
 a blissful enjoyment in it, feel it even in your dy- 
 ing, if you should perhaps die of thirst after all. 
 Try to see her, if only from a distance. Stare 
 at her long and ever anew, until she has radiated 
 all her beams upon you, as it were, and squandered 
 them. Then she will have become cold and ray- 
 less and can burn you no more. Get at you no 
 more. Or else her rays will continue to stream 
 out, but you will be sated and oversated and 
 therefore hardened to them. Try to speak with 
 her and beg her to take her destructive witchery 
 from you. She must be able to do so since she is 
 herself the witch. Try to secure a picture, a 
 photograph of her, and carry on a cult of myster- 
 ies with it behind locked doors. The picture can- 
 not resist your furious kisses, and you can perhaps 
 cool your fires for ever. Seek a confessor : a con-« 
 fidant to whom you can speak openly will take the 
 frightful tension from your breast. You will 
 pour out your heart, and he will take the half 
 of your burden on himself. The invisible be- 
 loved will become visible, audible, in short, pres- 
 ent, in your spoken words. And the habit of 
 even this presence will perhaps remove the deadly 
 
 [43]
 
 pain of separation. And probably dull by ha- 
 bituation the tormenting need of having the be- 
 loved object present. 
 
 Unfortunately fear had so driven me back into 
 my own soul that for the first four weeks I be- 
 trayed my condition to no one by even so much 
 as a hint. But because I thought that people 
 might detect it from outward appearance, I hesi- 
 tated to take any steps whatever, however cau- 
 tious, to find out even the name of the girl. 
 
 [44]
 
 XXI 
 
 About a fortnight had passed, during which 
 my condition showed no improvement. Like a 
 malignant growth which if not cut out spreads 
 and spreads and finally consumes the entire body 
 on which it is parasitic» such was the relation be- 
 tween the terrible and lovely vision and my soul. 
 The actualities about me really no longer existed 
 at all. Breslau had become a city of fantasy, 
 perhaps a Vineta,^ in which I was in search of a 
 palace of blue turquoise, and the queen of the 
 water-fairies who must surely live there, and from 
 which I only rose under compulsion. 
 
 Nobody remarked the change at first, as I did 
 my best to conceal the malady that was couched 
 within me, and successfully played before others 
 the part of my former self. 
 
 1 Translator's note. A once famous Wendish port on the Is- 
 land of Wollin in the Baltic. The destruction of a near-by 
 stronghold by the Northmen (1098) gave rise to the legend that 
 the town had been engulfed by the sea. Sunken rocks in that 
 vicinity are regarded as the ruins of Vineta. 
 
 [45]
 
 XXII 
 
 Besides, my mother's attention was at that 
 time diverted from my person by vexation and 
 anxiety over my sister Melanie, which she felt 
 more keenly than I. Mother discovered little by 
 little all sorts of things in her drawers and clos- 
 ets which she could not possibly have bought 
 with her wages, she being a maker of flower- 
 wreaths. Long suede gloves, open-work silk 
 stockings, bronze-colored shoes, lace-trimmed 
 shirts, a hat with an ostrich-plume, new and 
 stylish dresses, a new coat, and many other val- 
 uables which far exceeded the capacity of her mis- 
 erable purse. 
 
 I had paid little attention to the transforma- 
 tion in my sister, and if I had had my mind on 
 things as of old, I should have taken her seriously 
 to task. As it was, I did indeed support my 
 mother, who feebly appealed to Melanie's con- 
 science, and tried to force her to a confession, and 
 perhaps to a conversion, but with a tolerance to- 
 wards the possible straying of my sister which 
 visibly astonished my mother. It came to a break 
 
 [46]
 
 between my mother and Melanie, who declared 
 that she was of age and dependent neither on the 
 home nor the support of my mother. And as 
 all this in a certain sense was really true, she ran 
 away and then stayed away, after she had once 
 returned, packed her things, piled them up in a 
 cab, and taken them with her. 
 
 Mother spent sleepless nights. She said, "I 
 foresee only too clearly how she will end. She 
 will not spare her old mother the shame of seeing 
 her honest name disgraced, and will at the same 
 time ruin your hard-earned career as teacher. For 
 they do not appoint a teacher whose sister is 
 in the underworld of the same city." 
 
 Mother did not dream, thank God, how little 
 impression that apprehension made on me even 
 then. 
 
 Strangely enough, I felt myself at this time, so 
 critical for me, more than ever drawn to Father 
 Stark and his daughter. It may have been in 
 consequence of the need of confession which I 
 felt, as already mentioned. Although I did not 
 satisfy the need even here, and though I gave 
 neither the old bookbinder nor his daughter any 
 
 [47]
 
 hint of my experience, yet in their presence I 
 felt enveloped by hearts that loved and under- 
 stood. 
 
 The old man, my present father-in-law — I 
 hear his calm, kindly voice in the shop below — 
 the old man was not only a bookbinder, but he 
 also read many of the books he bound; indeed 
 he himself composed some little stories for cal- 
 endars. ^ Moreover, people came to him when 
 they needed a bridal or obituary poem, or the like. 
 In the composition of such things he had acquired 
 a certain reputation. 
 
 He possesses to this day an almost unlimited 
 quantity of them, and some day perhaps an at- 
 tractive selection of them can be made. 
 
 I wrote my first poem at that time in a man- 
 ner that is hardly clear to myself. I discovered 
 it, as it were, at the moment when I had written 
 the final period. I shall never forget the joy 
 that was depicted in the face of the old book- 
 binder when he had read through this poem that I 
 had brought him, and now learned that it was 
 
 1 Translator's note. Annual publications of rather higher 
 type than the Farmer's Almanac, but serving a similar pur- 
 pose. 
 
 [48]
 
 born of my pen. He praised it then in the strong- 
 est terms. 
 
 "Man, man, why you're a great poetic genius. 
 Here's a fellow squatting in a corner, doing a 
 coolie's work just to buy a crust of bread, and 
 writing things that are worthy of a Goethe and 
 a Schiller." In this vein my present father-in- 
 law used to talk, and always added, "But now 
 it's time for me to take my own scrawls, this 
 wretched waste paper, and burn it." 
 
 [49]
 
 XXIII 
 
 Upon the supreme critical day, for such was 
 the twenty-eighth of May, followed another 
 equally critical one, which as the sixteenth of 
 June, 1900, deserves to be set down indelibly in 
 the book of my life. 
 
 The morning was beautiful, and I had the pre- 
 sumption to indulge myself during the lunch- 
 period in a couple of hot Wieners, which I 
 bought at the entrance to the Schweidnitz Raths- 
 keller» and ate. 
 
 At this moment my eyes were directed to the 
 so-called Golden Cup side of the Breslau Ring, 
 about in the region of the large well-known hard- 
 ware-store of Emmo Harlan, whose sign, by the 
 way, I saw continually from my desk in the office. 
 
 Suddenly I experienced the utmost conster- 
 nation. It could not possibly be an illusion — no, 
 what I clearly saw before my eyes could only 
 be the little princess of the whipping-post. 
 
 Oh, how I had stared at that post through my 
 window from early till late, as if the girl must 
 suddenly issue forth from it. In fancy I had 
 again and again wreathed that post in roses from 
 
 [5°]
 
 top to bottom. I had again and again circled 
 about the post like a fool, without stopping for 
 the scoffing of the passers-by. 
 
 This time the enchanting, lovely miracle of 
 beauty was riding in an elegant wicker carriage 
 drawn by two tiny dappled ponies. She had the 
 reins of the little horses in her hand (behind her 
 was a little lackey, beside her sat her governess). 
 She was wearing a picture-hat, and under it was 
 once more the glorious flowing hair which at the 
 very first glance had had such a magically in- 
 fatuating effect upon me. 
 
 If I picture to myself in reverse order, as it 
 were, what took place then, some little exag- 
 geration may creep in; but thereby I shall after 
 all approximate somewhat the state into which I 
 was helplessly thrown on that day. A coach- 
 man who was washing an elegant pony-chaise, 
 with his trousers and sleeves rolled up, took the 
 whip which stood in the socket on the box of 
 that same chaise, and cracked it several times 
 loudly before my face. 
 
 Only now did I observe where I was standing. 
 In the long courtyard of Emmo Harlan's house, 
 which was overcrowded with scrap-iron, plough- 
 
 [51]
 
 shares, etc., and on which the windows of the 
 salesrooms opened. 
 
 The handsome old-fashioned building was 
 known all over town by the name of the Harlan 
 house. 
 
 Now it struck me that an elegant gentleman 
 and an elegant lady had appeared in the win- 
 dows of the second story and had motioned and 
 spoken to someone in the yard. 
 
 The place toward which their signs and words 
 had been directed was now empty. It was in 
 front of a little porch, like a church-portal, built 
 of blocks of hewn sandstone. 
 
 While they were motioning and speaking, a 
 small wicker carriage stopped before the porch, 
 and an old servant lifted out of it a childlike girl 
 whose face, of the most delicate pink, breathed 
 health, youth, and happiness. She stroked the 
 ponies and let them take sugar from her little 
 white-gloved hands before she disappeared with 
 her governess under the porch. 
 
 I was staring after the child when the crack- 
 ing whip-lash whizzed close by my ear. How- 
 ever, something else must have happened : for why 
 else had so many employees' heads crowded into 
 
 [52]
 
 the windows of the vaulted salesrooms, all star- 
 ing out at me? 
 
 "What do you want, anyway?" a well-dressed 
 young man, probably a clerk, suddenly asked 
 me. "Nothing," I responded somewhat taken 
 aback. "Well, but then why were you running 
 like mad after the young mistress's carriage?" 
 
 This second question I answered, to my knowl- 
 edge, only by a shrug of the shoulders, where- 
 upon I was taken on each side by the arms, and 
 amid general laughter, which seemed to come 
 from everywhere, I was led by two coachmen or 
 porters, not at all brutally, out through the drive- 
 way into the Ring, where they left me standing 
 in the stream of traffic. 
 
 I think I stood there a long time before I be- 
 gan to move my feet. 
 
 [53]
 
 XXIV 
 
 That morning, that whole day I did not re- 
 turn to the office, although I had an urgent piece 
 of work to finish. Neither did I go home, and 
 I think that for the very first time since she was 
 widowed my mother had to wait dinner and sup- 
 per for me in vain. It was towards nine o'clock 
 in the morning when my mother saw me again. 
 
 All that time I had walked about restlessly, 
 without eating or drinking, for an immense fear 
 had pervaded me when I finally came to myself 
 before the porch of that patrician house. I 
 recognized that here was something which had 
 got me in its power without my will, indeed 
 against my will, and had commanded me. 
 
 But if this was so, could not this something, this 
 Daemon which was possessing me, misuse me for 
 still worse things? It was this fear that was 
 calling into the lists all my healthy powers to 
 fight against that Daemon. 
 
 I shall remain as cool as possible, and if you 
 like be a little superficial again, in the account 
 of my restless roving, rather than perhaps let my 
 spirit be once more clouded by its confusion, or 
 
 [54]
 
 even entangled in it. First I walked about in the 
 streets and lanes of the city, until I reached the 
 Oder somewhere and followed its banks upstream 
 out of the town. 
 
 Even at the beginning of my wanderings my 
 feeling was that I had gone astray and was al- 
 ready far, far away from the familiar and peace- 
 girt spot where I had dwelt in security before the 
 apparition at the whipping-post had entered my 
 life. There is a dream that most people have 
 probably dreamed. On a certain day and at a 
 fixed hour you must be at such and such a place. 
 Very much depends on your being punctual. Un- 
 punctuality, and still more your utter failure to 
 arrive, involves irreparable and painfully severe 
 material and spiritual losses. Never again will 
 that opportunity return^ if you miss it. Now, 
 however, this is the torturing course of the dream, 
 that you cannot possibly overcome the incompre- 
 hensibly numerous hindrances, in order to reach 
 your destination at the right time : you lack a col- 
 lar, a shirt, some other important article of cloth- 
 ing, and when you have found one, another has 
 disappeared. If you have finally reached the sta- 
 tion in spite of everything, then you have boarded 
 
 [55]
 
 the wrong train, and suffer the distress of travel- 
 ing in the opposite direction and withdrawing 
 farther and farther from the place you wish to 
 reach. Finally the train may stop, but the door 
 of your compartment will not open, and before 
 you can get off, the train is shunted on to a ferry, 
 perhaps, and you are suddenly in mid-ocean on a 
 trip around the worM from which you can only 
 hope to return after years. . . . Such roughly 
 was my condition at the beginning and during 
 the course of my wandering. It became more 
 torturing from hour to hour. 
 
 [56]
 
 XXV 
 
 The same Daemon that had misused me for 
 an involuntary and almost unconscious action 
 could not but be that which was now preparing all 
 the hindrances that prevented a return to my old 
 healthy state, taking me with it on extensive aim- 
 less labyrinthine paths, and against which I set 
 in motion, alas in vain, all my good angels. 
 
 Every thinking person, to the extent of his 
 thinking, is a dramatist. And as I had fallen 
 into a perplexed and tormented state of worry, 
 I had composed in my mind's eye — or it had done 
 itself — a drama of which I was on the one hand 
 a spectator, yet also became involved in its dia- 
 logues. Of course the Daemon was on the stage 
 too. And his procedure was so diabolically clever 
 that I, in the most vehement colloquy with him, 
 did not even observe that it was his claw which 
 had meanwhile caught me by the neck and was 
 ceaselessly thrusting me forward with smarting 
 soles and burning brain, together with the entire 
 Thespian cart of my soul, which all the while 
 was engaged in producing its own furious tragic 
 action. 
 
 [57]
 
 It was the Daemon, it was my mother and 
 Aunt Schwab, and the school-principal Dr. Wohl- 
 feil, whom I had seen on the stage; and the last 
 three were engaged in desperate battle with the 
 Daemon. This Daemon looked like me, to a hair, 
 only that he was dressed in the most foppish fash- 
 ion: he wore patent-leather shoes and a dia- 
 mond stick-pin in his necktie. They proved to 
 the Daemon, and I took part in it, that by the il- 
 lusion of this enchanting little lady of fashion he 
 had planned my destruction. My honesty, my 
 conscientiousness, my lack of pretension, my in- 
 dustry, and my faithful and filial love had been a 
 thorn in his flesh; what he was trying to bring 
 me to was gluttony, avarice, and pride. He 
 wanted by means of an illusion as silly as it was 
 devilish to involve me in folly, madness, and pos- 
 sibly inexpiable guilt. 
 
 Enough. I only know that whoso may have 
 met me on this journey, whether it was by day 
 or by night, saw a gesticulating person who talked 
 audibly to himself, and who must be assumed to 
 have escaped from a madhouse. 
 
 [58]
 
 XXVI 
 
 Mother was deeply concerned at my failure 
 to appear, but still more at the condition in which 
 I 'finally came home. She too must have feared 
 the worst for my mental condition. Indeed, I 
 myself thought with horror of a possible death 
 in the madhouse. My fear of it was so great 
 that when mother wanted to fetch a physician I 
 roundly declared that if a physician should en- 
 ter our apartment, I would jump out of the win- 
 dow. 
 
 I slept till the evening of the following day, 
 ate something that mother brought to my bed- 
 side, and again slept through until the next morn- 
 ing. When I awoke, I was strengthened and 
 quieted. 
 
 Mother had been at the office herself and had 
 adequately explained my absence as due to a sud-» 
 den attack of illness, so that for this once I had 
 no disadvantage from it. 
 
 [59]
 
 XXVII 
 
 Now there came weeks in which I was almost 
 my old self again. So the crisis must after all 
 have resulted in a success for my side. I pur- 
 posely avoided thinking back over it. I pretended 
 to myself that I had not seen the apparition at 
 the whipping-post at all, but had only read about 
 it in a book, and that it was about the same with 
 the painful incident in the yard of the patrician 
 house on the Ring. My present wife, then Ma- 
 rie Stark, learned of my mysterious crisis at that 
 time from my mother, as she has recently told 
 me. But both women, with a correct instinct, 
 agreed to make no further allusions to the inci- 
 dent, not to remind me of it in any way. The 
 success which my poem had had with the old 
 master-bookbinder now encouraged me to further 
 poetic ventures, and one day a whole bundle of 
 poems was sent off by Stark to an illustrated 
 weekly in Munich. 
 
 What the poems contained and what value 
 they possessed is indifferent here. One verse read 
 for example: "Is't thou, O Muse, that takes me 
 
 [60]
 
 to her service, and like the Sphinx with talons 
 tears the lyric from my breast*?" That may 
 sound silly, but it was truly felt. Well, as I 
 have said, the essence and worth of the poems may 
 be debated before another forum. More import- 
 ant to me for the moment is what took place with- 
 in me after Stark had sent them off to the Munich 
 newspaper. 
 
 The strange action to which I was led thereby 
 might have convinced me even then that I had 
 by no means become my old self again. 
 
 A glowing ambition, such as had been wholly 
 remote from me hitherto, caused a swarm of pro- 
 vincial illusions, like mushrooms after a mild 
 rain, to shoot up in me. Poems were to me a 
 divine gift, and I did not doubt that since I had 
 condescended to hand them over for compensa- 
 tion, this compensation must be a royal one. 
 Also I assumed, imperceptibly losing the ground 
 from under my feet, that my poetic productions 
 would have a perfectly immense effect and that 
 in consequence my name would suddenly be men- 
 tioned with the highest admiration "from the 
 Meuse to the Memel, from the Adige to the 
 
 [61]
 
 Belt." ^ To-day it is wholly inexplicable to me 
 how I could soar to such chimerical heights, but 
 I yielded to these chimeras so completely that long 
 before the newspaper had answered I regarded 
 myself as a rich and honor-crowned poet. 
 
 Now since that frightful new vision, that made 
 everything which I had hitherto accepted with in- 
 difference appear ugly to me, had not yet died 
 out again, but had actually directed itself to my 
 own person and its outward appearance, I stepped 
 one day in an exalted mood into the leading cloth- 
 ing-store in Breslau, and actually succeeded, by 
 posing as a well-known author, in getting them to 
 note my address and let me walk off with a new, 
 unpaid-for suit of clothes on my person. 
 
 I do not think I was a conscious swindler at 
 that time. But with this incomprehensible act 
 I had taken the first step on the fateful way that 
 was later on to lead me into prison. 
 
 Rejected with thanks, my poems very soon 
 came back to Master Stark, who, in the extremest 
 state of moral indignation, thundered out by the 
 quarter-hour his rage and his contempt of the stu- 
 
 1 Translator's note. A familiar couplet from the national 
 hymn, "Deutschland, Deutschland über Alles." 
 
 [62]
 
 pid scribbling rabble, but who could not alter the 
 fact. If I assume to-day the opposite case, even 
 if they had paid for my patchwork verse, still 
 I could not have paid for a fourth of my mad 
 purchase with the proceeds. 
 
 [63]
 
 XXVIII 
 
 I MUST now come to Aunt Schwab, which is not 
 possible without a certain effort. In my domestic 
 circle the name is never uttered; I avoid it for 
 my own sake, Father Stark and Marie out of re- 
 gard for me. After all, she was own sister to my 
 good and beloved mother. And when I think 
 how she met her end, and what part I played in 
 the chain of events that led to her* death, I feel 
 each time a wound in my own flesh, with which it 
 is possible to live, strangely enough, in spite of 
 its being incurable. 
 
 The quaint little house she lived in was her 
 property. The comer house, you know, between 
 Ketzelohle and Heretic Hill. Her little rooms 
 were handsomely furnished, only somewhat over- 
 crowded with ancient art-objects which she bought 
 and sold, or had kept as unredeemed security. 
 She was not only a connoisseur in such matters, 
 but even had such a liking for the one or the 
 other object that with all her fondness for money 
 it was not to be bought of her. 
 
 To spend an evening with Aimt Schwab was 
 not uninteresting, both on her own account and 
 
 [64]
 
 because of the people you could see going in and 
 out of her house. One could make studies of 
 human nature there, and she herself had made 
 them copiously. Aunt Schwab was shrewd, had 
 experienced and seen much, and was perhaps bet- 
 ter posted on the scandals of the province, from 
 her own experience, than any other person in 
 town, because high and low entrusted her from 
 time to time with their confidences. For the best- 
 known names of the nobility she evinced not the 
 slightest respect, and I lost mine too when she 
 would draw aside from this or that old family the 
 ostentatious outward draperies they affected. My 
 mother was a simple woman, but Aunt Schwab 
 had a mobile mind and an active thirst for cul- 
 ture. She went to concerts and theatre, and was 
 well posted on the world of music and of actors, 
 and even on politics. 
 
 And she was no stranger in still another world, 
 though it is hard to determine whether she her- 
 self belonged in it or only touched the fringe of 
 it occasionally. It was the light-shunning world 
 of the crooks. She would often prove to me that 
 thievery infested all classes. She would show me 
 respected men in officers' uniforms, of every mill- 
 
 [65]
 
 tary rank, when we were walking the streets to° 
 gether, and would maintain that if someone 
 should trumpet out only the tenth part of what 
 she knew about them, they would have to ex- 
 change the gleaming coat of the king for a very 
 different uniform. She named distinguished 
 ladies who were no whit less clever than the art- 
 fullest shop-lifters. Some who were married 
 to the highest personages, mothers of well- 
 reared children, had the greatest skill in 
 causing diamonds to disappear unobtrusively 
 in their suede gloves, in their mouths, or 
 elsewhere. "I much prefer," aunt would often 
 say, "to have to do with real crooks than with 
 folks of that stamp, who will not admit their 
 rascality in the least. Robbers, forgers, embez- 
 zlers of trust-funds, countesses and baronesses 
 that put into their own pockets half of the pro- 
 ceeds from the sales at their booths in charity- 
 bazaars, consider themselves none the less first and 
 last as the noblest flower of the nation, and stead- 
 fastly feel themselves justified in looking down 
 contemptuously upon their honest and decent fel- 
 lowmen." Well, who knows how far Aunt 
 Schwab was right"? I think she knew these amat- 
 
 [66]
 
 eur crooks no less thoroughly than the profession- 
 als. These she certainly knew. I have proofs 
 of that which are written as it were with blood 
 and iron into the history of my life. 
 
 One of Aunt Schwab's friends was a police 
 commissioner. She declared he had a screw 
 loose, although she had lived on very intimate 
 terms with him, as I believe, for ten years. I am 
 convinced that he had helped her out of many a 
 hole. Really, my aunt and probably the com- 
 missioner also belonged in a certain sense in the 
 very group to which Aunt Schwab preferred the 
 real crooks. Convinced without doubt of their 
 civic righteousness, they nevertheless profited not 
 infrequently by goods that had been criminally 
 obtained. 
 
 I have met at my aunt's house private detec- 
 tives, matrimonial agents, inventors of all sorts 
 of patent articles, bankrupt characters of all 
 sorts, theological candidates who had turned into 
 procurers, officers who had degenerated into card- 
 sharpers and been convicted, schoolmasters who 
 had done time in prison on account of moral 
 derelictions, and others besides. I have met 
 there harlots who made upon me the impression 
 
 [67]
 
 of decent women, and decent women and daugh- 
 ters of good middle-class houses, who would sell 
 themselves as prostitutes for money with which 
 to pay for furs or a ball-dress, to be worn at a 
 festival, let us say, given by the elite in honor of 
 the Crown Prince, perhaps in the parliament 
 building. 
 
 Aunt Schwab, who with her keen understand- 
 ing had seen through the glittering shell of our 
 social conditions, and perceived the canker-worm 
 at the heart of it, had thereby arrived at a some- 
 times terrifying open-mindedness. In almost no 
 respect would she deign to recognize accredited 
 values as such. On the other hand, she could 
 almost read off a man's back his character and 
 his debts. 
 
 You said yourself, my good aunt, that you had 
 scarcely ever in your life been deluded in this re- 
 spect. Then I must have been your only delu- 
 sion. At once your first and last one : for it was 
 a delusion with a fatal issue for you. 
 
 She, whose right hand did not trust her left, 
 had conceived a positively criminal, boundless 
 confidence in me ; such a foolish, blind confidence 
 that even then I was surprised at it and am 
 
 [68]
 
 astonished by it to this very day. How could I 
 fall so low as to reward such confidence so atro- 
 ciously? 
 
 [69]
 
 XXIX 
 
 One day when I went to Aunt Schwab's, not 
 looking like the same person — "clothes make the 
 man I" ^ — in the suit that I suppose was already 
 the fruit of a swindle, and treated her to the same 
 high-flown expressions about wealth and poetic 
 fame that I had used on the clothes-dealer, she 
 was still so wont to hear from me only the sim- 
 plest, purest truth that she swallowed the whole 
 thing. She was as unsuspecting as every one else 
 but myself of the poisonous sting that was buried 
 in me and that would not be festered out in any 
 wise. She had not even learned anything of the 
 crisis that had driven me about without ceasing 
 for almost twenty-four hours. 
 
 Aunt Schwab was my well-wisher. She was 
 interested in everything whereby my advancement 
 in the world could be promoted. And as she had 
 a high opinion of me, as already noted, my emer- 
 gence as a poetic genius seemed to confirm her 
 faith in me in an admittedly rather surprising 
 manner. 
 
 1 Translator's note. Both a proverb and the title of a well- 
 known short story by Gottfried Keller. 
 
 [70]
 
 I told her that a certain Dr. Stark — I was sur- 
 prised at the ease with which I made a Ph. D. 
 out of the master-bookbinder I — a Dr. Stark, then, 
 having found out about the poems which I had 
 been occasionally tossing off for years, had con- 
 gratulated me in inimitable terms and prophesied 
 a brilliant future for me. He was just writing 
 an article in which he would make me known as 
 the newly rising star. A paper in Munich would 
 at his instance print some of my poems and had 
 sent me an advance instalment of 500 marks. I 
 can still see how my aunt's eyes grew bigger at 
 these bold impostures. Finally I detected in her 
 a frankly joyful surprise which almost sobered 
 me for a moment. But the fleeting manifesta- 
 tion of my conscience was washed away by the 
 stream of events. My aunt accorded my com- 
 munications an importance that surprised myself, 
 and immediately fetched a bottle of wine to cele- 
 brate the occasion with me. 
 
 Now while we were emptying the bottle I ob- 
 served that I had become an interesting person- 
 ality to Aunt Schwab, and that she was now sur- 
 veying me with a sort of timid respect. This 
 
 [71]
 
 alteration flattered me so greatly that I, seized 
 by a sort of megalomania, involved myself more 
 deeply in my web of lies and illusions. 
 
 To my horror I recognized that Aunt Schwab 
 had blindly taken on faith even what I had only 
 meant, from my point of view, as a joke. The 
 service of destroying my tissue of falsehoods by 
 a dry jest, such as she had at command on oc- 
 casion, she seemed for this time wholly unable to 
 render me. Instead of being sobered, I found my 
 intoxication only increased both by her words and 
 the unaccustomed drink. On this day she was 
 of a positively unlawful credulity that was fate- 
 ful for us both. 
 
 So I ventured to yield to the temptation of 
 hinting to her darkly about a matrimonial ven- 
 ture which, as I let her guess, the mysterious Dr. 
 Stark had urged upon me. I had seen the girl, 
 spoken with her parents, had been introduced into 
 the wealthy house by him. Of course my future 
 bride had been won over to me by my poems, 
 as she had given me to understand by word and 
 sign. I finally remarked in passing: it was a 
 pity that for lack of adequate means I was still 
 
 [72]
 
 condemned to an all too modest, all too cautious 
 procedure. 
 
 I regarded it as wholly out of the question that 
 this woman, her wits especially sharpened in such 
 matters through her profession, would bite at so 
 crude a bait. But she swallowed it unquestion- 
 ingly, so that surprise and painful terror made an 
 icy chill run down my back. 
 
 On that day I went from my aunt's with a 
 thousand-mark note which she had lent me — a 
 sum that made me dizzy. Till then I had actu- 
 ally never even held such a note in my hands. 
 
 [73]
 
 XXX 
 
 Every step in life is fateful, hence I had rather 
 not apply that term to this day, and especially to 
 that step and that second which took me out of 
 aunt's house into the street. 
 
 There brooded over the city one of those burn- 
 ing summer nights that are not rare in Breslau. 
 
 As I now stepped into the street, I heard my 
 name called by a man who was going into my 
 aunt's house. It was a certain Vigottschinsky, a 
 man of unfailingly neat dress and of youthful ap- 
 pearance, whose age was however not easy to de- 
 termine. He went in and out at my aunt's, as I 
 knew, and was well liked by her, doubtless by 
 reason of his jolly nature. To this day I do 
 not know the nature of the relation between them. 
 Only this is certain, that obscure business dealings 
 played a part in it. 
 
 Vigottschinsky then, for that was the man's 
 name, spoke to me and asked whether my aunt 
 were at home. I said yes and expected that he 
 would go right up to see her. Instead of that he 
 went on to ask, as I was proceeding, whether he 
 might walk a little way with me. 
 
 [74]
 
 It is not at all clear to me whether he had cer- 
 tain designs upon me even at that time. 
 
 Vigottschinsky's manner was engaging, like 
 that of all the Viennese. I must not be surprised 
 if he sought to make my closer acquaintance. 
 Old Miss Schwab always spoke of me in the 
 highest terms, and he was certain that no other 
 than myself would be the rich lady's heir. 
 
 [751
 
 XXXI 
 
 These words, and the entire meeting, affected 
 me not unpleasantly. The false exaltation in 
 my breast had not yet gone stale, and the process 
 of self-deception and self-befuddling was in full 
 swing. It suited me to find a person towards 
 whom I could go on playing the part of a made 
 man. 
 
 Vigottschinsky proposed that we should drink 
 a glass of beer in one of the gardens along the 
 promenade. 
 
 So there we sat together till midnight, and 
 never wearied of pouring out our hearts to each 
 other. 
 
 I have never had any friends, and the pleasure, 
 nay the happiness of such an exchange of confi- 
 dences was hitherto unknown to me. Moreover, 
 Vigottschinsky was without question a taking 
 personality, whose advances flattered me. 
 
 He had taken extensive journeys, knew the 
 great seaports from Hamburg down to Naples, 
 and knew Vienna, Berlin, London, Paris, and 
 Rome. I shall never forget how fascinatingly he 
 could talk. 
 
 [76]
 
 All told, it was a wonderful summer night be- 
 neath the soft rustle of the chestnut-tree tops in 
 the illuminated garden, festively enlivened by 
 gay people, with the lonesome cries of the swans 
 floating over from the city moat. In one of the 
 other gardens near by a band was playing, and 
 the music reached our ears in muffled tones. 
 
 Vigottschinsky was really astonished and much 
 interested to learn of my literary bent and my 
 first successes as a poet, which I probably set 
 forth to him in a considerably more fantastic 
 shape than to my aunt. It came out in this 
 connection that he was from my point of view as- 
 tonishingly well read. From him I heard for the 
 first time the name of Dostoievsky, which from 
 that time on is inseparable from my destiny. 
 
 In this night the fantastic structure which I 
 had erected above and around me underwent a 
 marked consolidation. 
 
 It was the sweet wound in my soul, the elegant 
 suit I had on, my first friend, the atmosphere of 
 self-deception and false ostentation in which I 
 had this day advanced so successfully at Aunt 
 Schwab's, it was my fancied poetic glory and the 
 faith of my aunt, the faith of Vigottschinsky in 
 
 [77]
 
 it, the perfume of strange lands that Vigottschin- 
 sky brought with him, it was the summer night, 
 the wholly unwonted enveloping flood of light 
 and festivity, the equally unwonted drink, and 
 by no means least of all the thousand-mark-note 
 in my pocket — it was all this together that com- 
 pleted my befogging and intoxication. 
 
 It is inevitable in such nocturnal sessions that 
 sooner or later the conversation will turn upon the 
 relations of the sexes. Of course this is probably 
 the favorite topic anyway. But in a Breslau 
 beer-garden, during a hot summer night, it might 
 only be avoided by one who was blind and a deaf- 
 mute besides. After all, it is here that the world 
 of prostitutes and their doubtful hangers-on min- 
 gles with the populace, and you see the flower of 
 the city daughters, in their light-colored summer 
 dresses, and the provocative finery and display 
 of the local demi-monde, mingling in a motley 
 throng. 
 
 Of course Vigottschinsky and I were also at- 
 tentive to this throng during our conversation. 
 We were constantly being attracted by some new 
 apparition. Vigottschinsky did not dream of 
 the divine miracle of purity and loveliness with 
 
 [78]
 
 which I secretly compared each one of these ap- 
 paritions, whereupon I hurled them down into 
 Hades. 
 
 Vigottschinsky was informally accosted by sev- 
 eral magnificent ladies. But he seemed not to be 
 in the requisite mood and to prefer my company 
 to theirs. And they on their part seemed to know 
 him sufficiently to respect his whim. 
 
 He spoke very slightingly of them. 
 
 Yet by his own account he must have lived 
 the most licentious life. 
 
 His accounts were of a shamelessness that 
 frightened me. Orgies in which he had osten- 
 sibly participated in houses of ill fame were 
 connected with incidents that can-not be nar- 
 rated, so absolutely bestial and animal and rut- 
 tish. 
 
 He must have been positively a frightful 
 scourge to the harlots that he took into his 
 service. And of course that came to light in the 
 court proceedings. That is also revealed in his 
 expenditure of the plunder, which he squandered 
 in a few wild nights. 
 
 I never saw him again after the announcement 
 of the sentence. As the king did not exercise his 
 
 [79]
 
 pardoning power, he was executed on a Monday 
 at five o'clock in the morning. 
 
 Well, I certainly cut a despicable figure before 
 him as I raved about an unnamed ideal of divine 
 beauty and innocence, the original of which, by 
 the way, I naturally did not betray. 
 
 I cannot say that he showed any disdain or 
 scorn in face of my eulogies. Instead he sighed, 
 as I remember very distinctly, and said that if I 
 had the faintest hope of attaining such an object 
 of my love I should be the most fortunate of men. 
 He could no longer count on such bliss. As I 
 view things today, I am astonished that I found 
 it possible, in the presence of the vile and deeply 
 depraved man that his own erotic confessions, 
 even at that time, unquestionably made him ap- 
 pear to be, to lift the veil from a sacred secret 
 even as far as I did, and to respond to his bestial 
 confessions by the prostitution of my spiritual 
 shrine. 
 
 Before we went, I changed the thousand-mark 
 note. What I had eaten I could easily have 
 paid for without it. But I could not resist the 
 itching desire to put on airs with my wealth. 
 
 The adventures with Aunt Schwab and Vigott- 
 
 [80]
 
 schinsky took place before Master Stark had got 
 my poems back. This failure, which he ascribed 
 to the initial blindness of men in the face of 
 everything new and great, was unable either to 
 eradicate my conceit or to sober me in any way. 
 
 I felt at some moments, in fact mostly, that 
 something within me must be out of plumb. 
 Once again I was as if in that dream where you 
 see splendid and paradisean landscapes, go stroll- 
 ing among them with rapture and astonishment, 
 and still cannot free yourself of some persist- 
 ently gnawing torment. 
 
 My good mother noticed of course, as she told 
 me later, a marked change in me. I had become 
 silent towards her. I no longer revealed to her, 
 as formerly, all the stirrings of my soul. I went 
 out without saying whither, which I had never 
 done before. As from a great distance I would 
 sometimes see her eyes fixed on me, questioning, 
 thoughtful, distressed, but even such glances had 
 no more power over me. 
 
 And those other glances had no power over me, 
 that Marie Stark directed at me in similar spirit. 
 
 An instinct told me that I must give her and 
 Master Stark no inkling of the scope of my poetic 
 
 [81]
 
 presumption, and still less of the imagined mat- 
 rimonial project. They saw that I was altered, 
 that I dressed foppishly and expensively, and 
 that even in my way of life I no longer wished 
 to be the retiring Philistine I had been. I told 
 them that I and Aunt Schwab had plans that 
 were already bringing me in some money, but 
 that would in time bring me a fortune. In a 
 similar way I tried to make plausible to my 
 mother the new lavishness that naturally seemed 
 strange to her. 
 
 Even at that time Master Stark and his 
 daughter revealed that trait of character to which 
 I owe my deliverance. One may simply desig- 
 nate it as loyalty. It was based upon an affec- 
 tion for my person which was expressed with 
 equal warmth and constancy by father and daugh- 
 ter. It was motherly in the daughter, fatherly in 
 the old man, and in both it was with a degree of 
 feeling that bears and hopes and understands 
 everything, and is at all times willing to share any 
 sorrow, to shoulder any burden, to make any sacri- 
 fice. To be sure, I did not at that time get be- 
 yond a vague feeling of the treasure that I pos- 
 sessed in these two people. 
 
 [82]
 
 I was actually suffering already from an ar- 
 rogance that made me see in them creatures who 
 were far beneath me, to whom I must condescend- 
 As for my little municipal post, I very soon 
 found that too beneath my dignity. I was slack 
 in my work and unpunctual besides. When I 
 got a wigging one day on this account, I flared 
 up haughtily and declared that I did not need 
 to wear myself out for starvation-wages in the 
 service of a city that was rolling in wealth. 
 That meant my dismissal. 
 
 Nevertheless the affair was finally straightened 
 out by my office chief, who was a well-wisher of 
 mine. 
 
 [83]
 
 XXXII 
 
 I COME now once more to the principal thing, 
 to the idol that I worshipped and that had 
 brought my character and my life to derailment. 
 I still kept struggling against its power, but with- 
 out being able to escape from its grasp, and yet 
 it tyrannized over me. 
 
 Every evening and every morning I would 
 promenade around the Ring for at least an hour, 
 back and forth in front of Emmo Harlan's house. 
 
 I further attracted attention to myself by buy- 
 ing something in the hardware-store at least every 
 other day. 
 
 Once I saw the proprietor going through the 
 store, recognized in him the gentleman whom I 
 had seen at the window, and made him a deep 
 bow. 
 
 There were thirty to forty salesmen in the 
 room, and it seemed to me that they were laugh- 
 ing at me. But I did not care. 
 
 You cannot know, I thought to myself, how 
 terribly serious this matter is for me, and how I 
 am directed to this threshold by the inexorable 
 finger of God, to find here either life or death. 
 
 [84]
 
 Laugh! I laugh no less. The courage to live 
 is the courage to die. 
 
 Of course I sought in every possible way to 
 meet the little daughter. I knew the times when 
 she drove out, and would always make a deep 
 bow when the little wicker carriage drove past 
 me. The powerful instigation of my Daemon 
 to run after it, as I had done the first time, I was 
 always able to overcome. 
 
 However, he betrayed me into other almost 
 equally foolish acts. 
 
 When the beautiful child, admired and stared 
 at by everyone, strolled around the promenade 
 with her governess or with her distinguished 
 parents, leading a white greyhound on a red rib- 
 bon, I was helplessly impelled to meet her four 
 or five times and to perform each time the ridic- 
 ulous ceremony of a deeply devcfted salution. 
 It was on a Sunday that I was observed in such 
 a repeated salutation by Vigottschinsky, who 
 then unexpectedly hooked his arm into mine from 
 behind. He frankly confessed that he was now 
 up to my dodges, and he must admit that there 
 was no fault to find with my taste. 
 
 Since my secret was now irretrievably be- 
 
 [85]
 
 trayed, it would have done little good if I had 
 denied it. So I resolved to be frank, now that I 
 had the confessor I had wanted, and to reveal 
 my passion to its full extent. 
 
 I also renewed my lying assertion that I had 
 met with the favor of the beautiful child, and 
 was well liked by her parents. Vigottschinsky 
 hastened to take his oath that this had been evi- 
 dent at the first glance. 
 
 Again we went into one of the beer-gardens, 
 this time at midday. 
 
 [86]
 
 XXXIII 
 
 On this day the sluices gave way, and I reveled 
 in pouring out my heart, in the confession of my 
 insane passion. This was a deliverance, a relief 
 that had never hitherto been vouchsafed me. 
 I found or thought I found in Vigottschinsky a 
 man who not only knew how to honor my con- 
 fidence, but had the deepest understanding of my 
 distress. 
 
 I asked him on his conscience whether he 
 thought there was any hope that I might ever 
 possess this creature, without whom I was unable 
 to live. And I was overjoyed when he uncon- 
 ditionally affirmed it. 
 
 He then confirmed me in what I already 
 thought I knew, that for me everything depended 
 either on attaining distinction as an author by 
 some lucky stroke, or else on getting a fortune. 
 But the latter was probably the easier and more 
 obvious method, and he would advise me to pur- 
 sue it. 
 
 He mentioned to me a number of cases where 
 a single good idea had made its discoverer a rich 
 man over night. Such ideas he had often had 
 
 [87]
 
 himself, but they had mostly been stolen from 
 him by so-called friends and had brought riches 
 not to him but to them. 
 
 After we had eaten, and as we still went on 
 drinking, we fell into an endless building of air- 
 castles, and both of us grew so excited over it 
 that we swore eternal friendship. We stood up, 
 drank solemnly with linked arms, to the astonish- 
 ment of the people who sat round about us, and 
 even sealed our union with the customary kiss of 
 brotherhood. 
 
 Hereupon we shook h^nds, expressed our joy 
 at having found each other, and mutually pledged 
 our word that neither would undertake anything 
 without the other. 
 
 With that our relations had naturally taken 
 on a different aspect. We were now friends, in- 
 deed brothers, and could be frank with each other 
 in everything. 
 
 Vigottschinsky said, "All right, we are friends, 
 and we want to make money. We want, let's 
 say, to make money by commerce. We must 
 register and advertise a firm, quite unobtrusively 
 if you like. Or we'll simply advertise and not 
 have the firm registered. We'll rent a little 
 
 [88]
 
 office and stock up with some article or other that 
 people are apt to fall for: suppose it's a hair- 
 wash or a mouth-wash or a mineral water. It 
 could just as well be a remedy for debility or a 
 specific to produce a handsome bust, or anything 
 else. Business is business. A real merchant 
 won't shrink from any article that brings in 
 money. We'll advertise and have the money 
 sent in advance. In this way, if all goes well, 
 you get hold of some capital. The advertising 
 section of the newspaper is a keyboard that con- 
 jures up ducats instead of music if you know how 
 to play on it. Then when you have the capital, 
 you take maybe two percent of it, have your ar- 
 ticle manufactured, and ship it out. If the peo- 
 ple have to wait a bit, that does no harm." 
 
 I made some objections to this. 
 
 "Oh shucks," he continued, "every druggist 
 makes a hundred percent profit, and there are 
 absurd earnings in the bank business. Every 
 cigarette-manufacturer wants to get out seventy 
 or eighty percent. In business life you can't be 
 squeamish." 
 
 Two thirds of my thousand-mark-note had been 
 spent by this time. I had informed my new 
 
 [89]
 
 friend of its provenance. Now when I called to 
 his attention the fact that advertising itself re- 
 quired some capital, he declared instantly and 
 without reflection that Aunt Schwab must ad- 
 vance it. 
 
 Thus was laid on that day the foundation for 
 the conspiracy against her to which she fell a 
 victim. 
 
 [90]
 
 XXXIV 
 
 The plan seemed at first not so perfidious as it 
 turned out later on. Vigottschinsky knew from 
 me how much influence I had with Aunt Schwab, 
 and I knew that he too had been establishing 
 himself more and more solidly in her confidence. 
 I have already said that I am not wholly clear as 
 to the character of his relations with her. 
 
 Well, let us rather say: I am clear. 
 
 I spare nobody, because I must serve the truth 
 in this book as best as I can, and besides, there 
 is here no question of good and evil. 
 
 I do not pronounce sentence upon myself ; how 
 should I do so by others^ 
 
 Vigottschinsky, who was a cynic through and 
 through, had evoked Aunt Schwab's eroticism, 
 perhaps intentionally, and had left it by no means 
 unused. 
 
 So if he and I joined forces against my aunt, 
 we should represent a power over her which she 
 herself had granted us, and for which she was 
 probably no match. And we already had so 
 much confidence in each other as hard-boiled 
 
 [91]
 
 knights of industry, that we unreservedly ad- 
 mitted this state of affairs to ourselves and based 
 our plan of campaign on it. 
 
 [92]
 
 XXXV 
 
 I SHOULD be to this day the same diabolical 
 scoundrel that I must have appeared to be then, 
 if I had in those days had my feet on the ground. 
 But the power of Eros had detached me from the 
 earth and held me fettered m a fixed immaterial 
 sphere. Hence I can say today with a good con- 
 science that if I did sink into the abyss of crime, 
 it was due to no really earthly motive and hence 
 no base one. 
 
 To deeds of drunkenness the courts, perhaps 
 wrongly, allow the familiar mitigating circum- 
 stances. A man is not held for the blind and 
 perhaps bloody deed that he commits in a fever 
 that is physically proven to have risen to 104 de- 
 grees and more. Such a man is not responsible. 
 Was I at the time responsible? 
 
 Such a bewitchingly beautiful child as Veron- 
 ica Harlan, on the strength of what I could have 
 confessed as to her influence over me, would have 
 been taken to the public square in the dark ages 
 and burned as a witch. 
 
 I mean by this to say no more than that the 
 power of love seemed supernatural in bygone 
 
 [93]
 
 days. What do you suppose I should have said 
 to my confessor, in the days of which the wonder- 
 ful Gothic architecture of the Breslau city hall 
 bears witness, and especially the whipping-post 
 before it, about the influence of the hardware- 
 dealer's daughter over me*? 
 
 "Your Reverence, I was a peaceful person and 
 I have lost all peace, I was as industrious and as- 
 siduous as an ant and now I have become an idler, 
 I was as unexacting as a lame cab-horse and now 
 I have become a libertine and a glutton. I used 
 to love my mother more than anything: if she 
 should die to-day, I should not need to brush 
 away a tear. I used to love God and heaven, and 
 fear the devil and his hell; but tell me to-day 
 where Veronica Harlan is, and though she dwell 
 in hell, I will renounce God and heaven for ever 
 more. 
 
 "From the moment when I first saw the girl 
 dates this alteration. I have never touched Ve- 
 ronica's finger, or exchanged so much as a word 
 with her, and yet whether far or near she has ab- 
 solute power over me. Remote in the flesh, she 
 is nevertheless everywhere present to me. She 
 floats in through my open window by night and 
 
 [94]
 
 glides with equal ease through the thickest wall. 
 She causes me torments which are not readily de- 
 scribed, and raptures which can be described no 
 better. She scorches my brain, she burns my 
 liver. She makes me mad. Make the witch 
 take pity on me, or I renounce eternal bliss, and 
 you will cut down my hanged body from the 
 door-post." 
 
 After such a confession the Inquisitor would 
 not long have hesitated to deliver Veronica Har- 
 lan over to the torture. 
 
 Either I had to die, or to find ways and means 
 of winning Veronica Harlan and so securing de- 
 liverance. But the ways I had hitherto trod, 
 with and without Vigottschinsky, were of an ex- 
 travagant nature. That they were in reality not 
 practicable I did not see, because the monstrous il- 
 lusory power of love had taken from me all sense 
 of the power of reality^ 
 
 1951
 
 XXXVI 
 
 It was fast approaching midnight, and Vigot- 
 tschinsky and I were still sitting harmoniously 
 together and making our plans. Of course we 
 had long ceased to sit in the beer-garden, and had 
 changed our quarters several times. We had 
 gone over from beer to wine, because our con- 
 fidence in early and large gains rose from minute 
 to minute and I therefore did not need to put 
 any value on saving still further the rest of my 
 thousand-mark-note. 
 
 It might have served me as a warning that this 
 day had an excessively strange ending, and in 
 the end not a good one. But I kept seeing noth- 
 ing but my goal. It was, as we know, a goal in 
 the clouds. 
 
 We entered at about half-past eleven a cer- 
 tain centre of night-life, to which Vigottschinsky 
 had introduced me because it was the meeting- 
 place of the handsomest and costliest prostitutes. 
 It was called a cafe-restaurant, and one could 
 drink in it coffee, either iced or with milk, tea, 
 chocolate, Pilsen beer, every sort of brandy, and 
 
 [96]
 
 every sort of wine up to the best French cham- 
 pagne. Also there were suppers served at many 
 tables. 
 
 It was the first time I had ever seen such a gen- 
 teel harlots' resort, gleaming and sparkling with 
 gilt tapestries, mirrors, and huge chandeliers hung 
 with glass prisms. It is then not to be wondered 
 at if the flood of light, the evening gowns of the 
 ladies, the tuxedos of the gentlemen, the waiters 
 in elegant dress-suits, the dazzling white napery 
 and shirt-fronts, at first intimidated me consid- 
 erably. I even wondererd for a moment whether 
 they might not show us the door. This was un- 
 fortunately not the case. 
 
 It did not take twenty minutes to get used to 
 things, and I saw myself being served by a dis- 
 tinguished gentleman in full dress, who treated 
 me like a minister of state. 
 
 I was really astonished at the progress I had 
 already made. 
 
 Vigottschinsky unobtrusively called my atten- 
 tion to certain rules of propriety to be observed 
 here: that you must not put your knife in your 
 mouth, and that you didn't tap on your glass to 
 
 [97]
 
 call the waiter; but yet he said that nobody could 
 possibly detect that I had not yet mingled in such 
 circles. 
 
 I thought of mother and our apartment, and 
 shuddered. I betrayed in my heart simple Mas- 
 ter Stark and his daughter, thinking that they 
 were now after all not the right associates for 
 me. Dear father, dear Marie, you have forgiven 
 me for this a thousand times. 
 
 Four or five gipsies made with various fiddles 
 and a cembalo some wonderful music, which 
 lulled you as it were into a blissful intoxication. 
 I at once resolved that on this day I should not 
 mind the three hundred marks that I still had in 
 my pocket. 
 
 I'll not be shabby here, was my utterly silly 
 reflection, for I am taking my first steps on the 
 parquet-floor of the elegant world, which is also 
 Veronica's world (I had now learned her name 
 and was almost always whispering it). 
 
 But perhaps I was not so wrong after all. 
 Among the gentlemen there were those whose dis- 
 tinguished origin could be clearly seen. And it 
 later transpired that even the son of the president 
 
 [98]
 
 of the provincial council was occupying the table 
 in the corner with his ladies. 
 
 When I said at the beginning that it was 
 really too bad that we had not been induced in 
 one way or another, directly upon our entrance, 
 to turn around, I was thinking of the experience 
 that awaited me here. There were clouds gath- 
 ering there for a storm that even in retrospect 
 brings my heart up into my throat. 
 
 [99]
 
 XXXVII 
 
 There was a table there in an alcove at which 
 quantities of champagne were being drunk. 
 There were six persons sitting around it, three 
 gentlemen and three ladies. They were excited 
 and never stopped laughing, you might say. Yet 
 although they were in something more than high 
 spirits, their merriment did not for a long time 
 transgress the bounds of what is customary in any 
 decent place. 
 
 I noted that Vigottschinsky was in a certain 
 state of agitation and was interested in one of the 
 ladies at that table, who had her back to us. She 
 was a type, he told me, such as he had only once 
 encountered in a young girl, and that had been a 
 Circassian. 
 
 I looked that way and was likewise attracted in 
 an indefinable way by the vision, which I only 
 saw from behind. She had something strong and 
 youth-like about her, one might say something 
 Appollonic. But you found yourself thinking 
 that this girl, perhaps not so long ago, might have 
 been riding half-wild horses without saddle or 
 bridle on the steppes of Asia, 
 [loo]
 
 We had eaten such a supper as I had hitherto 
 not even dreamed of. Finally Vigottschinsky 
 ordered champagne, though only a German brand, 
 which I of course had to pay for, as well as for 
 a great sea-crab he had ordered. I must now 
 learn to know all these things, he told me. 
 
 Engrossed afresh in crab, champagne, chim- 
 eras, and everything else imaginable, I had paid 
 no further attention to the table and girl just 
 mentioned, and hence had not remarked what Vi- 
 gottschinsky suddenly communicated to me as 
 quietly as possible. 
 
 He had kept the girl incessantly in view, and 
 claimed to have observed that she had looked 
 around at me several times, and when I tried with 
 the utmost sincerity to talk him out of it, he swore 
 that it was so, and that I could pride myself on 
 the conquest I had made. 
 
 I wanted to speak of other things, but he 
 would not desist, saying that there were even 
 stirrings of jealousy at the table in question. 
 
 By this time it was probably an hour after 
 midnight. Fresh arrivals hardly came in any 
 more, or if they did, it was gentlemen whose hats 
 were pushed far back, who talked loudly and un- 
 
 [101]
 
 ceremoniously and whose companions did like- 
 wise, or at times even shrieked quite discordantly. 
 
 At the tables in the restaurant, too, there was 
 likewise greater freedom and vivacity now. 
 
 On the strength of Vigottschinsky's assertions I 
 could hardly help trying to pick up this and that 
 from the conversation at the champagne-table — 
 only there were hardly any but champagne-tables 
 now! And it was really the fact that the Cir- 
 cassian's beautiful wrists, at first only half in 
 jest, were being tightly held by her elegant escort, 
 to prevent her from looking around. Yet she 
 turned her Apoll ine head on its proud neck far 
 enough around to look me in the face. 
 
 Thereupon her partner, the elegant gentleman, 
 was ridiculed by the rest of the table. 
 
 A thrill passed through me when she looked at 
 me. But I was so infinitely far from taking any 
 account of an event like this that I gazed quite 
 blankly into the beautiful eyes of the girl ; I was 
 indeed smitten by her beauty, wholly strange to 
 me and of a primitive exuberance, but I was still 
 far from taking any further interest in her. 
 
 Vigottschinsky and I had studiously continued 
 our conversation. When I looked up after a 
 [102]
 
 time, the elegant partner of the Circassian had 
 turned his chair half around towards our table 
 and was staring at me with scornful challenge. 
 
 People were already beginning to notice the 
 proceedings. 
 
 Now the Circassian tried on her gallant what 
 he had vainly tried on her. But she had as little 
 success in drawing him back into the circle as he 
 had had in restoring her exclusive interest to his 
 companions. Then she hit upon the idea of hold- 
 ing her dainty handkerchief before his eyes. An- 
 grily he thrust it aside and rose from his chair 
 with a quick jerk. I can still see how his hand- 
 some face, flushed with wine, grew alarmingly 
 
 grey. 
 
 What happened now, and with the speed of 
 lightning, was so surprising to every one, and to 
 me no less, that I cannot recall ever having felt 
 as helpless as I did then. 
 
 For before I had made up my mind as to the 
 best way of taking the edge off this most baseless, 
 silly comedy of jealousy, the mad Circassian was 
 suddenly beside me and laughing as she gave me 
 —who had jumped up in alarm— three, four, 
 five, six hearty kisses. 
 
 [103]
 
 XXXVIII 
 
 It will have been guessed whom I had met in 
 this way and at such a place. It was revealed, in 
 a certain sense, that my sister was still the same 
 wilful and independent girl as before, and that 
 she still had her heart in the right place. How- 
 ever, her mad conduct caused me great embarrass- 
 ment in the fact that I had met her at all in this 
 quarter. 
 
 But at any rate our relationship was now 
 cleared up to the satisfaction of her jealous lover, 
 and we, Vigottschinsky and I, were induced to 
 take seats in the alcove with the three couples. 
 
 The conversation at their table had all at once 
 grown quite frosty. The spirit of the cham- 
 pagne seemed to have evaporated. The touch- 
 ing reunion of brother and sister made every one 
 thoughtful. 
 
 Then too, I must have cut a sorry figure despite 
 my ready-made suit. 
 
 And now my sister Melanie, too, had suddenly 
 
 lost her wild mood, and shrank into her shell 
 
 in my presence like a schoolgirl. The expression 
 
 on her face showed embarrassment, almost timid- 
 
 [104]
 
 ity. My presence seemed for the first time to 
 make her conscious that she had become a demi- 
 mondaine of city-wide repute. This fact I was 
 also having to digest. 
 
 She wanted to ask after mother, I could see. 
 She wanted to ask me how I had come by this 
 friend and into this resort. She was ashamed 
 of her company and of her lover, she would have 
 done anything to get rid of them. 
 
 No one will be surprised that this group was 
 not exactly pleased with the sudden turn of 
 affairs, which it also felt, and that the one who 
 had caused it was surveyed with rather ill-favored 
 glances. 
 
 My situation was certainly of a sort to en- 
 courage repentance. And I really had, in this re- 
 sort and in this circle, as I sat beside my sister, 
 the feeling of being pilloried. I should have 
 liked to steal away urmoticed, or still rather to be 
 herding sheep, perhaps, somewhere in Turkey a 
 thousand miles away. I had the feeling of be- 
 ing leprous, scabious, a pariah, whereas shortly 
 before I had felt as if I were already admitted 
 to full membership in the upper ten thousand. 
 There came upon me, perhaps for the first time 
 [>o5]
 
 in my life, a fury against the class whose sons 
 were brought up with horses and servants, gover- 
 nesses and mistresses, French cookery and costly 
 wines, and could buy with money the body of my 
 sister. 
 
 I must have appeared not quite kosher to those 
 around me. I felt dangerous forces rising in 
 me. It was as if my shame were turning every 
 minute more and more into bitterness and silent 
 rage. There was a danger, and it was recog- 
 nized by my sister, that some sort of kindling 
 spark might fall into my soul and cause an ex- 
 plosion. 
 
 My sister recognized too late that it would 
 have been better for her and for me not to have 
 made herself known to me. I told myself, to be 
 sure, that I must make every effort to keep my 
 feelings in check, but I could not prevail upon 
 myself to accept from the lover who was buying 
 her the glass of champagne that he handed to me. 
 Nor could I avoid turning pale in the act, and 
 failing to evade his glance as I had previously 
 done during his fit of jealousy. 
 
 Strangely enough, I was also ashamed of Vigot- 
 
 [106]
 
 tschinsky. I found it natural, and yet it vexed 
 me, that they all edged away from him, as it 
 were, with their looks. The three gentlemen 
 might have been barristers, lieutenants in mufti 
 or something similar. They had waxed mus- 
 taches and wore their hair parted in the middle. 
 
 Although I had to gulp down a tangle of emo- 
 tions and thus had enough to do to look after my- 
 self, yet I saw that Vigottschinsky was greatly 
 taken aback at the turn of affairs with his Cir- 
 cassian. And I noted that he sought my sister's 
 eye. It flashed through my mind at once that if 
 this went on it might very well give rise to a fresh 
 complication of jealousy. Not long after, how- 
 ever, I also intercepted a strangely searching 
 glance which my sister was directing at Vigott- 
 schinsky. 
 
 I had been through not a little on this Sunday. 
 My nerves had been played upon violently and 
 unbrokenly, like so many strings, beginning at 
 the encounter with Veronica Harlan and her grey- 
 hound, through all the planning and resolving to 
 the oath of friendship, and in the wandering from 
 beer-hall to beer-hall, from wine-room to wine- 
 [107]
 
 room. The meeting with my sister had almost 
 snapped them all in twain. But now the entire 
 instrument threatened to go to pieces at the 
 slightest additional touch. 
 
 [108]
 
 XXXIX 
 
 Suffice it to say that the danger of a conflict 
 which lay in the tense and sultry atmosphere of 
 that evening was not avoided. I should be re- 
 luctant to enter into the description of ugly de- 
 tails. I have spent a beautiful autumn forenoon 
 in my orchard and garden, have shaken my plum- 
 tree, and performed all sorts of quiet rustic tasks. 
 How far I am now from the repulsive entangle- 
 ments of that time, which wound about my feet 
 like hellish brambles because I had my eyes not on 
 the earth, but directed to a divine and distant 
 star. But I will continue my report neverthe- 
 less.. 
 
 All the next day I lay a-bed with a terrible 
 seedy feeling. My deeply dejected, in truth in- 
 consolable, mother nursed me in silence and with 
 a face that seemed to me, when I secretly ob- 
 served it, to be turned to stone. 
 
 Not only because of the shooting pains in my 
 head, which were due to the liquors I had drunk, 
 did she make cold compresses for me, but also 
 because I had a bruise over my left eye. 
 
 It resulted from a nocturnal brawl in front of 
 [109]
 
 the Vincent House, and in particular was due to 
 a cowardly and underhanded blow from the fist 
 of my sister's lover. 
 
 With that obstinate tenacity which is at tioies 
 characteristic of the drunken, I tried to induce 
 my sister not to go with her gallant, but to go 
 with me to our mother's. For this I was called 
 by the elegant blackguard the most disgusting 
 names, which would have been appropriate if I 
 had played a part diametrically opposite to my 
 present one, i. e., had accepted money for bring- 
 ing my sister to him. I was walking along before 
 him in silence with Vigottschinsky, when he sud- 
 denly dealt me from behind a tremendous blow 
 on the cheek with the palm of his right hand ; that 
 was the beginning of the fight. I am not strong, 
 but I know that the next minute, strangely 
 enough, the villainous, cowardly scoundrel was 
 lying on his back, and that I was kneeling on him 
 with my hands at his throat. As I could not do 
 this indefinitely, and also did not wish to throttle 
 him, I declared myself ready to let him go, on 
 his word of honor that he would keep the peace. 
 This word of honor he solemnly gave me before 
 the whole group, which was still together. Never- 
 [no]
 
 theless, at the very moment when I took my 
 hands away he drove his fist into my face, bellow- 
 ing; "You damned curl" 
 
 It is a wonder that I did not lose my eye. 
 
 [hi]
 
 XL 
 
 I SEE that I have gone into details again after 
 all. Let them stand, although they are without 
 significance for the whole story. It cannot be 
 helped that if you occupy yourself with a matter 
 in any way at all, it will to a certain extent get 
 the mastery over you. 
 
 After a relatively short time I had recovered 
 and could pursue the realization of our plans 
 with Vigottschinsky. 
 
 My mother had not succeeded in getting out 
 of me what had really taken place the day be- 
 fore, and how I had got into my terrible condi- 
 tion. Nor did she subsequently succeed in whee- 
 dling out of me anything about my secret love, 
 nor about my business plans. Vigottschinsky 
 called on me while I was in bed. My mother 
 said she felt a horror of him, and I could see 
 that she was not simply talking. 
 
 I calmed her and assured her that she would 
 one day realize what a lucky chance it was for 
 us that I had found this man. He and I de- 
 bated for a long time as to the manner in which 
 
 [112]
 
 we should wrest from Aunt Schwab the working 
 capital we required; but as to this matter also I 
 left mother completely in the dark. 
 
 It may be asked whether the adventure with 
 my sister must not have led to my conversion, 
 whether the blow at my eye must not have waked 
 me out of my terrible dream-life. That was not 
 the case. The condition which I had experienced, 
 and into which I had been cast during the after- 
 math of my debauch, was really only an intensi- 
 fication of the suffering I had had to endure, every 
 day and every hour since my first sight of little 
 Veronica, in being deprived of her, banished from 
 her presence. Unless I could cherish and foster 
 at least a hope of one day possessing her, life had 
 become a hell to me in any case. Since this hope, 
 which alone kept me alive, could not be nourished 
 by reality — and it certainly could not — it had to 
 go on twining itself about illusions. 
 
 Certainly I showed myself a stranger to the 
 world, provincial and without judgment, in find- 
 ing it possible to believe that a poor municipal 
 clerk, whose sister was a woman of the streets, 
 even if he did secure some little fortune, could 
 
 [113]
 
 have had any success in his suit for the hand of 
 the only daughter of wealthy and respected peo- 
 ple; and to that extent my madness did have 
 a very real and very natural foundation. 
 
 [>H]
 
 XLI 
 
 The step which Vigottschinsky and I planned 
 to take with regard to Aunt Schwab was success- 
 ful. It is fairly indifferent how we imposed upon 
 her, and what we made her believe. I have 
 already told how she had displayed with respect to 
 my matrimonial project a credulity that was in- 
 comprehensible to me, how she had put stock in 
 my poetic illusions and other chimeras. If I look 
 for explanations today, I find several. She had 
 gained her unshakable confidence in me at a time 
 when I thoroughly justified it. She knew me as 
 sober and cautious from the assistance I had pre- 
 viously given her in business affairs. She revered 
 in me a spirit of scrupulous uprightness which to 
 be sure at the same time disquieted her and caused 
 her to grant me only a partial insight into her 
 business. 
 
 In the attempt to unravel the entanglements of 
 deceit, one gets lost in the labyrinth of its eternal 
 obscurities. So for example I thought that my 
 aunt was purposely using my unsuspecting hon- 
 esty to deceive herself and others. Really, she 
 had formed her judgment of me once for all, 
 
 ["5]
 
 and had filed the documents away, so to speak. 
 The riddle I now presented she approached from 
 the old standpoint, though it had now become a 
 false one. Besides, my good aunt knew very 
 well that she had sunk below the social plane of 
 her parents. But callouses had formed over this 
 sore spot in her consciousness, and under such 
 circumstances, as is well known, they are doubly 
 thick. Accordingly my aunt thought herself 
 convinced, in spite of all, that she could move in 
 the highest society on equal terms, wherefore she 
 was about as favorably affected by my advance 
 in that direction as one morphium-addict by the 
 confession of another one. After all, my aunt 
 had a true and genuine respect for intellect. 
 Although she unscrupulously exploited to the ut- 
 most painters, actors, musicians, singers, young 
 litterateurs, and so on, yet they were the object 
 of her frequently almost idolatrous admiration, 
 whereof an autograph-album which she possessed, 
 with many famous names in it, gave clear evi- 
 dence. Hence she took it as an accomplished 
 fact when her nephew declared that he would 
 presently move upward into these envied circles, 
 all the more that this would at once be balm to 
 
 [116]
 
 her wound and nourishment to her presump- 
 tion. 
 
 We had then, that is Vigottschinsky and I, 
 coaxed out of my aunt a considerable sum, indeed 
 a substantial capital, with which we established 
 an office in the little furnished room of the Aus- 
 trian. The fist-fight in front of the Vincent 
 House had broken up the relation between 
 my sister and her lover. I had done my 
 share in this and had met her several times 
 for that purpose. Strange, I had never come 
 so close to my sister before, nor she to me. 
 Only now had I come to understand her, from 
 my eccentric point of view, and by this very 
 alteration in my nature I possessed an attrac- 
 tion for her. She was capable and honest pt 
 bottom, and she now threw in her lot with mine 
 again, partly out of a craving for kinship, partly 
 because I had fought and suffered for her. We 
 found pleasure in each other, and enjoyed the un- 
 alloyed pleasure of feeling that after so many 
 years of living together we had only just dis- 
 covered each other. 
 
 To be sure, the bond that now united us would 
 hardly have held very long without Vigott- 
 
 [117J
 
 schinsky. It was some time before I found this 
 out. 
 
 For the moment I suspected nothing when he 
 proposed to take Melanie into our firm, as it were, 
 and turn the clerical work over to her. Of course 
 I knew that she could make better progress with 
 her pen than I or my brother Hugo. 
 
 Our office was a long slit with a single window 
 from which one looked down at the entrance to 
 the Lobe Theatre. Vigottschinsky's bed stood 
 in it, and there was just room enough to squeeze 
 past it in reaching the desk, which stood by the 
 window. The room had old dark wallpaper, 
 which hung down in spots. Moreover it was 
 high and hence quite sinister. 
 
 Four weeks passed in conferences in this room. 
 
 These conferences were however nothing more 
 than objectless chatter, which was spiced with im- 
 moderate drinking and smoking, and which be- 
 came a pleasure that we sought again and again. 
 
 Objectless chatter is perhaps not a fitting ex- 
 pression, because it did not indeed turn on actual 
 and sensible objects, but so much the more on 
 imaginary and senseless ones. These have the 
 strongest power of attraction for worthless people. 
 [u8]
 
 Air-castle-builders and idlers of every sort know 
 that. My sister was a permanent member of 
 that company. 
 
 At that time I had strangely arrived at the 
 settled conviction that I had succeeded in the 
 moral redemption of my sister, in lifting her out 
 of the dens of vice. I was so blinded as to see 
 a further piece of good luck in Vigottschinsky's 
 liking for her, especially since it was returned and 
 had led to an engagement. This engagement, a 
 marriage, what could be better adapted to win 
 back my sister to the ranks of honest citizens'? 
 
 It was astonishing to see the power that Vigott- 
 schinsky had gained over the beautiful girl. Her 
 self-will, her upright nature, her contradictory 
 spirit were as if blotted out. I had long since 
 had to form suspicions of the nature of the rela- 
 tions that connected my sister and my friend. 
 But I had too much to contend with in my- 
 self, and both Vigottschinsky and Melanie left 
 nothing undone to make their relation appear 
 like a serious, straightforward, and lawful one. 
 
 In the Lobe Theatre they were playing eve- 
 ning after evening, "Around the world in eighty 
 days." Towards nine o'clock they regularly 
 
 [119]
 
 executed on the stage a surprise attack by 
 Indians, whose shots one could plainly hear in 
 our room. Our longing to travel, to roam 
 through the wide world, was of course always 
 freshly excited by this. We dreamed of adven- 
 tures, fairy lands, and riches. In this and other 
 ways time was squandered and money wasted, 
 without our making a beginning at any business, 
 reliable or unreliable. 
 
 I had resigned my post in the municipal office 
 as soon as I had the money from my aunt in my 
 pocket. However, it was not quite easy to take 
 leave of my place by the window of the city hall, 
 because that meant giving up my view of the 
 whipping-post as well. To my office chief I had 
 little by little conveyed a fairy-tale concerning 
 the change in my fortunes, in which, quite se- 
 riously, a rich marriage and incipient literary 
 fame were alternately stressed more or less. But 
 the strangest part of all was that I believed the 
 fairy-tale myself. 
 
 [120]
 
 XLII 
 
 So we were merchants now and had to put on a 
 good social front. It was not possible to do 
 business without that. Vigottschinsky very soon 
 cut quite a good figure, although he did not spend 
 on his outfit half as much as I. They say that 
 people with a hump-back, or with a limp like 
 me, not infrequently have the inclination to trick 
 themselves out in a ridiculous fashion. I too fell 
 a prey to this inclination. I thought I owed it to 
 my business, to my importance as author, and to 
 the idol of my love, to make a complete dandy of 
 
 myself. 
 
 So I bought myself white collars and expen- 
 sive linen, four or five stylish suits, patent 
 leathers, gloves, cravats, hats, provided myself 
 with a stick-pin, cuff-buttons, and a gold watch, 
 and when I was thus togged out and in my silk- 
 lined summer overcoat was striding up and down 
 Schweidnitz Street, I never passed a show-win- 
 dow without mirroring my idolized person in it. 
 
 It goes without saying that we also used my 
 aunt's capital on every possible occasion to give 
 ourselves a good time. Every day we went to 
 [121]
 
 beer-halls and beer-gardens, and sometimes to 
 those unpretentious wine-rooms that can be found 
 in Breslau. 
 
 It would be a mistake to assume that I did 
 anything at this or at any time without ref- 
 erence to my absurd goal. The picture of Ve- 
 ronica Harlan — not the one that lies before me, 
 but the imaginary one — did not leave me for an 
 instant, nor the thought of it. Of course she is 
 in truth the epitome of sweetest loveliness, and 
 was still more so in the intoxicating exhalations 
 of my soul. Always I stood under the spell of 
 a constraint that completely enslaved me, but at 
 the same time turned my slavery into ecstasy. 
 But at the heart of this ecstasy dwelt pain and 
 despair. 
 
 [122]
 
 XLIII 
 
 I LOOK back upon my completed existence from 
 a distant, lofty, secure position. I survey the 
 path, the network of roads, and the landscape 
 from which a happy exit was finally found after 
 all. The Lorenz Lubota of today, whom father- 
 in-law and wife call Lenz, has made the Lorenz 
 Lubota of the past the object of his meditation. 
 JLenzI They call me Lenz I Well, why not*? 
 Is not every spring [Lenz is a word for spring. 
 Tr.] preceded by the stormy November, the dark 
 December, the ice- and snow-bound January, in 
 short by autumn and winter"? Perhaps they are 
 not so far wrong in this appellation, if it is to 
 suggest new sprouts and the blossoms of future 
 fruits. Is there not growing up here perhaps, 
 under the calm strokes of my pen, a fruit?- Is 
 the air of my spirit not pregnant with sprouts and 
 strange blossoms? To be sure, this spring that I 
 am living through to-day is nothing compared 
 with the one that in those days passed over my 
 soul, with its warm showers, fantastic blooms, 
 burning suns, and delirious tempests, when we 
 were engaged in squandering the gold of our first 
 [123]
 
 plunder. Exuberant raptures like those of that 
 day have never since swelled my breast to burst- 
 ing, but to be sure no more pains have harrowed it 
 such as were then my daily bread. For it should 
 by no means be thought that my then condition 
 was nothing but sheer rapture. I had rather the 
 feeling that blood was being sucked out of my 
 heart by some great spider day and night. Hence 
 I have written, as I see in paging these leaves, 
 that a pain was the innermost core of all the rap- 
 tures I felt. And that pain was very great. 
 
 What can be more terrible than to show to 
 a thirst-parched throat the mirage of the coolest 
 spring? A morbid, lying, deceptive certainty, 
 whereby the voice of hopelessness has been buried 
 and violently silenced. What can be more pain- 
 ful than the occasional waking of the sleep- 
 walker, even though he succeed in saving himself 
 from a plunge into the depths by clinging to the 
 eaves-trough? Can a man who is fundamentally 
 honest completely forget that he is so, and put 
 his conscience to death? I at least never had 
 the feeling of guiltlessness when I was running 
 through my aunt's money, even though I did not 
 exactly let the feeling of guilt rise in me. I 
 [124]
 
 mostly used to gulp down the dainties of the 
 restaurants like so much gall and poison, even 
 though I did not know it outwardly. Besides, 
 I was so to speak gutted by a terrible pas- 
 sion. A conflagration raged within me. I could 
 have cried out to my judges that all my insane 
 commissions and omissions came down to nothing 
 more than the attempt to put out this ravaging 
 fire. I could have proved it to them, or else I 
 may possibly succeed in doing it with this memoir. 
 I could have wished to throw myself under the 
 wheels of an omnibus, I have somewhere said. 
 Not once, I may add, but countless times did I 
 think of that. I also considered putting an end 
 to myself by drowning in the Oder, or with the 
 bullet or the rope. 
 
 But from all this I was restrained by the 
 thought that I should thereby leave the earth on 
 which Veronica was living. 
 
 I do not conceal from myself that if I had 
 attained the presumptuous goal I then sought, 
 the plane of happiness secured by it would have 
 been a very different and much higher one than 
 that plane upon which I can stand to-day in peace 
 of soul. Earthly rapture would then have at- 
 
 [125]
 
 tained to a supernatural degree and would have 
 perhaps been unendurable to a mere mortal in its 
 all-overshadowing, blinding splendor. I confess 
 that in spite of being wholly cheerful and content 
 in my peaceful little circle, I have in this respect 
 not made a full renunciation. Only I have trans- 
 ferred all fulfilments of that sort into the "better 
 life." 
 
 [126]
 
 XLIV 
 
 I COME now to that point which was one of the 
 most momentous in my complicated course of 
 error, self-deception, megalomania, and crime. 
 In order to get it as clear as possible, I discussed it 
 all thoroughly only yesterday with my father-in- 
 law, as if unintentionally, sitting in the arbor 
 over a glass of beer. The good old man knows 
 that I am working on the story of my fall from 
 grace, a belated argument for the defence which 
 is to teach my judges to understand and to par- 
 don; for to understand all means to pardon all. 
 
 Stark still regards me to this day, as in the 
 time of our first meeting, as the great writer of 
 the future. 
 
 There can be nothing pleasanter, nothing more 
 comfortable, than our evenings in the summer- 
 house. Yesterday it was especially fine. My 
 Marie of the simple goodness, with the heart of 
 purest gold, had prepared for us, as always, the 
 most delicious supper, consisting of eggs, cheese, 
 sour milk, and fresh bread and butter. The in- 
 sects buzzed, roses, elders, and honeysuckle 
 scented the air, also the firs on the edge of the 
 ['27]
 
 near-by woods. Though it had grown dark, the 
 air had not lost its body-heat. The monstrous 
 disk of the moon hung behind the elders and 
 larches along the village brook. The murmur 
 sounded doubly loud in the nightly stillness, in 
 which not a twig was stirring. Fireflies gleamed 
 in the grass of the round common. 
 
 Marie had gone back into the house when I 
 began to speak of my hare-brained suit for the 
 hand of Veronica Harlan. 
 
 But I will tell it as it happened. 
 
 I had learned that the lovely girl was be- 
 trothed, indeed that she would be married in a 
 few days. Vigottschinsky had got the informa- 
 tion. That was of course wholly absurd. But 
 just as on the one hand my hope grasped at every 
 straw, so the most improbable rumors were ca- 
 pable of casting me into a boiling maelstrom of 
 torment. In short, I was aflame with jealousy. 
 
 Veronica was at that time, I judged, about 
 fourteen. But I might have been deceived, she 
 might perhaps be between fifteen and sixteen. 
 Why should a sixteen-year-old girl not marry? 
 
 And what might not and could not be possible 
 and usual in her enviable circle *? 
 
 [128]
 
 And so I composed that letter to the father of 
 the child, hardware-merchant and recently ap- 
 pointed kommerzienrat, * a letter which to this 
 day is beyond my comprehension. 
 
 I could not help it, I had to write the letter. 
 It was as if somebody else guided my hand. But 
 always when I spoke of this circumstance, or 
 said anything about Veronica, I mean during my 
 trial, I was told that they were not interested in 
 that, that it had nothing whatever to do with the 
 case. Strange enough that when one is to pass 
 judgment on the guilt or innocence of an accused, 
 the essential motivating or exonerating factor 
 is not included in the scope of the cross- 
 examination. 
 
 "What are your letters to us*?" they said. 
 "Write as many letters as you will, we don't 
 care about them, unless they contain incrimina- 
 ting or exonerating matter with respect to the 
 crime that has been committed." 
 
 My letter to Mr. Harlan was grandiloquent 
 and bumptious. 
 
 1 Translator's note. "Councilor of Commerce," an honorary 
 title bestowed on successful financiers and business men. 
 
 [129]
 
 How was it possible, how could the letter of 
 a fundamentally so timorous, so modest, nay even 
 so sober a man as I, who had a pimply complexion 
 and a limp, was imperfectly developed owing to 
 lack of nourishment in his youth, and was repul- 
 sively ugly according to his own conviction, turn 
 out so impudent and arrogant? It must have 
 been that in my character, as you might say, not 
 one stone was left upon another. 
 
 "To this day I blush with shame," I confessed 
 to my father-in-law, "when I think of that 
 inexplicable letter." 
 
 For I had declared in it that I could in no 
 case consent to the betrothal, and still less the 
 marriage, of Veronica Harlan to any other than 
 myself. 
 
 Thereupon my father-in-law said, "Why 
 shouldn't the letter have been dictated to you by 
 some evil Daemon that had an interest in putting 
 you in a hole?" 
 
 I have forgotten to say that my father-in-law 
 had been an active spiritualist, many years before 
 we knew each other, and that during that time 
 he had been in active occult communication with 
 his deceased wife and many other spirits. When 
 [130]
 
 we became acquainted, he had already given up 
 the practice of table-tipping and in fact all active 
 spiritualism. Marie had little inclination for it, 
 and he himself had lost with advancing years 
 that passionate curiosity about the life beyond. 
 However, he possesses a work, "Manuscripts by 
 Spirit Hands," bound by himself in forty hand- 
 some volumes, which is unique in the world and 
 may perhaps some day attain universal signif- 
 icance as a storehouse of unheard-of revelations 
 from the fourth dimension. I myself do not go 
 near it. 
 
 Who should be surprised if I got no answer to 
 my hare-brained letter"? It is well known that 
 the rich not infrequently get letters from insane 
 people. No one pays any attention to them. 
 They are thrown into the waste-basket. 
 
 At that time, however, it was far from my 
 thoughts to make clear to myself this natural 
 state of the case, and more and more I enveloped 
 myself in the narcotic exhalation of my megalo- 
 mania. 
 
 Is it credible? My presumption had taken an 
 enormous leap upward since I had written to the 
 rich hardware merchant. The bold and resolute 
 
 [131]
 
 letter to this patrician gave me by reaction a 
 feeling of social equality. I carried my head 
 much higher than hitherto, and floated in a stupe- 
 fying sea of conceit. I thought to myself, as I 
 walked through the streets and the passers-by 
 streamed past me : I hope you are not unaware 
 that I have written a very serious message to 
 Mr. Emmo Harlan to tell him of the bone I have 
 to pick with him. Yes, I know he did not an- 
 swer. From that very fact you can see the effect 
 my letter had. 
 
 I told myself in quite sober earnest, as it 
 seemed to me, that the silence of the great mer- 
 chant was a good sign for me. The answer to 
 a letter like mine must be considered from every 
 angle. The breaking-off of the previous engage- 
 ment could not be done rapidly, and then too they 
 would probably institute inquiries with respect to 
 my person. But in my megalomania — I had 
 been told, by the way, that the poet Byron had 
 also had a club-foot! — I did not doubt that I 
 should be described to the Harlan family as the 
 rising star in the poetic firmament. 
 
 [132]
 
 XLV 
 
 One day while I was thus waiting, I was again 
 possessed by what my father-in-law had called 
 an evil Daemon. I had just vainly asked 
 the postman once more about the expected letter, 
 when I ran straight home to change my clothes 
 and to get myself up with a solicitude which I 
 must at present characterize as absolutely ridic- 
 ulous. And the result was ridiculous, too. I 
 might easily have read that in the looks that fol- 
 lowed me with ironical astonishment. 
 
 I took a cab and gave the driver a definite 
 address — you will guess which one. 
 
 The whole thing went with such lightning 
 speed as I had really not ventured to hope for. 
 I had assumed the title of Doctor on my calling- 
 cards. The servant to whom I gave the card 
 disappeared with it in the inner apartments. He 
 returned, and I was ushered into a blue salon. I 
 had to wait a moment, and it was nearly eleven 
 o'clock in the morning before the beautiful Mrs. 
 Harlan rustled mto the salon. She immediately 
 stopped short, as if she had expected some one 
 else, and declared, recovering her composure di- 
 [133]
 
 rectly, that that had indeed been the fact. She 
 had been expecting a Doctor von Trota, a young 
 assessor and a friend of her brother. Then she 
 said, ''But what do you wish*? I presume you 
 would like to see my husband." 
 
 I answered with a trace of timidity that that 
 might not be necessary as yet. 
 
 Mrs. Harlan looked searchingly at me. She 
 may have noticed that I was only keeping my 
 composure with an effort. I felt, but could not 
 help it, that there were twitchings around my lips, 
 that a hard lump was squeezing my throat, and 
 that hot tears were coming into my eyes. 
 
 "What is your pleasure. Doctor^" she said 
 then. 
 
 But suddenly she bethought herself and cried, 
 as if she had now guessed the reason for my com- 
 ing, "Of course, of course, take a seat I I had 
 almost forgotten that we have advertised for a 
 tutor for our Veronica. I am surely not mistaken 
 in the assumption that your call is connected with 
 that." 
 
 I thought of my pedagogical leanings and my 
 studies. 
 
 For reply I said, "No, dear madam, the days 
 
 [134]
 
 in which I should have accepted a mere tutor- 
 ship are forever past." 
 
 I myself was somewhat taken aback when this 
 strange answer had escaped me. I felt such a 
 giddiness as if I had leaped across an abyss, but 
 was still unable to get a firm footing on the other 
 side after my foolhardy leap. And in other ways 
 my answer did not satisfy me. If I had only not 
 put in that word "mere." 
 
 "Do you consider a position as tutor to a young 
 and talented child something so insignificant*?" 
 Mrs. Harlan naturally rejoined with astonished 
 mien. 
 
 Then I vigorously pulled myself together and 
 said how gladly I should certainly accept such a 
 position if I had not taken the liberty of calling 
 about a different, far more important, and far 
 more serious matter. 
 
 I had now reached the outermost tip of the 
 rocky promontory, from which there was nothing 
 but a leap into empty space. 
 
 [135]
 
 XLVI 
 
 Today I am sober and in perfect health. All 
 the more I must say to myself that that person, 
 who was then in the house of the hardware-mer- 
 chant as suitor for his daughter's hand, was a sick 
 man. Why, it is impossible for me today even 
 to understand my conduct at that time. There 
 are crises of growth, crises of puberty, which are 
 an inevitable and, as it were, healthy malady. 
 It may perhaps have been such a so-called chil- 
 dren's disease, some kind of infection. 
 
 My feeling at that time, even when I was fac- 
 ing the beautiful Mrs. Harlan, was that I should 
 not act as I was acting, had I not lost a certain 
 inhibiting power over certain forces of my soul. 
 
 My conduct was that of a high-flyer, unless 
 it was that of a lunatic. 
 
 I come to that part of my speech, and of my 
 general conduct at that hour of irresponsibility 
 in the house of the hardware-merchant, that has 
 remained fixed in my memory. 
 
 "Dear madam," I said, "it would be a very 
 special honor to me to act as tutor to your daugh- 
 ter, if my destiny and the hand of God had not 
 
 [136]
 
 directed me to far higher goals and especially one 
 higher goal. My father was a staff-officer" — the 
 green tax-collector's uniform of my father gave 
 me this idea! — "my education most careful. 
 From childhood on I have received plain indica- 
 tions of every sort, that pointed to a great future 
 career for me. I should not wish to appear 
 boastful, but I may be permitted to inform you 
 of the fact that this coming autumn a drama of 
 mine, 'Konradin von Hohenstaufen,' is to be 
 performed in the local tnunicipal theatre. A 
 great scholar whom I will not name, and who 
 possesses the largest library in Breslau" — I was 
 thinking of my present father-in-law, the Master 
 Bookbinder Stark — "has designated this work as 
 perhaps the greatest since Friedrich Schiller. 
 
 "I am well-to-do, dear madam. How else 
 could I have ventured on this step*? My finan- 
 cial assets are invested in safe securities. Also I 
 am a partner in a well-inaugurated commission- 
 business, but to be sure only nominally, since my 
 ideal inclinations and aptitudes disqualify me 
 for a strictly commercial career. Dear madam, 
 as a genius I stand to be sure at the beginning of a 
 long and thorny path. But I hope to be wor- 
 [137]
 
 thy of my talents and to endure to the end 
 the divinely ordained martyrdom" — I hastily 
 added — "of the great poet and thinker. I am re- 
 signed to the mockery, the misunderstanding, nay 
 even the blindness of my fellow-men, for did not 
 a far loftier than I not shrink from the path to 
 Golgotha? Permit me then, dear madam, to 
 present myself as the author of that letter which 
 your husband doubtless received about two weeks 
 ago. The writer says that he has an older claim, 
 a higher claim to the hand of your daughter than 
 any other, and goes on seriously to prefer his suit. 
 Be assured, dear madam, that I am most sacredly 
 in earnest in this matter." 
 
 [138]
 
 XLVII 
 
 I DO not know where I may have picked up all 
 these well-turned phrases. They came from my 
 lips as smooth as butter and without the least 
 hesitation. And this is certain: while I was 
 speaking I believed what I said. 
 
 Just by the mere sight of the mother of Veron- 
 ica, my idol, I was lifted up above the real solid 
 ground of real things. 
 
 Yet it was of course an incredibly injudicious 
 act to involve myself in so coarse a web of lies, 
 which could so easily be torn asunder by anyone 
 but myself. Across the way was the office in 
 which I had worked for my mother and her chil- 
 dren as a poor starveling. A step to the police- 
 station would be sufficient to determine exactly 
 what was my origin and my general situation. 
 But in the exalted state in which I was, with the 
 fear which impelled me and the splendor that 
 was luring me on, the thought of being unmasked 
 was as far from me as from a man with the best 
 conscience in the world. 
 
 Mrs. Harlan had listened attentively to me. 
 It seemed to me several times as if she were 
 [139]
 
 looking hastily about her, as though seeking aid. 
 When I had said everything, as I thought, and 
 was waiting in expectant silence, she rose, went 
 to the wall, and seemed about to ring an electric 
 bell. As she did so she said, "Your proposal, sir, 
 is very honorable." Then she added in effect 
 that her daughter was to be sure still a mere 
 child, and too young to marry. But, all in good 
 time, for today she would say neither yes nor no. 
 
 While she was saying this and other things 
 like it, a servant came in and soon after Mr. 
 Harlan himself. 
 
 Harlan was slender, carefully and even ele- 
 gantly dressed, and had trinkets of coral on his 
 gold watch-chain. I immediately resolved to buy 
 myself watch-charms of the same kind. And I 
 subsequently did so, but of course they took away 
 from me all my finery — not that I am shedding 
 any tears over them — as goods stolen from my 
 aunt. Mr. Harlan entered, and his wife, as I 
 distinctly observed, winked at him as she in- 
 formed him of the subject of our conversation. 
 
 [140]
 
 XLVIII 
 
 Before I again stepped into the cab that was 
 waiting for me before the driveway of the Har- 
 lan house, I could not forego standing still and 
 letting my eyes stray over the Ring, while I 
 slowly buttoned my kid gloves. My conceit, or 
 rather my self-deception, and my folly had 
 reached their highest point. In my own eyes I 
 had achieved a fabulous success. Today I know, 
 of course, why Mr. Harlan acted and had to act, 
 as he did, as if he were agreeing completely to 
 my proposal. He simply took me to be what I 
 was. And because it is dangerous to arouse a 
 lunatic, the best thing to do is to give him no 
 occasion for contradiction. 
 
 Upon my persistent urging the following ques- 
 tions had been discussed before I went : whether I 
 might see and speak with Veronica, whether I 
 might write to her, and how long they wished to 
 postpone the marriage. "I propose," said Har- 
 lan lightly, "that we let three months elapse be- 
 fore you speak to my daughter. I shall regard it 
 as unnecessary that you should correspond with 
 her for the present. After the lapse of that time 
 [141]
 
 we can see whether your affection has remained 
 constant. But we must positively allow my little 
 Veronica," he ended, "two years for her develop- 
 ment before she is led to the altar." 
 
 My present belief is that my courtship was 
 regarded in the Harlan house as a welcome jest, 
 and was thoroughly and heartily laughed at. 
 
 For me, to be sure, it was more than a jest. 
 
 I was ready to burst with pride and presump- 
 tion as I stood there, still unable to decide to step 
 into the closed cab. I looked up at the windows 
 of the Harlans' house, in the hope of catching 
 sight of my beloved. To a fellow-employee from 
 the city hall, who noticed me and bowed, I paid 
 no attention. I saw my present father-in-law, 
 the worthy grey-beard, being led by Marie — he 
 needed that support on account of his weak eyes 
 — approaching on the sidewalk. The kind people 
 discovered me. Marie blushed to her eyes with 
 happiness, and the old man, on being acquainted 
 by her, at once waved his handkerchief at me 
 with a merry smile. But to keep company with 
 them now seemed to me wholly beneath my dig- 
 [142]
 
 nity, and so I jumped into the cab in a sort of 
 flight. 
 
 "Drive me to Hansen's restaurant," I ordered 
 the driver. 
 
 [143]
 
 XLIX 
 
 Several days have passed during which I have 
 not written any of these recollections of mine. 
 Well, there is no hurry. The weather has been 
 fine, and I could take beautiful walks, or I might 
 better say journeys, to Erdmannsdorf, through 
 the old park of Buchwald, and over to town or the 
 little Schmiedeberg. My family can run the 
 little shop and the little farm, with its few chick- 
 ens and several goats, almost without my help, 
 and they like me to have all the leisure I can. As 
 an experienced clerk, the book-keeping and the 
 correspondence of our little business cost me little 
 time and effort. I can do that with my left hand, 
 so to speak. 
 
 I purposely wanted to pause and reflect for a 
 few days, really to divert my thoughts, before 
 I proceed to render myself an account of my mo- 
 mentous relations with Melitta. 
 
 The little one was sitting with her mother, the 
 so-called baroness, at a side-table in that same 
 fashionable restaurant which I had named to the 
 cabby before I got into his cab, probably chiefly 
 for the sake of impressing the passers-by. 
 
 [144]
 
 You will recall the excited condition into 
 which I had got myself after leaving the Harlans' 
 house. 
 
 In reality I was astonished and had to bethink 
 myself a little, as the cab actually stood still 
 before the plate glass windows of Hansen's res- 
 taurant. 
 
 Even Vigottschinsky had never ventured into 
 this most fashionable and most famous restaurant 
 in town. 
 
 As for me, such a step had been heretofore the 
 very last thing to be thought of, because I had 
 never yet got rid of my vague feeling of being an 
 outcast. Suddenly I had got into this Eldorado 
 of all epicures, without knowing how. 
 
 I do think that for the first moments I conduc- 
 ted myself fairly well; but I had difficulty in 
 facing the glances of the guests without confusion. 
 To the left of the entrance of the long restaurant 
 were sitting cadets and officers of the royal Bres- 
 lau cuirassiers. Handsome men, tall, slender 
 figures, rich, aristocratic lads, every one of them 
 belonging to some noble old family. They had 
 the condescension, it seemed, to stoop to this re- 
 sort, which common people were also allowed to 
 
 [145]
 
 frequent. The other tables showed faces of men 
 mostly of mature age, which simply could not 
 fail to inspire respect. Surely many of them, 
 physicians, professors, city councilors, bore the 
 most resounding names in town. I distinctly 
 heard someone called Your Highness. Yes, and 
 there was sitting in a discreet alcove in the uni- 
 form of a general, in distinguished isolation, the 
 Duke of Ratibor, who as commandant of Breslau 
 was a well-known figure. Somehow too I thought 
 of police and presiding judges and similar high 
 officials, in the light of several glances whose 
 cross-fire I had to stand. No, it was no enviable 
 moment when I stepped into that restaurant, and 
 I should not care to live through it again. 
 
 It should have brought me to my senses. 
 
 And in the presence of all these persons of rank 
 I actually did come to my senses, in a way. But 
 when I had been shown with exquisite politeness 
 to a table all by myself, and had sat down at it, 
 I found myself reassured by the thought of hav- 
 ing enough money in my pocket to pay my bill, 
 and of owing it to nobody in this circle, but at 
 most to my aunt. And besides, I was a free man 
 and no longer a clerk at the city's mercy. 
 
 [146]
 
 Quite certainly, however, it was a strange 
 thing that a little despised starveling could dine 
 table to table with the highest officials of the city, 
 the province, nay even of the state, as like to 
 like, and not be shown the door. 
 
 Now whether it was to give myself courage, or 
 to put myself in the proper light here at the out- 
 set, or in my treacherous feeling of triumph- 
 anyway, I immediately ordered champagne. 
 
 Certainly, the luxury of the fashionable world 
 includes exquisite enjoyments. It is after all not 
 surprising if one who has learned to know them, 
 and then has to give them up, turns criminal for 
 the sake of them. This was probably the case 
 with Vigottschinsky. Unbridled sensuality pos- 
 sessed this man, talented in his way, and even 
 attractive in many respects, and destroyed him. 
 This danger is overcome in me. 
 
 The nourishing soup, the delicious fish, the 
 fragrant roast, the game, the dessert, and last but 
 not least the excessively luscious wine, put me 
 into a very satisfied mood. The artificial light, 
 which has to burn all the time, even by day, in 
 that restaurant, except just in front of the single 
 plate-glass window, added to its cosiness. Then 
 [147]
 
 there is also the darkening veil of the clouds of 
 smoke, which to a certain degree isolates the in- 
 dividual guests and even yourself. You seem to 
 yourself to be in a hidden cave, in a hiding-place, 
 and you feel as if you could sin with less interfer- 
 ence. After I had sat there half an hour, I felt 
 as if I had been taken into a secret society in 
 which everyone wished his neighbor every joy. 
 
 [148]
 
 Melitta was sitting, as I already said, with her 
 mother at a sidetable. The girl had a little lap- 
 dog that wore a tiny bell on its neck. When 
 Melitta let the lap-dog down on to the floor, its 
 leash reached just far enough for it to rest its 
 dainty little fore-paws on my left thigh. Of 
 course I made friends with it. 
 
 The baroness thanked me several times with a 
 faint smile for this friendliness. Once she re- 
 proved Melitta in an amiably reproachful tone, 
 because the gentleman — that was I — was con- 
 stantly being annoyed by her dog. 
 
 Then Melitta looked around at me. 
 
 At the sight of her face a sort of terror must 
 have shone through my expression, visible to the 
 baroness. I saw how she lifted her eyebrows, 
 as if in question. 
 
 And I was actually frightened, because Melitta 
 to my thinking resembled Veronica in a remark- 
 able way. 
 
 From this moment a wonderful confusion be- 
 gan in me, whereby in a mystic, or let us rather 
 
 [149]
 
 say abnormal, manner I united the images of the 
 two girls. 
 
 To be sure, I told myself, this girl is not really 
 Veronica, but Veronica is giving me a sign through 
 her, is using her to get into communication with 
 me. 
 
 This idea took shape like a flash and possessed 
 me from then on like a perception of the highest 
 truth. 
 
 Melitta seemed to be Veronica's age. I found 
 out later, to be sure, that she was considerably 
 older, but still I could never really convince my- 
 self of it. Now whether it was her clothes, or 
 whether her growth had been retarded, she had 
 for me something absolutely childlike. She wore 
 Veronica's loose blond hair, falling in glorious 
 long waves. Her eyes were brown, her dainty 
 little nose was tilted the least little bit at the very 
 tip. And the way she moved that tip, when she 
 spoke with what I might call the mouth of a 
 suckling, had an especial charm for me. 
 
 It was evident that she was the object of con- 
 versation at the table of the cuirassiers. But 
 however the looks of the gentlemen strayed over 
 
 [150]
 
 the table of the baroness, the little one seemed 
 insensible of them, and one could clearly see that 
 she returned none of them. 
 
 On the other hand, she did reveal an outspoken 
 interest in me, strange to say. 
 
 This fact surprised me on the one hand, but 
 was at once brought into connection with my new 
 fixed idea, whereby it was made to seem, on the 
 other hand, not particularly remarkable. My 
 mania, which was giving me the delusion of a 
 supernatural concatenation, turned the striking 
 behavior of the child toward me into something 
 that was quite as it should be. And only that, I 
 mean my mystical conception of the matter, gave 
 me the courage to follow it up. 
 
 To anticipate at once: Melitta had a real 
 affection for me. I have a number of proofs of 
 that. How that was possible in my case, who 
 up to the time of my great crisis had never really 
 ventured to count on such an experience, is un- 
 certain. I did indeed have my simple and even 
 sober friendship with Marie, but at that time it 
 was not to be mistaken for passionate love either 
 on my side or on hers. 
 
 [151]
 
 Nor did the affection of Melitta for me ever 
 rise, I suppose, to the height of such a passion. 
 Yet for this girl there could be nothing in which 
 love, and indeed a very actual love, did not have 
 a part. 
 
 [152]
 
 LI 
 
 I WILL put together certain traits which I have 
 arrived at by reflection and which make some- 
 what comprehensible the affection of Melitta for 
 
 me. 
 
 She was the strangest specimen of the genus 
 Woman, I suppose, that there could ever be in 
 the world: outwardly a childish school-girl, in- 
 wardly of unswerving, mannish independence. 
 This independence was the same both in thinking 
 and in acting. All attempts to break it down— 
 they had often enough been made by her mother — 
 always led merely to the same failure. 
 
 Never, she declared, would she let her right 
 to love be starved. She told her mother to 
 her face, with great calm and firmness, that she 
 intended to deny herself absolutely nothing in 
 this regard. If a man pleased her and the oppor- 
 tunity could be found at all, she would take him. 
 She had not the least intention of going out of 
 the world, without once having enjoyed, and 
 enjoyed to the full, the best thing in life. If 
 anyone tried to prevent her, let him look out for 
 himself. Whoever did that would be her enemy. 
 [153]
 
 It was natural to hate one's enemies. But she 
 was capable of a deadly hatred of that person 
 who should try to rob her of the greatest good in 
 life, that is, of nothing less than life itself. 
 
 Nor did Melitta merely uphold such views 
 with her tongue: her mother could tell a tale or 
 two about that. 
 
 As I know from my own trial, the visits of 
 the lawyers, the physicians, and the clergyman 
 in the prison, and from my own private reading 
 in my cell, there is such a thing as perversity. 
 Melitta had perverse leanings. So she would 
 often say : she had rather die than have anything 
 to do with one of those dandified dolls, the officers 
 of the royal cuirassiers. Here her repugnance, 
 her utter aversion set in, whereas an ugly and 
 probably filthy old fellow could make a strong 
 impression on her. The baroness told me that 
 she had for a long time given herself quite un- 
 reservedly to a shock-haired, gout-racked, greasy 
 old cabaret-actor. 
 
 So perhaps the way in which Melitta swooped 
 down upon me at first sight, as they say, is to be 
 ascribed to perversity. 
 
 To be sure there may also have been involved 
 
 [154]
 
 in it some sign-language between mother and 
 daughter, with reference to the snaring of simple- 
 tons. A free life was the prevalent practice with 
 them, without disagreement, only that the mother 
 wished to spend it in a well-considered, well- 
 applied, purposeful manner, whereas this was a 
 secondary consideration for the daughter. 
 
 Well, all one, even through my narcotic fog I 
 perceived what manner of persons I had run into 
 the arms of. And after the dog had given rise 
 to an informal conversation, I quietly made bold 
 to settle the ladies' bill together with my own. 
 
 I do not know how they had found out about 
 this circumstance, but at any rate they rose soon 
 after, to leave the restaurant in silence, with a 
 significant, suggestive smile and a nod of the head 
 at me. 
 
 Needless to say that in two minutes I too was 
 on the street and at their side. 
 
 [iSSl
 
 LH 
 
 One can imagine how complicated my circum- 
 stances had become when in less than twenty-four 
 hours — Melitta hardly gave me that much time — 
 I had entered into a fixed liaison with her. The 
 sweet and utterly depraved child was my precep- 
 tress in the art of love. As my aunt had put the 
 capital expressly into my hands and not into those 
 of Vigottschinsky, I gave him substantial amounts 
 of it, but kept the lion's share ^ for myself. This 
 melted away at a furious pace. 
 
 As I did not wish to betray my relations with 
 Melitta to Vigottschinsky and my sister, yet they 
 could not help seeing that an estrangement had 
 come between us, I was again forced to take refuge 
 in lying. It was perhaps -a good thing that 
 Vigottschinsky's sagacity soon got on my trail 
 and thus took this burden off me. He took it as 
 a matter of course that I too had now given up my 
 narrow-minded ideas about love and had pro- 
 ceeded to action. 
 
 As for him, the investigation later on showed 
 
 ^Translator's note. The lion's share (see ^sop) was the 
 whole. Hauptmann seeras to have fallen into a common error. 
 
 [156]
 
 that excesses of every sort had become second 
 nature to him. At that time, although his re- 
 lations with my sister were just at their zenith, 
 he managed just the same to find time for deceiv- 
 ing her with other women. My sister did not 
 dream of this at first, but later he no longer made 
 a secret of it. His shameless frankness, how- 
 ever, only seemed to intensify her love. At least 
 she acceded to his lightest wish with a doglike 
 servility. 
 
 When I recovered my sister in that night- 
 resort, her conduct as compared with formerly 
 had become finer» even ladylike. It was Vigott- 
 schinsky who really made a harlot of her. 
 
 He carried photographs around with him, 
 mostly unspeakably vile little ones in series, 
 which disgusted me, and would spread them out 
 before us with cynical laughter. He had got 
 them from sailors, he said, who had brought them 
 along from Port Said or other international dens 
 of vice. His speech teemed with obscenities. 
 He never thought of taking my sister any more 
 to resorts like the one in which we had found her. 
 Instead he dragged her around among the very 
 meanest gin-shops, where women waited on table, 
 
 [157]
 
 and where the dregs of humanity gave itself up 
 to the beastliest orgies. Before I came to know 
 Melitta, he and I had taken several, I suppose, 
 of those so-called beer-journeys by night from one 
 ale-house to another, but never without my being 
 thoroughly ashamed of myself afterward in con- 
 sideration of my ideal, Veronica. 
 
 [158]
 
 LIII 
 
 Had I not been so taken up by my affair with 
 Melitta, I might perhaps have prevented Vigott- 
 schinsky from dragging my sister so completely 
 down to destruction with him. Left alone with 
 her, the scoundrel had an easy time of it in this 
 regard. In the first weeks I did not dream of the 
 obscure, subterranean ways that he was wont to 
 walk with her. When in the blackest night of 
 my life I recognized how deep she had sunk, a 
 horror came upon me, as I distinctly recall. I 
 saw no reason why I should have failed to observe 
 through what a terrible school she had mean- 
 while been taken by that blackguard. What 
 had become of my sister, frivolous indeed and all- 
 too-hungry for life, but fundamentally always 
 straight and outspoken and strong of will? 
 
 He dragged her with him through every gutter 
 and puddle, through every rubbish-pile and gar- 
 bage-heap. He introduced her into his circles, 
 those of the obscurest of all "men of honor," and 
 domiciled her there, sold her favors or used them 
 as his stakes in three-card monte. And if the 
 poor girl ever rebelled, his fists broke her resist- 
 
 [159]
 
 ance. Finally she had lost all power of rebel- 
 lion, as the force of vice had completed her 
 subjugation. She could no longer do without the 
 smell of fusel brandy, the rowdy ish delirium, the 
 bestial enjoyments of the vice-dens. Before 
 the crime against Aunt Schwab was committed, 
 nay even before it was planned, she had already 
 "turned a trick" * now and then, as the rogues' 
 cant puts it, and this came out in the subsequent 
 investigation. She confessed to me that several 
 times she had had to lure gentlemen into definite 
 quarters, so that Vigottschinsky's political parti- 
 sans — he draped his basest crimes with the mantle 
 of politics — could the more easily rob them. 
 She had stagged ^ and furnished other kinds of 
 mechanical assistance in all sorts of crimes. 
 
 I must not anticipate and not digress. 
 
 The day on which I had made my insane 
 marriage-proposal in the Harlans' house, had 
 subsequently dined and drunk champagne in 
 Hansen's restaurant, and had finally been taken 
 home with the baroness and her daughter, to 
 awake the following morning in Melitta's arms 
 
 1 Translator's note. To carry out a theft. 
 
 2 Translator's note. Thieves' cant: to stand sentry. 
 
 [160]
 
 —that day, I say, had not only torn me com- 
 pletely loose from the solid ground of my former 
 life, but had finally silenced the voice of reason 
 within me. From now on I lived in a world 
 which no longer had the slightest element in 
 common with that in which I had formerly ex- 
 isted. Indeed, it had nothing in common with 
 any real world. I confess, however, that it was 
 full of new and intoxicating sensations, and that 
 it conjured up about me unspeakably glorious 
 phantasmagoria. 
 
 [161]
 
 LIV 
 
 I HAVE just been paging through my manu- 
 script and feel that it is time to speak again of my 
 poor, honest mother. 
 
 I was still inhabiting my old little room, that is 
 I still used it to sleep in. But to be sure very 
 irregularly in every respect, as I mostly came 
 home towards morning and spent some entire 
 nights every week in the apartment of the baron- 
 ess. 
 
 My mother still had towards me the respectful 
 attitude that was based on my former exemplary 
 life. She still saw or wanted to see in me the 
 good son, the rock on which she could confidently 
 erect the secure asylum of her old age. 
 
 Of Veronica Harlan she knew nothing, of 
 Melitta as little, as she had no social intercourse, 
 hardly ever stepped over the door-sill, and only 
 ran the most indispensable errands to the baker 
 or butcher, or into the nearest dry-goods store. 
 Marie, my present wife, visited her now and then. 
 But neither Marie nor her father knew at that 
 time any more about me than my mother did. 
 
 The disappointments of my mother's life had 
 
 [162]
 
 caused her to shun the world. She never went 
 to see other people, and when Marie or perhaps 
 her neighbor across the corridor succeeded in 
 disturbing her in her hiding-place, she never dis- 
 avowed her preference for seclusion. Even if 
 there had been people who knew about everything 
 that I was doing, and if they had told her, she 
 would not have believed it, indeed she would in 
 all probability have rebuffed even the attempt to 
 make such a revelation. 
 
 The transformation which she observed in me, 
 and which she could not explain to herself, she 
 interpreted as sickness, I am certain of that. 
 Hence it never occurred to her to lecture me on 
 moral grounds. She seemed to be totally incapa- 
 ble of that, as far as I was concerned. She 
 always merely cast troubled looks at me, and I 
 evaded them when I could, since they were the 
 only thing that made me uncertain in what might 
 be called my ecstatic gymnastics on the tight- 
 rope. 
 
 My mother is dead. It was grief that put her 
 under the sod. I am certain of that, although 
 the physician told me for my consolation that she 
 had lived her life out to its furthest limit. Her 
 
 [163]
 
 organs were worn out, the examination had dis- 
 closed. But what have I said as to the part 
 played by grief as a grave-digger*? It was not 
 grief nor worn-out organs, it was the pitiless and 
 brutal blows that destiny dealt her heart which 
 caused her death. 
 
 And I may say that I never returned to the old 
 dwelling without feeling that I was going into 
 a mouldering grave. I could just as well call 
 it a coffin. It was the coffin in which, as it seemed 
 to me then, I lay buried alive for many long and 
 horrible years. 
 
 [164]
 
 LV 
 
 My mother, I said, took me to be sick. After 
 her death they brought to me in prison a letter 
 which had been found in the drawer of her sew- 
 ing-table. It was very long and addressed to me. 
 
 It transpired from this letter that she had for 
 a time thought me demented, but hoped that I 
 would some day recover and be wholly myself 
 again. She had experienced something similar 
 many years before with one of her brothers. 
 
 The baroness and her daughter sucked the life- 
 blood out of me. The girl was without doubt a 
 consumptive. Either she infected me, or else, 
 which is more probable, I had likewise been carry- 
 ing the germs of that disease in my system. At 
 any rate, I was in the hospital during almost the 
 entire period of the trial, since I took to my bed 
 shortly after my arrest with pulmonary catarrh 
 and a fever of 104 degrees. 
 
 Melitta always had a slight fever, probably 
 without knowing it. I suppose that caused the 
 shine in her eyes, the purple patches on her cheeks, 
 and her burning, insatiable mouth. 
 
 From this malady and this internal fever prob- 
 
 [165]
 
 ably arose also her blazing, unquenchable sen- 
 suality, which made her favors as intoxicating 
 as they were depraving. She had completely 
 enslaved me. 
 
 Melitta ate little, and never any meat. She 
 neither drank nor smoked; otherwise, she said, 
 the fine sensitivity of her nerves would be blunted, 
 which involved for her the highest delights of 
 life. What self-denial with so much lack of 
 moderation I And yet she was good and said she 
 loved me because I was so good. 
 
 Melitta asserted that she would soon die. She 
 .is living to-day, but has disappeared from Bres- 
 lau. They say she went somewhere in the South. 
 Some said that a rich Brazilian had traveled after 
 her for a long time and had hanged himself on 
 the door-knob of her hotel-room, because she re- 
 mained cold to him. The fact was that she liked 
 almost anybody. Age, class, or other advantages 
 or defects made no difference. The red coats, 
 it is true, were repulsive to her, and when she dis- 
 liked somebody, she disliked him, and he got no- 
 where with her, even though he squandered mil- 
 lions over night. 
 
 Let no one think that I reveled in the posses- 
 
 [166]
 
 sion of her in a simple, natural manner. As I 
 have said, the thought of Veronica and her image 
 did not forsake me even in Melitta's arms. We 
 have lain awake in close embrace for entire nights, 
 and it not infrequently happened that I would 
 dissolve in sentimental tears and confess to 
 Melitta the cause of my unhappiness. She ex- 
 pressed anything but jealousy. She rather 
 clasped me the more wildly and tenderly. "I 
 do not love happy people," she said, "I love only 
 the unhappy ones. The more you suffer, the 
 more ardently I yearn to comfort you. If it does 
 you good and eases your pain," she would often 
 say, "then close your eyes and imagine that you 
 are holding the other in your embrace." 
 
 She did not know the delusion that always en- 
 raptured and tormented me in her embrace: 
 namely that in some way she was a greeting, a 
 part, a mystic emissary of Veronica Harlan. 
 
 Towards the end of the summer Vigottschin- 
 sky and I had to meet for a conference. The 
 money of my aunt was spent, and we had to de- 
 cide how we should coax more out of her. Such 
 
 an attempt was not easy 
 v'e w 
 
 [167] 
 
 For a long time we were of two minds as to
 
 the sum to be extorted, of which each of us this 
 time was to administer (as Vigottschinsky called 
 it) exactly one half, for he insisted on that. As 
 I needed him and feared I might otherwise lose 
 his aid — I felt that he had me in his power to 
 some extent with respect to my aunt — I had to 
 consent to this arrangement. He proposed a 
 sum that was twice and three times the one we 
 had squandered. 
 
 I still remained timid, although I needed the 
 money more than he did, since I had paid all 
 sorts of large and small bills for the baroness and 
 her daughter, and had even got into debt. Gold 
 ornaments which I had bought for the little one 
 I had already had to pawn secretly to Aunt 
 Schwab, as if I had got them from a friend. The 
 baroness gave me to understand, Melitta never, 
 that I was either solvent, and then I must prove 
 it with clinking coin, or else, as she ironically put 
 it, I must seek out another sphere of action. She 
 must live, must provide for her daughter, think of 
 her future, and besides — nothing for nothing. 
 
 We had given up in our private talks the fiction 
 that we were still trying to get business capital. 
 This was strange in view of my general high-flown 
 
 [168]
 
 airs. I probably viewed this matter so dispas- 
 sionately because the knife was at my throat. I 
 could detect that my friend had previously only 
 pretended that he believed in my poetic fame and 
 my matrimonial prospects. What I had done 
 and attained in the meantime made me appear in 
 his eyes less idiotic than artful. He left me in 
 no doubt of this. But I had no desire to initiate 
 him into my mysteries. 
 
 I have already spoken of the social cloak in 
 which he liked to drape himself. He had contin- 
 ued to perform certain services for Aunt Schwab, 
 even though less consistently, and gave me to 
 understand that in this way he could withdraw 
 from the entire affair, if he chose, and leave me 
 in the lurch. But all the same he hated my 
 aunt. I was horrified to see in what an implac- 
 able form this came to light while we were forg- 
 ing our new plans. But he draped his social 
 cloak about this too. 
 
 My accomplice declared that he was an anar- 
 chist, and that he approved of any and every 
 means of depriving the bourgeoisie of their plun- 
 der. He had vowed war to the knife against the 
 exploiting state, against capitalism. Property 
 
 [.69]
 
 was robbery, he maintained, and there was the 
 greatest merit in robbing a band of thieves. If 
 one theft succeeded, then at least for once justice 
 would be satisfied in detail and in particular. 
 
 But now especially one must regard women 
 like Aunt Schwab as cancerous sores on the body 
 of humankind. He called her a blood-sucker, 
 called her an old hyena, who lay in wait for 
 those mortally wounded in the social struggle and 
 fell upon their dying bodies, in order to fatten 
 on their carrion. And he called her a disgusting 
 old vulture, who stank of her nauseating trade 
 a mile away and sat in her dwelling like that 
 carcass-eating bird among the clean-picked bones 
 of a fallen beef. 
 
 So tremendous was Vigottschinsky's hatred, 
 so immoderate and wild his fury, that I was unfor- 
 tunately carried along into its maelstrom to a 
 certain degree — remember the hatred and despite 
 that my mother felt towards her sister. 
 
 So then the new swindle was thought out be- 
 tween us to the last detail, and fully "planted," 
 as the phrase is. 
 
 [170]
 
 LVI 
 
 To be brief, this stroke succeeded too. 
 
 It could only succeed because the usurious old 
 witch, as mother called her, had still not lost her 
 blind confidence in me. To be sure, we had gone 
 to work with unexampled cunning, too. Vigot- 
 tschinsky's liaison with my sister and his tenacious 
 plans with regard to my person had caused him 
 to utilize his intimacy with my aunt in confirming 
 her confidence in my honesty, my caution, my 
 business judgment. And he had also undertaken 
 to prepare her for the coming blood-letting sim- 
 ply by a shrewdly devised fabric of lies with 
 respect to my business successes and by admiring 
 eulogies of my character. It is honestly true that 
 we subsequently sat over our wine and laughed 
 like fools at this base and scoundrelly trick, and 
 especially at the role of demi-god which he had 
 had me play, while he had depreciated himself in 
 every way and even left himself out of the reckon- 
 ing, in order to give more weight to me. 
 
 We got from Aunt Schwab a certain hundred- 
 per-cent-earning industrial stock, which I pro- 
 mised her that she would get back untouched, as 
 
 [>7i]
 
 I merely wished to deposit it at my bank as secur- 
 ity, and for three months at the most. 
 
 In less than six weeks this new money had run 
 off through the same channels as before, and we 
 were just about to plan another stroke, come what 
 might, when Aunt Schwab all at once awoke from 
 her pipe-dream. 
 
 One day I came home and learned that she had 
 been at my mother's. It was the first time in a 
 decade that this had happened. I cannot say 
 what took place then between the two estranged 
 sisters. I did indeed find my mother pale and 
 agitated and with trembling lips; but she would 
 not give me any disclosure of importance. She 
 merely fixed upon me her old, grieved, and sadly 
 questioning glance, perhaps with less timidity 
 than usual. 
 
 In a letter she had left behind my aunt asked 
 me to come to her. 
 
 Now there did come over me a sort of reali- 
 zation, which increased to consternation. 
 
 I had already been living during the last weeks 
 
 as if under the pressure of an ever more darkly 
 
 lowering cloud. Moments of clearness showed 
 
 me to what dangerous cliffs and precipices I 
 
 [172]
 
 had rashly climbed. The burden of my cares 
 grew and oppressed me. I not infrequently cried 
 out in the night and awoke bathed in perspiration. 
 I sought consolation in religion and felt springing 
 up in me the desire to be able to renounce the 
 world, to spend the rest of my days behind the 
 walls of a monastery. I was a Protestant and 
 considered conversion to Catholicism, since the 
 old spacious Roman church seemed the most 
 likely to afford me an asylum. A deep weariness 
 came over me. It was a weariness of life of the 
 sort that craves nothing but rest and peace, and 
 fears any resurrection as merely a new hardship. 
 I had at this time already laid out Veronica's body 
 in my heart like a beautiful corpse. My soul 
 was as it were draped in black. The catafalque 
 stood in the midst of it, covered with flowers, 
 and with lighted candles around it. But the 
 room seemed to derive its light not from the 
 candles, but from the unearthly glory of the 
 beauty of my dead beloved. With this image in 
 my soul I wanted to go out like a candle, and as 
 I have said with no anticipation of a resurrection. 
 Of course there were other moods, too. When 
 less exhausted physically, I had supermundane 
 
 [173]
 
 hopes that burst through my surfeit of life. I 
 saw myself then in the sphere of Veronica, who 
 had become a seraph, and God had allowed me 
 to feast myself to all eternity solely on the 
 splendor of her beauty. 
 
 In my first consternation I went to look for 
 Vigottschinsky. We considered what was to be 
 done. 
 
 First we must find out how much information 
 my aunt had of our doings, or whether she per- 
 haps had only a vague suspicion. Hence we were 
 agreed that I must take the disagreeable step of 
 going to Aunt Schwab without delay. "For," 
 said my pretty friend, as he urged me to haste in 
 noticeable anxiety, "she would be capable, in her 
 first alarm, of turning us over to the prosecutor 
 without a word." 
 
 [174]
 
 LVII 
 
 Aunt Schwab had opened the door for me 
 herself when the faint tinkle of the tinny bell had 
 died away. She did not speak to me, and let me 
 step into her parlor in silence. 
 
 The red plush sofa squeaked as she sat down 
 on it. 
 
 Now I spoke my first ''Good evening," and 
 asked, for it was already growing dark, whether 
 I should light the lamp. 
 
 But there was no answer. Nor did my aunt 
 ask me to take a seat. 
 
 A dray rumbled over the pavement of Heretic 
 Hill. The canary in the adjoining room, a 
 triller from the Harz, made a last effort to offer 
 the settmg sun his customary tribute of song. 
 My aunt still said not a word. 
 
 "You sent for me," I stammered, "what for?" 
 
 Still it seemed not to be a part of my Aunt's 
 plan to reply to me, until after some time she 
 finally made up her mind. 
 
 Whereupon she said these words distinctly and 
 clearly with a firm voice : "Lorenz, you are the 
 
 [175]
 
 most contemptible scoundrel I ever knew in my 
 life." 
 
 At these surprising words I felt as if the knife 
 of a surgeon had split me open from the throat 
 past the navel and down through all my intes- 
 tines to the backbone. Never in my life have 
 I felt a pain like it. 
 
 [176]
 
 LVIII 
 
 It is good to pause a little, to light my chilled 
 pipe again, to step to the open window, to listen 
 to the finches and red-breasts, and to tell myself 
 where I am, before I go on with my confessions. 
 
 I have now done that to the full. I have 
 saluted the doctor, who drove by on the street in 
 his new one-horse rig — he has a good practice, he 
 can afford it — I have listened to the talk of the 
 children who are bringing berries and mushrooms 
 which they want to sell in the shop below. And 
 I have breathed in the odor of my cabbage-roses, 
 which comes up to me out of the front garden. 
 This has quieted my heart-beat. It means a great 
 deal to me to be clear-headed and cool as I descend 
 into the deepest and most dangerous shafts of 
 my life, into their infernal passages and mazes, 
 where deadly poisons float about in the mine-gas. 
 Can there be a greater miracle than that I am now 
 enjoying once more the light of a golden day? 
 
 [177]
 
 LIX 
 
 So Aunt Schwab, sitting in the dim light on her 
 red plush sofa and looking up at me, her idolized 
 nephew, had said these words: "You are the 
 most contemptible scoundrel I ever knew in my 
 life." And I, as I have just written, felt myself 
 exposed to the backbone by a single slash. 
 
 At this moment I was confirmed in the reali- 
 zation that I was indeed no longer worthy of 
 Veronica and must treat her as one dead. 
 
 Yet my heart cried out for her in this terrible 
 hour, in which the death-blow was being delivered 
 to my moral personality. Yes, I should have 
 died blissful, with the exultation of any Chris- 
 tian martyr, if I might have made her understand, 
 lying at her feet, that like a moth I had sought 
 and found death in her flame. 
 
 Later on I once yielded to the inward impulse 
 to reveal this to the beautiful child, who had 
 never even so much as exchanged a word with 
 me. The letter came back unopened. 
 
 There can be no thought, however, of trying to 
 describe the storm that arose in me at my aunt's 
 words. It is certain that before I allowed the 
 
 [178]
 
 first word of my answer to escape from my lips I 
 had regained my composure. 
 
 I felt the whole seriousness of my situation, 
 and was resolved to leave no means untried to 
 avoid being unmasked. 
 
 The direct and excessively brutal attack of my 
 aunt afforded a basis for my defensive tactics. 
 
 «First let me light up," I said, and proceeded 
 to do so without undue haste. Then I continued, 
 -There, now we have light, and now we'll look at 
 everything in the light." ^^ 
 
 "You know I am no friend of excitement, 
 said I, as she was about to burst forth. "If I 
 really am what you say, then our getting excited 
 won't change it, either. By the way, I am 
 thirsty," I had the impudence to conclude, "for 
 you know I don't like to keep you waiting when 
 you send for me, so I've been hurrying. Perhaps 
 you might give me a bottle of beer." 
 
 She began again; "Lorenz, you are the most 
 contemptible scoun ..." 
 
 "Don't take any more trouble at all," I mter- 
 
 rupted her, "for I pay no attention to anything 
 
 that has no basis in reason, and if you are gomg 
 
 to continue like that, don't be surprised if I reach 
 
 [179]
 
 for my hat. An hour will surely come when you 
 are in a better humor." 
 
 She managed to pant, "You two have deceived 
 me, give an accounting." She wept. She could 
 not get out another word. 
 
 I said calmly, "Who has betrayed you*? What 
 'you two' do you mean*?" 
 
 Of course the details of the conversation are no 
 longer in my memory. At any rate, I knew ulti- 
 mately beyond a doubt that my aunt, probably 
 through her police commissioner, was pretty well 
 informed about our actions. 
 
 I had succeeded, or at least I thought so, in 
 making plausible to her a certain business con- 
 nection between myself and the baroness, because 
 the latter could be very servicable as an agent. 
 The liaison with her daughter was denied and 
 roundly declared to be a base calumny. Like- 
 wise Vigottschinsky's liaison with my sister, as 
 that infuriated my aunt more than anything. At 
 the same time I gave her to understand, or at least 
 pretended to, that I did not approve of her own 
 relations with Vigottschinsky. The mere fact 
 that I knew of them embarrassed her. I was only 
 acting along his own line when I tried to 
 
 [180]
 
 strengthen my aunt's confidence in me by ex- 
 pressing my doubts of Vigottschinsky's character. 
 I went further and said that his name could not 
 possibly be registered as partner in the new firm. 
 So much had become clear to me by listening here 
 and there, I said, that the decent commercial 
 world would absolutely reject him. At times it 
 seemed as if by such subterfuges my aunt could be 
 made to change her mind again after all, and be 
 won over to renewed confidence and even to an 
 apology. I got my beer after a time, yes and had 
 to share her supper. But I kept feeling all the 
 time that the peace was deceptive. 
 
 The speech to which she adhered was about as 
 follows: "I may have used too strong an expres- 
 sion when I called you a scoundrel. It may be 
 that I have been misled by gossip and calumnia- 
 tion, and that the business you are doing promises 
 profit. Today is Wednesday. You have till 
 Saturday. Either Melanie and you will appear 
 Saturday noon at twelve o'clock with all the ac- 
 counts of your business, or you can count on sit- 
 ting behind iron bars with your accomplices on 
 the evening of that same day. Let the baroness 
 look out for herself too." 
 [i8i]
 
 LX 
 
 Until daybreak Vigottschinsky, my sister, and 
 I held a council of war in our so-called office, with 
 wine and cigars. At about half-past nine we 
 heard as usual, from inside the theatre, the blank 
 cartridges of the great Indian attack. The great 
 theatrical hit, "Around the world in eighty 
 days," was still being played. The ground was 
 rather hot under us, and we should have been 
 glad to set sail for the new world, or anywhere 
 else. 
 
 Our situation was fairly hopeless. Not be- 
 cause we had no account books. We did not 
 think that my aunt would immediately deliver 
 us over to the courts on that account. First of 
 all Vigottschinsky would try to make another of 
 his attempts at reconciliation, and then too my 
 aunt had reasons for being very reluctant to have 
 dealings with the courts. No, our case was hope- 
 less because we had contracted other debts and 
 absolutely needed more money, without any pros- 
 pect of squeezing a single additional red cent 
 out of Aunt Schwab. 
 
 This state of affairs did not seem to find Vigott- 
 
 [182]
 
 schinsky unprepared; but for a long time I did 
 not know where to turn. I thought of stringing 
 myself up, but I could not even think the thought 
 of crawling back into my cast-off skin. Rather 
 die than admit before Melitta and her mother 
 so pitiful a downfall. And anyway: I could 
 die and thus be torn from Melitta. But I was 
 incapable of tearing myself away from her while 
 living, from the enjoyments and ecstasies that 
 she knew how to give. No, if the worst came to 
 the worst, I should perhaps end it all by a leap 
 into the Oder. Vigottschinsky, as I say, seemed 
 to have reckoned on the present crisis and to be 
 closer to his goal. He favored my aunt with 
 the filthiest expressions, which outdid anything 
 that his hatred had ever achieved in this direction 
 before, and spared no means of egging me on to 
 a like hatred of her. I had reported to him 
 verbally the sentence which my aunt had used 
 to greet me with, and this sentence, in which I 
 was branded as the most contemptible scoundrel, 
 was indeed well suited to awaken in me the desire 
 for retaliation, and, put to good account, to cause 
 a wild feeling of revenge to flare up in my de- 
 ranged mind. 
 
 [183]
 
 LXI 
 
 I DID not see Melitta or my mother on the 
 following day; for my sister, Vigottschinsky, and 
 I did not lose sight of each other. Without its 
 being said, I felt that there was something wholly 
 new and fearful between us, whereby we were 
 being welded together in an unexampled manner. 
 It seemed quite natural to me that we should 
 breakfast in an out-of-the-way basement lunch, 
 that we took our dinner in an ill-lighted den 
 which bordered on a disreputable, tumble-down 
 tenement, that we drank Nordhausen corn-whis- 
 key with it and at evening were still drinking 
 corn-whiskey, and that we stayed awake all that 
 following night, or at most slept a little in our 
 clothes, our arms resting on a pot-house table, 
 our foreheads pillowed on the backs of our hands. 
 
 In all that I had so far seen and done in these 
 two nights and a day I was helpless, in the main. 
 We were drifting as it were on a resistlessly 
 flowing stream. Vigottschinsky steered our craft. 
 Whither was he steering it, what goal had he 
 chosen for the journey? A vague presentiment 
 of it may well have breathed upon me, much as 
 
 [184]
 
 when you go past some old bit of masonry, and 
 from a basement hole the chill iron and mould- 
 laden breath of a subterranean torture-chamber 
 makes your soul shudder. 
 
 I lacked any power to take the rudder from the 
 helmsman. Or to jump out of the boat. Either 
 death awaited me in the flood, or in spite of my 
 attempted flight I should in the end be drawn 
 alive into the wake of the boat and so be carried 
 along to its fearful goal. 
 
 The subsequent testimony of Vigottschinsky 
 decidedly contested my passivity: I had fre- 
 quently behaved wildly, and by furious pounding 
 on the table had at times deadened his doubts 
 and his conscience. I denied this before the 
 judge. But if I really did so, then probably the 
 unwonted and immoderate consumption of 
 brandy took from me any recollection of it. I 
 have since attempted countless times over to re- 
 call to my memory those fearful nights that 
 preceded the crime, and truly it may be a fact 
 that I made on him at times the described impres- 
 sion. One and another trace of it rises dimly 
 in my memory. But in that case I behaved 
 noisily in order to disguise my inward weakness, 
 [>85]
 
 my lack of the "will to the deed." Perhaps I 
 willed the crime without wishing it, and thought 
 in my wretchedness that I could keep my hands 
 clean if I let Vigottschinsky's plans take their 
 course. 
 
 Upon these nights followed another day. On 
 the night of Friday we were going to proceed to 
 the execution. In these three nights, without any 
 exaggeration, my hair turned gray. 
 
 Even on the evening before the deed, which 
 was carried out without me, I was wholly apa- 
 thetic. I had become acquainted with all sorts of 
 types of male and also female rogues, and had 
 plunged with a kind of suicidal fury into the 
 vortex of sensual orgies. Things went on there, 
 and my sister even participated in them, than 
 which nothing more animal or satanic can be 
 imagined, and the recollection of which still cor- 
 rodes my soul with burning stains. Inextin- 
 guishable, stinking stains. 
 
 When I took leave of Vigottschinsky on the 
 evening before the crime, after we had agreed on 
 the hour and place where he was to pass the 
 plunder on to me for his greater security, I hoped 
 that the unendurable tension in my brain would 
 
 [186]
 
 soon degenerate into madness. And when instead 
 of this I subsequently recovered my senses in a 
 prison cell, that too was a great blessing to me. 
 
 My aunt was to be robbed. The scrapp ^ 
 had been framed by a practised peter-man, a 
 rascally friend of Vigottschinsky, the latter, my 
 sister, and myself. I use these terms of the 
 rogues' cant because they became familiar to me 
 in those fearful nights. The rogues had even 
 initiated me into their guild with a grotesque 
 dance and a baptism of corn-whiskey under the 
 name of Crookleg. In the opinion of the experts 
 the "scrapp" could be managed without difficulty. 
 The only thing was not to have just the worst 
 kind of bad luck. 
 
 Of course there was no idea of even touching 
 a hair of the victim's head. 
 
 The whole affair went off exactly in accordance 
 with the predetermined plan. Only unfortu- 
 nately it was overstepped in one single point, 
 which to be sure cost Vigottschinsky his life. 
 
 Vigottschinsky visited my aunt on the basis 
 of his former but now somewhat cooled relations, 
 
 ^Translator's note. Thieves' cant. Scrapp=plan of robbery; 
 frame=to prepare; peter=a safe; peter-man=safe-cracker. 
 
 [187]
 
 to which however, in case he seriously wanted to 
 do so, he knew how to give the old warmth. 
 He was bringing my aunt good news. There 
 was awaiting her, he said, in the visit of myself 
 and my sister on the following day a great satis- 
 faction. 
 
 Aunt kept him to supper, as was to be expected, 
 they drank some wine, and so it continued ac- 
 cording to programme, in that she kept the rascal 
 with her over night. The latter had put a sleep- 
 ing-draught into her last glass of wine just before 
 going to bed, and in view of his position of trust 
 near her, it was easy for him, even if she should 
 awake, to hold her attention and to divert her 
 from the proceedings in the adjoining little pawn- 
 office. It was a feature of the general depravity 
 in the nature of Vigottschinsky, that his sensual 
 impulses shrank from nothing when it was a 
 question of his advantage. 
 
 From midnight on my sister had to "stag" on 
 Coppersmith Street in the rain. Various "high- 
 balls," that is signs, in which she possessed a great 
 skill, had been agreed upon for the approaching 
 "peter-man." Also she was a past-mistress, as 
 her darkness-loving fellow-rogues said, in the arts 
 
 [188]
 
 by which one manages to divert any disturbance 
 that threatens, and to entice the disturber away 
 from the scene of action. I am convinced that 
 the fabric of the plan was of long preparation, 
 for everything was so ingeniously thought out 
 and with so many precautions. 
 
 Soon after twelve Vigottschinsky opened a win- 
 dow, and when the watchman had passed on his 
 rounds, he threw down on the pavement for my 
 sister, as soon as she stepped out of the shadow 
 of a certain gateway, the house-key carefully 
 wrapped up in paper. Melanie picked up the 
 key and walked, at 'first slowly, then faster as 
 soon as she had turned into a side-alley, on a 
 definite, long, labyrinthine course, leading to a 
 pre-arranged spot where she handed the key over 
 to the "peter-man." He now set out for my 
 aunt's house, whither she followed him, but at so 
 great a distance that she could just barely keep 
 him in sight. She walked into Coppersmith 
 Street at the very instant when the rogue disap- 
 peared in my aunt's house. 
 
 [189]
 
 LXII 
 
 I HAVE often wondered why Vigottschinsky 
 did not want to carry out without me his un- 
 questionably long-cherished plan. He was better 
 acquainted with my aunt's habits than I. He 
 knew exactly where she kept her cash, certain 
 valuable papers, and her jewelry, also where 
 she hid the keys to all these special receptacles. 
 He had made my aunt's house the object of his 
 close scrutiny in the course of several years, and 
 knew his way about in it better than she did. 
 And if he could not manage the mechanism of 
 the fire-proof safe, I certainly could not do any- 
 thing for him, so much the less that my aunt 
 never let anyone come near that steel fortress. 
 So he could not do without the cracksman and 
 other accomplices of the rogues' guild. 
 
 Well then: what use had he for me, to whom 
 he must after all turn over a goodly portion of 
 the plunder, if all went well"? I presume, in the 
 first place, in order to stiffen his own back, since 
 he was probably only a beginner in the profession 
 of thief. Out of the honesty and stability which 
 he saw in me he made himself the firm prop, the 
 [190]
 
 post that he needed, in order to let the creepers of 
 his criminal ideas twine around it. Welcome to 
 him was moreover my combination of ingenuous- 
 ness and folly. Such a fool as I, if rightly used, 
 one might perhaps be able to employ as a dummy, 
 or to pull the chestnuts out of the fire. And then 
 it would ultimately not be hard to cheat him out 
 of them again, without even having burned one's 
 own little finger. Then let him perish, covered 
 with burns. But who can genuinely illuminate 
 the fine and complex motives of the soul*? Of 
 course there are often quite inactive persons who 
 are only capable of developing their energy' by 
 making common cause with others. And who 
 knows but that Vigottschinsky just simply had a 
 fellow feeling for me. 
 
 The plunder was to be handed over by the 
 cracksman, since Vigottschinsky did not wish to 
 leave the house, partly to my "stagging" sister, 
 partly to a certain reliable man who was to set 
 off with it to Dresden that same night. My 
 sister, on the other hand, was awaited at the 
 Freiburg station by a so-called officer's widow, 
 who was traveling with her son and who was to 
 receive unobtrusively my sister's part of the plun- 
 
 [191]
 
 der and carry it to Berlin. The place and date of 
 the so-called "smack," that is, the division of the 
 spoils, had been fixed in a little town, upon the 
 punctual observance of which one could rely 
 without any danger of defalcation, according to 
 Vigottschinsky's assurance, in view of the honesty 
 of the thieves among themselves. 
 
 Vigottschinsky believed himself capable of 
 watching the discovery of the burglary, on awak- 
 ing the next morning, of simulating horror and 
 astonishment, comforting my aunt, and encourag- 
 ing her in the hope of recovering the stolen goods, 
 of notifying the police, and taking the first steps 
 for the discovery of the thieves. I am convinced 
 that his impudence was equal to this plan. 
 
 In that night cash and other valuables to the 
 amount of at least one hundred and twenty thou- 
 sand marks were stolen by burglary from the 
 pawn-shop of Helen Schwab. Of this entire 
 plunder very little, on the whole, was ever seen 
 again, perhaps a gold ring, or a gold watch with 
 a monogram. This success, however, which did 
 no good to either Vigottschinsky or me, was only 
 secured by a hair's breadth. 
 
 At the door of the old house of which the pawn- 
 [192]
 
 broker occupied the second story there was a 
 bell-pull by which one could even get her out at 
 night. It was hers to decide whether she regarded 
 the money-seeking night-hawk both as deserving 
 of confidence and as a sufficiently juicy morsel 
 to make her open the door for him. Such a 
 night-hawk my sister had successfully intercepted 
 and lured into a dark alley by means of her charms 
 and feminine wiles of every sort. 
 
 While she was still occupied with this person, 
 so that she could no longer keep watch on the 
 door, the bell had been pulled by a telegraph 
 messenger, who was looking for an address be- 
 cause he could not deliver a telegram. Vigott- 
 schinsky was immediately down at the door, and 
 soon afterward the messenger was already running 
 off along the house-fronts in pursuance of his duty. 
 But my aunt, whom Vigottschinsky had left 
 asleep, was asleep no more ; she had awaked, and 
 he found her in a struggle with the burglar. 
 
 [193]
 
 LXIII 
 
 I SHOULD sooner have expected anything else 
 than to be awakened by Marie Stark just on the 
 morning after this. The last time I had seen the 
 bookbinder family, and that has already been 
 mentioned, was when I was climbing into the 
 cab after my proposal of marriage in the Harlans' 
 house. At that time I was ashamed of knowing 
 them. 
 
 I was ashamed of them still, until my megalo- 
 mania was drowned in secret distresses, cares, 
 anxieties, and the rising floods of mire and crime. 
 But then I did not think of honest Stark and his 
 daughter, because I did not wish to increase my 
 torments to no avail. After all, it could not but 
 make me feel like a shipwrecked mariner who 
 should suddenly remember that he had sometime 
 or other set foot on a sunlit, peaceful green island. 
 
 In the book of Ecclesiasticus, the fourth chap- 
 ter, there is a verse, the twenty-seventh: "Avoid 
 not thy neighbor in his fall." Are there many 
 in our day that can still measure this saying of 
 wisdom in its full value? However that may be : 
 
 [194]
 
 to recognize it is a great deal, to live according 
 to it is the highest humanity. 
 
 So much and no less signifies that which Marie 
 and her father have done for me. 
 
 She told me yesterday, "You started up out 
 of sleep and stared at me. In that moment I 
 knew everything." 
 
 You must think of this circumstance, if you 
 would appreciate Marie's resolute heart of gold. 
 
 She knew everything, knew that I was a partici- 
 pant in the theft and murder to which the sister 
 of my mother had fallen a victim, and the news 
 of which was just being disseminated in news- 
 paper extras. She could not tell how far I was 
 involved. And yet she said, while the shouting 
 criers ran by in the street below, as she reddened 
 and shyly caressed me a little, "Lorenz, you have 
 had bitter experiences, and you have others before 
 you. But save yourself for me. I will wait 
 for you." 
 
 Will anyone attempt to ascertain what these 
 words meant to me, spoken to me on that morning 
 by Marie ^ 
 
 She went back and forth between mother and 
 
 [195]
 
 me and did not leave us for a moment. It is 
 thanks to her that my mother first learned of 
 the affair a week later, and only from her in a 
 softened form. She always told her that nobody 
 doubted my complete innocence. Marie herself, 
 strange to say, likewise believed that in her own 
 fashion. Her slogan might have been: "inno- 
 cently guilty." 
 
 At about ten o'clock Stark came up. "Cour- 
 age," said he, when we were by ourselves. To 
 me it was a miracle to see these two people thus 
 suddenly standing by my side without a word of 
 reproach, although fully acquainted with the 
 facts, while I thought myself forsaken by God 
 and man. 
 
 I wept alternately with the father and Marie, 
 because either she or he had to keep my mother 
 occupied. 
 
 Flight was not even thought of. 
 
 Silently it was assumed by us three that the 
 bitter cup of penitence and earthly punishment 
 must be drained to the dregs. 
 
 I should not have waited for my arrest, but 
 should have given myself up to the law, had I 
 not been deterred by a certain feeling of obliga- 
 
 [196]
 
 tion to my accomplices. I did not want to appear 
 to them as if I were perhaps trying to secure 
 better conditions for myself by being a hypocrite. 
 Then too, by giving myself up voluntarily I 
 should have brought on myself the suspicion of 
 playing the informer. 
 
 I wanted to spare others as well as I could, 
 but to be unsparing only of myself. 
 
 I was glad that I had a fever, that I coughed 
 and was shaken with the shivers. Despite such 
 phenomena I had the feeling that the crisis of my 
 grave sickness was now past, and that I was on 
 the road to recovery. 
 
 I could not escape a prison sentence. Yet I 
 had spent the entire night in my mother's apart- 
 ment, which could be proven absolutely, and the 
 guilt of direct participation in the murder did 
 not enter into my case. 
 
 On this morning and in the company of the 
 Starks I felt as if I had taken a very long, danger- 
 ous journey and had only just got back to my 
 four walls. 
 
 I awaited my imprisonment with impatience. 
 I saw in everything that was to come the great 
 bath of purification, so to speak, in which I could 
 
 [197]
 
 cleanse myself of the dust, of the poisonous sub- 
 stances I had breathed in on my journey, and 
 which would heal my wounds and restore my 
 vanished powers. 
 
 [198]
 
 LXIV 
 
 Such was the result, but I had thought the 
 coming cure not nearly so hard, the healing 
 process much less wearisome. 
 
 Strange to say, I was all at once restored to my 
 former sober discernment. My supposition was 
 that it would hardly be a matter of hours until 
 my arrest. For I was thinking of my aunt's 
 friend the police commissioner, who had informed 
 my aunt of my doings. In order to conceal from 
 my mother if possible the procedure of the arrest, 
 Stark was posted as sentry at the little window 
 in the front room that looked out on the street, 
 so as to notify me at once of any suspicious oc- 
 currences. 
 
 And after some time he actually came back 
 into the room with the announcement that a closed 
 cab had stopped, four or five doors up, and that 
 three gentlemen in plain clothes had got out of it. 
 So the expected and yet so terrible moment was 
 approaching. 
 
 I had already been walking restlessly up and 
 down for a long time, with my hat in my hand 
 and my overcoat over my arm. Now I suddenly 
 
 [199]
 
 found myself embracing alternately Marie and 
 the old bookbinder, and I could not have taken 
 leave differently from my real wife and my real 
 father. Here was my wife and this was my fa- 
 ther. No doubt of it, this hour of direst need 
 had welded us together for ever. 
 
 The gentlemen stepped up to me down-stairs 
 in the narrow entrance, to which point I had gone 
 to meet them. One of them was the friend of 
 my aunt, who was commissioned to identify me. 
 It was hardly necessary. I gave myself up with 
 the words: "Here I am, gentlemen," and went 
 to the cab hastily and inconspicuously. 
 
 I longed for my solitary cell. 
 
 "Are you sick*?" asked one of the gentlemen. 
 
 I said, "I don't know," and strange to say, "I 
 think not." 
 
 "I hope you will not be misguided enough to 
 make a useless attempt to escape," said the gentle- 
 man who sat beside me. 
 
 Whereupon I replied, "You forget that I 
 limp." 
 
 "Yes, his one leg is too short," said the friend 
 of my aunt in confirmation. 
 [200]
 
 We drove past the house of Melitta and her 
 mother. The windows were open, and the baron- 
 ess was watering the little orangery at the window 
 with a green watering-pot. 
 
 Goodbye, goodbye, I thought, and my throat 
 contracted, and my body was all one grievous 
 bitterness. The cab rumbled into the Ring, and 
 as I looked up I saw the whipping-post. Some- 
 thing like a rosy, ghostly vapor was circling 
 about it. Was it the shade of a departed spirit'? 
 Thereupon, as in a vision, the stone pillory re- 
 vealed itself to me in its true frightfulness. I 
 felt myself chained to the rings and whipped till 
 I bled in the presence of the whole city, while 
 in the Harlan house opposite the householder, the 
 family, and all the servants stood at the windows. 
 And it seemed to me, apart from my own suffer- 
 ing, that all this was not so bad, but that the 
 worst was a horrible and cruel face which was 
 leering at me, and which a voice at my ear named 
 to me, while I felt my heart turning to stone, as 
 the true countenance of mankind. 
 
 When I looked up again, for mostly I kept my 
 eyes fastened on our eight knees so close together, 
 [201]
 
 I recognized a former fellow-clerk and desk-mate 
 from the municipal office, who was going to the 
 city hall to work. He had been my neighbor 
 there for many years; he was a cheerful, con- 
 tented soul, and he showed that now as he saluted 
 a colleague with the gesticulations of John, the 
 Merry Soap-Boiler,^ before disappearing with 
 him in the porch of the city hall. 
 
 Why am I not going up to the city hall any 
 more, I wonder, contented and happy with these 
 people? I thought. And wasn't it glorious when 
 it so happened that we could go down into the 
 huge basement vaults of the city hall for our 
 lunch hour, and eat our Wieners and drink our 
 beer there? 
 
 Why, there was a familiar driveway and built 
 around it was, sure enough! the old house of 
 Emmo Harlan that everybody knew. After all, 
 I clung for a long time, the thought came to me, 
 to the idea that the hardware-merchant would 
 surely have to give me some answer to my pro- 
 posal. I saw in my mind's eye how I had run 
 after the carriage of little Veronica and been led 
 
 ^ Translator's note, A reference to a well-known poem en- 
 entitled "Johann, der Seifensieder," by Freidrich von Hagedorn. 
 
 [202]
 
 out into the street by the domestics, and how for 
 the second time, befuddled by a sort of trium- 
 phant frenzy, my breast puffed up with the idiotic 
 presumption, I had stepped out of the driveway 
 and into the Ring. How did I come to do all 
 this'? And what a variety of previous occur- 
 rences accounted for my coming to drive with 
 these gentlemen in a cab. 
 
 Suddenly I drew out my handkerchief, and 
 before the police ofBcers could prevent it, while 
 my whole breast seemed to fill with hot tears, 
 I waved it out of the window toward the flashing 
 window-panes of the Harlan house. Of course 
 the officers, who immediately drew back my arm, 
 thought that I had done this to give my accom- 
 plices the "office," that is a sign. 
 
 For a time I was absent-minded and thought 
 myself on a journey. Around me was a wholly 
 unfamiliar city. 
 
 When I came to, the enveloping world had 
 approached me in an oppressive manner. I per- 
 ceived familiar things, of which I thought I had 
 been dreaming the night before. I was to be 
 taken to the so-called Inquisitory, as I thought I 
 must gather from the remarks of my escorts. But 
 [203]
 
 this could not possibly be the Inquisitory. I 
 should have sooner expected anything else than 
 that they would bring me to this house, that I 
 should have to climb those stairs again, instead 
 of going to the peace and protection of my prison 
 cell. Of course it lay with me whether I would 
 make it a cell for prayer, for atonement, for 
 saintly living. 
 
 But this was really too much. I stopped short 
 in the middle of the staircase and asked if they 
 had not made a mistake. The answer was: 
 "Not at all." A hundred times I had climbed 
 this narrow, creaking wooden staircase, without 
 noticing anything special about it, for it was the 
 stairway to Aunt Schwab's apartment. But now 
 invisible fists, countless and terrible, struck out 
 at me from the walls, from the coming darkness 
 in front of me, and I did think of running away, 
 come what might. 
 
 My companions must have noticed that, for 
 they grasped me more tightly, and I stumbled, 
 fairly hurled forward, into the vestibule of my 
 aunt's flat. 
 
 The apartment consisted of the small unlighted 
 vestibule, a cramped kitchen with a pantry, the 
 [204]
 
 room in which my aunt slept, the parlor with the 
 red plush sofa, and the little office, which con- 
 tained the many pigeon-holed cabinets for the de- 
 posited objects, the ledger, the correspondence, 
 and the like. The little steel safe was not here, 
 but was set up in the parlor beside the sofa, so 
 that it should not meet the eyes of the many kinds 
 of people who went in and out of the office. 
 
 For some seconds, while we were compelled to 
 wait in the vestibule, I had the feeling of standing 
 before an experience that would shroud my soul 
 in eternal night, and then again I was as far re- 
 moved from all that was going on around me as 
 if I were a mere spectator looking on at a pre- 
 arranged spectacle. 
 
 The morning sun shone into the office, the door 
 of which was open. Also the doors to the parlor 
 and the kitchen stood open. They had probably 
 left everything as nearly as possible unchanged 
 from the state in which they had found it after 
 the night of the murder. 
 
 The canary from the Harz, hanging in the 
 office, was singing loudly and incessantly with all 
 his might. His thoughtless and carefree jubila- 
 tion formed the strangest contrast to that which 
 [205]
 
 had transpired and was still transpiring here. 
 
 At the office-door something violent must have 
 taken place. A clothes-tree which stood near it, 
 with my aunt's raincoat and umbrella and, as I 
 recognized, with Vigottschinsky's hat and over- 
 coat, was overturned. 
 
 On the table in the parlor the remnants of yes- 
 terday's supper had not yet been cleared away. 
 There were bread, butter, cold meat, radishes, 
 Swiss cheese, and egg-shells, as well as a half- 
 empty and a wholly empty wine-bottle. On a 
 platter lay the bones and head of a smoked 
 flounder, a dish which was distasteful to my 
 aunt, but which she mostly set before Vigottschin- 
 sky because he liked it. 
 
 I shuddered slightly as I saw these victuals. 
 Hard to say for what reason. Perhaps I felt as 
 if a ghost-supper had taken place here. 
 
 But how, why did just this simple and most 
 actual bread, this yellow butter, etc., seem to me 
 quite especially ghastly"? Whereas the murmur 
 of voices behind the closed door of the bedroom 
 hardly affected me. To be sure: the spectral 
 world about me increased. An instinct told me 
 that the increase of spectral elements in the field 
 [206]
 
 of my perceptions was actually an advantage to 
 me. I only needed to help the process on a little, 
 in order to take from the horrible, brutal reality 
 almost everything real and actual, which might 
 otherwise have destroyed my mind. 
 
 Incessantly I felt a nausea which increased 
 several times to a convulsive retching. Because 
 many a wrathful thought came to me, and I even 
 gritted my teeth, I seemed all the more to my 
 escorts as a dangerous miscreant. But I was 
 merely seized with unspeakable bitterness in the 
 face of that incomprehensible power which had 
 held up to me the prototype of beauty, so to speak, 
 in order to lure me with it, by craftily shrouded 
 paths, into a stinking cess-pool. 
 
 But grinding of teeth and the lifting of 
 clenched fists is of no avail. Man has an over- 
 weening conception of himself. He is reared in 
 a lie and is naturally surprised when it is proven 
 to him, with a brutal kick of fate, how little truth 
 there is in his supposed equality with the gods. 
 
 But perhaps it was just as well that a grim 
 
 defiance had come upon me at the very moment 
 
 that the door of the bedroom opened, where they 
 
 were going to confront me with the murdered 
 
 [207]
 
 woman, as of course I had long since realized. 
 Without this defiance I might not have been able 
 to bear up. 
 
 The officers and I were about to move forward, 
 when they motioned us back and closed the door 
 again. 
 
 A fit of nervous laughter seized me, which was 
 naturally chalked up against me as callousness, 
 as brutality. But a recollection from the days 
 of my childhood had suddenly rushed into my 
 mind, when we three, my sister, my brother, and I, 
 had likewise waited in the utmost expectancy for 
 the opening of a door. Back of it the famil- 
 iar Christmas table had been piled with gifts, 
 and the candles were just being lighted on the 
 tree. 
 
 And I sobbed with convulsive laughter, because 
 I could not help thinking how similar after all 
 were the proceedings of this day, though to be 
 sure a very different ceremony was to follow. 
 
 Meanwhile the door was actually opened wide. 
 I collected my thoughts for a moment, and as we 
 advanced I thought, as if mechanically, of noth- 
 ing else but the words of my Marie: "Lorenz, 
 [208]
 
 you have had bitter experiences, and you have 
 others before you. But save yourself for me. I 
 will wait for you." 
 
 No, I face about here. I will let the unreal 
 shadow of my personality, my shadowy double 
 enter without me across the threshold of the dis- 
 gusting and in every respect defiled alcove where 
 my aunt lay in her nightgown, a hideously de- 
 graded corpse. 
 
 Oh, roses, roses I One must inhale the odor of 
 roses, of thousands and thousands of incense-bear- 
 ing roses I Or the scent of the mountain stream 
 that rushes along over yonder, cold and clear. 
 The perfume of the pines I Steeling draught of 
 the pure, heavenly mountain air, permeate me, 
 be blessed to me as my daily bath I 
 
 Herewith let the resolve be taken to deliver up 
 to my good Marie, to-day or tomorrow, even the 
 picture of Veronica. 
 
 Strange how I suddenly hit upon that idea. 
 
 What connection between the shudder that has 
 come over me this very day at the mere recollec- 
 tion of the murder-chamber, at merely standing 
 before its imaginary threshold, and this little 
 [209]
 
 square of cardboard, from which Veronica's lovely- 
 little child-face smiles up at me? 
 
 What connection between this prototype of 
 beauty, this heavenly and wonder-working image, 
 and the stinking hell-hole whose very thought 
 poisons the air of my clean house *? 
 
 Well, no other than that between the beginning 
 and end of a road, 
 
 I have reflected on the connection between this 
 starting-point and this terminus in my cell, where 
 I was under lock and key and had plenty of time 
 for it, and what I have discovered in this way is 
 to be sure only a small part, as I have shown. 
 
 Namely this: the sight of the utmost purity 
 led me into the deepest wickedness, and the sight 
 of the basest wickedness led me to purity, and 
 even in another and better sense. 
 
 Did those magistrates dream, as they either 
 furtively watched me in the presence of the dead 
 woman, or stared at me, or tried to catch me nap- 
 ping with their questions, or snapped at me, that 
 it was just in that den of murder and pestilence, 
 just under that cross-examination, that there came 
 to me with the power of a lightning flash the 11- 
 [210]
 
 lumination that has lifted for me out of the dark- 
 ness the world in which I am now living, and in 
 which I shall live out my life till the day of my 
 death? 
 
 [211]
 
 LXV 
 
 I THOUGHT of Striking out the foregoing chap- 
 ter. But I will let it stand, because it bears wit- 
 ness to a certain confusion into which I can be 
 brought even, to this day, by the recollection of 
 my confrontation with the dead body and with 
 Vigottschinsky at the side of it. 
 
 But I shall attempt to clear up the main point 
 of the chapter, and thereby perhaps the others too, 
 to a certain extent. 
 
 All at once, you see, the murder-chamber re- 
 vealed to me the entire hopeless wretchedness to 
 which all life is condemned. This revelation oc- 
 curred, as I say, with the power of a lightning- 
 flash, in a blinding, almost deadly light, as it 
 seemed to me at the moment. There lay the 
 dead woman, in whom the rigor mortis had al- 
 ready set in, almost naked and, it may be said, 
 exposed to the eyes of all in a disgraceful position. 
 This throttled female, with her ugly shape and 
 her throat all black and blue, had not one feature 
 that reminded me of Aunt Schwab. This mass 
 of moulded flesh was so alien to me that at the 
 sight of it I felt nothing but an animal shudder. 
 [212]
 
 It was for this, then, that my aunt had piled up 
 penny on penny, mark on mark, had figured and 
 done usury, systematically exploited the misery of 
 others, to come to this end, which of course she 
 could not have ultimately escaped, even if the 
 unchastity of her old carcass had not laid her in 
 the arms of her murderer. 
 
 And was she really so very much less laden with 
 guilt than he*? Mother told of two cases where 
 clients of my aunt had each in his own way com- 
 mitted suicide, when their notes were presented 
 for payment. 
 
 Well, and these judges, these police officers, 
 these prosecutors, could one pronounce them guilt- 
 less and sinless men? Have not almost all 
 human beings a secret sin to conceal, a secret mis- 
 demeanor, if not many and positively criminal 
 offences'? And think of all that is done even by 
 the courts, partly out of general human short- 
 comings, partly out of negligence or carelessness, 
 whereby the happiness or unhappiness, the life or 
 death, of innocent persons is decided I 
 
 So I went out of this room in deep penitence, to 
 be sure, but on the other hand with a strangely 
 exalted soul. It was as if I were lifted out of 
 
 [213]
 
 myself. It was clear to me that provided I made 
 good use of the insight I had gained, I could lose 
 little, but could take to myself the true profits of 
 life: the power of rising above one's existence, 
 a power which is the equivalent of the power to 
 renounce. 
 
 And now perhaps you will understand my 
 resolve to part with the little photograph of 
 Veronica Harlan. 
 
 [214]
 
 LXVI 
 
 Now I have crossed the threshold of the 
 murder-chamber after all, but only in imagina- 
 tion, and only passing over it back and forth in 
 such a way that it could not but be clear how I 
 went in and came out as two entirely different 
 persons. After I had stood under the lightning- 
 flash of my illumination, I saw the crude decep- 
 tions to which I had fallen a prey, about like one 
 who thinks he is stepping on a green flowery 
 mead and who sets his foot on a deep pit of 
 liquid manure, completely overgrown with green 
 duck-weed, in which he promptly sinks down over 
 his head. 
 
 "When I sat in my prison cell, behind bolts and 
 walls and close-set iron bars, robbed by men of 
 my freedom, I had gained an inward freedom, I 
 had cast off the bonds and fetters of grave error. 
 I had risen up again out of the manure-pit and 
 had shaken the filth from me. I think myself 
 safe from a fresh immersion of that kind. 
 
 There followed the trial, there followed hear- 
 ing after hearing. The investigations brought 
 to light things that were so remote from the true 
 
 [215]
 
 course of my experience that they are without 
 significance for it. And since I had learned once 
 for all how to separate appearance from reality, 
 I kept on applying my learning, and the central 
 core of my being was no longer touched by the ex- 
 ternal procedure of the trial. 
 
 At times during the sessions of the jury I felt 
 as if my place in the dock were occupied only by a 
 lay figure, on which judges and prosecutor were 
 venting their rage, while i myself had stayed in 
 my cell. 
 
 [216]
 
 LXVII 
 
 A CERTAIN ebb in my communicative craving 
 and in my material is setting in. So probably 
 most of that which concerns the crisis in my life 
 has gradually been told. And yet I feel as if 
 something important had been left unsaid. 
 
 I shall go over to the school-house today to see 
 Dr. Levine — he has repeatedly asked about my 
 literary undertaking — and shall agree with him 
 upon a day when I can read to him what I have 
 written so far. 
 
 The peculiar thing about my case is that I am 
 in accord with it, I mean my case. For this 
 reason my memoir has overstepped the bounds of 
 what might have been a defence before worldly 
 judges. On the contrary, the judges that I take 
 into consideration as readers are such as have out- 
 grown the judge's calling on their own part. 
 Such a man is Dr. Levine, of whom I have already 
 spoken before. He is the quondam state's attor- 
 ney, who is the village schoolmaster here, and who 
 has no greater desire than to spend the rest of his 
 days under the elders, ashes, and birches of our 
 simple hamlet, and to end the dream of life some 
 
 [2»7]
 
 day in the densely overgrown churchyard of the 
 place. In this as in many other points he and I 
 are of one mind. 
 
 When I said I was in accord with my case, I 
 meant that I am not one of those who have done 
 time in prison, and who cannot get over griev- 
 ing about it. Their ambition seems to have been 
 made ten times more active, like the nerve of 
 a hollow tooth, by the ineffaceable stain that ad- 
 heres to them in the eyes of the community, and to 
 cause them a thousand times more pain. They 
 cannot get over saying, "Oh, if I only hadn't . . . 
 oh, if I only weren't . . . oh, if I could only 
 undo what has been done. . . ." Their exist- 
 ence is a chain of self-reproaches and repent- 
 ances. They are almost maddened by the at- 
 tempt to turn back the hands of the clock of life 
 to the time that preceded the deed. How differ- 
 ently I should act to-day, they think. 
 
 "Tell me," I asked Dr. Levine, "why did you 
 give up your legal career*?" 
 
 "Law and rights descend from generation to 
 generation like an eternal malady," said Dr. 
 Levine. And he added, "Judge not, that ye be 
 not judged." 
 
 [218]
 
 I have also jotted down a passage from the 
 patristic writer TertuUian which he translated 
 for me. It shows how the early Christians 
 thought of holders of power and wielders of 
 power, of judges and courts, and reads thus: 
 "Recently a dispute arose whether a servant of 
 God might take over the administration of any 
 post of honor or any office of authority. If we 
 admit that anyone can do this without taking an 
 oath, can act as holder of a post of honor without 
 pronouncing judgment on the life and death or 
 the civic honor of a human being, can promulgate 
 a penal law without condemning someone to be 
 chained, imprisoned or tortured — then even a 
 servant of God may accept such an office." 
 
 No, I am not an "Oh-if -I- weren't" or "Oh-if-I 
 hadn't." I am a believer in being, in living. 
 Life is much too vast to be stowed away without 
 residue in the humdrum retail store and back 
 room, and I already know much too much about 
 it not to feel firm and free and justified in it. 
 Here is the sun, here is the moon, here are the 
 stars, here is the Milky Way. I breathe air, fra- 
 grance, warmth, ice, fog, tempest. I enjoy the 
 light, I enjoy the night-time. If they should 
 [219]
 
 exclude me from intercourse with the petty hu- 
 man fossils, well, what greater favor could be 
 done me"? But if they should promptly leave me 
 entirely alone — well, after all, what human being 
 is not entirely alone? And is my consciousness 
 not unbounded'? And should I esteem myself 
 lower than humanity, lower than any living hu- 
 man being, when I am fervently pressing close to 
 the Godhead every day and every night? 
 
 I have looked deeply into my case from every 
 side, as I say, in the long nights and days of my 
 solitary confinement, and finally and ultimately 
 found myself in accord with it. The trivial, 
 narrow-breasted, narrow-minded municipal clerk 
 that I was is no more. My breast is arched, my 
 spirit is independent and broad, even my walk 
 has improved. 
 
 I will not gloss over ugliness, and yet one 
 might use a rather bold figure and speak of a 
 pearl that I had found at the bottom of the 
 manure-pit and brought up with me. And with- 
 out this experience-chain of disappointment and 
 suffering, could I have known an hour like the 
 one when I was released and stepped out of the 
 door of the Breslau Inquisitory under the open 
 [220]
 
 sky, whereupon Marie was immediately clasped 
 in my arms? — 
 
 No, I will not go over to see Dr. Levine. 1 
 shall not reveal the contents of these pages even 
 to him. In the first place, there would be a cer- 
 tain shamelessness in it, the display of which I 
 could perhaps not forgive myself for a long time. 
 It would probably make me carry a discontent 
 around with me for years to come. Who can tell 
 whether that discontent might not assume propor- 
 tions that would drive me away from here into a 
 new and alien spot, simply because my secret, my 
 most sacred and deepest secret, was in the hands 
 of another? And of course I should have been 
 exposing to public gaze the tenderest emotions of 
 my father-in-law and my wife without their con- 
 sent. "Why don't you write," my good wife did 
 say to be sure, "perhaps it may turn out to be a 
 book, you know." Well, it is a book by now, 
 but my good Marie and Papa Stark might be 
 startled after all, if they should see how far I 
 have gone in the revelation of myself and of us 
 all. 
 
 And yet might I not show it to them, either? 
 
 Well, perhaps the time for that may still come, 
 [221]
 
 some winter day, some winter evening. For the 
 time being I will lock the pages up. 
 
 It still remains to be considered, however, 
 whether I should cause Marie's heart fresh pain 
 by the revelations about Veronica. 
 
 I can easily put off Dr. Levine by saying that I 
 had suddenly come to realize that the thing 
 could not be done in this form, and that I must 
 begin the entire work all over again. 
 
 My mother died before I saw the light of 
 freedom again. I hope not of a broken heart, 
 as they say. Besides Stark and Marie, my 
 brother Hugo took care of her while I was in 
 prison, he having been appointed as drawing- 
 teacher in a city high-school by a strange agency, 
 of which I shall speak. My mother never be- 
 lieved in my guilt, Marie and Stark say, and 
 never lost her faith in my good character or in 
 me. 
 
 Melitta only came to see me in prison a single 
 time, but smuggled Veronica's picture in to me 
 in a New Testament. I was deeply touched by 
 this trait in her character. 
 
 Today I do not know nor care to know where 
 she is. 
 
 [222]
 
 My brother Hugo received his position, as I 
 say, through a strange agency. 
 
 What I could not achieve with the very most 
 ardent desire of passion, nor by distracting my- 
 self to the point of madness, namely to so much 
 as speak with Veronica Harlan, that privilege 
 fell into my brother's lap in the most natural way 
 in the world. 
 
 Fortunately he had spent the period of my 
 great crisis outside of Breslau, in Munich, in fact. 
 He only returned to Breslau after the grass had 
 long been growing over my trial. He had the 
 best of recommendations from Munich, and so he 
 received from the director of the Breslau school 
 of art a so-called master-studio. 
 
 Mr. Harlan had applied to this director and 
 requested him to recommend a talented young 
 artist, who also would be suitable in respect to 
 his morals, to undertake the instruction of his 
 daughter Veronica in drawing and painting. 
 
 The choice had fallen on my brother. 
 
 It fell on him and was approved by Harlan, 
 although the director did not conceal the relation 
 in which he stood to me and my fate. 
 
 Harlan took a liking to my brother, and it is 
 [223]
 
 due to his influence as member of the council that 
 he was appointed, again in spite of me, as teacher 
 in the employ of the city. 
 
 I have no idea in what manner my sister 
 Melanie escaped the punitive hand of the law. 
 I received a single letter from her, sent from 
 Bahia in Brazil. She said she had married there. 
 The close of the letter was : "If I get along well, 
 I will write again two years from now. If not, 
 goodbye for ever I" 
 
 [224]
 
 HAUPTMANN'S DRAMAS 
 
 The authorized trandaiion into English thus far include» 
 seven volumes 
 
 VOLUME I. SOCIAL DRAMAS 
 
 Before Dawn The Beaver Coat 
 
 The Weavers The Conflagration 
 
 VOLUME IL SOCIAL DRAMAS 
 
 Drayman Henschel Rose Bernd 
 
 The Rats 
 
 VOLUME III. DOMESTIC DRAMAS 
 
 The Reconciliation Colleague Crampton 
 
 Lonely Lives Michael Kramer 
 
 VOLUME IV. SYMBOLIC AND LEGENDARY 
 DRAMAS 
 
 Hannele The Sunken Bell 
 Henry of Aue 
 
 VOLUME V. SYMBOLIC AND LEGENDARY 
 DRAMAS 
 
 Schluck and Jau And Pippa Dances 
 
 Charlemagne's Hostage 
 
 VOLUME VI. LATER DRAMAS IN PROSE 
 
 The Maidens of the Mount Grisclda 
 
 Gabriel Schilling's Flight 
 
 VOLUME VII. MISCELLANEOUS DRAMAS 
 
 Commemoration Masque Fragments: 
 
 The Bow of Odysseus I Helios 
 
 Elga II Pastoral 
 
 uniformly hound, each volume, $2.50 
 
 Published by B. W. HUEBSCH, INC., New York City