[1]Executed by Napoleon's orders.
[1]Executed by Napoleon's orders.
Once more,—is it for the last time? I get out at the Northern Station. I do not ask now, "What have I to do here?" as I feel at home in the chief city of Europe. Gradually a resolve has been ripening in me, not quite clear I confess, to take refuge in the Benedictine cloister at Solesmes.
But first I go and visit my old haunts with their painful, and yet such pleasant, memories,—the garden of the Luxembourg, the Hotel Orfila, the churchyard of Mont Parnasse, and the Jardin des Plantes. In the Rue Censier I remain standing a moment in order to cast a stolen look into the garden of my hotel on the Rue de la Clef. Great is my emotion at the sight of the pavilion containing the room where I escaped death in that terrible night when I unconsciously wrestled with it. My feelings may be imagined as I turned my steps to the Jardin des Plantes and perceived the traces of the waterspout which devastated my favourite walk before the bears' and bisons' houses. On my return, in the street Saint Jacques I discover a spiritualist bookshop and buy Allan Kardec'sBook of Spirits, hitherto unknown to me. I read it, and find it is Swedenborg and Blavatsky over again; and as I find my own "case" treated of everywhere, I cannot conceal from myself that I am a spiritualist. I, a spiritualist! Could I have believed I should end as one when I laughed at my former chief in the royal library at Stockholm because he was an adherent of spiritualism! One knows not into what harbour one will finally run.
While I continue my studies in Allan Kardec, I notice a gradual reappearance of the symptoms which disquieted me before. The noises over my head recommenced, I am again attacked by compression of the chest, and feel afraid of everything. I do not, however, succumb, and continue to read the spiritualistic magazines while I keep a careful watch over my thoughts and acts. Then, after quite plain warnings, I am woken up one night exactly at two o'clock by a heart attack.
I understand the hint. It is forbidden to penetrate into the secrets of the Powers, I throw away the forbidden books, and peace immediately returns—a sufficient proof for me that I have followed the Higher Will. On the following Sunday I am present at vespers in Nôtre Dame. Deeply impressed by the ceremony, although I do not understand a word of it, I burst into tears, and leave the cathedral with the conviction that here, in the Mother Church, is the harbour of salvation. But no! It was not so! For the next day I read inLa Pressethat the Abbot of the Solesmes Convent has just been deposed for immorality.
"Am I, then, always to be the plaything and sport of the invisible Powers?" I exclaimed, struck by so well-aimed a blow. Then I was silent, and suppressed unseemly criticism, determined to await the end.
The next book which accidentally falls into my hands allows me to catch a glimpse of the purposes of my Guide. It is Haubert'sTemptation of St. Anthony. "All those who are tormented by longing for God I have devoured," says the Sphinx. This book makes me ill, and I am alarmed when I recognise in it the thoughts which I have expressed in my mystery-play mentioned above—regarding the admission of evil into the kingdom of the good God. After reading it, I threw it away like a temptation of the Devil, who is the author of it. "Anthony makes the sign of the cross, and resumes his prayers." So the book ends, and I follow his example.
After that, and at the propitious moment, I come across Huysmans'En route. Why did not this confession of an occultist fall into my hands before? Because it was necessary that two analogous destinies should be developed on parallel lines, so that one might be strengthened by the other. It is the history of an over-curious man, who challenges the Sphinx and is devoured by her, that his soul may be delivered at the foot of the Cross. Well, as far as I am concerned, a Catholic may go to the Trappists and confess to the priest; for my part, however, it is enough that my sin be publicly acknowledged in writing. Besides, the eight weeks which I have spent in Paris writing the present book may well be the equivalent and more of entering a convent, because I have lived a thorough hermit's life. A little room, not larger than a monk's cell, with a barred window high up under the ceiling, has been my dwelling. Through the bars of the window, which looks into a deep courtyard, I can see a fragment of the sky and a grey wall overgrown with ivy which climbs upward to the light. My loneliness, which I find terrible in itself, is still more oppressive in the restaurant among a noisy crowd of people twice a-day. Add to this the cold—a perpetual draught through the room which has given me violent neuralgia,—pecuniary anxieties with no means of relieving them, the daily increasing bill, and it may be imagined what the total effect is!
And then the pangs of conscience! Formerly when I regarded myself as responsible, it was only the remembrance of committed follies that pained me. Now it is the evil itself, my sinful acts, which constitute my scourge. To crown all, my past life appears to me merely as a network of crime, a skein composed of godlessness, wickednesses, blunders, brutalities in word and act Whole scenes out of my past unrolled before my gaze. I see myself in this and that situation, and always a preposterous one. I am astonished that anyone has ever been able to love me. I accuse myself of every possible crime; there is not a meanness, not a disagreeable act, which is not marked in black chalk on a white slate. I am filled with terror at myself, and would like to die.
There are moments when shame sends the blood to my cheeks and to my ear-tips. Selfishness, ingratitude, malice, envy, pride—all the deadly sins weave their ghostly dance before my awakened conscience.
While my mind thus tortures itself, my health deteriorates, my strength decreases, and, together with the emaciation of the body, the soul begins to have a presentiment of her deliverance, from the mire.
At present I read Töpffer's Le Presbytere and Dickens'sChristmas Tales, and they impart to me an indescribable inward calm and joy. I return to the ideals of the best period of my youth, and recover the treasures which I had squandered in the game of life. Faith returns, and with it, trust in the natural goodness of men; faith in innocence, unselfishness, virtue.
Virtue! This word has disappeared from modern use; it has been declared null and void and thoroughly false.
Just now I see in the papers that my drama,Herr Bengt's Wife, has been acted inCopenhagen. In this play love and virtue triumph just as in theSecret of Gilde. The drama has not pleased the public any more than when it was first acted in 1882. Why? Because this fuss about virtue is considered idle talk.
I have again read Maupassant'sHorla. That is the finale out ofDon Juanover again. Some one steals unseen into the bedroom in the middle of the night. He drinks water and milk, and finishes by sucking the blood of the wretched Don Juan, who, hunted to death, is forced to lay hands on himself.
That is a real experience. I recognise myself in it, and 1 confess that my senses are disturbed; but some one has a hand in it.
My health constantly gets worse, for there are cracks in the wall so that smoke penetrates into my room. To-day when I walked in the street the pavement moved under my feet like the deck of a ship swaying up and down. Only with considerable difficulty can I make the ascent to the Garden of the Luxembourg. My appetite grows continually less, and I only eat in order to still the pangs of hunger.
An occurrence which has often happened since my arrival in Paris has caused me to make various reflections. Inside my coat, on the left side, exactly over the heart, there is heard a regular ticking; it reminds me of the ticking noise in walls produced by the insect called, in Sweden, "the carpenter" and also the "death-watch," believed to presage somebody's death. I thought at first it was my watch, but found it was not so, as the ticking continued after I had laid the watch aside. It is not the buckle of my suspenders, nor the lining of my vest. I accept the explanation of the death-watch, as it suits me best.
A few nights ago I had a dream which again aroused my longing to be able to die, by holding out the hope of a better existence, where there is no danger of a relapse into the misery of life. Having gone too far on a projecting ledge bounded by a steep precipice hid in darkness, I fell head foremost in an abyss. But strangely enough I fell upwards instead of downwards. I was closely surrounded by a dazzling halo of light, and I saw——. What I saw gave me two simultaneous ideas, "I am dead, and I am delivered." A feeling of the greatest happiness overcame me, together with the consciousness that the other life was now over. Light, purity, freedom, filled my spirit, and as I cried, "God!" I obtained the certainty that I had won forgiveness, that hell was behind me, and that heaven was open. Since that night I feel still more homeless than before in this world, and like a tired, weary child, I long to be able to "go home" to rest my heavy head on a mother's bosom, to sleep on the lap of a mother, the pure spouse of an infinite God, who calls Himself my Father, and whom I dare not approach.
But this wish is connected with another—to see the Alps, and more especially the Dent du Midi in the Canton Valais. I love this mountain more than the other Alps, without being able to say why. Perhaps it is the remembrance of my residence on the Lake of Geneva, where I wroteReal Utopias, and of the scenery there which reminded me of heaven. There I have spent the most beautiful hours of my life, there have I loved,—loved wife, children, humankind, the universe, God. "I lift up my hands to God's mountain and house."
Paris,October1897.
After my return to Paris at the end of August 1897, I found myself suddenly isolated. My friend the philosopher, whose daily companionship had been a moral support for me, and who had promised to follow me to Paris in order to spend the winter there, has delayed in Berlin. He is not able to explain what detains him in Berlin, as Paris is the goal of his journey, and he is very eager to see the City of Light.
I have waited for him three months, and receive the impression that Providence wishes to have me alone, in order to separate me from the world and to drive me into the desert, that the chastising spirits may thoroughly shake and sift my soul. In this Providence has done right, for solitude has educated me by compelling me to hold aloof from my social pleasures, which had considerably increased, and by depriving me of every friendly support. I have grown accustomed to speak to the Lord, to confide only in Him, and have as good as ceased to feel the need of men; an attitude which has always seemed to me to be the ideal one of independence and freedom.
I am obliged to renounce even the convent in which I expected to find the protection of religion and of harmony with one's fellows. The life of the eremite was imposed upon me, and I have received it as a chastisement and an education, regardless of the fact that at the age of forty-eight it is difficult to change one's rooted habits for new ones.
I live, as mentioned above, in a small room, narrow as a convent cell, with a barred window high up under the ceiling, which looks out on a courtyard and a stone wall overgrown with an immense quantity of ivy.
In the evening I go out for my meal, and go straight to the restaurant, without first taking a liqueur to provoke an appetite,—a thing I dislike doing now. Why I choose the little restaurant on the Boulevard St. Germain it would be difficult for me to explain. Perhaps it is the recollection of the two terrible evenings I spent there last year with my occultist friend, the German-American, which fascinates and draws me thither, to such a degree that every attempt to go to another restaurant results in a degree of discomfort which might be called unfair, and which drives me back to this one, which I hate. The reason is that my former friend has left unpaid debts here, and that I have been recognised as his companion. For this reason, and because we have been heard speaking German, I am treated as a Prussian, that is to say, I am served very badly. It is no use for me to make silent protests by leaving my visiting cards behind, or purposely forgetting letters bearing the Swedish postmark. I sec myself compelled to suffer and to pay for the guilty. No one but I sees the logic in this position, nor that it is an atonement for a crime. It is simply a piece of justice which cannot be objected to, and for two months I chew the horribly bad food which reeks of the dissector's knife.
The manageress, who, pale as a corpse, sits installed at the cashier's desk, greets me with a triumphant air, and I am accustomed to say to myself, "Poor old woman, she has certainly had to eat rats during the siege of Paris in 1871!"
But it seems as though she begins to feel sympathy with me when she sees my dull submission and endurance. There are moments when she seems to me to look paler,—when she sees me come alone, always alone, and always thinner. It is the bare truth that after passing two months in this way, when I buy new collars I must buy them nearly two inches smaller. My cheeks have become hollow and my clothes hang in folds.
Then all of a sudden they seem disposed to give me better food, and the manageress smiles at me. At the same time the feeling of being bewitched ceases, and I go my way without rancour, and as if freed from a burden, with the assurance that for my part the penance is over, and perhaps also for my absent friend. If it was mere fancy on my part that I was badly treated, and if the manageress was quite blameless, I ask her pardon. In that case it was I who punished myself with a well-deserved chastisement.
"The chastising spirits take possession of the imagination of the man who deserves punishment, and effect his moral improvement by letting him see everything distorted" (Swedenborg).
How often it has happened to me that when I really wished to enjoy a meal, all the dishes inspired disgust in me as though they were bad, while my companions were enthusiastically unanimous in praising the good food. The man "continually discontent" is an unfortunate under the scourge of the invisible Powers, and it is with very good reason that people avoid him, for he is condemned to be a disturber of the peace, who, doomed to solitude and suffering, atones for secret misdoings.
Accordingly I go about alone, and when, after not hearing my own voice for weeks at a time, I seek any one's company, I so overpower him with my loquacity that he is bored and retires, and involuntarily gives me to understand that he does not wish for another meeting. There are other moments when the longing to see a human being drives me into bad society. Then it happens that in the midst of conversation a feeling of discomfort, accompanied by headache, seizes me. I become dumb, unable to bring out another word. And I find myself compelled to leave the circle, who always show that they are glad to be rid of an intolerable person who had no business there.
Condemned to isolation, outlawed among men, I take refuge in the Lord, who for me has become a personal Friend. He is often angry with me, and then I suffer; often He seems absent, engaged with some one else, and then it is much worse. But when He is gracious, then my life is sweet, especially when I am alone. By a curious accident I have taken up my abode in the Rue Bonaparte, the Catholic street. I live exactly opposite the École des Beaux Arts, and when I go out, I walk between rows of plateglass windows filled with Puvis de Chavanne's Legends, Botticelli's Madonnas, Raphael's Virgins, which accompany me to the upper part of the Rue Jacob, whence the Catholic bookshops with their prayer-books and missals follow me to the church St. Germain des Prés. From that point the shops with their objects of devotion form a line of Saviours, Madonnas, Archangels, Demons, and Saints, all the fourteen stations of the Passion of Christ, and Christmas mangers on the right hand. On the left there is a series of devotional picture-books, rosaries, clerical vestments, and altar vessels, as far as the Saint Sulpice market-place, where the four lions of the church, with Bossuet at their head, guard the noblest religious edifice in Paris. After I have passed observantly through this repertory of sacred history, I often enter the church in order to strengthen myself by looking at Eugene Delacroix's picture of Jacob wrestling with the angel. The fact is that this picture always sets me thinking, by rousing irreligious ideas in me, in spite of the religious character of the subject. And when I pass out again, through the kneeling worshippers, I keep remembering the wrestler who holds himself upright although lamed in the sinew of his thigh. Afterwards I pass by the Seminary of the Jesuits, a kind of terrible Vatican, from which emanate floods of psychic force, whose effect may be felt from far, if one may believe the Theosophists. I have now reached my goal, the Garden of the Luxembourg. From the time of my first visit to Paris in 1876, this park has exercised a mysterious influence over me, and it was my day-dream to be able to live near it. This idea was realised in 1893, and from that time on, although with interruptions, this garden has become part of my recollections, and so to speak, of my personality. Although actually of moderate extent, it seems in my imagination of immeasurable size. It has twelve gates, just like the Holy City in the Book of Revelation, and in order to complete the resemblance, "On the east, three gates; on the north, three gates; on the south, three gates; on the west, three gates" (Rev. xxi. 13). Every entrance gives me a different impression, derived from the arrangement of the plants, buildings, and statues, and perhaps also from personal reminiscences connected with them.
So I feel quite glad as I enter by the first gate after the Rue de Luxembourg as one comes from Saint Sulpice. The ivy-grown cottage of the gatekeeper, with a duckpond close by, seems like an unpublished idyll. Further on is the building containing pictures, by living artists, in clear bright colours. The thought that the friends of my youth, Karl Larsson, the sculptor Ville Vallgren, and Fritz Thaulow, have there deposited, so to speak, parts of their souls, strengthens and makes me feel younger, and I seem to feel the irradiation of their spirit pierce through the walls, and bid me take courage, since my friends are close by. Further on we have Eugene Delacroix, whose right to his laurels is questioned by contemporaries, and will be by posterity. The second gate of the pair which open on the Rue de Fleurus leads me to the racecourse, which is as broad as a hippodrome, and ends with a flower-terrace where a marble Victory stands as a boundary pillar, and from which one sees in the distance the Pantheon surmounted by a cross. The third gate forms the continuation of the Rue Vanneau, and leads me to a dusky alley which, on the left, merges itself into a sort of Elysian field where the children have chosen for themselves spots to play in and amuse themselves with wooden horses which go in pairs with lions, elephants, and camels, just as in Paradise; further on is the tennis ground, the children's theatre among flower-beds, the Golden Age, Noah's Ark. Here the springtime of life meets me in the autumn of my own.
On the south side, past the Rue d'Assas, the vegetable and nursery garden present a picture of midsummer; the blossoming time is over. It is the season of fruit, and the beehives close by, with their citizen-like inhabitants who collect gold dust for the winter, strengthen the impression of maturity which this part of the garden makes. The second gate, immediately opposite the Lyceum "Louis le Grand," opens up a paradisal prospect; velvet-like meadows with ever fresh green; here and there a rose bush and a single peach tree. I shall never forget how one spring this last, arrayed in its dawn-coloured blossoms, enticed me to spend a whole half-hour in contemplation, or rather in adoration, of its slim, youthful, virginal form.
The Observatory Avenue leads to the gate of the main entrance, which with its gilded "fasces" looks really majestic. But, as it is really too majestic for me, I generally remain standing outside—in the morning admiring the palace, in the evening the bright outline of Montmartre showing above the roofs, and in clear weather the Great Bear and the Polar Star circling above the great barred gate, which serves me in my astrological observations as a mural quadrant.
On the east side the only gate that attracts me is that which opens on the Rue Soufflot. From that point I discovered my favourite garden, with the charming outlines of the giant plane trees, and in the blue distance hinting at mysteries, as I did not yet know the Rue de Fleurus, which later on became dear to me as the entrance to a new life. Thence I am accustomed to look back over the path I have traversed, which is interrupted on one side by the pool, and on the other by the little statue of David with the broken sword.
One morning in early autumn the fountain presented the spectacle of a rainbow, which reminded me of the dyer's shop in the Rue de Fleurus where "my rainbow" expanded as a sign of my covenant with the Eternal (videInferno[1]). When I go on to the descent of the terrace I have to pass by the row of statues of women who were more or less queens or sinners, and I remain standing at the top of the great flight of stairs where, in springtime, a hedge of red hawthorn acts as a framework to the outspread panorama of flowers.
The last gate, that by the museum, makes a mixed impression, with the vulture that for no apparent cause has swooped down on the head of the Sphinx, and with Hero kissing Leander, overtaken by an early death, which might have been easily predicted. Passing it, I increase my topographical knowledge by skirting the gallery of contemporary paintings, and burying myself in the rose garden avenue with its thousands of roses.
This constitutes my morning walk, and I tune my mood to whatever pitch I like, according to the gate through which I enter. For my return route I use the Boulevard Saint Michel, and keep the top of the steeple of the Sainte Chapelle in sight. This serves as a cynosure to guide me between the vain attractions spread out in the shop windows and exhibited on the pavement in the shape offilles de joieand children of the world. Arrived at the Saint Michel market-place, I feel myself protected by the statue of the noble archangel who kills the dragon. The feeling that this emblem displays the spirit of evil is not derived from its lizard-like tail, nor the ram's horns, nor the lifted eyebrows, but from its mouth, which does not close at the corners, while the lips are drawn forward so as to hide the four front teeth. The tusks cannot be hidden, and its hideous sidelong smile displays the deathless evil, which still grins contempt, with the spearpoint in its breast.
Three times in my life I have met this mouth, in an actor, a female painter, and another woman, and I have never been deceived in my feeling about it.
I have now reached the crowded opening of the Rue Bonaparte. This narrow road forms a discharge outlet for the Mont Parnasse quarter, Luxembourg, and part of the Faubourg Saint-Germain. One has to manoeuvre skilfully to make one's way into the outflowing torrent, hemmed in as it is by foot-passengers and vehicles, while the firm ground is represented by a pavement a yard broad.
Meanwhile nothing makes me so nervous as these omnibuses drawn by three white horses, because I have seen them in dreams, and, moreover, these white horses remind me, perhaps, of a certain "pale horse" mentioned in the Book of Revelation. Especially in the evening, when they follow one another three abreast with the red lantern suspended above, I imagine that they turn their heads towards me, look at me maliciously, and say, "Wait a little; we will soon have you."
In brief, this is my "vicious circle" which I traverse twice a day, and my life is so thoroughly enclosed in the frame of this circuit, that if I once take the liberty to go another way, I go wrong, as if I had lost fragments of myself, my recollections, my thoughts, and feelings of self-coherence.
One Sunday afternoon in November I betook myself to the restaurant to eat alone. Two little tables are set out on the pavement of the Boulevard St. Germain, flanked by two green oleander pots, and shaded by two fibre-mats, which form an enclosure. The air is warm and still; the street lamps, which have been lit, illuminate a vivid kinematographic picture, as omnibuses, chaises and cabs drive home from the parks, filled with holiday-makers in their best clothes, who sing, blow horns, and shout at the passers-by.
As I sit down to eat, both my friends, two cats, come and take their usual places on both sides of me, waiting till the meat appears. As I have not heard my own voice for weeks, I make them a short address without getting any answer. Condemned to this dumb and hungry companionship, because I have abandoned evil companionship where my ear was vexed by irreligious and coarse language, I feel rebellious against such injustice. For I abominate animals, cats as well as dogs, as it is my right to hate the animal within myself.
Why is it that Providence, which takes the trouble to educate me, always banishes me to evil companionship when good companionship would be more adapted to improve me by the power of example?
At this very moment there comes a black poodle with a red collar and drives my feline friends away. After he has swallowed their portions, he makes his acknowledgments by defiling the foot of my seat, and then the ungrateful cynic takes up a sitting position on the asphalt and turns his back on me. From the frying-pan into the fire! It is no use complaining, for swine might come instead of him and offer me their society, as they did to Robert the Devil or Francis of Assissi. One can ask so little of life: So little! and yet it is too much for me.
A flower-seller offers me pinks. Why must it be pinks, which I dislike because they resemble raw flesh and smell of a chemist's shop? To please her I take a handful at my own price, and since it was a generous one, the old woman rewards me with a "God bless the gentleman for giving me such a fine douceur to-night!" Although I know the dodge, the blessing sounds pleasantly in my ears, for I have great need of one after so many curses.
About half-past eight the news-vendors cryLa Presse, and that is a signal for me to go. If I remain sitting to eat some dessert, and to drink an extra glass of wine, I am certain to be annoyed in some way or other, either by a troop of cocottes, who sit down exactly opposite me, or by roaming street urchins, who abuse me. There is no mistake about it; I am put upon diet, and if I take more than three courses and half a flask of wine, I am punished. After my first attempts to transgress the limits at meal-times have been frustrated in this way, I give up making any more, and finally find myself contented to be put on half rations. So I get up from table, in order to betake myself to the Rue Bonaparte and from thence up to the Luxembourg.
At the corner of the Rue Gozlin I buy cigarettes, and pass the "Gold Pheasant" restaurant. At the corner of the Rue du Four I pause by a strikingly realistic picture of Christ. The spiritually minded artists during their campaign against the Zola-literature have not been able to avoid the contagion of realism, and with the help of one devil seek to drive out another. It is impossible to pass such pictures without pausing to contemplate them, drawn as they are after living models and painted with the glaring colours of the impressionists.
The shop is closed and veiled in shadow, and the Redeemer stands there in His royal robe lit by the street lamp, showing His bleeding heart and head crowned with thorns. For more than a year I have been persecuted and followed by the Redeemer, whom I do not understand and whose help I should like to dispense with by bearing my own cross if possible. This is due to a remnant of manly pride which finds something repulsive in the cowardice of casting one's sins on the shoulders of the innocent.
I have seen the Crucified everywhere—in the toy shops, at the picture dealers', at the Art Exhibitions particularly, in the theatre, and in literature. I have seen Him on the cover of my cushion, in the burning logs in the oven, in the snow over there in Sweden, on the coast cliffs of Normandy. Is He preparing for His return, or has He arrived? What does He want? Here in the shop window in the Rue Bonaparte He is no longer the Crucified. He comes from heaven as Victor, adorned with gold and jewels. Is He the "Good Tyrant" which youth dreams of, a Prince of Peace, a glorious hero?
He has cast away His cross and resumed His sceptre, and, as soon as His temple on the Mont de Mars (formerly called "Mount of Martyrs") is ready, He will come and rule the world Himself, and hurl from the throne the false usurper, who finds the eleven thousand rooms known as theinfamia Vaticani locatoo narrow for him, laments over his luxurious imprisonment, and kills the time with small excursions into the field of poetry.
Leaving the picture of the Redeemer, as I arrived at the Saint Sulpice market, I am astonished to find that the Church seems removed to a great distance. It has gone back at least half a mile, and the fountains proportionably. Have I then lost the sense for distances? As I pass along the seminary wall it seems as though it would never end, so interminable does it appear this evening. I spend half an hour in traversing this small portion of the Rue Bonaparte, which generally takes only five minutes. And before me there walks a figure, whose gait and manner remind me of some one whom I know. I quicken my steps, I run, but the Unknown presses forward with exactly corresponding celerity, so that I never succeed in shortening the distance between us. At last I have reached the trellis-gate of the Luxembourg. The garden which was closed at sunset is sunk in silence and solitude, the trees are bare, and the border-beds laid waste by frost and autumn storms. But there is a good wholesome smell of dry leaves and fresh earth.
Following the enclosing wall I go up the Rue de Luxembourg, and always see in front of me the Unknown, who begins to interest me. Clad in a traveller's mantle, which resembles mine, but is of opaline whiteness, slight and tall like myself, he goes forward when I do, remains standing when I remain standing, so that it seems as if I were his guide and he depended on my movements. But one circumstance particularly draws my attention to him, viz. that his mantle flutters in a strong breeze which is quite imperceptible to me. In order to clear up the matter I light a cigar, and as I perceive the smoke rise steadily upward without wavering, my conviction that there is no air-current, is strengthened. Moreover, the trees and bushes in the garden are motionless. After we have reached the Rue Vavin I turn off to the right, and at the same moment find myself transported from the pavement to the middle of the garden without understanding how it has happened, as the gates are closed.
Before me, at a distance of twenty steps, stands my companion turned towards me. Round his beardless face of dazzling whiteness spreads a luminous ring in the shape of an ellipse with the Unknown in the centre. After he has given me a sign to follow him, he goes further. The crown of rays accompanies him, so that the gloomy, cold, and squalid garden is lit up as he goes. Moreover the trees, the bushes, the plants grow green and blossom just as far as the rays of his halo reach, but fade again when he has passed. I recognise the great flowering canes with leaves like elephant's ears hanging over the statuary group of Adam and his family, also the bed of Salvia fulgens, the fire-red sage, the peach tree, the roses, the banana plants, the aloes,—all my old acquaintances, each in his own place. The only strange thing is that the seasons of the year seem to be mingled together, so that the spring and autumn flowers are blooming simultaneously.
But what surprises me more than anything is that nothing of all this seems strange to me; it all appears quite natural and inevitable. So as I walk along the bee-garden, a swarm of bees buzzes about the plants and settles on the flowers, but in such an exactly defined circle that the insects disappear as soon as they fly into the shadow. The illuminated part of a sage-plant is covered with leaves and blossoms, while the part in shadow is withered and blighted with hoar frost.
Under the chestnut trees there is a fascinatingly beautiful sight, as, under the foliage, an empty dove's nest is suddenly taken possession of by a cooing pair of doves.
At last we have reached the Fleurus Gate, and my guide signs to me to remain standing. Within a second he is at the other end of the garden, at the Gay-Lussac Gate, at a distance which appears to me immense, although it is only about a quarter of a mile. In spite of the distance I can see the Unknown surrounded by his oval halo. Without speaking a word or moving a muscle of his mouth he bids me approach. I seem to divine his purpose as I traverse the long avenue, the racecourse well known to me for years bounded at the end by the cross of the Pantheon, which stands in blood-red relief against the dark sky.
The Way of the Cross and, perhaps, the fourteen Stations, if I am not mistaken. Before I begin it, I make a sign that I wish to speak, question, and receive explanation. My guide answers with an inclination of the head that he is ready to hear what I have to say. At the same moment the Unknown changes his position without the slightest perceptible movement or rustle. The only thing I notice is, that as he approaches me the air is filled with a perfume as of balsam, which makes my heart and lungs swell, and gives me courage to dare the contest.
I commence my questioning—
"Thou art he who has followed me for two years. What would'st thou of me?"
Without opening his mouth the Unknown answered me with a kind of smile full of super-human kindness, forbearance, and urbanity,—
"Why dost thou ask me since thou knowest the answer thyself?"
And, as if within me, I hear thy voice sound again, "I wish to raise thee to a higher life, to lift thee out of the mire."
"Born as I am out of mire, created for baseness, feeding on decay, how shall I be freed from earthly grossness except by death? Take my life then! Thou wilt not? It must be the infliction of punishment which is to educate me? But let me assure thee that humiliations make me proud; being denied the little enjoyments of life produces desire for them; fasting occasions gluttony, which is not my besetting sin; chastity whets the edge of lust; enforced loneliness produces love of the world and its unwholesome delights; poverty gives birth to greed; and the evil companionship to which I am relegated instils contempt of humanity into me, and produces unawares the suspicion that justice is maladministered. Yes, at certain moments it seems to me as though Providence was not kept sufficiently informed by its satraps to whom it has intrusted the rule over mankind; that its prefects and sub-prefects allow themselves to be guilty of malversations, falsifications, baseless denunciations. Thus it has happened to me, that I have been punished where others have sinned; suits have been brought against me, in which I was not only innocent, but actually the defender of right and the accuser of crime. All the same the punishment has lighted on me while the guilty triumphed.
"Allow me a plain question: Have women been admitted to a share in the rule? For the present method of government seems so irritable, so petty, so unjust, yes,—unjust. Is it not the case that every time when I have brought a righteous and lawful case against a woman, she, however unworthy she may have been, has been acquitted, and I have been condemned?
"Thou wilt not answer? And then thou demandest from me that I should love criminals, soul-murderers who poison the mind and falsify truth, and perjurers! No, a thousand times no! 'O Eternal! should I not hate them that hate thee? Should I not abhor them that rise up against thee. I hate them with perfect hatred; I count them mine enemies.' So speaks the Psalmist, and I add, 'I hate the wicked as I hate myself'; and my prayer is this, 'Punish, O Lord, those who persecute me with lies and malice as Thou hast punished me when I was false and malicious! Have I now blasphemed the Eternal, the Father of Jesus Christ, the God of the Old and New Testament? Of old time He listened to the reproaches of mortals, and permitted the accused to defend themselves. Listen to the way in which Moses defended himself before the Lord when the Israelites were tired of the manna, "Wherefore hast Thou afflicted Thy servant? and wherefore have I not found favour in Thy sight, that Thou layest the burden of all this people upon me? Have I conceived all this people? have I begotten them, that Thou shouldest say unto me, Carry them in thy bosom, as a nursing father beareth the sucking child, unto the land which Thou swearest unto their fathers? Whence should I have flesh to give unto all this people? for they weep unto me, saying Give us flesh, that we may eat. I am not able to bear all this people alone, because it is too heavy for me."'
"Is not this plain speaking on the part of a mortal? Is it quite befitting, this speech of an angry servant? Yet consider, the Lord does not smite the bold speaker with a thunderbolt, but lightens his load by choosing seventy leaders to share the burden of the people with Moses. The way in which the Eternal grants the prayer of the people when they clamour for flesh to eat, is only slightly contemptuous, like that of a kindly father when he grants the wishes of his unreasonable children. 'Therefore the Lord will give you flesh and ye shall eat. Ye shall not eat one day, nor two days, nor five days, neither ten days nor twenty days, but even a whole month, until it come out at your nostrils, and it be loathsome to you.'
"That is a God after my ideal, the same God to whom Job cries, 'Oh that one might plead with God as a man pleadeth with his friend.' But without waiting for this, the sufferer takes the liberty of demanding explanations from the Lord regarding the evil treatment to which he is exposed. 'I will say to God, "Condemn me not; show me wherefore Thou goest against me in judgment. Doth it please Thee to oppress me, to overthrow the work of Thine own hands, and to further the devices of the wicked?"' These are reproaches and imputations which the good God accepts without anger, and which He answers without using thunderbolts. Where is He, the Heavenly Father, who can smite at the follies of His children and pardon after He has punished them? Where does He hide Himself, the Master of the house who kept it in good order, and watched the overseers in order to prevent injustice?"
During my disconnected speech the Unknown regarded me with the same indulgent smile, without betraying impatience. But when I had finished, he disappeared. I found myself breathing a stifling atmosphere of carbonic oxide, and standing alone on the gloomy, dirty, autumnal-looking Rue Medici. While I went down the Boulevard Saint Michel I felt vexed with myself, that I had neglected the opportunity of speaking out everything. I had still many shafts in my quiver, if only the Unknown had waited to answer, or to direct an accusation against me.
But as soon as the crowd again presses round me in the glaring light of the gas lamps, and all the exposed wares in the shops remind me of the trivialities of life, the scene in the garden appears like a miracle, and I hasten in alarm to my lodging, where meditation plunges me into an abyss of doubt and anxiety. There is a ferment going on in the world, and men are waiting for something new, of which a glimmering has already appeared. France is preparing for a return to the Middle Ages,—the period of faith and of dogma, to which it has been led over the downfall of an empire, and of a miniature Augustus, just as at the time of the decay of the power of Rome and the invasion of the barbarians. One has seen Paris—Rome in flames, and the Goths crowning themselves in the capitol, Versailles. The great heathen Taine and Renan have gone down to perdition, and taken their scepticism with them, but Joan of Arc has again woken to life. The Christians are persecuted, their processions dispersed by gens d'armes; saturnalias are held on carnival days, and shameful orgies take place in the open streets under the protection of the police, and with the aid of money grants from the Government, which to satisfy the discontented offers shows, with or without gladiatorial encounters. "Panem et Circenses" (Dear)—bread and games. All is readily bought with money, honour, conscience, fatherland, love, administration of justice,—truly the infallible and regular symptoms of decay in a community, whence Virtue, both in name and reality, has been banished for thirty years. Yet for all that we are in the Middle Ages. Young men assume monkish cowls, wear the tonsure and dream of convent life. They compose legends and perform miracle-plays, paint Madonnas and carve images of Christ, drawing their inspiration from the magician,[2]who has bewitched them with Tristan and Isolde, Parzival and the Holy Grail. Crusades against Jews and Turks begin afresh; the Anti-Semites and Philhellenes see to that. Magic and alchemy have already been re-established, and they only wait for the first proved case of witchcraft in order to erect a funeral pile to burn witches on. Middle Ages indeed! Witness the pilgrimages to Lourdes, Tilli-sur-Seine, Rue Jean Goujon. Heaven also gives the sleepy world signs to be ready. The Lord speaks through water-spouts, cyclones, floods, and thunder-storms.
Mediæval also is the leprosy which has just appeared again, and against which the doctors of Paris and Berlin have combined.
But they were beautiful, the Middle Ages, when men knew how to enjoy and to suffer, when strength and love and beauty in colour, in line, and harmony were revealed for the last time, before they were drowned and sabred by the renaissance of heathenism which is called Protestantism.
The evening has come, and I burn with desire to renew my meeting with the Unknown, well prepared, as I now am, to confess all and to defend myself before I am condemned. After I have taken my melancholy meal alone I go up the Via Dolorosa, the Rue Bonaparte. This street has never appeared to me so monstrous as this evening; the shop windows yawn like abysses in which Christ is portrayed in many forms —half-martyred, half-triumphant. I go on and on, while the sweat runs in great drops down my face, and the soles of my boots burn my feet, yet I do not seem to advance a step. Am I the Wandering Jew who refused the Redeemer a drink of water? and am I, now that I wish to follow and imitate Him, unable to approach Him?
Finally, and without myself knowing how, I find myself before the Fleurus Gate, and in the next moment within the garden, which lies there, dark, damp, and still. Immediately a gust of wind sets the skeletons of the trees in motion, and the Unknown takes up his position quicker as he approaches in his summer-like garment of light. With the same smile as before he invites me to speak.
And I speak, "What demandest thou of me, and wherefore plaguest thou me with thy Christ? A few days ago in some mysterious manner thou placedst theImitation of Christin my hand, and I read it as in my youth when I learned to despise the world. How can I have the right to despise the creation of the Eternal and the beautiful earth? And whither has thy wisdom led me? To neglect my affairs, till I have become a burden for my fellow-men, and ended as a beggar. This book, which forbids friendship, which lays worldly intercourse under a ban, which demands solitude and renunciation, is written for a monk, and I have not the right to be a monk and expose myself to the danger of letting my children die of want. See whither the love for a lonely life has led me. On the one hand thou enjoinest the life of a hermit, and as soon as I withdraw myself from the world I am attacked by the evil spirits of madness, my affairs fall into confusion, and in my isolation I do not possess a single friend from whom I can ask help. On the other hand, as soon as I seek out men, I meet the worst kind, who annoy me with their arrogance, and that in proportion to my humility. For I am humble, and treat all as my equals, till they trample me under their feet, when I behave like a worm which raises its head but cannot bite.
"What then demandest thou of me? Is it to make me a martyr at all costs, whether I do thy will or disregard it? Wilt thou make me a prophet? That is too great an honour for me, and I lack the vocation to be one. Besides I cannot take up that attitude, for all prophets which I have known have been finally unmasked as half-charlatans, half-lunatics, and their prophecies have always failed.
"Moreover, if thou pressest upon me this vocation, I must be favoured with electing grace, so that I become free from all destructive passions which are degrading for a preacher; I must have adequate support for my life instead of being, as I am, besmirched with poverty, which makes one's character deteriorate and ties one's hands. It is certainly true, and I grant it, that contempt of the world has led me to despise myself and to neglect my calling through undervaluing honour. I confess that I have been a sorry guardian of my own person, but that is because of the superiority of my better self which despised the unclean sheath in which thou hast immured my immortal soul. From my earliest years I have loved purity and virtue—verily I have. Yet my life has dragged itself dong in filth and wickedness, so that I often suppose my sins to be punishments inflicted upon me, with the object of arousing in me a permanent disgust of life. Why hast thou condemned me to ingratitude, which I hate more than any other sin? Thou hast entangled me, who am naturally grateful, in snares, in order to compel me to feel obligation to the first benefactor who came in my way. So I have become involved in dependence and slavery, since benefactors demand as compensation control over the thoughts, wishes, inclinations, and devotion,—in a word, the whole soul, of those whom they benefit. Always I have been compelled to withdraw myself, laden with debt and ungrateful, in order to preserve my individuality and manly worth; I have been forced to tear asunder the bonds which threatened to strangle my immortal soul. And that, too, with the spiritual torment and pangs of conscience of a thief who goes his way with some one else's property.
"As a matter of fact, by choosing the royal road of the Cross I have entangled myself in the thorny thicket of theology, so that doubts more terrible than ever have taken possession of me, and whispered plainly in my ear that all unhappiness, all injustice, and the whole work of redemption is only an enormous temptation which one must manfully resist. Often I believe that Swedenborg, with his terrifying hells, is only a fire and water-ordeal which must be undergone. And although I owe a debt of gratitude, which I cannot pay to this prophet, who has saved me from madness, I feel rise again and again in my heart a burning desire to overthrow him, to defy him as an evil spirit who always plots to ensnare my soul in order to enslave me, after he has driven me to despair and suicide. Yes, he has insinuated himself between me and my God, whose place he has wished to take. It is he who tyrannises over me with terrors of the night and threatens me with madness. Though possibly he has only fulfilled his task in drawing me back to the Lord and making me submit to the Eternal. It may be that his hells are only a scarecrow; I take them as such, but believe no more in them, for I cannot believe in them without slandering the good God who demands that we should forgive, because He can Himself forgive. If the unhappiness and trouble I meet with are not punishments, then they are initial tests. I am inclined to explain them in this way, and it is likely that Christ is the Example, because He has suffered much, although I do not understand what end such great sufferings serve, except to throw into relief future blessedness. I have said what I had to say. Give me now an answer."
But the Unknown, who had listened with wonderful patience, answered only with a gesture of gentle irony, and vanished.
When I found myself back in the street, I was, as usual, angry at having forgotten the best arguments, which always turn up when it is too late. A whole long speech presents itself to me now, while my heart swells and my courage rises again. The awe-inspiring and sympathetic Unknown has, at any rate, heard me without crushing me. He has also waited to hear my grounds of complaint, and he will now consider the injustice to which I have been a sacrifice. Perhaps I have succeeded in convincing him, as he stood there and did not answer me.
The old idea that I am Job comes into my mind, I have really lost my property; they have taken my movable goods and books, means of existence, wife, and children. Hunted from one land to another, I am condemned to a lonely life in the desert. Is it I who have written these lamentations, or is it Job: "My neighbours have forsaken me, and my friends have forgotten me. My wife makes herself strange to me, and my prayers reach not the sons of my mother. Little children also despise me. He has made me a by-word among the people, and I have become their music. I find only slanderers, and my eye wakes the whole night while they persecute my soul. My skin breaks and is dissolved. When I say, 'My bed shall comfort me, my couch shall ease my complaint,' then thou scarest me with dreams, and terrifiest me through visions." This fits me exactly; the cracks in the skin, the dreams and the visions. But there is an over-plus on my side. I have endured the extremest sufferings, as circumstances brought about by invisible powers which hemmed me in, in order to compel me to leave unfulfilled the simplest duty of a man,—to support his children. Job retired from the game with his honour unaffected; for me all was lost, even honour, and yet I overcame the temptation to suicide; I possessed the courage to live without honour.
For three months I seek in vain to come into personal connection with the Swedenborg Society in Paris. For a whole week I go every morning past the Pantheon to reach the Rue Thouin, where the chapel and the library of the Swedish prophet are situated. Finally I find some one who says that the librarian only receives strangers in the afternoon, just the time when I wish to be alone with my thoughts, and am too tired to walk. However, time after time I make the attempt to reach the Rue Thouin. The first time I felt uncomfortably depressed as I wont out, and at the end of the bridge of Saint Michel this feeling amounted to a positive fear, which compelled me to return home. A second time it is Sunday, and they are going to have service in the Swedenborgian chapel. I arrive an hour too soon, and do not feel strong enough to wait an hour in the street. The third time I find the pavement taken up in the Rue Thouin, and workman blocking the way with their planks and tools. Then I conclude that Swedenborg is not destined to be my leader on the right path, and under this impression I retrace my steps. But when I get home, it occurs to me that I have allowed myself to be deceived by Swedenborgs invisible enemies, and that I must fight them.
My last attempt I make in a carriage. This time the street is barricaded, as it expressly to frustrate my purpose. I get out of the carriage and clamber over the obstructions, but when I reach the door of the Swedenborgian chapel I find the pavement and steps have been taken away. In spite of all I manage to reach the door, pull the bell, and am told by a stranger that the librarian is ill.
With a kind of feeling of relief I turn my back on the gloomy, shabby little chapel with its dark window panes soiled with rain and dust. This edifice, built in the severe barbaric depressing Methodist style, had always repelled me. Its want of beauty reminded me of the Protestantism of the north, and it cost my pride a struggle to bring myself to seek to enter it. I did it as a pious duty towards Swedenborg, nothing more.
As I turned round with a light heart, I saw on the pavement a tin-coated piece of iron, in the shape of a clover-leaf, and superstitiously picked it up. Simultaneously a recollection sprang to life in my mind. The year before, on the 2nd November in the terrible year 1896, as I was walking one morning in Klam in Austria, the sun disappeared behind a wall of cloud shaped like an arch, with clover-shaped outlines surrounded by blue and white rays. This cloud and my tinned iron-plate resembled each other as closely as two drops of water. My diary, in which I made a sketch of the former, can verify this fact.
What does that signify? The Trinity, that is clear. And further?—
I leave the Rue Thouin, joyful as a school-boy who has escaped a hard task because the teacher is ill. As I pass by the Pantheon, I find the great gate wide open in a sort of challenging way, as if to say, "Come in!" As a matter of fact, in spite of my long residence in Paris I have never visited this church, chiefly because people have told me lies about the wall-paintings, and said that they dealt with certain modern subjects which I strongly dislike. One may imagine my delight as I enter and find myself in a shower of radiance falling from the central dome, and surrounded by a golden legend—the sacred history of France, which closes immediately before the time of Protestantism. The ambiguous inscription without—"Aux grands hommes," had also misled me. There are few kings, still fewer generals, and not a single deputy; I breathe again. On the other hand, there are St Denis, St Geneviève, St. Louis, Joan of Arc. Never would I have believed that the Republic was Catholic to such a degree. There is only wanting the Altar and Tabernacle. In place of the Crucified and the Virgin is the statue of a woman of the world, set up here by women who admire her; but I comfort myself with the thought that this celebrity will finally descend to the gutter like so many more honoured ones have done before. It is pleasant and interesting to roam about this temple which is dedicated to sanctity, but it is sad to see at the same time how the virtuous and benevolent have been beheaded. Must one not out of reverence to God believe that all the evil treatment which has fallen to the lot of the just and merciful is only an apparent wrong, and that, however discouraging the path of virtue may appear, it leads to some good end, which is hidden from our view? Otherwise these infernal stakes and scaffolds, where executioners triumph over saints, must suggest blasphemous thoughts regarding the goodness of the supreme Judge who only seems to hate and persecute the saints below, in order to reward them in a higher world. "Those who sow in tears shall reap in joy." Meanwhile, as I leave the Pantheon, I cast a look at the Rue Thouin and wonder that the road to Swedenborg has led me to the Church of St. Geneviève. Swedenborg, my guide and prophet, has hindered me from going to his modest chapel. Has he then rejected himself and become better instructed, so that he has been converted to Catholicism. While I studied the works of the Swedish seer, it has struck me how he sets himself up as an opponent to Luther, who valued faith alone. In fact, Swedenborg is more Catholic than he has wished to appear, since he preaches faith in conjunction with works, just like the Catholic Church.
If it is so, then he is at war with himself, and I, his disciple, will be crushed between anvil and hammer.
One evening, after a day filled with pangs of conscience and doubts, I betook myself, after I had taken my lonely midday meal, to the garden which draws me like a Gethsemane where unknown sufferings await me. I have a foreboding of torments, and cannot escape them; I long for them almost as a wounded man wishes to subject himself to a cruel operation, which will bring him cure or death. Reaching the Fleurus Gate, I find myself at once upon the racecourse which is terminated by the Pantheon surmounted by the Cross. Two years ago this temple signified to my worldly mind the honour paid to "great men," now I look upon it as dedicated to the martyrs and the sufferings which they have endured; so greatly has my point of view changed. The fact that the Unknown remains absent causes me to feel an oppression of the chest. Lonely, and prepared for controversy, I feel myself weary for want of a visible opponent. To fight with phantoms and shadows is worse than to contend with dragons and lions. Terror seizes me, and urged on by the courage of the coward, I go forward with firm steps on the slippery ground between the plane trees. A close smell of dirty cod-fish mixed with that of tar and tallow chokes me; I hear the slapping of waves against the sides of ships and the quay; I am led into the courtyard of a yellow brick building; I mount upstairs, traverse enormous halls and countless galleries, passing between showcases and glass cabinets full of animals stuffed or preserved in tins. Finally, an open door invites me into a hall of strange appearance; it is dark, but faintly illuminated by patches of light reflected from a number of coins and medals in well-arranged showcases. I stop before a glass-covered case near a window, and my eye is attracted among the gold and silver medals by one of another metal, which is as dark as lead. It bears the picture of myself, the type of an ambitious criminal with hollow cheeks, hair erect, and an ugly mouth. The reverse of the medal bears the inscription, "Truth is always ruthless".[3]Oh! Truth! which is so veiled from mortals, and which I was bold enough to believe I had unveiled, when I despised the Holy Communion, the miracle of which I now recognise. The medal is a godless memorial to the dishonour of the godlessness of blasphemous friends. It is true I have always been ashamed of this glorification of brutality, and not taken the trouble to keep this memorial. I have thrown it to the children to play with, and it has disappeared without my missing it. Similarly, by a fateful "coincidence," the artist who made the medal, went out of his mind soon afterwards, having deceived his publisher and committed forgery. Oh, this disgrace, which cannot be wiped out, but must for ever be preserved in memory, as the law orders this indictment to be kept in the State museum! Here one sees what "honour" comes to! But what have I to complain of, since Providence has only granted fulfilment to an unholy prayer which I addressed to it in my youth?
I was about fifteen years old when, weary of useless conflicts against the young hot blood that longed to satisfy its passions, exhausted by the religious doubts which devastated my soul, which was eager to solve the riddle of existence, surrounded by pietists who worried me under the plea of winning my soul to love the God-like, I roundly asserted to an old lady friend who had lectured me to death, "I pitch morality overboard, provided I can be a great genius and universally admired!"
I was, moreover, strengthened in my views by Thomas Henry Buckle, who taught us that morality was "a nothing," incapable of development, and that intelligence was everything. Later on, when I was twenty, I learnt from Taine that evil and good were indifferent matters, possessed of unconscious and irresponsible qualities, like the acidity of acids, and the alkalinity of alkalis. And this phrase, which was quickly caught up and developed by George Brandes, has stamped an impress of immorality on Scandinavian literature. A sophism, that is a weak syllogism which has missed the mark, has seduced a whole generation of freethinkers.
Weak indeed it is! For if we analyse Buckle's epigram, "Morality is incapable of development, and therefore does not matter," it is easy to discover that the inference should rather be, "Morality, which remains invariably the same, thereby proves her divine and everlasting origin."
When my wish was finally attained, I became an acknowledged and admired genius, and the most despised of all men born in my country in this century. Banished from the better circles, neglected by the smallest of the small, disavowed by my friends, I received the visits of my admirers by night, or in secret. Yes, all do homage to morality, and a minority reverence talent, a fact which gives rise to various reflections concerning the essence of morality.
Still worse is the reverse of the medal! Truth! As though I had never given myself over to the power of falsehood, in spite of my pretence to be more truthful and sincere than others. I do not dwell on the petty falsehoods of childhood, which signify so little, occasioned as they mostly were by fear or the incapacity of distinguishing between fact and imagination, and because they were counterbalanced by punishments unjustly inflicted and based upon false accusations of my schoolfellows. But there are other falsehoods, and more serious ones because of the injurious consequences which evil example and excuse for grievous wrongdoing involve. For example, the untrue description in my autobiography, "The Son of a Servant," with regard to the crisis of puberty. When I wrote that youthful confession, the liberal tendency of that period seems to have induced me to use too bright colours with the pardonable object of freeing from fear young men who have fallen into precocious sin.
As I bring these bitter reflections to a close, the coin-cabinet contracts, the medal retreats to a distance, and diminishes to the size of a lead button,—and I see myself in a dormitory in a school for boys in the country on the bank of the Malar in 1861. Children born of unlawful unions, children of parents who had tied from their country, badly brought-up children who in too many families were in the way, live here together huddled in a loft, without oversight, tyrannising over and ill-treating each other, in order to revenge themselves for the cruelty of life. A hungry herd of little evil-doers, ill-clothed and ill-nourished, a terror to the country people and especially to the gardeners.
Pains of conscience follow immediately on a fall, and I see myself in the twilight of a summer evening sitting at a table in my night-dress with a prayer-book before me, stung by conscience and shame, although wholly unacquainted with the nature of sin. Innocent because I was ignorant, and yet a criminal. Led astray, and afterwards leading others astray, suffering remorse and relapsing, doubting the justice of my accusing conscience, and doubting the mercy of God who allows an innocent child to be exposed to the most terrible temptations. Unhappy victim without strength to stand first in the unequal strife with all-powerful Nature 1 Meanwhile the infernal fire is lit which will burn till the grave.
I burn with desire to accuse myself and to defend myself at the same time, but there is no judgment-seat and no judge, and I devour myself here in solitude.
As I cried out in my despair towards all quarters of heaven, I became enveloped in a dark mist, and when I began to see again clearly I found myself standing in the Fleurus Avenue with my head leant against a chestnut tree. It was the third tree counting from the entrance gate, and the avenue has forty-seven on each side. Nine seats are placed between the trees to rest on. Thus there are forty-four halting places for me before I reach the first Station.
For a moment I remain quite depressed, watching the path of tears stretch before me. Suddenly under the leafless trees a ball of light approaches, borne along by two birds' wings. It stops before me on a level with my eyes, and in the clear light which the ball radiates I see a white sheet of paper ornamented like a menu-card. At the top I read in smoke-coloured letters, "Eat!" Then in a second the record of my whole past life is enrolled like a micrographic reproduction on an enormous placard. Everything is there! All the horrors, the most secret sins, the most loathsome scenes in which I have played the chief part Alas! I could die with shame as I see those scenes depicted, which my eye, which seems to grow in size, takes in at once, without needing to read and interpret them.
I do not die, however. On the contrary, for a minute which is forty-eight years long, I review my whole life from early childhood to this day. My bones are dried up to the marrow, my blood ceases to circulate, and, consumed by fiery pangs of conscience, I fall to the ground with the cry, "Mercy! Mercy! I must cease to justify myself before the Eternal, and I must cease to accuse my neighbours."
When consciousness returned I found myself on the Rue de Luxembourg, and as I looked through the trellis-gate I saw the garden blooming, while a choir of little mocking-birds greeted me from the bushes and trees.
The next evening there was h knock at my door about six o'clock, and there stepped in the American painter whom, in my bookInferno, I have identified with Francis Schlatter. As we had parted from each other quite indifferently, without friendship or enmity, our meeting was quite cordial. I notice that the man is somewhat altered. He seems physically smaller than I remember him, and I cannot get him as before to smile at the vexations of life and at sorrows already endured, which are so easily borne when they are happily over. But he treats me with a surprising respect which contrasts strongly with his former cameraderie. Meanwhile this meeting rouses me from my lethargy, partly because I have some one to speak to who understands every word I say, partly because he forms a link with a period when the development of my life, belief, and growth was strongest. I feel as if the clock had been put back two years, and feel a wish to get free, to spend half a night on the Boulevard pavement in talk, with our glasses before us.
We agree to have our lunch at Montmartre, and take that direction. The noise of the street somewhat interrupts the current of conversation, and I notice in myself an unusual difficulty in hearing and understanding his words.
At the entrance to the Avenue de l'Opéra the crowd is great, and we are constantly separated by those who meet us. It happens that a man carrying some cotton wool stumbles against my companion so that he is covered over with white. With my head full of Swedenborgs symbols, I try to remember what this should signify, but can only think of the opening of the grave at St. Helena, when Napoleon's body looked as though it were covered with white down.
In the Rue de la Chaussée d'Antin I am already so tired and nervous that we resolve to take a carriage. Since it is dinner-time the street is very full, and when we have driven for some minutes the carriage suddenly stands still. Simultaneously I receive such a blow in the back that I rise from my seat, and as I turn round there are three horses' heads opposite me,—an omnibus with a shouting driver on the top of it. This puts me out of humour, and I ask myself if it is intended for a warning.
We alight at the Place Pigalle and dine. Here I am reminded of my residence in Paris in the seventies, when I was young, but it makes me sad, for the changes are great. My lodging-house in the Rue Douai is no more. The "Black Cat" which stood there then is closed, and Rodolphe Salis has been buried this year. The "Café de l'Ermitage" is only a recollection, and the "Tambourin" has changed its name and title. The friends of those days are dead, married, scattered, and the Swedish colony has transferred its quarters to Mont Parnasse. I feel that I have grown old.
The dinner is not so lively as I expected. The wine is of the bad kind that puts one out of humour. My having got out of the habit of listening and speaking makes the conversation disjointed and exhausting. The hope of recovering our former cheerful mood with the coffee is not realised, and soon that terrible silence begins which betrays a desire to get away from each other.
For a long while we struggle against the growing embarrassment, but in vain. As early as nine o'clock we rise from table, and my companion, guessing my mood, takes his own way, under the pretext of having an appointment to keep. As soon as I am alone I feel an indescribable relief; my discomfort ceases, my headache disappears, and I feel as though the convolutions of my brain, and the network of my nerves which had become entangled, were slowly returning to their normal state. In truth, solitude has made my personality so sensitive that I cannot bear the contact of a stranger.
Quietly, but with an illusion the less, I return home, glad to be in my cell again; but I notice that the room has undergone a change; it is no longer the same, and a sort of domestic discomfort seems to pervade it. The furniture and small articles are in their places, but give a strange impression. Some one has been here and left traces of himself behind. I am undone!
The next day I go out to seek for society, but find none. The third day I go by appointment to my friend the artist to see his etchings. He lives in Marais. I ask the porter whether he is at home. "Yes," he answered, "but he is in the café, with a lady." Since I have nothing to say to the lady I go away again. The next day I go again to Marais, and since he is at home I proceed to mount the six flights of stairs, which wind narrowly like stairs in a tower. When I have ascended three I begin to remember a dream and a reality. The dream which is often repeated has to do with just such narrow cork-screw stairs up which I crawl till I am stifled, as they grow ever narrower. The first time I remembered this dream was in the tower at Putbus, and I immediately went down again. Now I stand here squeezed, panting, my heart palpitating, but determine to ascend. I manage to get up, enter the studio, and find my friend with a lady. After I have sat for five minutes I get a severe headache and say, "My good friend, it seems as though I must renounce your society, for your stairs kill me. Just now I have a distinct conviction that if I come up here again I shall die."
He answered, "But you lately ascended the Montmartre and the stairs at the church of the Sacred Heart."
"Yes," I reply, "it is very strange."
"Well," he said, "then I will come to you, and we will dine in the evening together."
So the next day we actually have our meal together, and fall into the pleasant mood which is desirable at such times. We treat each other with respect, avoid saying unpleasant things, put ourselves at each other's point of view, and obtain the illusion of being of one mind in all matters. After our meal, since the evening is mild, we continue our conversation, and cross the river, proceeding to the Boulevards till we finally reach the Café du Cardinal. It is now midnight, but we are far from being tired, and now begin those wonderful hours when the soul gets free from her wrappings, and the spiritual faculties, which would ordinarily be employed in dreaming, are roused to waking, and clear conceptions and keen glances into the past and future. During these night hours, my spirit seems to hover over and outside my body, which sits there like a stranger. Our drinking is merely a secondary matter which serves to keep sleep away, perhaps also to open the flood-gates of memory whence all the occurrences of my life flow forth, so that at every moment I can call up facts, dates, years, scenes, and pictures. That is the attraction and power of vinous excitement over me, but a religious-minded occultist has told me that it is a sin, for it is wrongfully antedating salvation, which consists in the liberation of the soul from matter. Therefore this trespass is punished with terrible subsequent tortures.
Meanwhile they begin to disturb us by giving signs of closing the Boulevard cafés, but as I do not want to finish, I name the word "Baratte," and my friend is ready at once. Café Baratte, near the "Halls," has always had a wonderful attraction for me, without my exactly knowing why. It may be the proximity of the "Halls." When it is night on the Boulevard, it is morning in them—all through the night in fact—which with its enforced want of occupation and dark dreams is banished. The mind which has become intoxicated in immaterial worlds descends to eating, sin, and noise. This scent of fish, flesh, and vegetables, over the refuse of which we step, seems to me an effective contrast to the lofty themes which we have just been discussing.
That is the stuff out of which we are created and re-created three times a day, and when one enters from the darkness, dirt, and knots of seedy figures outside, into the comfortable café, one is greeted by light, warmth, song, mandolines, and guitars. At this hour of the day all class distinctions are wiped out. Here sit artists, students, authors, drinking at long tables, and in a sort of waking trance. Or have they fled from the sad sleep which, perhaps, has ceased to visit them? There is no sparkling hilarity, but a kind of stupor broods over the whole, and it seems to me as if I had entered into a realm of shadows peopled by half-real phantoms.
I know an author who used to sit there at night and write. I have seen strangers there dressed as though they came from a brilliant supper at Parc Monceau. I have seen a public man, with the appearance of a foreign ambassador, stand up and sing a solo. I have seen people who looked like disguised princes and princesses drinking champagne, and I really don't know whether they are real mortals, all these shadows, or the projected "astral" bodies of sleepers outside who hallucinate those drunk with sleep who sit there. The remarkable thing is that no coarseness prevails in the company packed together in the narrow café. The songs are mostly sentimental, and the melancholy guitars heal the needle-pricks with which the sharp steel-strung mandoline pricks the brain.