So as not to disturb you by exciting your imagination, dear reader, which might make the driving of your own team more troublesome to you, I shall mention no particulars of my struggle and my defeat. This precaution of an old man need not hurt you.
I fell under the joint influence of the following things: the fatally arisen rupture between corporal and spiritual desires, - the sharp contrast between English purity and English lewdness that, with its incomprehensible contradiction, has as exciting an effect as the dog in the duck-yard, who decoys the inquisitive ducks into the mouth of the strangler, - and finally the accursed self-contempt that makes one say: "There's nothing lost with me anyway."
With his attention so steadily fixed upon me, my father could not remain without suspicion. He came to my room one morning, installed himself there, and said:
"I hope, Vico mio, that you have remained and will remain a nobleman in all things."
When we Italians perceive that someone would enter upon a friendly conversation with us, we look upon it as an invitation to set up together and complete a small work of art, and we gladly give it an attentive hearing and zealously assist with careful application, so that something good and fine be brought forth. When I hear two Hollanders carrying on a conversation, it sounds more like children of a village school repeating their penal task, careless, slipshod, unwilling and embarrassed - if only they get it over with.
"My father," I answered, "I believe I know quite well how you wish a nobleman to be, but perhaps I do not know how he should comport himself in everything. Do you refer to any particular circumstance, or are you speaking generally?"
"If you recognize generally that a nobleman must avoid all intimate intercourse with ignoble persons, Vico, - the particular instances that I have in mind are therein included."
"That is plain, father. But yet I have something more to ask. First this: do you call it intimate intercourse where the spirit on either side remains at an infinite distance? And then this: can a nobleman have ignoble desires?"
I saw my father start painfully. Slowly and eyeing me sharply, he said:
"I fear, Vico, that I must speak plainly here, too. To the first I make this reply: It is certain that we have a body, but of a spirit that can separate itself from this body we know nothing and have no single proof. And as concerns the second question: natural desires are never ignoble as long as they remain in the natural channels."
"Without agreeing to the first," I replied, "I shall let it rest, because our natures are too different, and we do not understand each other anyway. But your answer to the second gives me much to ask. If a desire in me is natural and thus not ignoble, how then can it drive me to ignoble things? Are all natural desires good in all men? And how do I distinguish between natural and noble desires and unnatural and ignoble desires?"
"Have you no power of discrimination for that, Vico?" my father asked.
"If I use my discrimination, father, I call ignoble what my father calls natural."
My father arrested the conversation a moment to reflect. Then he realized that in order not to lose more ground, he must turn from the general to the particular.
"Let us beware, son, lest we become entangled in words. I have happily established that we both have an aversion from the vile and low. Take care then, that is all I wished to say, that you do not come into contact with it."
"But the vile and low in me desires contact with the vile and low in others," said I, bitterly.
My father grew impatient and said:
"I don't believe in this baseness and vileness in you. The popes surely talked you into that when you were a child. I understand that you have to deal with desires and passions that are absolutely not unnatural or bad, but very common at your age. But do not seek relief from them with unworthy, licentious persons. Of the great danger I have already warned you, have I not? Do not forget that in a few moments you can, through defilement, devastate your entire life."
"I do not forget that, father."
"Very well, but you should also be too proud to trouble yourself about such low-graded creatures."
"I would gladly have reason to be proud. But what is passing on in me is well suited to keep me humble. Can you deliver me from all this lowness and ugliness? You yourself have aroused it in me."
"I?" my father called, frowning angrily.
"By your scientific explanations. Before that time I had comparative peace. Now I am desperate, like a captive and tormented cat. It will end badly with me, father, that is certain. I foresee it, and can do nothing to prevent it. I can put out my eyes and chop off my hands, but I cannot control my thoughts and drive away these visions. That is beyond human power. I shall go to the bad, that is certain, and then the sooner the better. There's not so much lost with me."
With an anxious, painful eagerness my father listened to these first outspoken words. Then he said with a little laugh, half pitying, half scornful:
"One thing is plain to me now, my boy, that you must get married soon. Well, happily you need not seek long or fear a refusal. You can get of the very finest that wears a petticoat. Don't be bashful, Vico! You have a noble name, pure blood, a handsome face, and a fine, strong, healthy body. I shall supply the money. Be calm, my boy, you can have what you want for the asking."
I got up, deeply indignant. I believe that I laughed a theatrical laugh.
"Most decidedly your meaning is that I should make use of a pure and holy being, whose name I am not worthy to pronounce, as a safety valve, a preservative, a drain for my own foul and low passions. I assure you that, had it not been my father who had spoken such words to me, I would have challenged the man."
My father attempted a pitying smile, but it was artificial and painful:
"Good heavens, Vico! what exaggerated, impossible, fanatical nonsense! Then were all mothers who bore children drains for their husbands? Do be calm and reasonable, lad! You are not unworthy, your passions are not foul and low, whoever got that into your head? Your mother, surely, and her black friends. It's terrible how a mother can early poison the thoughts of her child."
"If one of my parents poisoned my thoughts, then it was not my mother. I realize my unworthiness through my own consciousness, not through outside persuasion. But my father cannot understand that, because he is a stranger to my deepest and most sacred feelings. Even though your advice had been good, father, your manner of expressing it would already have repelled me. But, moreover, your advice is idle. An English girl of twenty does not marry a young man of seventeen, and in three years from now I'll be lost anyway, hopelessly lost. I foresee that positively. And oh! what does it matter? It's only I, after all!" Scornfully shrugging my shoulders, I ran about the room. My father lifted both hands to his forehead and stared into vacancy with a look full of gloom, long-nurtured wrath and desperation. I still remember that look and wonder that I was not more painfully struck by it at the time. After a while he got up, sighed, and with the words, "We shall see!" he walked out of the room.
Again the poor man had brought about the contrary of what he wished to attain. One impression, above all, I retained from the conversation - it was that my mother would surely understand me and perhaps save me. I knew that she still lived and I also knew the name of our country seat. For the first time since our departure from home the thought of writing to her entered my mind. Amid many tears I composed a long, passionate letter to her that night, in which I told of all my tortures, my raptures, my struggles, my wondrous love and my deep self-degradation and self-contempt. I gave no facts, for young, sensitive, passionate letter writers seldom do, but prefer keeping to general terms. Nor did I employ a single religious expression, because I had really completely forgotten the brief maternal education, and simply translated elemental feeling of the heart into language most current to me.
"Help me, dearest mother," I wrote. "Help me. I know that you alone can do it. I have never forgotten you, and every day and night have thought of you. I still see you as distinctly as though I had left you only yesterday. I am a strange and terrible riddle to myself, and father, alas! cannot understand me. He speaks of nature that is always good, and says that my desires are natural and therefore good. But to me these desires seem ugly and despicable and the nature that drives me to them not at all good. He cannot understand this. Nature torments and tortures me. And no matter how I battle I see no deliverance. And at the same time, I adore a wondrous being, an angel of purity. And my father says that I must transfer the desires which I consider despicable to this sacred beloved. And that is a terrible thought to me. I love her with a passionate, boundless love, but I tremble to touch her with my impure lips. I harbor thoughts that would make me die of shame in her presence. And with my sordid depravities I am fit only for the low creatures, just as unhappy as I, whom I see running about here and who address me occasionally. Tell me, dearest mother, is there still help for me, is there still redemption? What is that nature of which my father speaks? Is it a thing or a thinking being, and how can it be good, always good, and bring me into such terrible straits and make me so unhappy?"
In this strain I wrote many pages and sent them off at a venture without much hope. And for two weeks I vainly went to the post-office every day, toward the last without the least hope.
But the answer came after all and I hid myself with it in my room, securely bolted, and with trembling hands I tore the envelope and kissed the paper and for a long time could not read for the tears that streamed from my eyes.
And when the contents, like a warm flood of tender benediction, seemed to pour itself out over my benumbed and tormented heart, of course I cried and kissed all the more and with greater fervor. We Italians are always a little, what here in my small town would be called, theatrical and affected, even though we be wholly without witnesses.
I am proud of it that so many years ago I already addressed to my mother the question which, as far as I know, the best philosophers have never put to themselves with sufficient stress. Even those who by preference call themselves natural philosophers, thus those who have offered their lives to the service of Nature, who have sacrificed everything to understand her, who never speak of her without reverence and admiration and never cease praising her beauty, her bounty and the peace she bestows upon her scholars and admirers - even they, with amazing carelessness, forget to apprise us whether they consider her dead or living, a being or a thing, a thinking, feeling, clearly conscious and responsible Deity, or a blind, senseless force; and finally to teach us how we can persist in our praise and homage in the face of so much torture, so many monstrous faults, so much relentless cruelty.
Nature worship is the religion which unobserved makes the most proselytes nowadays. Even the druggist of my little town, who is a clever botanist, has gradually renounced his slack Protestantism for an ardent and devout nature worship. When he accompanies me to my nursery occasionally, on his search for plants, he can be stirred to truly southern enthusiasm at the sight of insects, birds, plants, trees, meadows, - all the wonders of his adored "Nature." His Bible had to make place for a periodical entitled "Living Nature," but dead nature - the clouds, the sea and the stars - inspires in him no slighter enthusiasm. This is all very lovable, but I often find it quite difficult not to cause the good man embarrassment by asking him where he considers that his beloved Nature ends and something else begins. Whether he counts man and their products also as a part of nature, and if so, why his admiration should make a sudden turn before the slums of Amsterdam; and if not, or only partly, what peculiar something it then is that has created so curious a product as man, and yet should be the opponent and enemy of, and debarred from, the great good and beautiful unity of all other things.
Yes, yes, dear reader, I know that men do a great deal of thoughtless babbling, and in a vague and careless way prate of Mother Nature, and beautiful Nature and human nature, and so on and so forth, without even knowing or distinguishing with the slightest degree of exactness what they really say or mean. But yet there have also been those among my fellows and good friends, like my amiable comrade Spinoza, and my greatly beloved friend Goethe, who did not care in the least for hollow phrases and also well-nigh constantly thought about these things, and who yet never proved with sufficient force men's right to praise Nature as much as they do, to bring all that is knowable into her domain and yet to judge of some of her products, as let us say: baboons, tyrants, grand inquisitors, drunkards, philistines, modern buildings and bad verses, in an ethically and aesthetically disapproving sense and, moreover, to call this opinion natural.
See then, the answer I received from my mother was quite as plausible to a young mind. She really seemed to have a nail for every hole and a hole for every nail.
"Nature, my dear son," she wrote, "is blind and subject to sin. Through a Divine decree which we cannot penetrate she has been delivered over to Satan. But to offset nature there is the miracle. That is the wonder of Divine grace, through which we can find redemption from sin. The blood of Christ is the medium of redemption, and nothing more is required of us than to believe in Christ and in the redeeming power of his blood. Then the Miracle of Grace shall be performed in us and none can fall so deeply into sin, but faith in Christ can bring him salvation, and powerfully as nature works toward corruption, the miracle has wrought things
'a che natura
non scaldo ferro mai, ne batta incude.'"
The letter whereof this is a fragment made a profound impression on me. In the first place it came as a tangible, living token of the mother, so greatly venerated and adored - well-nigh as a departed saint; then, too, it awakened old, tender, childish feelings by the familiar tones of piety, which now struck my more experienced ears as something entirely new. And with the eager enthusiasm natural to me I thankfully and reverently accepted each of these proffered thoughts, fitting and arranging them until they seemed exactly to fill the gap which I had discovered in my spiritual life.
Exactly! Nature's trend is downward through the influence of Satan who draws us. This was just what I had felt. On the other side is God, who also draws us - but upward. That, too, I had felt. Thus at times nature is left to its own desires and Satan free to allure. Why? You must not ask. Divine decree. To a certain extent this is perhaps transferring the difficulty, but once thus firmly pronounced, - the door shuts unhesitatingly - the spirit becomes reconciled to it. Of course, something impenetrable may remain!
And now the salvation: Christ.
It was the first time this word was brought into the field of my vision, like a new plant that I saw sprouting in the garden of my life. Now, after fifty years, it is not yet full grown, but gives promise of blossom and fruit. Marvellous are the transformations it has undergone.
First I seemed to hear a word devoid of sense, and knew not what to do with it. A man, a God, a human-God, a Divine Man - all well and good, but what was that to me? Words, words. Satan who drew me downward I had felt, God who drew me upward I had felt. Of Christ I felt nothing. The assurance that he had lived, died and was risen again, did not affect me as long as he remained imperceptible to me.
Now I had gained the impression that Emmy knew more of him. It was customary in her family to offer morning prayers, and when I heard her pronounce the words: "Jesus Christ, our Lord," she did it with such expressive fervor that I could not doubt but that she positively knew whereof she spoke. At the time I had not yet learned the creative power of the suggested word.
So, in the course of a merry morning gallop, I, queer suitor that I was, began to theologize with the dear girl and asked her squarely: "Emmy, who is Christ?"
Now in my artlessness I had thought that anyone questioned by an earnest and not indifferent person, about a good acquaintance and dear friend, would manifest pleasure and gladly and heartily give the desired information. But Emmy seemed exceedingly surprised and even alarmed, as though the question did not at all please her, but more evidently distressed her.
"Don't you know that?" she said in a somewhat sullen and reserved tone of voice. "I thought you were religious."
"I surely am, Emmy, but that is why I want to know more of him."
"But aren't you Catholics taught that?" Emmy asked.
"To be sure, Emmy, but that does not satisfy me. It tells me nothing. I also want to feel that Christ is and what he is."
"Do you wish to turn Protestant?
"That makes no difference to me. I only do not want to use words without knowing what they mean. When you say, 'Jesus Christ, our Lord,' it seems as though you really knew what you meant with it."
"Of course I know!" said Emmy, the least bit crossly.
"Can't you make it clear to me, then?"
To my continued astonishment Emmy seemed to think this an unpleasant topic of conversation. It seemed as though she wanted to get it over with. She began, as though unwillingly, about God who had been born a man, had died for our sins, had risen again.
"No, Emmy, all that means nothing to me. It may all be very true, but what good is that to me now? If he died, well then, he is dead -"
"He is risen again," Emmy said quickly and almost angrily.
"Then he never died either; then it's folly to speak of dying. Is death still death when you know you will rise again directly? I'm willing to be killed three times a day then; no one is so much afraid of the bit of pain. Thus Christ still lives, - very well! then I ask: How do I become aware of that? By what am I apprised of it? What is he really then, and whereby should I know him if I saw him?"
"You must believe in him," Emmy said, still more or less crossly.
The verb "to believe" that Emmy used has an auxiliary with less favorable meaning. In English "to make believe" is in other words to impose on a person's credulity. It was as though this thought had made me suspicious and I began to surmise that Emmy's anxiety and anger were akin to that of the schoolgirl who is praised for a composition which she has copied from another. But surely it was in perfect good faith that the dear girl thought to believe what people had made her believe. As with everyone under suggestive influence, her deceived personality, without being clearly conscious of it, repelled any critical pressure that might bring to light the unreality of the imprinted image. How sorely I tormented the artless maiden at the time with my naive and inexorably insistent questioning! And how glad she was when at last I abandoned the Christ question and began to talk of tennis and croquet!
Although unformulated, yet this conversation positively revealed to me that Emmy in truth knew nothing of Christ, but used the word on her parents' and society's authority, and as a corresponding reality possessed nothing but a vague, fleeting phantom of a good and beautiful man with long hair and pointed beard, who was dead and yet living, - a man and yet God, existing everywhere and nowhere, and who on account of all these contradictory qualities is probably most easily known and addressed in pictures and images, which cannot and need not resemble him, with words that are pleasantly ingratiating through the familiar tones of precious associations.
But I had readily adopted from my father his scorn for this kind of faith in imprinted unrealities and suggested images, and I still retain it as the greatest treasure he left to me, covering all his sin toward me.
Surely there is no illusion - there are only grades of reality; and what we call phantasmagorias are merely very fleeting realities, created by man, in comparison to the eternal and immutable realities which we apprehend with our soul and our senses, and which must be of higher origin. But we will not give to human creations honors alone due to the Divine, and will not pronounce hollow words nor adore suggested phantoms.
Thus the Christ idea of the maternal gift had as yet no value for me - but even so I was rich with the ideas of God and Satan as the causes of this sad discord and confusion in my soul. Now all that was necessary was to fight Satan and to call on God for aid. Mother's advice had been: "Pray and chastise and subdue the flesh." I tried it immediately with trusting ardor, and behold! 't was true - it really helped. I hardly dared believe it myself, it seemed almost too good.
I prayed night and morning in my own, original, upright way, to the power which I felt as an uplifting influence, calling it God.
I imposed penalties upon myself, denying myself wine and delicate food, bathing a great deal in ice-cold water, clothing myself insufficiently, making forced marches on foot, and when Satan again seemed to be getting the upper hand, even sleeping beside my bed on the hard floor. For that I would rather go up with God than down with Satan - well I of that I was most positively convinced. It is strange with what blind arrogance man can consider himself an exception in this regard, as though anyone on earth would enjoy and prefer descending into the deep with Satan than ascending with God on high. And it may be called even stranger that I went to all this trouble, the while the maternal wisdom deemed salvation possible only through a miracle, which I, certainly, could not compel, and by faith in Christ which, though I honestly desired to, I could not awaken in myself.
The little fish did not see that by these evolutions it had even now entered the encircling meshes of the net which would land it into the same suggested faith from which it had once before turned away in alarm.
For the evolutions helped, there was no doubt about that. I soon felt more cheerful, braver, and above all, purer and stronger. Satan, if not absolutely routed, yet seemed to be considerably intimidated. I rowed, played cricket and croquet, studied, rode horseback, went walking in the country, not in the dangerous parks. I did not consider the infamy of my fall wiped out and maintained a respectful aloofness from my beloved, as one unworthy of her. But I saw her often and worshipped and adored her to my heart's content, without thinking far ahead.
This success was not the result of a miracle, nor of faith in Christ, but probably of the glad shock produced by mother's letter and of a strong auto-suggestion. But it seemed to confirm her wisdom and thus prepared the susceptibility to deeper suggestions.
During these exercises of virtue Satan's image through its countervailing influence became ever clearer to me. The crafty, evil power, whose existence I had officially recognized by my declaration of war, was obviously flattered and manifested itself with stronger reality. At the time I did not yet know that suggestion can engender reality, and that all actions are also auto-suggestions.
Satan retreated, hid himself, surreptitiously arose again, awaited his chance, taking advantage of unguarded and weak moments, and in one word demeaned himself as a very live and sagacious Satan.
His cleverest artifice consisted in finally taking advantage of my excess of virtue. After a few weeks of self-torture, over-fatigue, scant food, little sleep and insufficient clothing, I naturally fell ill, and the kind Tenders family would not hear of it that I should be tended elsewhere than in their own home.
Behold Satan's splendid chance, which he turned to excellent account. He kept still as a mouse; no impure thoughts, no visions, no troublesome dreams annoyed me. The hungry dogs which I had now come to look upon as Satan's faithful domestic pets were hushed, first by the auto-suggestion, subsequently by my illness, and finally by the promise clearly betrayed in my actions, that I would grant them nobler prey. Indeed, though I did not acknowledge it to myself, to what else could it lead - these daily more tender and ardent relations between the desperately enamored and speedily recuperating patient and the dear nurse, assuredly not insensitive to his adoration? The flame of martyrdom was swiftly quenched with beef tea, soft-boiled eggs and sweet malaga wine, and I could not possibly recognize Satan's voice in these gentle commands to self-indulgence, nor could I think to honor God by disobedience to such a charming mistress.
What a time! what a time! all the way from my nursery to my house I have been smiling in anticipation of my afternoon hours of literary activities, smiling and smiling in sweet remembrance. The children by the wayside got nickels instead of pennies, and the fisherman who lay caulking his boat hauled up on shore in the little harbor peered out from under the scow with an attentive expression as though he would say: "Well, bless my heart, and if the old gentleman ain't gone and got a jag on this morning!"
I am indeed blissfully intoxicated with the heady aroma of these long past days of young love! the sound of her approaching footsteps in the morning, the rustling of her gown before I beheld her, as she came to bring me some dainty which she had concocted for my regalement. And the merry little chats, when she would at first sit on the chair beside my bed, but later perchance also on the edge of the bed. And once at the very end, when I was to get up the following day, and thanked her for all her loving care, she bent over me, and before either of us really knew what we were about - so it seemed to me at least, perhaps her consciousness was clearer - we had kissed each other on the lips. And the blessed tears I shed when she had gone, - for the undeserved grace of this happiness, which yet never could endure, - these are things, are they not, dear reader? which we usually look upon as the very highest summits of our earthly joys, that still shine most radiantly when our sun is near its setting. But know then too that joy and bliss are of more imperishable matter than rock and glacier, and that very sublime beauty is more clearly perceived from a distance. Long ago, I have observed that most happiness can be valued best when it lies a certain distance behind us, and one must grow old to taste the full flavor of beauty at the very moment of perception.
There still followed a few lovely days of glorious summer weather, which I spent in a hammock stretched above the smooth green turf between the oaks. I saw the round sun shadows upon the grass, the sparkling, gently flowing Thames, the white swans, the gaily crowded boats, the kindly, happy people about me, and in their midst, as the sunny kernel of joy, the wavy, golden hair of her whom I loved best, and who only lent the true radiance to all this summer glory. I read Heine and listened to Schumann, and I breathed the subtle penetrating fragrance of the linden blossoms, the wonderful fragrance full of poignant melancholy and sweet longing that does not touch our senses ere love has deeply nestled in our Heart. I had travelled through so many lands and yet had never smelled the perfume of the linden blossoms, so that it was as though the great linden tree had become fragrant through Emmy's wondrous power just as she made the golden summer sun truly to shine.
But then I was restored to health and the lovely, lazy life was ended. And Emmy, mindful of our last rather unsatisfactory conversation on horseback and perhaps also to offer an antidote for Heine, brought me a small New Testament as a parting gift, which I gratefully and reverently pressed to my heart and began to peruse diligently.
Now the crafty devil held me securely in his meshes and could display himself without having the terrified little fish swim away. My body, now strong again and refreshed, wanted Emmy for my wife in the ordinary, human, time-honored way. It made this known with undeniable distinctness, without concerning itself in the least about my exalted scruples. Women can still cherish the illusion that kisses and embraces have no deeper significance; a man is more distinctly warned; and I really think it not at all kindly of the great and noted lovers that they so often profess ignorance in that respect, thus misleading the reader.
Satan could grin perfidiously now at the fix I was in. The shame of my unworthiness could, perhaps, have been wiped out with the help of Emmy's magnanimous forgiveness. Such an absolution is not unusual in the world of romance, and quite the rule in the actual world. But the body absolutely would not bear of postponement, and though circumstances were ever so favorable to me, yet modesty and convention, yes, even practical common sense, demanded a few years more of waiting.
A few years - how lightly these periods are set and written down in the love stories, from the time of father Jacob's seven years - and how terribly different is their significance for the man of different temperament.
The Old Testament shepherd lad may perhaps have borne it in good stead - but if we try to be frank, dear reader, what then may we suppose that such periods hide for the man of modern civilization, of wrong, of corruption, of unworthy transactions between the moral, ideal and natural reality?
When but recently come to England, I had read the statement in one of Thackeray's books that possibly there might be pure women, but certainly no pure man, and with youthful arrogance I had sworn a solemn oath that I would make him out a liar. This was the first of the fine set of broken, patched and mended oaths with which the quarrelling household of my soul was gradually fitted out. And one would think that the ambition for the collecting of this precious and breakable bric-à-brac should not be so generally praised and encouraged. I, at least, have had to pay dearly for this hobby, and with melancholy, struggles, self-torment, self-reproach and continuous worry it has embittered the best years and the most beautiful emotions of my life. And if now, in the end, I, at least, saw the way clear, dear reader! - but truly! if I should have to begin again, from the very beginning, I should not know yet bow to act better. I would surely never make promises again - but what I once pronounced impure and unworthy, I still call it so. And that I was, nevertheless, drawn into it through my own nature, like a rebellious cat, I still consider equally disgraceful and unjust. But how I could have prevented it I do not know yet, for I fought like a hero, and after all I was not one of the weakest; - yes! I was stronger even than the greater majority.
But this I know, that with all this worry I would not besides give to remorse a place in my house, and I advise you, dear reader, relentlessly to throw this guest out of your door. I would certainly continue to be as rebellious and unforgiving toward the vile and unworthy, - but if there is consciousness of sin and sense of guilt to bear, I know now who is justly ready and willing to bear with us and to ease this burden for us poor toilers.
The constitution of society and the precepts of convention are moreover so badly qualified to ease the struggle, because society and moral law manifest so little comprehension of the true nature of our difficulties. Where I felt no danger whatsoever, there were strong walls of strict convention; and where I knew positively that I would succumb, the world offered no defence.
With one of Emmy's friends or another innocent girl or woman, no matter how lovely and attractive, one might without danger have sent me off on a journey and have left us together for days and weeks without witnesses, and not a shadow of eroticism or impure thought would have arisen in me. With Emmy herself, her innocence and my own scruples and respect were a better safeguard than all moral laws. But as soon as I detected in a woman, totally strange and indifferent to me, ugly even and repulsive, this peculiar weakness, usually paired with good nature, which indicated in an almost imperceptible manner that the parting wall of modesty would fall at my first assault, I already felt myself lost from the beginning in spite of all conventional restrictions.
I sometimes vainly endeavored to imagine how ugly a woman would have to be to make me repel her advances with stony coolness. Every woman, the least attractive even, could make me stumble, simply by humbling herself. As by an excess of chivalry, I could not refuse a woman's request nor even await it. It was as though I must prevent her casting off her modesty at all costs by my own debasement; that is to say, as long as she desired only my body and not my heart. My heart remained out of shot range behind the walls of my true love for Emmy.
When physical desires and spiritual sensibilities are once severed one from the other, they never grow entirely together again and possibilities of sad confusion remain throughout life. In spite of my pure and passionate love for Emmy, my bodily desires could be excited to madness by the first woman that came along seeming inclined to let the veil of modesty drop before me. And while, with - the exception of Emmy, the most beautiful, sweetest and noblest women did not exercise the slightest alluring power over me and Emmy's guileless trust in me and her absolute want of jealousy in that respect were entirely justified, a coarse, low-born, sensual and good-natured woman could seduce me to things that neither Emmy nor any of the persons who knew me would have deemed possible. Thus you see, dear reader, how highly necessary it is to regulate the strange connection between ape and angel in valid and permanent fashion, from childhood up, for the two have such different conceptions of good and beautiful that it will not do to leave to each his freedom in one narrow, fragile house.
For all the rest, I was constitutionally strong and well balanced in soul and body. Of disease I know little, and that breaking down of the bond between the visible and invisible part of our nature that people call nervous troubles nowadays was ever strange to me.
And this was the most perplexing and confounding circumstance in my difficulties, that when the ape had finally had his way, he rewarded me for it by a feeling of physical refreshment and comfort, by a consciousness of renewed and invigorated life, a clearing of thought, an increased activity and capacity for enjoyment.
All this agrees very badly - does it not? with the traditional punishment that should follow upon the misdeed. Perhaps it even seems to you in flagrant conflict with the moral world order. I cannot help it, but it was as I have told you, and you can only save the honor of tradition, as I did at the time, by declaring it all a most contemptible artifice of Satan. But conscience is not hushed by this explanation. On the contrary, who would maintain a real, live devil must have a conscience for him to gnaw. Pure and elemental it need not be; he is satisfied - with any cheap group-fabrication, and the torments remain the same.
My life in these years was one long, secret struggle, the fierceness of which only my father suspected, without being able to do anything to help me, poor man - for he really suffered under it with me because his life task was at stake.
In his helplessness he even seriously considered and covertly proposed our following the example of certain aristocratic English families where, as he declared he knew positively, a pretty servant girl was engaged to keep the son of the house from worse excesses, until the time for a respectable marriage had arrived and the girl was sent home with a liberal remuneration.
But the mere allusion roused me to indignant passion, little as I was entitled to such pride. How shall we account for it, that every reminder of what man recognizes as degrading in his love life is never more unbearable, never more painful than between parent and child?
My life and my being in these years was like the struggling of two powers in deadly dispute, rising and falling between heaven and earth, between clouds and sea - the eagle of ideal sublimity and the snake of earthly brutishness.
"Feather and scale inextricably blended."
For me, in an outwardly calm and care-free life, an anxious and terrible struggle with
"Many a check
And many a change, a dark and wild turmoil."
The distress, the shame, the self-contempt, the despair resulting therefrom made my behavior toward Emmy so strange, so uneven and capricious that she often felt hurt by it, and so was careful to draw back a little more.
Before long I had a rival: a young English officer, equally handsome, equally good to look at and strongly built as I, but somewhat calmer, somewhat more measured and somewhat more assured of his own right and virtue. For these qualities he was hateful to me, but with secret bitterness I recognized his superior rights, because I took him for a pure man.
In my country, in Spain, in France, also in Germany, men, even those calling themselves well bred, are often caddish enough to make coarse sexual jokes toward comparative strangers and to assume a freer tone when no women are present. Such behavior could make me furious and I always answered it with mocking non-comprehension. And at the same time it tormented me, that anyone knowing my thoughts and habits would call me a hypocrite for this reason. But my disgust for such coarsenesses was strong and sincere, and I valued it in my English friends that they seemed to feel the same as I in this respect.
My rival, Captain Truant, was polite and correct in everything and toward me he was cordial and pleasant, but he could not quite hide that he looked upon me as an Italian, that is to say, a man of lower race and backward civilization. I realized that he would think it very unsuitable and a great pity to have a sweet, well-bred blonde English girl like Emmy throw herself away upon a dark foreign type. True, I had money and a duke's title, but there are also Japanese, Turkish and Persian noblemen, who are therefore not yet a match for a pretty cultured English maiden. So without any mental scruples, with the calm conviction of the Englishman that his actions are perfectly justified, Harry Truant came between us two with a stanch, even, steady wooing. And what immediately struck me with distressing clearness was the greater ease with which Emmy and Harry understood each other. They were at home in each other's world and immediately understood each other's ways, each other's tastes, each other's humors. Perhaps in the beginning my exoticism had been to my advantage through the incentive of the strange and new. But my incomprehensible caprices, my strange, sometimes passionate, sometimes utterly reserved behavior had wearied and frightened Emmy for some time. And I saw that the more familiar and wonted ways of her thoroughly English countryman did her good and were more agreeable to her. I saw all this with bitter resignation; I thought that I was receiving my rightful deserts.
Yet the dear girl would not lightly have cast me off for another. It had never come to an actual proposal and she might consider herself free. But she was scrupulous enough to feel herself bound even by an unconfessed affection, by the intimacy of our conversations and by the one kiss. I realized this and in grieved and hopeless self-sacrifice, wished to put a stop to it.
"I know quite well what is going on, Emmy," I said one night as we sat together at the river's edge. "I only want to tell you that you must not consider yourself bound to me. You are free?"
She looked at me a while, irresolutely and with a sorrowful expression.Then she said, gently shaking her head:
"What does ail you, Vico? What is it that is lurking in your mind that you behave so strangely toward me?"
Her gently compassionate voice, the ardent confidential tone, the dear expression of her face, were more than I could bear. I felt the tears coming and clenched my fists. It was no use. I had to get up and went on a little further, leaning my head and hand against the rough bark of a tree, by force restraining my sobs, when I felt a gentle hand upon my shoulder.
"Vico!" she said.
But with a nervous jerk I shook her hand off my shoulder and in a choking voice said:
"Do not touch me. I am not worthy of you." The hand dropped and I realized that she became somewhat cooler and more cautious. Of course she began to suspect something very bad.
"Can't you tell me, Vico?" she asked, not unkindly but much more severely.
"No, Emmy. Never! - Think that I love you as no one else can ever love you. . . . But I am not worthy of you, and I want you to be happy. I shall stand in your way no longer. Do not trouble yourself about what will become of me."
"Poor boy!" said Emmy earnestly and tenderly. "Is it really something so insurmountable?"
"Absolutely insurmountable, Emmy. Think of it no more, God bless you!"
"God bless you, Vico!" said Emmy, following me with a look half sorrowful, half resigned.
More resigned than I liked to see.
Such farewells have taken place before and have also often been followed by reconciliations, yes, by several farewells and reconciliations. But here there was not the mutual equality of vehement passion, and not the singleness of purpose that, overriding all scruples, wins by perseverance. My rival made swift and prosperous use of the advantage afforded him.
I avoided Emmy's house, but still occasionally visited the club which Captain Truant also frequented. And a few weeks later I saw him enter there one evening and receive the congratulations of his friends. I realized what this meant and with a paralyzed, icy feeling I remained seated, staring at the paper which I pretended to read.
But the lucky fellow stepped up to me, he was not noble enough to wish to spare me.
Among those who noisily greeted and congratulated him there was also an officer, nicknamed "the gallant capting" by the others, an insignificant, blustering little fellow with a monocle, for whom I felt a particular aversion, because he, although ever himself the dupe, when he had drunk a good measure, would now and then with his brutal volubility and English jokes successfully turn the laugh on me, the stranger. Loudly laughing and talking to Harry he came and stood close beside me.
"And how about Dina, now?" the braggart asked Truant.
"Hush! hush, man!" said Truant. "A little discretion, if you please!"
But the tipsy fop would not be shut up so quickly.
"Will you give me authority to fill the vacant place, Harry? As lawfully authorized comforter?"
"All right! All right!" said Harry Truant, to get rid of him.
But I had distinctly heard and comprehended everything. Or rather I only comprehended that by a word of authority I had suddenly obtained permission to do exactly what my body desired. The tormented body, desperate from the long struggle of serpent and eagle, now desired vengeance and destruction. The room, the gas lights, the chairs, everything in an agreeable, even pleasant fashion began to fade, to float, to wheel about — and with the silent murderous resolution that in like circumstances had characterized my forefathers of the masculine line, I clutched Harry Truant by the throat.
If these memoirs were to find an English or American publisher, it would be politic to announce here that the Englishman with his practised boxing fists with ease doubled up the Italian and knocked him into a corner, unconscious. Anything short of that the public of Rudyard Kipling would not stand for, of course. Yet I prefer to state the truth: that Harry Truant and Vico Muralto dealt each other some ugly blows that night, but without deadly consequences, and that they were with difficulty separated by those present. The challenge for a duel, as conflicting with the laws and morals of his country, was not accepted by the English officer, which at the time greatly vexed me and stamped him in my eyes as the very soul of cowardice and dishonor, but which to-day I not only excuse, but highly respect.
That same year Harry and Emmy went to India as husband and wife. Vico and his father entered upon their last journey together.
In my youth people sometimes called me a poet, and though they employed the term vaguely and at random, yet it was not wholly unjustified. For I am a destroyer of suggestion, a shatterer of the group, a wanderer from the herd, an idol-hater, but also a searcher for joy, beauty and bliss, a lover of reality; and all these are characteristics of a poet.
But making verses did not suit me. Let me call it unwillingness; then you may speak of the impotence, and perhaps, even so, we are both saying the same thing. I honor and admire the great singers, but I myself have always felt a barrier when I wished to metamorphose my personal and intimate emotions into separate entities and into public property. I felt as though I must kill them first, before administering this cure, as Medea did with her father-in-law Æson, - and that I could not do.
I was equally impotent to create imaginary characters, which in their own way revealed my sorrows, my weaknesses, my follies and my virtues, forming new personalities with independent life: as my dear friend Goethe created Werther, Faust, Egmont and Tasso.
I realize that it must have been a great delight and consolation and also a strong proof of humility and love, an admirable emulation of the Divine Creator and enriching of the human world. But I myself could never attempt it.
My great grief seemed to me too sacred and too intimate to put it into little verses and send these out into the world as singing birds, to my own relief and the delight and edification of all.
Moreover I found it humiliating to make my own nature into a mask and in a well-sustained rôle let it aspire for human applause; as is the custom of my young friend Nietzsche, who lances such vehement tirades against actors and comedians, but does not seem to perceive how much he himself, like all poets, is an histrionic artist.
Here also I decidedly lacked the truly humble love of mankind that must have moved my surely not less proud friends, Shelley and Goethe. In the bard and the actor I always seemed to see the courtier.
Ariosto had his Alfonso d'Este and Goethe his Carl August.
And the great bards of freedom of the past century, Shelley, Byron,Hugo? Ali! Were they not courtiers of King Demos?
I am not an enemy of King Demos, and I know that his earthly realm is at hand. May he replace and rule all kings until King Christ rules supreme among men. I wish him prosperity and glory, as Diogenes, I imagine, must have wished to Alexander. But to be his courtier, I always lacked the necessary self-denial, and to rebel against him, like friend Nietzsche, there again I had too much realization of his worth and power. So that, impotent to be a lord and unwilling to be a courtier, I was driven into this forgotten nook. And here, to keep body and soul together, I must be something of an actor after all now, and play the philistine part, though it be vi coactus and not for human applause; while I, a lowly slave, nevertheless through my quiet mental activity enjoy the highest freedom in my chains, proclaiming to King Demos the weakness and instability of his power, because he shall not himself ascend the throne without the help of tyrants and shall be driven off by a yet more mighty and righteous Lord. And even for this Lord I am still a critical and fault-finding subject, but I think these are the ones he prefers.
In these first days of profound sorrow I strove with even greater effort to know who this Christ was who had redeemed us or could redeem us, and I wrote to my mother about it and read diligently in Emmy's precious gift.
My mother wrote me long prolix letters in reply, which I read attentively and reverently, unwilling to admit that they really had nothing more to tell me. They were the same things - the miracle of grace, the redemption through the blood of Jesus - repeated over and over again in all sorts of new inversions and combinations, so that it seemed a miracle already that with so few notes one could make so much music. My father was well aware of these letters and furtively regarded me half scornfully, half disturbed, as I sat deciphering them patiently and with earnest devotion to the last syllable. That it was all over with Emmy was a relief to him, but all the more anxiously he watched this animated correspondence and the increase of the maternal influence; especially as I should shortly attain my majority.
We had gone to Holland on our last trip to the little seaside resort on the North Sea with its unpronounceable name, and thus I for the first time tarried in that strange little nook of Europe, that was to become the seat of my voluntary hermitage, amid that curious little nation, which of all nations probably displays the most profound mingling of lovable and detestable qualities. On this first visit with my father I saw nothing of the people and little of the country. But I saw the coast of the North Sea and there I learned to love the sea more than when I sailed her. On that sandy coast we became intimate, the sea and I, there she took me to her bosom and we communed heart to heart, whispering the most intimate secrets into each other's ears. There the sea became for me a being with a soul - as everything is, though we do not perceive it - and there her aspects and her voice acquired a meaning, as all that we call lifeless has a meaning.
And on this first visit I went with my father to see the works of Rembrandt, with some doubt and unbelief and prejudice, as befits Italian patriots. And then with my newly awakened vision of the life of all things, I saw that this man did with all the living and the dead about him what the coast of the North Sea had done for me with the sea: - he showed the meaning and the mysterious life of everything, be it living or be it dead so to speak. And he showed how living men aside from their own personal life lead yet another, vaster world-life without themselves knowing it. And he pictured this world-life as something beautiful and grand, even though the people and the things were in themselves ugly.
And this was such a revelation, such a boon for my early matured soul that I absolutely would not believe that this man, who could do what none of my greatest countrymen had been able to do, was a perfectly commonplace Hollander. But I regarded him like some strange god, by chance incarnate here, and I revered him above all the saints in the calendar. Yes, I wished in a vague sort of way that he might prove to be Christ, for then I, should know what to believe. For it may be very fine to manifest, as Giotto and Fra Angelico, and Rafael and Titian, how beautiful human nature is and can be imagined; but yet there is more comfort and salvation in revealing how in the unlovely, mean and ugly the divine life dwells, and is beautiful and can be seen as beautiful even by us poor human beings. Yes, even though it were ever so imperfect, as in many a canvas that seems to me like an anxious and desperate struggle to bring out something at least of the everlasting beauty, - it was there, it was visible, perchance a faint ray in a dark, dreary cloud of ugliness, and the great task was again accomplished, the great consolation offered.
And finally I visited with my father the little village where Spinoza led his quiet philistine's life, and patiently bored the hole through which the confined thoughts could find an outlet. And when I saw the little house and the quiet, peaceful landscape and heard of the lonely, sober, chaste life of this equanimous and devout Jew, I desired for myself no better lot than to be able to follow his example as soon as possible.
It has taken a little longer than I thought at the time; stronger and more continued rubbing with the rough world was necessary to charge my soul with such high potency that, as his, it would emit bright sparks in isolation. But now it has come about after all, and I would not contradict you if you said that it was Rembrandt and Spinoza who drew me to the regions sanctified by their labors for the fulfilment of my life's task, had not this meditative dwelling sphere been already dear to me for other reasons.
On the day I came of age a letter from my mother arrived in which she reminded me that I was now free to go my own ways, and moreover informed me that on her journey from the north she would stop in Holland and hoped that she might at last clasp me in her arms again.
It was a momentous day for me when at last I was to see again my saint, adored so many years in the holy, dusky light of memory. My heart beat and my hands trembled as I stood behind the sleek hotel porter in front of the closed door of the apartment and heard the voice - soft, languidly cordial - inviting me to enter.
There she stood, tall, straight, the same face with the light gray eyes with the deep rings under them, but much paler now, and the once blonde hair showing silvery white beneath the black lace veil. She was dressed in black and white with a great silver crucifix on a black chain. I fell upon my knees before her, kissing her hands. She kissed me on the brow and lifted me up. I trembled with emotion when I felt her cool, soft lips, and saw her face, with the delicate pale violet and amber tints and the fine countless little lines crossing one another, so near my own. And I breathed the old familiar perfume of frankincense and lavender and felt her pure breath upon my brow. It was a moment of consecration. Even had she not been my mother, I should have felt awe and veneration for this stately and distinguished woman with her expression of long and patiently endured affliction, her fresh, well-preserved old age, her solemn, dignified garb and the peculiar sphere of purity and chastity that seemed to surround her. All my shame and humiliation came to my mind and threatened to relieve itself in a flood of tears. I longed to confess, to reveal all the ugliness and foulness in my soul, so that she should purify it through her power.
Woman in the last period of her life, when maternity slips away from her, can, if she well understands her new position and with wisdom sustains it, become a new human creature clothed with a higher dignity. Man in the fulness of his years still ever remains the male, and the lover. Woman is directed toward another sexless position and fulfils a new part not of minor importance. Thus I conceived it, when I saw my mother, and I comprehended now why some nations so greatly revered the power of priestesses and sibyls or feared the power of witches. I felt the influence of an unknown potency, a natural consecration that could forgive, purify, bless, absolve and prophesy wholly according to priestly prerogative, but stronger here where God and Nature ordained it than where human authority officially and formally conferred it.
My impulsive nature would undoubtedly have driven me to make a full confession even at this first meeting, had I not soon become aware of another person in the room. For a moment I thought of my sister, but then I remembered that my sister had taken the veil. This was a pretty young woman whose beauty, quite differently than with Emmy, I immediately saw and appreciated. She had large, dark, serious and gentle eyes, a fresh white complexion and dark glossy hair that was brought down low over the temples, braided and twisted to a knot in back. She was also dressed in black with a white lace collar and a gold breast pin in which were enclosed some brown plaits of hair. She stood at the window somewhat shy and embarrassed while I greeted my mother, but I saw her eyes shining with kindly satisfaction that she had been allowed to witness this scene.
My mother told me that this was Lucia del Bono, her faithful friend and adopted daughter. And I could notice that Lucia's veneration for my mother was almost as deep as mine, and also that the two women had talked about me a great deal and that this meeting was an important event not for the elder one alone.
In the unbearable grief for my lost love these visits to my mother and her beautiful, sympathetic companion now became my greatest solace and it was not long before I saw from my father's dark and suspicious glances, from his listless and discouraged air, which suddenly made the still vigorous man appear aged, and from his almost invariably silent and tightly compressed lips, that he realized what was going on.
He did not ask, and I did not speak. But we both felt that we had been seized by an irresistible current which was sweeping us toward an inevitable catastrophe.
Holland may be described as a painting whereof the frame constitutes the most impressive part. It is a fit dwelling place for the hermit who from inward meditation amid hazy meadows, dreamy cows, and peaceful little towns can easily turn to the contemplation of the greatest revelations of the gods - the vast heavens, the clouds and the sea. But toward the people he must learn to assume the attitude of the ancient hermit toward the spiders and rats in his cell. Sometimes they are annoying and disagreeable; sometimes too, in their revelations of life, instructive and interesting. I live on good terms with the inhabitants of this quiet little town because I never let them see how I think of them, and never show myself as I really am. To this attitude, which, with sharper insight, they would consider haughty conceit, I owe my reputation as a modest and respectable man. Were I humble enough to treat them as my equals by being natural with them, they would then call me a conceited ass and a cad.
But on one point we understand each other, on the subject of the water, the sea and the sport of sailing. If I kept a horse and rode to my nursery in the morning they would consider me a fool and I should surely never have become treasurer of the orphanage. But the fact that I have a yacht and frequently show them what storms she can weather, raises me in their esteem. Only the sea can arouse in these little shrivelled souls a dim shadow of the old boldness and beauty of life.
True, most of them are too much attached to their miserable little lives to risk them solely for the sake of stirring emotions without compelling need, and they prefer to let me go on my reckless expeditions alone or accompanied by the well-paid fisher lad. But they do not laugh at my recklessness, and at the club I notice that they regard the old gentleman with a certain amount of respect when he returns again from one of these sailing expeditions, which many a young seaman would refuse to undertake even for the sake of profit, and does not even brag or boast of it, but only slightly smiles at the exclamations of respectful amazement. Thus they honor physical courage, which is nothing more than muscular strength and a craving for the pleasing excitement of danger, while the moral courage to reveal to them the true nature of my thoughts and feelings they would punish with such sharp and malicious ill-will that in order to retain my peace of mind and pursue my life's task undisturbed, I think I should not challenge it and prefer to deceive them.
It was my father who made me a slave to the intoxication of the thrilling suspense of sailing out amidst whistling winds, seething foam, immense surging waves round about, fallow driving clouds above, the tugging taut rope in one hand, the straining tiller in the other, the eye travelling from sail to horizon, from pennant to ocean, the boat trembling the while from the waves breaking against her bow, and amid this tumult weighing the chances for a safe homecoming, total submersion or the breaking of the rigging. It was then he felt happiest; it deadened his melancholy, as biting on wood deadens a gnawing toothache. And he found in me a willing pupil, eager as I was for violent emotions and tortured by self-contempt, wild passions and all the pangs of lost love-joys.
In Holland, too my father had immediately hired a boat to sail the ocean, and the Scheveningen seamen had quite some trouble to make him understand that the North Sea was not an Italian gulf or lake and in rough weather would not permit of any rash enterprises in small sailboats. Yet after a few weeks, be managed to attain his object and I followed him gladly.
One afternoon we had sailed out, dressed in our oilskins, and the skipper who, submerged to the waist, had pushed us off the shore through the breakers, had warned us to be back within two hours, for at that time the ebb-tide set in and, with the fresh north breeze, the strong current would make it difficult for us to land. My father had nodded as though he were thinking of something else and had long ago penetrated and computed the caprices of the gray and formidable North Sea.
For an hour we sailed on silently, as was frequently our wont, my father holding the rudder. The coast had dwindled to a faint luminous line above which like a thin white mist hung the foam of the breakers. I lay on the deck, glanced toward land and horizon - then at my watch, and said:
"Come about; father, it's time." He did not seem to hear, and I turned toward him repeating: "It's time! come about!" Then I saw that be did not want to hear. He had hauled the mainsail in closely, luffing sharply, the sheet tightly drawn, and was staring fixedly and straight ahead under the large yellow sou'-wester. His eyes had the hard grim expression of old people who after a long life of struggle still fight for the bit of breath left them, or of indulged and long-tortured invalids, or of the starved or shipwrecked who no longer have feeling for anyone or anything but their own distress. Between his close-cropped gray whiskers and his tightly pressed lips I saw - what before I had never noticed - two sallow lines deeply furrowing his cheeks. All at once I felt a pity, such as I had never felt for him before - as though the realization of all the grief which he had suffered under my very eyes now suddenly penetrated my consciousness.
"What ails you, father?" I asked. He began talking away regardlessly as though there were no wind and no waves about him.
"You said three years ago that by this time you would be lost. I think you are right. You are."
"No, father, I think I was mistaken. I am beginning to see salvation."
"You do not see salvation, Vico, you see ruin. I understand it very well. Your mother has you again in her clutches. She is a harpy; do you know the monsters? Part woman, part vulture. They suck away half your healthy life-blood and replace it with gall. Melancholy and gloom are her idols. Suffering, pain, grief, trouble, bitterness - these are the archangels in her heaven. She makes sorrow her object of worship, and she pictures her God as a hideous corpse hanging on a cross with pierced bands and feet, covered with blood, wounds, scars, sores, matter, dirt and spittle, - the more horrible the better. And that attracts the dull masses exactly as the colored prints of murders and barbarians depicted in the papers. Was there ever more devilish error?"
"And if salvation can only be bought with pain, father? If all this suffering was the price of redemption for our sins?"
"Jew!" my father snapped at me with glittering eyes, his mouth drawn disdainfully in unutterable contempt! "Jew! where did you learn this bartering morality? Buy! Buy! everything can be bought! If you are but willing to pay, you can go anywhere, even to heaven. Salvation can be bought for a slaughtered human being. A fixed price and dirt cheap! - Salvation for all mankind for the corpse of a single Jew. What a bargain! and God is Shylock, be holds to his bond! his bond! Blood is the fixed price, nothing can change that. If not the blood of sinners then let it be the blood of my son. Thus reads the contract:
'My bond! My bond!
My deeds upon my head! I crave the law!
The penalty and forfeit of my bond!'
"Do you know, Vico, why the Jews are hated so everywhere? It is instinctive resentment because the world feels that it has been infected with the Jewish poison. The priesthood, the black vermin, is a Jewish Germanic bastard brood. They have made a Jew of God himself and they will make one of you too. And that my son! my child, the heir!"
The suffering on my father's face was terrible to see. Tears began to flow from his fixed eyes.
I tried to calm him. "Do come about, father! - it's over time!"
"We'll go on a while yet," he said with a ghastly affected airiness, and I sat there with the blood freezing in my veins, fearing he was going mad. All at once he burst out again.
"The blood of his son! the blood of his son! to buy off sin with which he himself had burdened us - his own debts thrust on us and accepted by us against our will and pleasure, and this acceptance paid for with the blood of his own child. What a Jew! What a sly, heartless usurer! Did you make these debts, Vico? - value received? What did you get for it? What did you get for this hereditary sin? Hereditary sin! Ha! ha! ha! hereditary sin! what an invention! - Hereditary debt! What a crafty, bartering Jew one must be to invent such an idea."
Once more I made an attempt, and standing upright at the mast I cried vigorously:
"Come about, father! - about!"
But he called back with even greater vehemence:
"Go ahead, I tell you!"
And then whilst I looked about over the sea and considered what to do:
"I tell you, Vico, there is life and there is death. And we must live as long as we can. But it must be real life too. Death is no life. The life of most men is a slow miserable death. There is no honor and no merit in maintaining a life that should more truly be called death. A bloodless, enervated, foul, rotten life. It is a shame that men do not yet know how to live, and even greater shame that they know still less how to die. I wanted to have you live. But I did not succeed and now I shall teach you to die. - Are you afraid?"
Then something began to stir and rise up in my soul, like a snake goaded forth from her cavern. I, too, began to forget the wind and the waves about me. True, I felt a tingling down my back to my very finger tips. Yet I was not a coward and I spoke firmly:
"I am not afraid, father. I believe I shall know quite as well as you how to die if it should be necessary, even without your teaching me. But I won't be murdered, not even by my father."
The tears from the fixed, now red-rimmed eyes began to flow more abundantly.
"Vico!" he cried in a much softer, trembling voice: "Will you be true to me then? Will you let yourself be saved? Will you save your precious life and your reason? Will you abjure this accursed harpy? Will you escape the sinister band?"
But I was irritated and excited and proudly replied: "I shall save myself, I shall be true to whomever I find worthy. I do not respect the man that curses my mother."
Then his face changed horribly, he lifted up his trembling right hand, thereby awkwardly knocking off the canvas cap from his head so that the damp gray hair fluttered. He made Jesus' sign of doom in Michel Angelo's last judgment, screaming loudly meanwhile:
"Then I curse you, do you hear! I curse you, Lodovico Muralto. Your father curses you!"
I had enough of Old Testament sentiments left in me not to be indifferent to such an imprecation!
I started, but tried my very utmost to see in him only the raving, irresponsible maniac. At the same time the thought flashed across my mind that he himself must also have been infected by Jewish ideas, that he should clutch at these weapons, more sounding than wounding. But I said nothing, walked up to him and from behind his hand attempted to grasp the tiller. "About!" I cried.
"Very well! about!" my father cried fiercely, and with that be wrenched the tiller out of my hand and pulled it violently toward himself, so that instead of sailing before the wind it struck us directly on the beam with mainsail closely hauled and sheet fixed.
Even had I desired death as eagerly as he did at the time, yet now I would instinctively have resisted. Seamanship teaches scorn of death but still greater scorn for bad man?uvring. "Blockhead!" I cried out, hastily cutting the taut rope so that the sail fluttered out into the wind like a half-escaped bird. But the boat had shipped so much water that I could not right her again and in a moment she was entirely swamped. I climbed to the high side stretching out my hand to my father. But he gave me one look of bitter scorn, shook his head and let himself sink, freeing his hand with a wild jerk from a loop in the rigging.
After this, I drifted about four hours. We had been missed and the life-boat had been sent out after us, but for a long time was unable to find me, as the dusk had begun to fall. Finally I was picked up by a fisherman who signalled for the life-boat to come and get me. I had lost consciousness and when I awoke it was night and I found myself in bed hearkening to the soft voices of two women in the room. I thought I was in Italy with my mother and my nurse in our house at Milan, so eloquent of the past were the old familiar sharp sss and rr sounds of these soft Italian whisperings. But soon I recognized the Dutch hotel furnishings, Lucia, and beneath the black lace veil the silvery hair of my venerable mother.