Short Fiction

I

So this is the Einfried Sanatorium! White and rectilinear, with its expanse of main buildings and side wings, it lies in the centre of a broad park that is delightfully fitted out with grottoes, arbours, and pavilions made of bark. And above and beyond the slate roofs, the hills rise bulkily against the sky. They are green with pines, and gently irregular.

This institution is still run by Dr. Leander. With his black, double-pointed beard, which is as coarse and matted as the horsehair used for stuffing furniture, with his thick, glistening spectacles and his air of having been chilled by science, hardened, and filled with a subdued, cautious pessimism⁠—with all this he maintains a forceful and conclusive jurisdiction over his patients. His patients⁠—items that were too weak to make laws for themselves and keep them, but had given themselves completely over to him that they might gain support from his rigidity.

As to Fräulein von Osterloh⁠—she functions with an unwearying devotion as housekeeper. Great heavens! how urgently she keeps on rushing upstairs and downstairs, from one end of the institute to the other! She has charge of the kitchen and the storeroom, goes through the wash, gives orders to the servants, and sets the table of the establishment from the standpoints of economy, health, tastiness, and of the outward appearance of things. She manages with an agitated meticulousness; and in her excessive industry there lies concealed a steady reproach for the whole world of men, since it has not yet occurred to anyone of them to take her with him. But in two round crimson spots, the unextinguishable hope glows on her cheeks of ultimately becoming the wife of Dr. Leander.⁠ ⁠…

Ozone, and quiet, quiet air⁠ ⁠… in spite of anything Dr. Leander’s detractors and rivals may say to the contrary, Einfried is to be most warmly recommended for consumptives. But there are not only tubercular patients here; there are all sorts of inmates, men, women, and even children. Dr. Leander has results to offer in any number of fields. There are people here with stomach-trouble, as, for instance, the wife of Magistrate Spatz, who in addition has something wrong with her ears. There are gentlemen with bad hearts, paralytics, sufferers from rheumatism and all stages of nervous disorder. One diabetic general is consuming his pension here with a ceaseless grumbling. Several men with fleshless faces jerk their legs about in an uncontrolled manner which by no means augurs well. One woman of fifty, the wife of a Pastor Höhlenrauch, has brought nineteen children into the world and is completely out of her head; still, she has no peace, but has been wandering miserably and aimlessly through the whole house for a year now, resting silent and staring on the arm of her private nurse, and driven by vague unrest.

There is an occasional death among the “serious cases,” who lie in their rooms and do not make their appearance either at mealtimes or in the drawing-room⁠ ⁠… and no one, not even the occupant of the adjoining room, is aware of it. The waxen guest is removed in the dead of night, and the activities of Einfried continue undisturbed: the rubdowns, the electric treatments, the injections, the showers, baths, exercises, sweating, deep breathing, all in different places and with the most up-to-date equipment.

Yes, everything is full of life, even here. The institute is in bloom. At the entrance to the side wing, the porter sounds the large bell when new guests arrive. Dr. Leander, together with Fräulein von Osterloh, accompanies in all formality to their cabs those who are leaving. Just what kind of creature has not put up at Einfried! There is even an author here, an eccentric man, who bears the name of some mineral or jewel, and is stealing days from the Lord God.⁠ ⁠…

Furthermore, besides Dr. Leander, there is a second physician, for the minor cases and the hopeless ones. But his name is Müller, and he is really not worth mentioning.

II

In the beginning of January the wholesale merchant Klöterjahn⁠—of the firm A. C. Klöterjahn & Co.⁠—brought his wife to Einfried; and Fräulein von Osterloh received them after their long journey in the reception-room on the ground floor, which was fitted out in a marvellously pure Empire style like nearly all of the distinctive old house. Almost immediately Dr. Leander also appeared; he bowed, and a conversation was begun, in the course of which both parties came to an understanding.

Outside, out in the winter, was the park with its covered flowerbeds, its snowed-up grottoes, and lonely little temples. And two servants were bringing in the trunks of the new guest from the cab which stood in the street in front of the big iron door⁠—since there was no approach up to the house.

“Slowly, Gabriele, take care, my angel, and keep your mouth closed,” Herr Klöterjahn had said as he helped his wife through the park; and whoever saw them could not help being deeply moved by this take care⁠—which was spoken in English⁠—even though it cannot be denied that Herr Klöterjahn might have said it in plain, simple German.

The driver who had brought them from the station to the sanatorium, a crude, ignorant man without any of the finer feelings, had bitten his tongue in powerless caution while the wholesale merchant was helping his wife to descend; yes, it even seemed as though these two sturdy bays, shivering in the silent cold and with their eyes rolled back, were following the anxious procedure with suspense, full of misgiving for so much frail gracefulness and such tender charm.

The young woman was suffering with her trachea, as it had been expressly stated in the first letter which Herr Klöterjahn had sent to the head physician of Einfried from the shore of the Baltic⁠—and, thank God, it was not her lungs! But even if it had been her lungs, this new patient could not have had a sweeter or a nobler look, could not have appeared more removed or incorporeal, than now. Close by her robust husband, she followed the conversation, lying back faint and weary in the white lacquered armchair, with its strong straight lines.

Her lovely pale hands, entirely bare except for a slender wedding-ring, were lying in her lap, in the folds of a dark heavy woollen coat. And she wore a tight-fitting silver-grey shirtwaist, with a close high collar covered with velvet embroidery. But these warm, heavy stuffs only made the unutterable weariness of her little head seem all the more appealing. Her light brown hair was gathered low in the back; it was combed smooth; and only near the right temple one stray curling strand fell across her forehead, not far from the place over her distinctly traced eyebrow where a peculiar tiny vein, pale blue and sickly, branched across the clearness and purity of an almost transparent forehead. This little blue vein over the one eye commanded in a disturbing fashion the whole fine oval of her face. It protruded more noticeably as soon as the woman began to speak, and gave an effect of exertion to her face, or even of distress, awakening uncertain apprehensions. Nevertheless, she spoke, and smiled. She spoke easily and amiably in a lightly veiled voice, and she smiled with her somewhat listless eyes. Yes, now and then they showed the least inclination to bulge, and the corners, on either side of the narrow bridge of her nose, lay in a deep shadow. Her beautiful wide mouth was pale, and yet it seemed brilliant, owing to the fact, perhaps, that her lips were demarcated with such exceptional sharpness and clarity. She would cough occasionally. At such times she put her handkerchief to her lips and examined it afterwards.

“Don’t cough, Gabriele,” Herr Klöterjahn said. “You know how Dr. Hinzpeter back home warned you especially against it, darling, and all you have to do is just hold back, my angel. As I said,” he repeated, “it is the trachea. When it began, I really thought it was the lungs, and God knows I was frightened. But it wasn’t the lungs, nah, not on your life; we don’t fall for anything like that, eh, Gabriele? He, he!”

“Beyond a doubt,” Dr. Leander said, and glistened on them with his glasses.

Whereupon Herr Klöterjahn requested coffee, coffee and rolls⁠—and he had such a vivid way of pronouncing it half swallowed, that you couldn’t help feeling an appetite.

He got what he wanted, got also rooms for himself and his wife, and they installed themselves.

Furthermore, Dr. Leander took over the case himself, without consulting Dr. Müller.

III

The new patient created an unusual stir in Einfried, and Herr Klöterjahn, who was accustomed to such successes, accepted with satisfaction every respect that was paid her. The diabetic general stopped grumbling for a moment the first time he saw her; the gentlemen with the fleshless faces smiled, and attempted desperately to control their legs when they were near her; and the Magistratsrätin Spatz immediately attached herself as an elder friend. Indeed, she made quite an impression, this woman who bore Herr Klöterjahn’s name! An author who had been spending his time in Einfried for some weeks now, a distant sort⁠—his name sounded like the name of some jewel⁠—coloured noticeably as she passed him in the corridor; he stood still as though rooted there, even after she had disappeared.

Within two days everyone in the sanatorium knew her history. She was born in Bremen, a fact, moreover, which was plainly noticeable in certain winning quirks to her pronunciation. Two years before, she had given the wholesale merchant Klöterjahn her consent for life. She went with him to his home town, along the Baltic, and about ten months ago, under the most unusually difficult and dangerous circumstances, she had presented him with a child, a marvellously vigorous and well setup son and heir. But since those dreadful days she had never regained her strength, if it could be said that she ever did have much strength. Exceptionally exhausted and exceptionally impoverished of all physical resistance, she had scarcely left her bed when she developed a cough which brought up a little blood. Oh, not much⁠—an insignificant little speck of blood; but it would have been much preferable if it had not happened at all, while the disquieting thing was that after a short time the same slight but troublesome incident was repeated. Now, there were remedies for all this, and Dr. Hinzpeter, the family physician, made use of them. A complete rest was prescribed, there was cracked ice to be swallowed, morphine was brought to bear against the tickling sensation which made her cough, and the heart was steadied as far as possible. But recovery refused to set in, and the young mother seemed to be consuming in a mild and silent glow while Anton Klöterjahn, Jr., a masterpiece of a baby, asserted and maintained his station in life with a frightful emphasis and lack of consideration.⁠ ⁠… As has been said before, it was the trachea, a word which, in Dr. Hinzpeter’s mouth, exercised an astonishingly consoling, reassuring, and almost hilarious effect on everyone. But although it was not the lungs, the doctor had eventually thought it highly advisable, in accelerating her convalescence, to try the influence of a milder climate and of a few months in some regular institute. The reputation of Einfried and its director had done the rest.

That was the way things stood; and Herr Klöterjahn in person told it to everyone who manifested the least interest. He spoke in a loud boisterous manner, and with the good humour of a man whose digestion is in as perfect order as his purse⁠—with vastly explosive movements of his lips, in the broad, yet rapid fashion of people along the north coast. Many of his words were hurled out, so that each sound came like a discharge; and he would laugh about it as an excellent joke.

He was of medium height, broad, strong, and short-legged, and possessed a full red face with water-blue eyes shaded by light blond lashes, large nostrils and moist lips. He had English side-whiskers, wore English clothing, and was enchanted to find at Einfried an English family, father, mother, and three pretty children with their nurse, who were stopping here for the simple reason that they did not know where else to stop; he ate an English breakfast with them every morning. He was especially fond of his food and drink, displayed himself as a true connoisseur of both the cuisine and the wine cellar, and entertained the company most rousingly with accounts of the dinners which were given back home among his own circle, and with descriptions of certain choice dishes which were unknown here. At such times his eyes would squint with a kindly expression and his speech contained some palatal and nasal element, to an accompaniment of soft smacking noises deep in his gullet. As evidence that he was not fundamentally inimical to other earthly enjoyments, there was the evening when a patient at Einfried, an author by profession, came upon him in one of the corridors joking with a chambermaid in a somewhat inappropriate manner⁠—a trifling bit of sport which caused the author concerned to show a most ridiculous expression of disgust.

As to Herr Klöterjahn’s wife, it was more than plain that she was attached to him with all her heart. She followed his words and motions with a smile; not with the complacent forbearance which most sufferers display towards the healthy, but with that lovable pleasure and sympathy which in rare instances good-natured invalids feel towards the confident manifestations of vitality by people who are perfectly at home in their skins.

Herr Klöterjahn did not stay long at Einfried. He had brought his wife here; but now that a week had passed, and he knew her to be comfortable and in good hands, he could stay no longer. Duties of equal importance, his thriving child, and his equally thriving business, called him back home. They compelled him to leave, with his wife entrusted to the best of care.

IV

Spinell was the name of the author who had been staying in Einfried for some weeks; Detlev Spinell was his name, and his exterior was remarkable.

Imagine a dark-haired man in his early thirties, quite tall, his hair already noticeably grey about the temples, and with a round, pale, somewhat puffy face which showed not the least trace of a beard. It was not shaved⁠—one could tell; but it was soft and childlike, with a faint down showing here and there. This gave him a quite noteworthy appearance. His eyes had a soft expression about them, were somewhat staring, and of the colour of a deer. His nose was small, but a wee bit fleshy. In addition, Herr Spinell possessed the arched porous upper lip of a Roman, carious teeth, and feet of unusual length. One of the gentlemen with the uncontrollable legs, who was a bit of a cynic and a wit, had dubbed him behind his back “the decrepit baby.” But that was nasty, and not at all to the point. He wore good fashionable clothes, went about in a long black coat and a vest with coloured dots.

He was unsociable, and found nothing in common with a single soul there. It was only once in a great while that an engaging, amiable, and overflowing mood came upon him; and this always happened when Herr Spinell was under some aesthetic urgency, when the sight of something beautiful or other, the composition of two colours, a nobly formed vase, or the mountains in the sunset, surprised him into open admiration. “How beautiful!” he would say at such times, laying his head to one side and raising his shoulders while he opened his hands and twisted his nose and lips. “God, just look, how beautiful!” And under the emotion of such a moment he was capable of throwing his arms blindly about the neck of the most distinguished person, whether man or woman.

There always lay on his table, visible to anyone who entered his room, the book which he had written. It was a moderate-sized novel, provided with a thoroughly amazing cover and printed on a sort of filter paper for coffee. As to the type, each letter looked like a Gothic cathedral. Fräulein von Osterloh had read it in an idle hour, and found it “refined,” which was her way of passing judgment of “godlessly boring.” Everything happened in worldly salons, in luxurious boudoirs, full of grotesques, antique furniture, expensive porcelains, invaluable fabrics, and artistic ornaments of all sorts. The most loving emphasis was laid upon the descriptions of such things; and through it you could always see Herr Spinell, with his nose twisted, saying: “How beautiful!”⁠ ⁠… Furthermore, it could not help seeming queer that he had written no other books besides this one, since he still seemed to be writing with passion. He spent the major portion of the day in his room writing, and mailed an extraordinary number of letters, almost always one or two daily. Although it was very strange and amusing how seldom he received a letter in return.⁠ ⁠…

V

Herr Spinell sat opposite Herr Klöterjahn’s wife at the table. The first meal they all ate together, he appeared a bit late in the large dining-hall on the ground floor of the side wing, spoke in a weak voice to everyone in general, and took his place⁠—whereupon Dr. Leander introduced him to the newcomers without much ceremony. He bowed, and then began eating in a visibly embarrassed manner, manipulating his knife and fork somewhat affectedly in large, white, beautifully formed hands which came out of two narrow sleeves. Gradually he came to feel more at ease, and cast calm sidelong glances at Herr Klöterjahn and his wife. Also, in the course of the meal, Herr Klöterjahn offered a few questions and remarks about the situation and climate of Einfried; his wife dropped in a word here and there in her catching way, and Herr Spinell answered politely. His voice was soft and quite pleasant; but he had a somewhat impeded and sipping manner of talking, as though his teeth were in the way of his tongue.

After dinner, when everyone had gone into the drawing-room, and Dr. Leander came to pay his compliments to the new guests in particular, Herr Klöterjahn’s wife inquired about the person who had sat opposite them.

“What is the gentleman’s name?” she asked. “Spinelli? I did not catch the name.”

“Spinell, not Spinelli, Madam. No, he is not an Italian, but was merely born in Lemberg, so far as I know⁠ ⁠…”

“And did you say he was a writer? Or just what?” Herr Klöterjahn asked. He had his hands deep in the pockets of his comfortable English trousers, leaned one ear to the doctor, and, as is the case with a good many people, opened his mouth to listen.

“Indeed, I don’t just know⁠ ⁠… he writes⁠ ⁠…” Dr. Leander answered. “He has, I believe, published a book, a kind of novel, but I really don’t know anything⁠ ⁠…”

This repeated “don’t know” indicated that Dr. Leander didn’t take much stock in the writer, and declined all responsibility for him.

“But that is certainly very interesting!” Herr Klöterjahn’s wife put in. She had never before seen an author face to face.

“Oh, yes,” Dr. Leander answered accommodatingly. “He is supposed to have a certain amount of reputation⁠ ⁠…” Whereupon nothing more was said about the author.

But a little later, after the new guests had retired and Dr. Leander was about to leave the drawing-room, Herr Spinell intercepted him and made inquiries on his part also.

“What is the name of these two?” he asked. “Of course, I didn’t quite catch it.”

“Klöterjahn,” Dr. Leander answered, and went on his way.

“What is the man’s name?”

“Their name is Klöterjahn!” and Dr. Leander was gone. He took no stock at all in this author.

VI

Had we not reached the place where Herr Klöterjahn had gone back home? Indeed, he was again on the Baltic, with his business and his child, this inconsiderate and lively little creature which had cost his mother so many pains and a slight defect in the trachea. But as for her, the young wife, she stayed on at Einfried, and the Magistratsrätin Spatz attached herself to her as an elder friend. But that did not keep Herr Klöterjahn’s wife from mixing agreeably with the other patients. As, for instance, with Herr Spinell, who, to the astonishment of all⁠—for up to now he had had nothing in common with a single soul there⁠—had showed towards her from the very start an extraordinary amount of consideration and devotion, and with whom she enjoyed chatting in the free hours left her by a strenuous schedule.

He approached her with an immeasurable amount of caution and reverence, and would only speak to her in a carefully suppressed voice, so that the Rätin Spatz who had trouble with her ears, could scarcely understand a word he said. He would tiptoe with his large feet up to the chair where Herr Klöterjahn’s wife was leaning back frail and smiling. Then he would stop about two steps off, keep one leg behind the other, bend the upper part of his body, and talk in his impeded, somewhat sipping manner. He was quite urgent, but ready at any moment to retreat and disappear in haste as soon as the least sign of weariness or satiety might be noticeable on her face. But he did not weary her. She would press him to be seated near the Rätin and herself; then she would ask him some question or other, and listen to him smiling and engrossed. For quite frequently he would drop into a delightful and unusual vein, such as she had never met with before.

“Just why are you at Einfried?” she asked. “What sort of cure are you taking, Herr Spinell?”

“Cure?⁠ ⁠… I take a bit of the electric treatment. But not to speak of. I will tell you frankly why I am here.⁠ ⁠… On account of the period.”

“Ah!” said Herr Klöterjahn’s wife, supporting her chin in her hand and turning towards him with the exaggerated eagerness one puts on for children who are about to tell something.

“Oh, yes. Einfried is entirely Empire; it used to be a castle, a summer home, I am told. This side wing is a recent annex, but the main building is old and genuine. Now there are times when I simply can’t live without Empire, when it is inevitably necessary to my well-being. It is plain that you must feel one way when among furniture which is soft and comfortable even to the extent of the lascivious, and feel another way among such tables, chairs, and drapes as these, with their marked straight lines. This brightness and strength, this cold crass simplicity and its reserve of vigour, lends me bearing and dignity, if you will; it produces an inner purging and renovation, and without a doubt it is uplifting.⁠ ⁠…”

“Yes, that is remarkable,” she said. “And I can understand you, with a little effort.”

Then he answered that it was not worth the effort, so that they both laughed together. The Rätin Spatz laughed too, and found it remarkable; but she didn’t claim to understand him.

The drawing-room was large and attractive. The high white folding doors of the billiard-room stood wide open; here the gentlemen with the uncontrollable legs and several others were amusing themselves. To the other side, a glass door afforded a prospect of the broad terrace and garden. In one corner there was a piano. There was also a card table at hand, covered with green felt. Here and there a woman was reading or doing fancy work. The heating was provided by an iron stove, although it was pleasant to sit and talk in front of the unused fireplace, with its imitation coal and flames made of painted paper. “You are an early riser, Herr Spinell,” said Herr Klöterjahn’s wife. “Two or three times I have happened to see you leaving the house around half past seven in the morning.”

“An early riser? But with reservations, to be sure. The fact is that I get up early because I am really a sleepyhead.”

“But you must explain that, Herr Spinell!” The Rätin Spatz also wanted to have it explained.

“Well⁠ ⁠… if you are an early riser, it doesn’t seem necessary to me that you should get up that early. But our conscience⁠ ⁠… it is an awful problem, this conscience! I and those of my ilk spend all their time in a struggle with their own lives, and they are kept more than busy trying to deceive life here and there and to procure for it a sly little bit of self-complacency. We are useless creatures, I and those of my ilk, and with the exception of a good hour now and then we are burdened to death with the knowledge of our uselessness. We detest the useful, we know that it is common and unlovely, and we defend this truth the way one defends only a truth which is inevitably necessary to him. And yet we are so gnawed at by a bad conscience that there isn’t a healthy spot left on us. Add to this the fact that the very nature of our inner existence, our attitude towards life, our method of work, has a horribly unwholesome, undermining, and irritable effect on us, which makes the case that much the worse. But there are slight palliatives, without which it would all be unbearable. A certain selectness and hygienic rigour in the manner of our living, for instance, is needed with many of us. To rise early, uncannily early, a cold bath and a walk through the snow⁠ ⁠… perhaps that will make us contented with ourselves for a whole hour. Believe me, if I did as I wanted, I should lie in bed until afternoon. So you see, my early rising is pure hypocrisy.”

“Why, no, Herr Spinell! I should call it self-mastery.⁠ ⁠… Shouldn’t you, Frau Rätin?” And, sure enough, the Rätin Spatz also called it self-mastery.

“Hypocrisy or self-mastery! It is a choice between one word and the other. But I happen to be so broodingly honest that I⁠ ⁠…”

“That is just it: you brood too much.”

“Yes, I brood too much.”

The good weather continued. The hills, the house and park, the entire locality, lay out in a flat pure white with blinding brilliance and bluish shadows. There was no wind, and the air was only moderately chilly. A delicate blue sky curved spotless above the entire scene, with myriads of tiny flaming torches, a dance of glistening crystals. At this time Herr Klöterjahn’s wife was doing reasonably well. She had no fever, her cough was almost entirely gone, and she ate without forcing herself to it. According to her instructions, she would often sit out for hours at a time on the sunny terrace. She would sit in the snow, all bundled up in covers and furs, and breathe in unquestioningly the pure iron air, which was to improve her trachea. Then at times she would notice Herr Spinell going about the park. He would be just as warmly clad, and in fur shoes which gave his feet a fantastic size. He walked through the snow with a tentative step and a certain careful, stiffly gracile position to his arms, and, when he reached the terrace, would greet her politely and climb the steps below her to begin a conversation.

“Today, on my morning walk, I saw a beautiful woman⁠ ⁠… God, she was beautiful!” And he laid his head to one side, and opened his hands.

“Indeed, Herr Spinell? But you must describe her to me!”

“No, that is impossible. For I should give you an unjust picture of her. I caught the woman in passing, with just half a glance; I didn’t really see her. But the effaced shadow of her that I received was enough to start me going and to let me carry away a picture that is beautiful⁠ ⁠… God, it is beautiful!”

She laughed. “Is that your way of observing beautiful women, Herr Spinell?”

“Yes, and it is a better way than if I stared like some crude reality-monger into their faces and carried away the impression of a miserable collection of facts⁠ ⁠…”

“Reality-monger⁠ ⁠… That is a queer word! A genuine author’s word, Herr Spinell! But it appeals to me, if I may say so. There is so much in it which I understand somewhat, something free and independent which is a challenge to our servitude to the actual⁠ ⁠… although it is nevertheless the most respectable thing imaginable, the very soul of respectability.⁠ ⁠… And then, I understand that there is something beyond the tangible, something more tender⁠ ⁠…”

“I know of only one face,” he began suddenly, with an unusually happy note in his voice, raising his clenched hands to his shoulders and letting an exalted smile expose his large teeth; “I know of only one face where it would be a crime for me to think of correcting the noble reality with imagination⁠ ⁠… one face which I should be content to gaze at, to dwell upon, not minutes, not hours, but my entire life⁠ ⁠… to lose myself in it, and be made to forget everything of this earth⁠ ⁠…”

“Yes, yes, Herr Spinell! The only thing is that Fräulein von Osterloh has somewhat disagreeable ears.”

He said nothing, bowing deeply. As he stood erect again, his eyes rested with an expression of embarrassment and anguish on the peculiar little vein which branched pale blue and sickly across the clarity of her almost transparent forehead.

VII

Really, a quite remarkable sort! Herr Klöterjahn’s wife would think about him now and then, since she had a good deal of time for thinking. Whether it was that the change of air was beginning to lose its effect, or that some actually harmful influence was asserting itself, the condition of her trachea would certainly have been better; she became weak, tired, without much appetite, and occasionally had a fever. Dr. Leander was most emphatic in insisting that she remain quiet, take plenty of rest, and be very careful of herself. So that when she did not have to be lying down, she would sit quietly near the Rätin Spatz, with some needlework forgotten in her lap, and thinking of something or other.

Yes, he had set her to thinking⁠ ⁠… this strange Herr Spinell. But the remarkable thing was that she didn’t think so much of him as of herself. Somehow or other, he had created in her an unusual curiosity, an interest she had never felt before, in her own person.

One day, in the course of a conversation, he had said: “No, they are puzzling things, women are. Old as the question is, you can’t help considering it in astonishment. Some wonderful creature, a nymph, a vision, a being out of some fairy dream. And what does she do? Goes off and surrenders herself to some champion at a county fair, or some butcher’s boy. She comes along on his arm, perhaps even leans her head against his shoulder, and looks about her with a sly smile, as if to say: ‘Now then, you can go break your hearts about it!’ And we do go and break our hearts.”

While he was saying this, Herr Klöterjahn’s wife had been very occupied.

Another day, to the great astonishment of the Rätin Spatz, the following dialogue took place between them:

“I wonder if I might dare to ask you⁠—although it is very impertinent⁠—what your name is, your true name?”

“Why, my name is Klöterjahn, Herr Spinell!”

“Hm. I knew that. Or rather, I challenge it. For, of course, I mean your real name, your maiden-name. You will be fair enough to grant me, I hope, that anyone who would address you as ‘Frau Klöterjahn’ would deserve to be thrashed.”

She laughed so heartily that the tiny blue vein over her eyebrow stood out with painful clarity, and gave her sweet, tender face an expression of effort and fatigue which was deeply disquieting.

“No! Surely not, Herr Spinell. To be thrashed? Does ‘Klöterjahn’ seem so awful to you?”

“Yes, I have hated this name from the bottom of my heart from the moment I first heard it. It is farcical, and frightfully homely; and it would be cruel and abject if one were to carry the accepted usage so far as to apply your husband’s name to you.”

“Well, and ‘Eckhof’? Is ‘Eckhof’ better? My father’s name is ‘Eckhof.’ ”

“Ah, just see! ‘Eckhof’ is something quite different. ‘Eckhof’ is even the name of a great actor. ‘Eckhof’ is proper.⁠ ⁠… You mention only your father. Your mother, then, could she⁠ ⁠…”

“Yes, my mother died when I was still quite young.”

“Ah. But tell me more about yourself, may I ask? But not if it tires you. If it tires you, you must rest, and I will go on telling you about Paris. But you could speak softly, yes, even if you whisper⁠ ⁠… that would only make everything the lovelier.⁠ ⁠… You were born in Bremen?” He put this question almost inaudibly, with an expression of worship and significance, as though there were no other city in the world like Bremen; as though Bremen were a city full of unmentionable adventures and speechless beauties, and to be born there gave one a vague majesty.

“Yes, just think!” she said involuntarily. “I come from Bremen.”

“I was there once,” he remarked thoughtfully.

“Great heavens, you were there, too! Herr Spinell, I believe you have seen everything from Tunis to Spitzbergen!”

“Yes, I was there once,” he repeated. “A few short hours in the evening. I remember an old, narrow street, with a strange moon lying straight above the roofs of the houses. Then I was in a Rathskeller that smelt of wine and must. It is an insistent memory⁠ ⁠…”

“Indeed? Just where could that have been?⁠ ⁠… Yes, I was born in just such a one of those dark, gabled houses⁠ ⁠… in the home of one of the old merchant families, with its reverberating halls and white lacquered portico.”

“Then your father is a merchant?” he asked a bit falteringly.

“Yes. But besides that, and first of all, he is an artist.”

“Ah! Ah! And to what extent?”

“He plays the violin. But that does not mean much. It is the way he plays it, Herr Spinell, that is important! I have never been able to hear certain notes without feeling the tears burn marvellously in my eyes⁠ ⁠… it is something that I experience in no other way. But you do not believe⁠ ⁠…”

“I do believe! Ah, as if I could doubt! But tell me: your family is quite old? Many generations have already lived, worked, and died in that dark, gabled house?”

“Yes. But why do you ask that?”

“Because it often happens that a race with dry, practical bourgeois traditions finds itself again toward the end of its days in art.”

“Is that the case?⁠ ⁠… Yes, as to my father, he is certainly more of an artist than many a man who calls himself an artist and lives on his reputation as an artist. I just play the piano a bit. Now I am not permitted to play, but then, at home, I used to play. My father and I⁠ ⁠… we played together. Yes, all those years are dear to me. Especially the garden, our garden, to the rear of the house. It was wretchedly grown up in weeds, and surrounded by mossy, crumbling walls; but that was what gave it its charm. There was a spring in the middle, with a thick wreath of irises about it. In the summer I used to spend long hours there with my girl friends. We all sat around the spring on little campstools⁠ ⁠…”

“How beautiful!” Herr Spinell said, raising his shoulders. “Would you sit there and sing?”

“No, we sewed.”

“Always⁠ ⁠… always that⁠ ⁠…”

“Yes, we sewed and chatted, my six girl friends and I⁠ ⁠…”

“How beautiful! God, just listen, how beautiful!” exclaimed Herr Spinell, and his face was distorted with his enthusiasm.

“What do you find so especially beautiful in that, Herr Spinell?”

“Only this: that there were six beside you, that you were not included in this number, but stood out from the rest like a queen. You were distinguished from your six friends. A little golden crown, quite faint, but significant, shone in your hair⁠ ⁠…”

“No, nonsense, no sort of crown⁠ ⁠…”

“Still, it was shining secretly. I should have seen it, should have seen it plainly in your hair, if I had been hidden in the bushes at one of those times⁠ ⁠…”

“God only knows what you might have seen. But you weren’t hidden there, although one day it was my present husband who stepped out of the bushes accompanied by my father. I am afraid they had overheard a good deal too much of our chatter⁠ ⁠…”

“Then that was the place you first met your husband?”

“Yes, I met him there for the first time!” she said loudly and cheerfully; and as she smiled, the tiny, pale-blue vein stood out, strained and peculiar. “He had come to see my father on business, you see. The next day he was invited to dinner, and three days later he asked to marry me.”

“Indeed! And it all happened with such extraordinary swiftness?”

“Yes.⁠ ⁠… Or rather, from then on, things went a little slower. For you must know that my father was not entirely willing at first, and conditioned quite a long delay. In the first place, he wanted to keep me with him, and he had still other reasons. But⁠ ⁠…”

“But?”

“But I wanted it to happen,” she said with a smile, and again the little light-blue vein gave her face a distressed and sickly appearance.

“Ah, you wanted it to happen.”

“Yes, and I showed a decently steady determination, as you see⁠ ⁠…”

“As I see. Yes.”

“… So that my father finally had to give in.”

“And then you left him and his violin, left the old house, the luxuriant garden, the spring and your six girl friends, and went your way with Herr Klöterjahn.”

“And went my way.⁠ ⁠… You have a strange manner of expressing yourself, Herr Spinell! Almost biblical! Yes, I left the house, since that is Nature’s arrangement.”

“Yes, that is Nature’s arrangement.”

“And then, it was a matter of my future happiness.”

“Of course. And it came, this happiness⁠ ⁠…”

“It came in the hour, Herr Spinell, when they first brought me little Anton, our little Anton, and when he wailed so powerfully with his sturdy little lungs⁠ ⁠… for he is so strong and healthy⁠ ⁠…”

“I have heard you speak several times of the health of your little Anton. He must be unusually healthy?”

“He certainly is. And he looks so comically like my husband!”

“Ah!⁠ ⁠… Yes, so it all happened that way. And now you are no longer called Eckhof, but something else, and you have a sturdy little Anton, and you are ailing somewhere in the trachea.”

“Yes.⁠ ⁠… And you are an out-and-out enigmatical man, Herr Spinell, I can assure you⁠ ⁠…”

“Yes, heaven knows you are that!” said the Rätin Spatz, who was still at hand.

Herr Klöterjahn’s wife often occupied herself deeply with this conversation. Noncommittal as it had been, still it had something concealed at bottom which nourished her preoccupations with herself. Was this the harmful influence which was affecting her? Her weakness increased, and often fever set in⁠—a quiet flame which always left her in a mood of extravagance, thoughtful and contented, and with a vague sense of injury. When she was not forced to remain in bed, Herr Spinell would step across to her with extreme caution on the tips of his large feet, and remain standing about two steps distant, one leg placed behind the other, and the upper part of his body bent slightly forward. He would speak to her in a voice softened with worship, as if his sheer devotion would pick her up tenderly and lay her on a bed of clouds, where no harsh sound, no earthly irritation, could ever reach her. At such times she would remember the way Herr Klöterjahn had of saying: “Slowly, Gabriele, take care, my angel, and keep your mouth closed!” he said it as though he were slapping you on the shoulder with crude good humour. But she would dismiss this recollection hastily, and lie back purged and weak in the bed of clouds Herr Spinell was so kind as to prepare for her.

One day she went back abruptly to the conversation they had had about her parents and her girlhood.

“And it is really true, Herr Spinell,” she said, “that you could have seen the crown?”

And although this talk had occurred fourteen days ago, he knew immediately what she meant, and he assured her with emotion that back there at the spring, as she was sitting there with her six girl friends, he would have seen the little crown glittering⁠—would have seen it glittering in her hair.

A few days later one of the patients asked her out of politeness how her little Anton was doing back home. She sent a swift glance towards Herr Spinell, who was standing near her, and then answered somewhat peevishly: “How is he? Both he and my husband are doing very well, thank you.”

VIII

Toward the end of February, one chilly day which was even clearer and more brilliant than all that had preceded it, a general feeling of good nature pervaded Einfried. The ladies and gentlemen with heart trouble were speaking to one another with flushed cheeks, the diabetic general was humming like a child, and the gentlemen with the uncontrollable legs were quite beside themselves. What was it all about? Nothing less than that a general excursion had been arranged for, a sleigh-ride through the hills in vehicles with jangling bells and snapping whips. Dr. Leander had decided on this as an entertainment for his patients.

Naturally, the “serious cases” had to stay behind. Those miserable serious cases! Everyone got together and pledged themselves to keep the whole thing a secret from them; it felt quite pleasant to be able to exercise a little sympathy and consideration. But even some who very easily could have taken part in the outing did not do so. As to Fräulein von Osterloh, she was excused without a word. Anyone as loaded with household duties as she could not afford to think of sleigh-rides. Her presence was needed in Einfried. And, in short, she stayed. But all were distressed when Herr Klöterjahn’s wife declared she preferred not to go. Dr. Leander tried in vain to urge her into taking the invigorating ride. But she claimed she was indisposed, that she had a headache, felt somewhat tired; and there was nothing to do but accept it. But the cynic and wit found occasion for the remark, “Just watch; now the decrepit baby won’t go with us, either.”

And he turned out to be right, since Herr Spinell let it be known that he intended working that afternoon⁠—he liked to apply the word “work” to his doubtful activities. But not a single soul was put out by his absence, and the disappointment was no greater when the Rätin Spatz decided to keep her younger friend company since riding made her seasick.

Immediately after the midday meal, which had been served today even before twelve, the sleighs drew up in front of Einfried, and the patients began moving across the park in lively groups, eager, excited, and bundled up snugly. Herr Klöterjahn’s wife was standing with the Rätin Spatz behind the glass door which opened on the terrace, and Herr Spinell was observing the departure from the window of his room. Amid laughing and joking, miniature battles would arise over the best seats; Fräulein von Osterloh, a fur boa around her neck, was running from one sleigh to another to shove baskets of food under the seats; Dr. Leander, his fur cap pulled down over his eyes, reviewed the whole scene once more with his glistening spectacles, then took his place and gave the sign to start.⁠ ⁠… The horses leaped forward, a woman or two let out a shriek as she fell over backwards, the bells jangled, the short-handled whips snapped and let their long cords drag in the snow behind the runners, and Fräulein von Osterloh stood at the gate waving her handkerchief until the sleighs glided out of sight at a bend in the road and the cheerful noise died away. Then she hurried back through the park to attend to urgent matters, the two women left the glass door, and almost at the same time Herr Spinell left his place of observation.

Einfried was quiet. The sleigh-party was not to be expected back before evening. The “serious cases” were lying in their rooms and suffering. Herr Klöterjahn’s wife and her older friend took a short walk together, and then went up to their rooms. Herr Spinell was also in his room, busy after his fashion. About four o’clock each of the women was brought her glass of milk, while Herr Spinell received his weak tea. Shortly afterwards, Herr Klöterjahn’s wife knocked on the wall which separated her room from Magistratsrätin Spatz’s, and said: “Let’s go down to the drawing-room for a while. I don’t know what to do with myself up here.”

“Right away, my dear!” the Rätin answered. “Just let me pull on my shoes. I have been lying down, you see.”

As might be expected, the drawing-room was empty. The two women took seats in front of the fireplace. The Rätin Spatz was embroidering flowers on a piece of canvas, and Herr Klöterjahn’s wife was also doing a bit of sewing, although she soon let her fancy work sink into her lap and looked vacantly above the arms of her chair. Finally she made a remark which it was not worth the trouble of moving her teeth for, but since the Rätin Spatz, however, asked “What’s that?” to her great humiliation she had to repeat the whole sentence. Then the Rätin Spatz asked a second time: “What’s that?” But at this moment steps were heard, the door opened, and Herr Spinell entered.

“Am I disturbing you?” he asked softly as he hesitated in the doorway. Then he looked on Herr Klöterjahn’s wife and inclined the upper part of his body in a certain tender, soaring manner.

The young woman answered: “Why, how could that be? In the first place, this room is a harbour open to all, Herr Spinell. And then again, in what way could you disturb us? I have the most decided sensation of boring the Rätin⁠ ⁠…”

At this he had nothing to answer, but allowed a smile to expose his carious teeth, and then walked somewhat stiffly under the eyes of the women to the glass door. He stopped here and looked out, with his back turned impolitely towards the women. Then he turned half around, although continuing to look out at the park. “The sun is gone. The sky has been clouding gradually. It is already getting dark.”

“Yes, indeed; everything is in shadows,” Herr Klöterjahn’s wife answered. “The sleigh-party is in for some more snow, it seems. Yesterday at this time it was still broad daylight; but now it is dark already.”

“Ah,” he said, “after all these excessively sunny weeks a little darkness is a rest to the eyes. I am quite grateful to this sun, which lights up the beautiful and the common with equally insistent clarity, that at last it has hidden itself for a while.”

“You do not like the sunlight, Herr Spinell?”

“Since I am not a painter. We become more introspective without the sun.⁠ ⁠… It is one thick grey mass of cloud. Perhaps that means thawing for tomorrow. In any case, I should not advise you to keep looking at your fancy work there, if I may say so.”

“Oh, don’t mind that, for I have already quit. But what is there to do?”

He had dropped on to the stool in front of the piano, with one arm resting on the cover. “Music⁠ ⁠…” he began. “Who ever hears music these days? Once in a while the English children sing little nigger songs, but that is all.”

“And yesterday afternoon Fräulein von Osterloh went speeding through ‘The Monastery Bells,’ ” Herr Klöterjahn’s wife remarked.

“But it is true that you play,” he said pleadingly, and stood up. “You used to play every day with your father.”

“Yes, Herr Spinell, but that was then! Back when we sat around the spring, you know⁠ ⁠…”

“But do it today!” he begged. “Just a few bars just this once! If you only knew how thirsty I am after⁠ ⁠…”

“Our family doctor as well as Dr. Leander have both forbidden it expressly, Herr Spinell.”

“They are not here, neither one nor the other! We are free⁠ ⁠… you are free! Just a few meagre chords⁠ ⁠…”

“No, Herr Spinell, we must not think of it. Who knows what sort of marvels you expect of me! And I have gotten out of practice, I assure you. I can do scarcely anything by heart.”

“Oh, then play this Scarcely-Anything! And furthermore, here are some scores, lying here, right on the piano. No, this is nothing. But here is Chopin⁠ ⁠… the Nocturnes. And now all that is necessary is for me to light the candles⁠ ⁠…”

“Please don’t expect me to play, Herr Spinell! I am not allowed. If it should hurt me?”

He was silent. He stood there in the light of the two candles; large feet, long black coat, pale grey-haired beardless face, and hanging hands. “Now I won’t ask you again,” he finally spoke very softly. “If you are afraid that it may hurt you, then by all means leave the beauty dead and dumb which might acquire utterance beneath your fingers. You have not always been so prudent. Not, at least, when you were called upon to surrender yourself to the very opposite of beauty. Then you weren’t worried about yourself, and showed a hastier and surer determination when you abandoned the spring and put off the little golden crown.⁠ ⁠… But listen,” he went on after a pause, and his voice sank even lower, “if you sit here and play the way you once did, when your father stood beside you and made his violin sing those tones which caused you to cry⁠ ⁠… then it may come about that the little golden crown will glisten secretly in your hair again⁠ ⁠…”

“Indeed?” she asked, smiling. It happened that her voice broke on this word, so that it was pronounced half hoarsely and half tonelessly. She coughed, and then said: “And they are really Chopin’s Nocturnes you have there?”

“Certainly. They are opened and everything is ready.”

“Well, then, in heaven’s name, I will play one of them. But only one, you hear? Then you must be contented forever.”

She arose, laid aside her fancy work, and went to the piano. She sat down on the stool, where a couple of bound volumes had been lying, adjusted the lights, and began turning over the pages. Herr Spinell had brought a chair up beside her, and was sitting near her like a music teacher.

She played the Nocturne in E-Sharp Major, Opus 9, Number 2. Even if she truly was somewhat out of practice, nevertheless her execution was a bit of real artistry. The piano was at best middling, but after the first few strokes she could manage it tastefully and with assurance. She displayed a nervous sense of the differentiations in tone-quality, and an imaginative feel for the slowing and speeding up of rhythm. Her touch was firm as well as soft. Under her hands the melody sang its ultimate measure of sweetness, and the little embellishments wound with a hesitating charm about her fingers.

She was wearing the dress of the day she came here: the dark, heavy coat-suit and the soft velvet embroidery⁠—all of which gave her hands and face such an unearthly frailty. The expression of her face did not change in playing, but it seemed as though the demarcation of her lips became clearer while the shadows deepened in the corners of her eyes. When she had finished, she laid her hands in her lap and went on looking at the notes. Herr Spinell continued to sit there, without a move or a sound.

She played another Nocturne⁠—a second and a third. Then she arose, but only to look for new pieces on the top of the piano.

It occurred to Herr Spinell to examine the volumes in black boards which had been lying on the stool. Suddenly he let out an unintelligible exclamation, and his large white hands began fingering passionately one of these neglected volumes.

“Impossible!⁠ ⁠… It is not true!⁠ ⁠…” he said. “And yet I am not deceiving myself!⁠ ⁠… Do you know what this is? What was lying here? What I am holding now?⁠ ⁠…”

“What is it?” she asked.

Then he pointed in silence to the titlepage. He was quite pale, let the book sink down, and gazed at her with trembling lips.

“Indeed? How does that come to be here? Give it to me, then,” she said simply. Then she arranged the score, took her seat, and after a moment of stillness began with the first page.

He sat next to her, bent forward, his head lowered, and his hands folded across his knees. She played the opening plaintively, with an excessive slowness, with disquietingly long pauses between the individual figures. The yearning-motif, a lonely, wandering voice in the night, was heard softly uttering its uneasy question. A silence, and an expectation. And see⁠ ⁠… it answers: the same weak, lonely note, only this time brighter, more tender. Another silence. And then, in that marvellous dampened sforzato which is like a sudden starting up, and the first sacred insistence of passion, the love-motif set in, rose, writhed keenly to a sweet culmination, sank back in resolution⁠—and with their deep song of heavy, pained astonishment the cellos came forward and continued the melody.

As she played on the miserable instrument, she tried with some success to bring out the effects of the orchestra. The run of the violins in their great climb rang with a brilliant precision. She played with a precise devotion, lingered credulously over every form, and raised up each element plainly and humbly like a priest lifting the holy wafer above his head. What happened? Two forces, two eager beings struggled in pain and sanctity towards each other, and embraced in a wild, enchanted hunger after the eternal and the absolute.⁠ ⁠… The overture flamed up and dropped. She stopped where the curtain opens, and kept looking in silence at the notes.

In the meantime the Rätin Spatz had reached boredom to a degree which deforms the face, drives the eyes out of the head, and produces a dreadful corpse-like appearance. Beyond that, this sort of music affected the nerves of her stomach, put this dyspeptic organism in a state of anguish which made the Rätin fear an attack of cramps. “I must go to my room,” she said weakly. “Goodbye; I’ll be back.”

Then she had left. It was much darker now. Outside, the snow could be seen falling thick and silent on the terrace. The two candles gave a restricted, wavering light.

“The second act,” he whispered; and she turned the pages and began with the second act.

A blare of horns was lost in the distance. What? Or was it the rustling of leaves? The soft gurgle of a spring? Night had already poured its silence everywhere, and there were no urgent warnings against surrender to the powers of melancholy. The holy secret was completed. The lights went out, the death-motif sank away with a peculiar, suddenly veiled quality; and with a driving impatience, melancholy let her white coverings flutter out to the lover approaching through the darkness with wide-open arms.

O abundant and insatiable rejoicing at union in the eternal Beyond-Things! Free of distressing error, escaped from the bonds of time and place, the you and the I, the meus and the tuus, melted together in an exalted happiness. The blinding malice of day might keep them apart, but no arrogant lie could deceive again these dwellers in darkness, since the strength of the magic potion had endowed them with sight. He who had looked with love on the night of death and its sweet secret, in the orgy of his vision now had only one desire, the yearning for the sacred night, the true, eternal, unifying⁠ ⁠…

Oh, fall about them, night of love, and give them that oblivion which they yearn for; encompass them with ecstasies, and make them free of this world of deceit and separation. Look, the last torch has gone out! Every thought and image has dropped away in the sacred twilight, which spreads its salvation over the anguish of madness. Then, when delusion is fading, when my eye is failing at all this glory⁠—the glory of which I was cheated by the lie of daylight; and I had been tricked into taking in its place the restless torture of my yearnings⁠—even then, O prodigy of fulfilment! even then I am the world.⁠ ⁠… And Brangäne’s dark warning-song was followed by that soaring of violins which is higher than all reason.

“I don’t understand it at all, Herr Spinell; a lot of it I can simply surmise. What does that mean, that ‘even then I am the world’?”

He explained it to her, quietly and briefly.

“Yes, so it is. But how does it come that you, who understand it so well, cannot play it, too?”

Strangely enough, he could not bear up under this harmless question. He reddened, wrung his hands, and sank back into his chair. “Those two things are seldom found together,” he at last said with an effort. “No, I cannot play.⁠ ⁠… But continue.”

And she went on into the drunken songs of this miracle play. Did love ever die? Tristan’s love? The love of your Isolde, and my Isolde? Oh, the strokes of death can never reach this eternal woman! What could death be but that which distresses us, which tricks lovers into disunion? In one sweet and, love brought them both together.⁠ ⁠… And if death destroys this, how else except with the very life of one could death be given to the other? And a mysterious interweaving of two melodies united them in the unnamed hope of Love’s Death, the endlessly inseparable enfolding in the Fairyland of night. Sweet night! Eternal night of love! All-inclusive land of holiness! Whoever has looked at you with understanding, how could he awake to desolate day again without sorrow? But ban all sorrow, friendly death! Free the hungering from the famine of awaking! O unattainable storm of rhythms; O rapture of the metaphysical certainty pressing forward chromatically! How is it acquired, how is it lost, this ravishment far from the loneliness of light? Soft desires without lies or sorrow; sublime, painless extinction; superspiritual twilight in the incommensurable! You, Isolde; I, Tristan; Tristan no longer, Isolde no longer.

Suddenly something very frightful happened. She left off playing, and held her hand over her eyes that she might peer into the darkness. And Herr Spinell turned quickly about in his chair. The door back there which led to the corridor had opened, and a strange form entered, supported on the arm of a second. It was a patient at Einfried who had not been able to take part in the sleigh-ride, but was employing this evening hour in one of her instinctive and mournful rounds of the institute; it was the wife of Pastor Höhlenrauch leaning on the arm of her nurse. Without looking up, she measured the rear of the room with uncertain, groping steps, and disappeared through the door opposite⁠—speechless and staring, wandering without consciousness. There was a long silence.

“That was the Pastorin Höhlenrauch,” he said.

“Yes, that was poor Höhlenrauch,” she answered. Then she began turning the leaves again, and played the finish to it all, played Isolde’s Liebestod.

How colourless and clear her lips were, and how the shadows had deepened in the corners of her eyes! Above the eyebrow, across her transparent forehead, the tiny, pale-blue vein was becoming disturbingly swollen. Under her industrious hands the unutterable ascent was completed, broken suddenly by that almost dissolute pianissimo which is like a floor slipping from beneath the feet, and a drop into a sublime covetousness. The abundance of a mighty attainment and conclusion broke out, was repeated⁠ ⁠… a bewildering turmoil of unrestricted rejoicing. Then it changed its form and its flow, seemed on the point of expiring, wove the yearning-motif once more into its harmonies, exhaled, perished, faded, glided away. Deep silence.

They both listened, turned their heads to one side and listened.

“Those are bells,” she said.

“They are the sleighs. I am going now.”

He arose and crossed the room. But he stopped at the door, turned about, and for a few minutes kept changing from one foot to the other. And then it happened that he, at a distance of fifteen or twenty paces from her, dropped to his knees, dropped on both knees without a word. His long black coat trailed on the floor. He kept his hands folded over his mouth, and his shoulders twitched sharply.

She sat with her hands in her lap, leaning forward away from the piano, and looking at him. A forced, uncertain smile lay on her face, and her eyes were peering meditatively with such effort into the darkness that they showed a slight tendency to bulge.

Out of the distance came the approaching sounds of bells, snapping whips, and a jumble of human voices.

IX

The sleigh-party, which was the talk of everybody for some time, had taken place on the twenty-sixth of February. It thawed on the twenty-seventh, when everything melted, dropped, splashed, and flowed; and Herr Klöterjahn’s wife was getting along excellently. On the twenty-eighth she brought up a bit of blood⁠ ⁠… oh, insignificant; but it was blood. At the same time a much greater weakness than ever before came over her, and kept her confined to her bed.

Dr. Leander examined her, and his face was as hard as stone. Then he ordered what is prescribed by science: cracked ice, morphine, absolute quiet. Furthermore, the next day overwork forced him to transfer the case to Dr. Müller, who accepted it dutifully and faithfully, and in all mildness; a quiet, pale, insignificant, and unhappy man, whose modest and unheralded activities were devoted to the nearly well and the hopeless.

The opinion he expressed first of all was that the separation between the Klöterjahn couple had continued for quite a while now. It would be especially pleasant if Herr Klöterjahn could pay another visit to Einfried, provided that his thriving business would permit it. A letter could be sent to him, perhaps even a short telegram.⁠ ⁠… And it would certainly cheer up the young mother and strengthen her if he would bring little Anton along; and, in addition to that, the doctors would be very glad to make the acquaintance of this sturdy little Anton.

And lo, Herr Klöterjahn appeared. He had received Dr. Müller’s short telegram and came from the shore of the Baltic. He got out of the cab, called for coffee and rolls, and looked very disconcerted.

“What is it?” he asked. “Why am I called here?”

“Since it is advisable,” Dr. Müller answered, “that you remain near your wife now.”

“Advisable⁠ ⁠… advisable.⁠ ⁠… But necessary as well? I am tending to my business, my man, and times are bad and travelling is expensive. Was this journey unavoidable? I shouldn’t have anything to say, for instance, if it was the lungs; but, thank God, it is only the trachea⁠ ⁠…”

“Herr Klöterjahn,” Dr. Müller spoke softly, “in the first place, the trachea is an important organ⁠ ⁠…” He incorrectly said “in the first place,” since no “in the second place” followed.

But at the same time as Herr Klöterjahn, a plump person dressed in red, plaid, and gold had arrived at Einfried, and she it was who carried in her arms Anton Klöterjahn, Jr., the small, sturdy Anton. Yes, he was there, and no one could deny that he really was excessively healthy. White and rosy, with clean fresh clothes, he rested fragrant and fat on the red bare arm of his servant, swallowed powerful quantities of milk and chopped meat, shouted and surrendered himself in every way to his instincts.

The author, Spinell, had observed the arrival of young Klöterjahn from the window of his room. In a peculiarly veiled manner, but sharply nevertheless, he had fixed the child in his eye while it was being carried from the cab to the house. And for some time he had remained standing there with this same expression on his face.

From now on he avoided as far as possible any meeting with Anton Klöterjahn, Jr.

X

Herr Spinell was sitting “at work” in his room. It was a room like all the rest at Einfried: old-fashioned, simple, and distinguished. The massive chest of drawers had lions’ heads of metal on it; the high wall mirror was no flat surface, but made of numerous little squares fastened together with lead; there was no carpet on the blue lacquered floor in which the stiff legs of the furniture were continued as clear shadows. A spacious writing-desk stood near the window, across which the novelist had drawn a yellow curtain, probably that he might be more by himself.

In the yellowish twilight he was sitting over the escritoire, and writing⁠ ⁠… writing at one of those frequent letters which he mailed every week, and to which, ridiculously enough, he usually received no answers. A large sheet of heavy paper was lying in front of him; in the upper left-hand corner, under a mighty queerly drawn landscape, the name, Detlev Spinell, was to be read in the most completely up-to-date letters. He was covering this paper now with a small, carefully traced, and exceptionally pure handwriting.

“Dear Sir,” it began. “I am sending you the following lines because I cannot help it, because the things I have to say to you burden me, torture me, and make me tremble, because the words pour forth with such violence that I should be stifled with them if I did not venture to relieve myself of them in this letter.⁠ ⁠…”

To give truth its dues, this “pouring forth” was certainly not the case, and God only knows what useless reasons prompted Herr Spinell to assert it. Words seemed to be doing anything but pour forth from him; for a man whose everyday occupation was writing, he seemed to get along miserably slow. If anyone had seen him, he would have come to the conclusion that an author is a person to whom writing is much more difficult than to anybody else.

He would get hold of one of those little downy hairs on his cheeks between two fingertips, and twist at it for fifteen minutes at a stretch, while he stared into space and didn’t advance a line. Then he would write a few neat words, and stop again. On the other hand, it must be admitted that whatever finally appeared gave the impression of ease and vividness, even if its contents were of an unusual, questionable, and often incomprehensible character:

“It is an inevitable necessity with me that those things which I have been seeing, which have been standing before my eyes as an inextinguishable vision for weeks, should be made plain to you as well⁠ ⁠… that you should see them through my eyes in that utter clarity in which they have stood before my inner vision. I am accustomed to yielding to such compulsions, that I may adjust my experience to that of the world in general, employing properly placed words in such a manner as to make them burning and unforgettable. I trust, then, that you will give me your attention.

“I wish to state only what actually has been, and still is. I should simply like to tell a story, a very short, unspeakably moving story; to tell it without commentary, without accusations or judgments, but in my own words. It is, Sir, the story of Gabriele Eckhof, the woman whom you now call your wife. And please note: it was you that lived through it, and yet it is I whose words will be the first truly to elevate it to the importance of an experience.

“Do you remember, Sir, the garden, the old, grown-up garden behind the grey ancestral home? Green moss jutted out of the cracks in the weathered walls enclosing this dreamy wilderness. Also, do do you remember the spring in the midst of it all? Lilac-coloured flags bent over its dank edges, and a white stream muttered its secrets down over the stones. The summer day was nearing a close.

“Seven virgins were sitting in a circle around the spring. But in the hair of the seventh, the first, the one, the sinking sun seemed mysteriously to be weaving a glimmering symbol of superiority. Her eyes were like troubled dreams, and yet her pure lips were smiling.

“They were singing. They kept their narrow faces turned towards the peak of the jet, just where, in a noble, weary curve, it inclines to fall again. And their soft, high voices hovered about its slender dance. Perhaps they held their frail hands folded across their knees while they sang.

“Do you recall the picture, Sir? Did you see it? You did not see it. Your eyes were not made for that, and your ears were not made to catch the shy sweetness of its melody. If you had seen it, you would not have dared to breathe. You would have struggled to keep down the pounding of your heart. You would have had to go, back into life, into your life, to preserve deep within you for the rest of your earthly existence this vision as something untouchable and imperishably sacred. But what did you do?

“This picture should have been an end in itself, Sir. Did you have to come and destroy it, that you might continue it in vulgarity and the ugliness of pain? It was a touching and placid deification, immersed in the crepuscular glory of decay, dissolution, and extinction. An ancient line, already too weary and too noble for the facts of life, was standing at the end of its days, and its last utterances were the sounds of art, a few notes on the violin, full of the penetrative melancholy of those who are ripe for death. Did you see the eyes from which these notes lured forth tears? It is possible that the souls of the six playmates belonged to life; but the other one should have had for her sister and mistress⁠—beauty and death.

“You saw it, this beauty of death. You looked at it, but only to covet it. No reverence, no instinct to pull away, touched your heart at the thought of her appealing sanctity. It was not enough for you merely to behold; you had to possess, exploit, desecrate. How admirably you chose! You are an epicure, Sir, a plebeian epicure, a cultured peasant.

“Please let me assure you that I do not harbour the slightest desire to anger you. What I am saying is not an affront, but the formula, the simple psychological formula for your simple, artistically uninteresting personality. And I say all this only because I feel called upon to illuminate somewhat your life and actions for you, since it is my one inevitable calling on this earth to give things their names, to make them speak, and to throw more light on the unrealized. The world is full up of what I might call the ‘unconscious type.’ And I can’t bear them, all these unconscious types. I cannot stand all this blunt mindless and unthinking turmoil and commerce, this world all around me of exacerbating simplicity! I am driven with painful insistence to orient everything around me⁠—in so far as I am capable⁠—to express and bring it into consciousness, completely indifferent as to whether this results favourably or unfavourably, whether it brings with it consolation and improvement, or leaves nothing but anguish.

“As I have said, Sir, you are a plebeian epicure, a cultured peasant. Of an especially strong constitution, in one of the very lowest stages of development, with the aid of money and congenial living you have suddenly arrived at a barbaric corruption of the nervous system to an extent never before heard of in history. And along with this, you have acquired a certain lascivious refinement in your appetites. It is quite possible that when you decided to make Gabriele Eckhof your own, the muscles of your gullet went through the same smacking procedure as at the sight of some rare food, of a tasty soup.

“The truth is that you led her and her half-dreamed desires astray, that you took her out of the rich garden into life and ugliness, that you gave her your common name, and made her a wife, a housekeeper, a mother. You have lowered this shy, weary, full-hearted beauty of death with its exalted inutility; you have brought it down to subjection beneath the vulgarity of everyday life, and that stupid, relentless, and detestable idol which we call nature. And not a single suspicion of the deep degradation of your actions has ever crossed your rustic consciousness.

“Again; what happens? She, with eyes like troubled dreams, presents you with a child. Every bit of blood and strength which she possesses, she gives to this being which is a continuation of the low-minded existence of its father⁠ ⁠… she gives this, and dies. Sir, she is dying! And if she does not depart in commonness, if at last she has risen out of the depths of her denigration, and passed away proud and purified under the deadly kiss of beauty, it is I that saw to it. You, in the meantime, were trying to while away the hours with chambermaids in lonely corridors.

“But her child, Gabriele Eckhof’s son, lives, flourishes, and triumphs. Perhaps it will follow in the steps of its father, and become a good business man, a taxpayer and a well fed member of the community. Or perhaps a soldier or an official, some stupid, dependable pillar of the state. In any case, an amusical, normally functioning creature, trustworthy and unscrupulous, sturdy and ignorant.

“Kindly accept the confession, Sir, that I hate you, you and your child, because I hate the life, the common, ridiculous, and yet conquering life which you represent⁠—the eternal contrast and deadly enemy to beauty. I do not dare to say that I detest you. I cannot. I will be frank. You are the stronger. I have only one thing to bring against you in battle, the sublime weapon and engine of vengeance of the weak: mind and the word. Today I have made use of these. For this letter⁠—and here, too, I am being frank⁠—is nothing but an act of retaliation, and I rejoice if there is only one word here which is sharp, brilliant, and beautiful enough to reach you, to make you feel some force outside of you, and just for an instant make your robust imperturbability vacillate.

And Herr Spinell put this letter in a stamped envelope, provided it with a neatly written address, and mailed it.

XI

Herr Klöterjahn knocked on the door of Herr Spinell’s room. He was holding a large, neatly written sheet of paper in his hand, and looked like a man who had decided to proceed with energy. The mail had done its duty; the letter had taken its journey; it had made the remarkable trip from Einfried to Einfried, and arrived in the proper hands. The time was now four o’clock in the afternoon.

As Herr Klöterjahn entered, Herr Spinell was sitting on the sofa, reading his own novel with the bewildering cover designs. He arose and looked at his visitor with a surprised interrogation, although he plainly reddened.

“Good day,” said Herr Klöterjahn. “I hope you will pardon my disturbing you. But may I ask whether you wrote this?” He held out the large, neatly written sheet of paper in his left hand, and beat on it with the back of his right until it crackled. Then he stuck his right hand in the pocket of his wide, comfortable trousers, turned his head to one side, and, as with a good many people, opened his mouth to listen.

Herr Spinell was smiling peculiarly. He was smiling amiably; somewhat puzzled and half apologetic, he drew his hand across his head as though he were thinking, and said: “Why, to be sure⁠ ⁠… yes⁠ ⁠… I took the liberty⁠ ⁠…”

The point was that he had been too indulgent this morning, and slept until nearly noon. Consequently, he was suffering from a bad conscience and a stuffy head, felt a bit nervous and very ill-fit to defend himself. In addition, a spring breeze had set in, causing him to relax and making him a bit despondent. All this must be mentioned as an explanation of how it happened that he conducted himself so poorly in the following scene.

“So! Aha! Fine!” said Herr Klöterjahn, pressing his chin against his breast, raising his eyebrows, stretching his arms, and making countless other little gestures, to plunge heartlessly into the matter once this question of form had been settled. Out of delight in his person, he went a bit too far in these gestures; what finally followed could not completely correspond to the threatening punctiliousness of his preparations. But Herr Spinell was quite pale.

“Very fine!” Herr Klöterjahn repeated, and shook his head vigorously to show how impregnably sure he was of his case. “I wouldn’t waste a word on this scribble, frankly, it would simply be too cheap for attention, if it didn’t clear up for me certain things I didn’t understand before, certain changes.⁠ ⁠… However, that doesn’t concern you, and doesn’t belong here. I am a busy man; I have better things to think about than your unutterable visions⁠ ⁠…”

“I wrote ‘inextinguishable vision,’ ” Herr Spinell said, pulling himself up. This was the one time he made any show of dignity.

“Inextinguishable⁠ ⁠… unutterable⁠ ⁠…” Herr Klöterjahn answered, and glanced at the manuscript. “You write a very miserable hand, my friend; I shouldn’t like to have you working in my office. At first glance it seems good enough, but held up to the light it is full of all sorts of gaps and wobbles. But that is your affair, and has nothing to do with me. I came to tell you that, in the first place, you are an ass.⁠ ⁠… Now, let us hope that has been made known to you. Besides that, you are a thorough coward, and I don’t need to spend much time making that clear to you. My wife wrote me once that you never look into the faces of the women you meet, but just barely graze them that you might carry away a lovely impression, out of fear of the truth. Unfortunately, later on she quit telling me of you in her letters; otherwise, I should have some other stories about you. But there you are. You say ‘beauty’ every third word, but it is nothing but shooting off, and sham and envy, and that’s where your shameless reference to ‘lonely corridors’ comes from; it was supposed to knock me over, and instead it was funny, just plain funny! Do you get all that straight now? Have I ‘illuminated your life and actions,’ you poor devil? Although it is not my ‘infallible calling,’ ha, ha!”

“I wrote ‘inevitable calling,’ ” Herr Spinell interposed, but he gave up the field again immediately. He stood there helpless and rebuked, like a big, whimpering, grey-haired schoolboy.

“Inevitable⁠ ⁠… infallible⁠ ⁠… You are a low-down coward, I tell you. You see me at table every day. You speak to me and smile, you pass things to me and smile, you wish me a pleasant day and smile. And then all of a sudden you sling all this muck of stupid calumnies at me. Ha, yes, you have courage on paper! If it comes down to a ridiculous letter like this. But you have been doing underhanded things against me, acting behind my back; I see that now plainly enough. Although you don’t need to get the idea that it has done you any good! In case you entertain the hope that you have put any nonsense into my wife’s head, then you’re all wrong, my dear sir, for she’s too intelligent a person for that! Or finally, if you think that she received me, the child and me, any differently from usual when we arrived, then you’ve put the last touch to your crudeness! If she didn’t kiss the little fellow, it was simply out of caution, because now the theory is that it might not be the trachea, but the lungs, and in that case we can’t be sure.⁠ ⁠… Although I ought to assure you in addition that as to the lungs and your ‘Sir, she is dying!’ you are an ass!”

At this point Herr Klöterjahn tried to recover his wind. He had become very angry by now, kept continually piercing the air with the index finger of his right hand and soiling the manuscript in his left hand most wretchedly. Between his blond English side-whiskers, his face was frightfully red, and his cloudy forehead was rent with swollen veins like choleric lightning.

“You hate me,” he went on, “and you would detest me if I were not the stronger. Yes, so I am, by God; I’ve got my heart in the right place, while yours for the most part is in your shoes. And I’d pound the life out of you and your ‘mind and the word,’ you sneaking idiot, if it weren’t against the law. But I don’t mean to say by that, my friend, that I’m going to take your invectives and let it go at that. And when I get home and show that ‘common name’ to my lawyer, we’ll see if you don’t get the surprise of your life. My name is a good one, sir, because I have made it good, and if anyone would lend a penny on yours⁠—well, you can decide that question for yourself, you prowling loafer! You have to be dealt with by law! You are a menace to the community! You put people out of their heads!⁠ ⁠… But you don’t need to imagine that you have succeeded this time, you patronizing sneak! I am not usually put to rout by individuals such as you. My heart is in the right place⁠ ⁠…”

Herr Klöterjahn was now really aroused to the utmost. He shouted, and claimed over and over that his heart was in the right place.

“ ‘They were singing.’ Bosh. They weren’t singing! They were darning. And besides, as far as I caught, they were talking about a recipe for potato-cakes. And when I mention that ‘decay’ and ‘dissolution’ to my father-in-law, he’ll get his attorney after you as well, be sure of that.⁠ ⁠… Did you see the picture? Did you see it? Naturally I saw it, but I don’t appreciate such things, which explains why I didn’t catch my breath and flee. I don’t barely graze on women’s faces; I look right at them, and if they please me, and want me, I take them. My heart is in the right pl⁠—”

There was a knock. Nine or ten sharp raps on the door one after the other⁠ ⁠… a slight persistent commotion of anxiety which silenced Herr Klöterjahn. And a voice which wouldn’t stop, driven to impropriety by distress, kept saying in the greatest haste: “Herr Klöterjahn, Herr Klöterjahn, oh, is Herr Klöterjahn there?”

“Wait outside,” Herr Klöterjahn growled. “What is it? I am busy here.”

“Herr Klöterjahn,” said the faltering, breaking voice, “you must come⁠ ⁠… the doctors are there, too⁠ ⁠… oh, it is terribly sad⁠ ⁠…”

He got to the door with one stride and flung it open. The Rätin Spatz was standing outside. She held her handkerchief over her mouth, and big, elongated tears were dropping into it by twos.

“Herr Klöterjahn,” she broke out. “It is so terribly sad.⁠ ⁠… She brought up so much blood, so awfully much.⁠ ⁠… She was sitting up very quietly in bed humming a bit of music to herself, and then it came, O God, so much of it⁠ ⁠…”

“Is she dead?” Herr Klöterjahn shrieked. He grabbed the Rätin by the shoulder and began shaking her in the doorway. “No, not quite, no? Not quite yet; she can still see me⁠ ⁠… Did she bring up a little blood again? From the lungs? I’ll admit, it might be from the lungs⁠ ⁠… Gabriele!” he spoke suddenly, his eyes beginning to fill, and it was evident what a good, kindly, warm, human feeling broke over him. “Yes, I’m coming!” and he pushed the Rätin out of the room and down the corridor. From quite a distance down the twisting hallway could be heard a rapidly vanishing “Not quite, no?⁠ ⁠… From the lungs?⁠ ⁠…”

XII

Herr Spinell was standing in the same place he had stood during Herr Klöterjahn’s so rudely interrupted visit. He was gazing at the open door. Finally he made a few steps forward and listened intently. But everything was quiet, so that he closed his door and went back to his room.

For a while he looked at himself in the mirror. Then he went over to the writing-desk, took a little flask and a glass out of one of the pigeonholes, and poured himself a cognac⁠—and nobody could blame him. Then he stretched out on the sofa and closed his eyes.

The upper shutter of his window was open. Outside in the park of Einfried the birds were twittering; and in these frail, pert little noises spring found its full, penetrative expression. Once Herr Spinell spoke to himself softly. “Infallible calling⁠ ⁠…” Then he twisted his head back and forth and sucked the air through his teeth, as though he were suffering with neuralgia.

It was impossible for him to rest and collect himself. We are not made for such heavy experiences as that!⁠ ⁠… Through a process of the spirit which it would take too long to analyse, Herr Spinell came to the conclusion that he would get up and move about a bit, walk for a while in the open air. He took his hat and left the room.

As he stepped out of the house and the soft, aromatic air surrounded him, he turned his head and let his eyes wander slowly along the wall until they came to a certain window. It was covered with a curtain; his gaze clung there for a while, earnest and gloomy. Then he put his hands behind his back and began walking along the gravel path. He walked, lost in thought.

The flowerbeds were still covered, the trees and bushes were still bare. But the snow was gone, and the roads showed only here and there any traces of moisture. The broad park with its grottoes, arbours, and little pavilions lay in an excellently coloured afternoon light, with strong shadows and a full, yellow sun; and the black branches of the trees stood out in sharp, delicate outline against the bright sky.

It was about the time when the sun increases in size, when the formless mass of brilliance becomes a noticeably sinking disk, a milder, broader flame which the eye can bear. Herr Spinell did not see the sun. His path was so situated that the sun was hidden from him. He was walking with lowered head, humming a little bit of music to himself, just a few bars, one figure mounting plaintively and uneasily, the yearning-motif.⁠ ⁠… But suddenly, with a jerk, one short, convulsive intake of breath, he stopped dead, and his wide-open eyes stared out from under heavily wrinkled brows with an expression of horror and defence.

The road had made a turn; now it led in the direction of the sinking sun. It was pierced by two slender strips of cloud with golden edges. It stood out large and oblique in the sky, setting the tops of the trees on fire and pouring its reddish-yellow light across the park. And in the midst of this golden illumination, with the powerful halo of the sun’s disk just above, a plump somebody, dressed in red, gold, and plaid, was standing prominently in the road; her right hand was resting on a large hip, while with her left hand she was moving slowly back and forth a gracefully formed baby-carriage. But in this carriage the child was sitting, Anton Klöterjahn, Jr., Gabriele Eckhof’s bouncing son.

He was dressed in a white padded coat and a large white hat; he was chubby-cheeked, and sat magnificently among his pillows. His eyes met those of Herr Spinell gleefully and unerringly. The novelist wanted to retreat. If he had been a man, he would have possessed the strength to pass by this unexpected sight with its flood of sunshine, and continue his walk. But just then, monstrously enough, Anton Klöterjahn began to laugh and rejoice. He screeched in unexplained delight. It almost seemed uncanny.

God only knows just what started him⁠—whether it was the black form in front of him which threw him into such wild merriment, or whether some excess of animal well-being had come over him. In one hand he was holding a bone teething-ring and in the other a tin popgun. He extended both of these objects hilariously out into the sunlight, shook them and banged them together as though he were trying to shoo someone away with scorn. His eyes were almost closed with pleasure, and his mouth was so yawningly agape that his rosy gums, every bit of them, were visible. Also, he threw his head about, meanwhile exulting.

Then Herr Spinell turned his back and got away from there. Followed by the jubilations of the little Klöterjahn, holding his arms in a certain cautious and stiffly gracile manner, he walked over the gravel with the vehement, yet hesitating steps of one who seeks to hide the fact that he is⁠—inwardly⁠—on the run.

I

It was hardly more than a wretched pretext of a sun that stood over the huddled city, milky and pale behind layers of clouds. The streets with their gabled houses were damp and windy; and often a kind of soft hail fell, not snow, and not ice.

School was out. Hordes of liberated children were streaming across the paved court out through the iron gate, separating and hurrying off to right and left. Big students held their books pressed with dignity high up against the left shoulder, while with their right arm they steered against the wind towards dinner. The smaller ones dropped into a cheerful trot which made the slush splash about them and set the accoutrements of knowledge to clattering in their sealskin satchels. But occasionally there would be a general pious-eyed doffing of caps before the Odin’s-hat and the Jupiter’s-beard of a gravely advancing professor.

“So you finally came, Hans?” said Tonio Kröger. He had been waiting on the viaduct for a long while; smiling, he approached his friend, who was coming through the gate in conversation with other companions and was just about to go along with them⁠ ⁠…

“What’s that?” he asked, and looked at Tonio. “Yes, that is so! Let’s walk a bit now.”

Tonio was silent, and his eyes grew sad. Hans had forgotten; it hadn’t occurred to him again until now that they were going to take a little walk together this noontime. And he himself had almost lived in the expectancy of this ever since they had agreed on it.

“Yes, goodbye, you!” Hans Hansen said to his comrades. “I’ll go a little ways with Kröger then,”⁠—and the two turned to the left, while the others shuffled off to the right.

Hans and Tonio had time for a walk after school because they both came from homes where lunch was not served until four o’clock. Their fathers were prominent wholesale merchants who held public offices in the city. For several generations the Hansens had owned the extensive lumber yards down by the river where powerful saws hissed and screeched as they cut into the logs. But Tonio was the son of the Consul Kröger, whose sacks of vegetables with the broad black imprint of the firm could be seen driven through the streets day after day; and the large old house of his forefathers was the most magnificent one in the whole city.⁠ ⁠… On account of their many acquaintances, the friends had to keep doffing their caps continually, and by many people the two fourteen-year-old boys were even spoken to first.

Both had their schoolbags slung over their shoulders; and both were well and comfortably dressed: Hans in a short reefer’s jacket covered on the back and shoulders by the wide blue collar of his sailor suit, and Tonio in a grey belted overcoat. Hans was wearing a sailor hat with short ribbons, and a shock of his straw-coloured hair protruded from underneath. He was extraordinarily pretty and well-formed, broad in the shoulders and small in the hips, with sharp widely-set steel-blue eyes. But under Tonio’s round fur cap, out of a dark face which was quite southern in the sharpness of the features, two sombre and delicately shadowed eyes with over-heavy lids looked forth dreamily and a little timidly.⁠ ⁠… His mouth and chin were moulded with unusual softness. He walked negligently and irregularly, while Hans’s lanky legs in their black stockings kept time and stepped out so elastically.⁠ ⁠…

Tonio did not speak. He was miserable. Knitting his somewhat slanting eyebrows, and with his lips rounded for whistling, he bowed his head and looked sideways into the distance. This posture and expression were peculiar to him.

Suddenly Hans thrust his arm beneath Tonio’s and gave him a side-glance, for he understood very plainly what it was all about. And although Tonio kept silent for the next few steps, yet he suddenly became very pliable.

“I didn’t forget it at all, Tonio,” Hans said, and looked down in front of him at the pavement. “But I just thought that nothing could come of it, because it is so wet and windy. But I don’t mind that in the least, and I think it was great of you to wait for me anyhow. I thought you must have gone home, and I was sorry⁠ ⁠…”

At these words Tonio became agitated and exultant.

“Yes, now let’s go over the walls,” he said with emotion. “Across the Mill-wall and the Holsten-wall, and then I’ll take you home, Hans.⁠ ⁠… No, no⁠—it doesn’t matter at all if I have to go back alone. The next time you will come with me.”

At bottom he didn’t believe very firmly what Hans had told him; and he felt sure that Hans laid only half as much weight on their walk as he. Yet he saw that Hans regretted his forgetfulness and was doing his best to placate him. And he had little intention of refusing to be placated.⁠ ⁠…

The fact was that Tonio loved Hans Hansen and had already suffered much through him. Whoever loves the more is at a disadvantage and must suffer⁠—his fourteen years of life had already taught him this hard simple fact. And it was like him that he should note such discoveries, should register them inside himself and get a certain pleasure from them, without really using them as defences or deriving any practical value out of them. And also it was natural with him to rate such acquisitions as far more important and more interesting than the knowledge which was forced upon him at school, and even to devote his hours of instruction in the Gothic-vaulted classroom mostly to testing out the full burden of such observations, and pondering on them. And this occupation gave him as much satisfaction as when he would go about his room with his violin (for he played the violin) and let its tones melt softly into the murmuring of the fountain which rose dancing below in the garden under the branches of the old walnut-tree.⁠ ⁠…

The fountain, the old walnut-tree, his violin, and in the distance the ocean, the Baltic whose summer dreams he was allowed to hear during vacations⁠—it was these things that he loved; he surrounded himself with them, you might say; and his inner life took its course among them. The names of these things can be used with good effect in verse, and they actually did keep recurring in the verses which Tonio Kröger composed now and then.

This fact, that he possessed a book of verses which he had written himself, became known through his own fault; and it did him much damage with both his fellow students and the teachers. On the one hand, the Consul Kröger’s son found it stupid and vulgar of them to take offence at this, and he disrespected both students and teachers, whose bad manners alienated him besides, and whose personal weaknesses he penetrated with unusual keenness. But, on the other hand, he himself felt something illicit and improper in the writing of verses; and in a measure he must yield to all those who considered it an occupation to look askance at. Yet that did not enable him to renounce it.⁠ ⁠…

Since he wasted his time at home, was slow and poor at concentration in his studies, and was always marked down by his teachers, he was continually bringing home the wretchedest reports; whereupon his father, a tall, scrupulously dressed man with thoughtful blue eyes who always wore a wild flower in his buttonhole, would display great anger and distress. Nevertheless, Tonio’s mother, his beautiful black-haired mother whose Christian name was Consuelo and who was so totally different from the other women of the city, since his father had once gone and gotten her from away down on the map⁠—his mother was absolutely indifferent to these reports.⁠ ⁠…

Tonio loved his dark and emotional mother, who played the piano and the mandolin so marvellously; and he was glad that she was not disturbed over his questionable status among mankind. But, on the other hand, he felt that his father’s anger was vastly more dignified and more respectable; and in spite of the scoldings, he was in perfect agreement with his father at bottom, while he found his mother’s gay indifference a little bit loose. Often his thoughts ran something like this: “It is enough that I am what I am and neither can nor will change myself⁠—indolent, unruly, and concerned with things which nobody else thinks about. At least it is right for me to be soundly reprimanded and punished for this, and not have it all passed over with kisses and music. We aren’t gipsies in a green wagon, but respectable people, Consul Krögers, the Kröger family.”⁠ ⁠… Nor was it rare for him to think: “Why am I so strange and so at odds with things, falling out with my teachers and never intimate with the other boys? Look at them, the good scholars and the solid middling ones. They don’t find the teachers comic, they don’t make verses, and they just think things which everyone thinks and which can be spoken out loud. What regular and comfortable terms they must be on with everything and everybody! That must be good.⁠ ⁠… But what is wrong with me, and what will come of all this?”

This manner of looking at himself and his relation to life played an important role in Tonio’s love for Hans Hansen. He loved him first because he was beautiful, but next because here was what seemed to be in every way his own counterpart and opposite. Hans Hansen was a splendid scholar, and a good fellow besides; he rode, belonged to a gymnasium, swam like a hero, and enjoyed general popularity. The teachers were almost tender in their liking for him, called him by his first name, and helped him in every way; his comrades tried to win his favour, and on the street ladies and gentlemen stopped him, grabbed him by the shock of straw-coloured hair which protruded from under his sailor cap, and said: “Good day, Hans Hansen, with your neat head of hair! Are you head of the class yet? Remember me to Papa and Mamma, my good lad.⁠ ⁠…”

Such was Hans Hansen; and ever since Tonio Kröger had known him he felt a yearning whenever he looked at him, an envious yearning which sat above the breast and burned. “Who else,” he thought, “could have such blue eyes as you, and live on such natural and intimate terms with everyone? You are always occupied with something highly proper and generally respectable. When you have finished your school assignments, then you take riding-lessons or work with the compass-saw; and even in vacations, by the sea, you are taken up with rowing, sailing, and swimming, while I lie forlorn and idle in the sand, and stare at the mysterious changes shifting across the face of the sea. But that’s why your eyes are so clear. To be like you⁠ ⁠…”

He did not make the attempt to be like Hans Hansen, and perhaps he was not even very earnest in his wish. But he hungered painfully, such as he was, to be loved by him; and he bid for his love after his fashion, a slow, thorough, and devoted fashion, passionate and melancholy, but with a melancholy that can burn deeper and more devouringly than all the abrupt passion which his appearance might have led one to expect.

And he did not bid in vain, for Hans, who respected a certain superiority in him, a trick of the lips which enabled Tonio to express difficult things, understood quite well that here was an unusually strong and tender feeling for him; he showed his gratitude and gave Tonio much happiness by his response⁠—but also many tortures of jealousy, of disillusion, and of frustrated efforts to establish a mental union. For it was a remarkable fact that Tonio, although he envied Hans Hansen for his manner of living, was continually trying to win him over to his own⁠—which could succeed only for moments, at best, and then only superficially.⁠ ⁠…

“I just read something wonderful, something splendid,” he said. They were walking along and both eating out of a poke of fruit candy which they had bought for ten pfennigs from Jiverrsen’s store in the Mühlenstrasse. “You must read it, Hans; it is Don Carlos, by Schiller.⁠ ⁠… I will lend it to you if you want.⁠ ⁠…”

“Ah, no,” Hans Hansen said; “forget that, Tonio; that doesn’t suit me. I’ll stick to my horse books, you know. There are some great pictures in them, I’ll tell you. Sometime when you are at our house I’ll show them to you. They are snapshots, and show the nags trotting, galloping, and vaulting, in all the positions which you are never able to see in real life because it goes too fast.⁠ ⁠…”

“In all positions?” Tonio asked politely. “Yes, that is fine. But as for Don Carlos, it beats everything imaginable. There are places in it, you’ll see, which are so beautiful that you feel a shock, a kind of explosion.”

“An explosion?” Hans Hansen asked. “How is that?”

“For example, there is the place where the king has cried because he was deceived by the marquis, but the marquis has deceived him only through love of the prince, you understand, for whom he sacrifices himself, and now the news comes from the cabinet to the antechamber that the king has cried. ‘Cried? The king cried?’ All the courtiers are frightfully affected, and it goes right through you, because he is a frightfully stern and rigid king. But it is so plain why he cried, and it really makes me sadder than it does the prince and the marquis put together. He is always so completely alone and without love, and now he believes he has found someone, and this man betrays him.⁠ ⁠…”

Hans Hansen looked sideways into Tonio’s face, and something in this face really must have won him over to the subject, for he suddenly shoved his arm back under Tonio’s again and asked:

“Just how does he betray him, Tonio?”

Tonio became agitated.

“Yes, the fact is,” he began, “that all letters to Brabant and Flanders⁠ ⁠…”

“There comes Erwin Jimmerthal,” Hans said.

Tonio was silent. “I wish the earth would swallow him up, this Jimmerthal!” he thought. “Why must he come and disturb us? If only he doesn’t walk with us the whole way and talk about his riding-lesson!” For Erwin Jimmerthal had just had a riding-lesson. He was the son of the bank-director, and lived out here beyond the Gate. With his bowed legs and narrow eyes, he was coming towards them along the avenue, his schoolbag missing already.

“Hello, Jimmerthal,” Hans cried. “I am taking a little walk with Kröger⁠ ⁠…”

“I have to go to town,” Jimmerthal said, “and see about something. But I will go along a little piece with you two. That must be fruit candy you have there? Yes, thanks, I’ll take some. Tomorrow we have another lesson, Hans.” The riding-lesson was meant.

“Great!” Hans said. “Do you know, I am getting leather leggings now, because I just got the high mark in drill.”

“You don’t have any riding-lessons, do you, Kröger?” Jimmerthal asked, and his eyes were nothing but two white slits.

“No,” Tonio answered hesitatingly.

“You should ask your father,” Hans Hansen observed, “to let you take lessons too, Kröger.”

“Yes,” Tonio said, hastily and indifferently. For a moment he felt a lump in his throat, because Hans had called him by his last name. And Hans seemed to feel this, for he said in explanation:

“I call you Kröger because your first name is so crazy. You won’t mind, will you? but I can’t stand it.⁠ ⁠… That is really no name at all. Still, you can’t help yourself any!”

“No, you have that name mainly because it sounds foreign and is unusual,” Jimmerthal said, and acted as though he had intended to make everything all right.

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

“Yes, it is a stupid name; God knows I’d rather be called Heinrich or Wilhelm, you can be sure of that. But it comes from the fact that I was named after one of my mother’s brothers who is called Tonio; for my mother comes from down south.”

Then he was silent and let the two of them discuss horses and harness. Hans had taken Jimmerthal by the arm and talked with a fluent sympathy which could never have been aroused in him for Don Carlos.⁠ ⁠… From time to time Tonio felt his nose prickling with the desire to cry. Also he had difficulty in keeping his chin under control, for it continually threatened to tremble.

Hans could not stand his name⁠—what was to be done? He himself was called Hans, and Jimmerthal was called Erwin; good, they were commonly known names which nobody resented. But “Tonio” was something foreign and unusual. Yes, in every way there was always something unusual about him, whether he wanted it or not⁠—and he was alone and shut out from the regular and the ordinary, although he was certainly no gipsy in the green wagon, but a son of Consul Kröger, from the Kröger family.⁠ ⁠… But why did Hans call him Tonio so long as they were alone, if, when a third person came up, he began to be ashamed of him? At times he was near him and won over to him, that was true. “Just how does he betray him, Tonio?” he had asked, and taken him by the arm. But when Jimmerthal had arrived, he had breathed easier nevertheless, had abandoned him and had gone out of his road to complain about his foreign Christian name. How sad it was to have to see through all this!⁠ ⁠… At bottom Hans Hansen cared for him a bit when they were alone; he knew it. But when a third person came, then he was ashamed of him and threw him over. And he was alone again. He thought of King Philip. The king had cried.

“Oh, Lord!” Erwin Jimmerthal said. “But now I must really go back to town. Goodbye, you two, and thanks for the fruit candy!” Then he leaped to a bench standing by the road, ran along it with his bowed legs, and went trotting away.

“Jimmerthal is not bad!” Hans said emphatically. He had a pampered and self-conscious way of announcing his sympathies and dislikes by passing judgment like a sovereign.⁠ ⁠… And then he continued talking about the riding-lesson because he was already started. And it wasn’t so far now to the Hansens’ home. The road across the walls did not require so much time. They held on to their caps and bent their heads before the strong damp wind which moaned and whistled in the bare branches of the trees. And Hans Hansen talked, while Tonio simply put in now and then an artificial “Oh” and “Yes, yes,” without any pleasure in the fact that in the excitement of his conversation Hans had taken his arm again; for that was simply an apparent intimacy, without significance.

Then they left the wall near the railroad station, watched a train puffing by in clumsy hastiness, counted the cars for a pastime, and waved at the man who was sitting in the rear of the very last one, muffled up in his fur coat. And on the Lindenplatz, in front of the wholesaler Hansen’s villa, they stopped; and Hans demonstrated minutely how amusing it is to hang on the garden gate and swing back and forth on the hinges until they creaked. And then he said that he must leave.

“Yes, I have to go in,” he said. “Goodbye, Tonio. The next time I’ll go home with you for sure.”

“Goodbye, Hans,” Tonio said. “It was nice to go for a walk.”

Their hands which pressed each other were all wet and rusty from the garden gate. But when Hans looked into Tonio’s eyes, something like remorse showed in his pretty face.

“Anyhow, I’ll read Don Carlos soon,” he said hurriedly. “That about the king in the cabinet must be great!” Then he put his schoolbag under his arm and ran through the front garden. Before disappearing in the house, he nodded back once more.

And Tonio Kröger went away from there winged and transfigured. The wind bore him along from behind; but that was not the only reason that he left so lightly.

Hans would read Don Carlos, and they would have something in common, which neither Jimmerthal nor anyone else could discuss with them! How well they understood each other! Who could tell⁠—perhaps he could even bring him to the point of writing verses?⁠ ⁠… No, no, he didn’t want that! Hans should not become like Tonio, but remain what he was, so bright and strong, the way everyone loved him, and Tonio most of all! But still it wouldn’t hurt if he read Don Carlos.⁠ ⁠… And Tonio went through the old squat gate, went along the harbour, and up the steep, damp, and windy gable-lined street to the house of his parents. His heart now was alive: he felt longings and brooding envy, and just a little disdain, and a very shy happiness.

II

Blonde Inge, Ingeborg Holm, the daughter of Dr. Holm who lived near the market, there where the Gothic well stood high, complex, and pointed⁠—she it was whom Tonio Kröger loved when he was sixteen years old.

How did it happen? He had seen her thousands of times; yet one evening he saw her in a certain light, saw how, while talking with a girl friend, she laughingly tossed her head to one side with a kind of insolence, touched the back of her head with a not especially slender, not especially delicate girlish hand, so that the white gauze sleeve slipped back from her elbow, heard how she stressed a word, an unimportant word, in a certain way, which gave a warm resonance to her voice⁠—and a thrill went through him, much stronger than he used to feel at times when he looked at Hans Hansen, in those days when he was a little stupid boy.

On this evening he carried away her image, with the thick blond plait, the narrow laughing blue eyes, and the delicate hint of freckles above the bridge of her nose. He could not go to sleep, because he heard the resonance in her voice; he tried softly to imitate the stress with which she had spoken the unimportant word, and he was horrified at the result. Experience taught him that this was love. He well knew that love would bring him much pain, distress, and humiliation, that it would, further, disturb his peace and fill the heart with melodies without allowing a person enough respite to round things out and calmly mould them into something solid; yet he accepted it with joy, yielded to it completely, nourished it wholeheartedly, for he knew that it makes rich and vital, and he yearned to be rich and vital, instead of rounding things out at his leisure.

This conquest of Tonio by the cheerful Inge Holm took place in the spacious salon of the Frau Consul Husteede, whose turn it was this evening to give the dancing-lesson. For it was a private course, and only members of the leading families took part, gathering in their parents’ houses consecutively in order to receive instruction in dancing and decorum. But expressly for this purpose dancing-master Knaak came here once a week from Hamburg.

François Knaak was his name, and what a man he was! “J’ai l’honneur de me vous représenter,” he said. “Mon nom est Knaak.⁠ ⁠… And you don’t say this while bowing, but not until you are standing erect again⁠—in a subdued tone, and yet clear. You are not always in a situation where you must introduce yourself in French, but if you can do it correctly and faultlessly in this language, then you won’t slip when it comes to German.” How wonderfully the black silk frock-coat clung to his fat hips! His trousers fell in soft folds down over his patent-leather shoes, which were ornamented with broad satin rosettes; and his brown eyes looked around with a resigned happiness upon their own beauty.

Everyone was awed by his wealth of sureness and propriety. He walked⁠—and no one walked like him, elastic, undulating, swaying, royal⁠—up to the mistress of the house, bowed, and waited for her hand to be extended to him. He received it, spoke his thanks softly, stepped back jauntily, turned on his left foot, speedily lifted the right with its compressed tip from the floor, and stepped away with shaking hips.⁠ ⁠…

You went backwards, and out through the door amid bowings if you were taking leave of company; you never pulled up a chair by grabbing it by one leg and sliding it along the floor, but you carried it lightly by the back and set it down noiselessly. You didn’t stand around with your hands folded across your stomach and your tongue stuck in one corner of your mouth; but if you did so, then Herr Knaak had a way of doing it after you, so that you would detest this position for the rest of your life.

That was decorum! But as to the dance, Herr Knaak was even more masterly here, if possible. In the spacious salon the gas flame burned in the chandelier, and the candles on the mantelpiece. The floor was strewn with talcum, and the students stood about in a silent semicircle. But beyond the portieres, in the adjoining room, the mothers and aunts were sitting on plush chairs and observing Herr Knaak through their lorgnettes, how he bent over, holding each lapel of his frock-coat with two fingers, and demonstrated the successive steps in the mazurka with quivering legs. But if he intended to dumbfound his public completely, he would suddenly and without provocation leap from the floor, spin his legs around in the air with bewildering swiftness, and fairly twinkle with same, whereupon with a thump which was subdued but yet shook everything in its firmness, he returned to this earth.⁠ ⁠…

“What an incredible ass!” Tonio thought deep down to himself. But he saw plainly that Inge Holm, cheerful Inge, often followed Herr Knaak’s movements with an unconscious smile, and this was not the only reason why all this marvellously piloted fleshiness wrung from him something like astonishment. How peacefully, how well beyond confusion, Herr Knaak’s eyes looked at things! They did not penetrate to those depths where things became complicated and sad; they knew nothing except that they were brown and beautiful. But for that reason his bearing was so proud! Yes, a person must be stupid to be able to walk like him; and then a person was liked, since he deserved it. He understood it so well that Inge, blonde sweet Inge, looked at Herr Knaak the way she did. But why would a girl never look at himself like that?

But yet, that happened. There was Magdalena Vermehren, the daughter of Vermehren the attorney, with the sweet mouth and the large, dark, glittering eyes full of earnestness and reverie. She often fell while dancing; but she came to him when partners were chosen, she knew that he wrote verses, twice she had asked him to show them to her, and often she gazed at him from a distance with her head lowered. But what did that have to do with him? He, he loved Inge Holm, the blonde cheerful Inge, who surely must despise him because he wrote bits of poetry. He would look at her, see her narrow blue eyes full of happiness and scorn, and an envious yearning, a sharp oppressive pain that he was shut away from her and must always be foreign to her lay in his breast and burned.⁠ ⁠…

“First pair en avant!” Herr Knaak said, and no words can describe how wonderfully the man brought out the nasal sound. They were practising the quadrille, and to Tonio’s profound horror he found himself in one and the same carré with Inge Holm. He avoided her as well as he could, and yet he was continually finding himself near her; he struggled to keep his eyes away from her, and yet his glance was continually falling upon her.⁠ ⁠… Now she came sliding and running by, holding to redheaded Ferdinand Matthiessen; she threw back her plait and, breathing deeply, took her place opposite him. Herr Heinzelmann, the pianist, struck the keys with his bony hands, Herr Knaak gave the command: the quadrille began.

She moved about in front of him, back and forth, stepping and turning; often he caught a fragrance which came from her hair or the delicate white stuff of her dress, and his eyes became sadder and sadder. “I love you, dear, sweet Inge,” he said inwardly, and into these words he laid his distress that she was so eagerly and cheerfully absorbed in the matter at hand and did not notice him. He suddenly recalled a beautiful poem by Storm: “I’d like to sleep, but you must dance.” He was tortured by the humiliating anomaly in this having to dance while one is loving.⁠ ⁠…

“First pair en avant!” Herr Knaak said; then came a new turn. “Compliment! Moulinet des dames! Tour de main!” and no one will explain in what a gracious manner he swallowed the mute e of the de. “Second pair en avant!” Tonio Kröger and his lady were there. “Compliment!” and Tonio Kröger bowed. “Moulinet des dames!” And Tonio Kröger, with lowered head and gloomy brows, laid his hand upon the hands of the four ladies, upon that of Inge Holm, and danced moulinet.

On all sides a giggling and laughing started up. Herr Knaak fell into a ballet posture which expressed a conventionalized horror. “Alas!” he cried. “Stop, stop! Kröger is lost among the ladies! En arrière, Miss Kröger, back, fi donc! Everyone understood it except you. Shoo! Away! Back with you!” and he pulled out his yellow silk handkerchief and with it shooed Tonio Kröger back to his place.

Everyone laughed, the boys, the girls, and the ladies beyond the portieres, for Herr Knaak had made something just too funny out of the incident, and it was as amusing as in a theatre; except that Herr Heinzelmann was waiting with a dry businesslike expression for the sign to go on playing, as he was hardened to Herr Knaak’s effects.

Then the quadrille was continued, and then there was a pause. The maid came clattering through the door with a tray of glasses full of wine jelly, and the cook followed in her wake with a cargo of plum pudding. But Tonio Kröger stole away, went secretly out into the corridor and, his hands behind his back, stood before a window with its blind drawn; it did not occur to him that absolutely nothing could be seen through this blind and that it was ridiculous therefore to stand in front of it and act as though you were looking out.

But he was looking into himself, where there were so many sorrows and longings. Why, why was he here? Why was he not sitting by the window in his room, and reading Storm’s Immensee, and looking out now and then into the half-dark garden where the old walnut-tree was groaning cumbrously? That was his place. Let the others dance and apply themselves eagerly and competently to the matter at hand!⁠ ⁠… No, no, his place was here nevertheless, where he was assured of being near Inge even though he was simply standing by himself, far off from her, and trying to distinguish from the buzzing, clatter, and laughter her voice with its ring of warm life. Your narrow blue laughing eyes, you blonde Inge! People can be as beautiful and cheerful as you only if they don’t read Immensee and are never even tempted to do such things. That is the sad part of it!⁠ ⁠…

She had to come! She had to notice that he was gone, had to feel how things were with him, had to follow him secretly, if only out of sympathy, lay her hand on his shoulder, and say: “Come in with us, be gay, I love you.” And he listened behind him and waited in unreasoning suspense for her to come. But she came by no means. Such things never happened on this earth.

Had she laughed at him too, like all the others? Yes, she had done that, though he would gladly have denied it for her sake and his own. And yet it was only out of his absorption in her nearness that he had danced in the moulinet des dames. And what did that matter? Perhaps some day they would stop laughing! Hadn’t a magazine recently taken a poem of his, although it did go under before the poem had time to appear? The day would come when he was famous, when everything that he wrote was printed, and then they would see whether or not it would make an impression on Inge Holm.⁠ ⁠… It would not make an impression; no, that was a fact. On Magdalena Vermehren, who always fell down; yes, on her. But never on Inge Holm, on blue-eyed, cheerful Inge; and so wasn’t it all in vain?⁠ ⁠…

Tonio Kröger’s heart contracted painfully at this thought. To feel marvellous, playful, and moody powers stirring within you, and yet to know that those people you hanker after are standing off from you in good-natured inaccessibility⁠—that is very distressing. But although he was standing before a drawn blind, lonely, excluded, and without hope, and in his misery was acting as though he could see out, yet he was happy. For now his heart was alive. Warmly and sadly it was beating for you, Ingeborg Holm, and his thoughts embraced your blonde, light, and impertinently ordinary little person in blissful self-denial.

More than once he stood hot-faced in lonely spots, where music, the smell of flowers, and the tinkling of glasses penetrated but softly; he tried to distinguish your ringing voice from among the distant sounds of the entertainment; he stood in pain on account of you⁠—and was happy nevertheless. More than once it distressed him that he was able to talk with Magdalena Vermehren who always fell down, that she understood him and laughed with him and was serious, while blonde Inge, although he sat next to her, seemed distant and foreign and estranged from him, for his language was not her language⁠—and he was happy nevertheless. For happiness, he told himself, is not to be loved; that is a gratification of vanity, mixed with repugnance. Happiness is to love, and perhaps to snatch deceitful little moments of nearness to the object of love. And he wrote this thought down inside him, thought it out completely, and felt it to the very roots.

“Faithfulness!” Tonio Kröger thought. “I will be faithful and love you, Ingeborg, as long as I live!” He was as well-meaning as all that. Yet inside him there was a soft whispering of fear and sorrow, for he had really forgotten Hans Hansen entirely, and he saw him every day. And the ugly and deplorable thing was that this soft and somewhat crafty voice proved right: time passed and days came when Tonio Kröger was not so thoroughly prepared to die for cheerful Inge, since he felt within him desires and power to accomplish a lot of remarkable things in this world, after his fashion.

And he moved warily about the sacrificial altar on which the pure chaste flame of his love was burning, he knelt before it and fanned and fed it in every way, since he wanted to be faithful. And yet after a while, unnoticeably, without excitement or noise, it was out.

But Tonio stood for a long time before the cold altar, filled with astonishment and disillusion over the fact that faithfulness was impossible on this earth. Then he shrugged his shoulders and went his way.

III

He went the way he had to go, a little negligently and irregularly, whistling to himself, with his head bent to one side, and looking into the distance; and if he got on the wrong track, this happened because for some people there really is no right track. If he was asked what in all the world he intended to become, he was accustomed to say (and had already written it down as well) that he bore within himself the possibilities for a thousand forms of existence, together with the intimate awareness that at bottom they were all impossibilities.⁠ ⁠…

Even before leaving his cramped native city, he had gently broken the holds and cords which bound him to it. The old Kröger family had gradually slipped into a condition of decay and disintegration; and people had cause to consider Tonio Kröger’s own nature and habits among the evidences of this condition. His father’s mother, the head of the family, had died; and his father, the tall, thoughtful, carefully dressed gentleman with the wild flower in his buttonhole, followed her soon afterwards. The large house of the Krögers, with all its noble history, stood for sale, and the firm was dissolved. Still, Tonio’s mother, his beautiful emotional mother who played the piano and the mandolin so wonderfully and who never minded about anything, had become engaged again after a year’s interval⁠—and to a musician at that, a virtuoso with an Italian name, and she went with him into the blue distance. Tonio Kröger found this a bit loose; but who was he to stop her? He wrote verses and couldn’t even say what in the whole world he intended to become.⁠ ⁠…

And he left his winding native city with the damp wind blowing around its gables, left the fountain and the old walnut-tree in the garden, the confidants of his youth, left also the sea which he loved so well⁠—and felt no pain at this. For he had grown big and wise, had understood how things stood with him, and was full of scorn for this stodgy and low-visioned existence which had held him so long.

He surrendered himself wholly to that power which seemed to him most illustrious, which he felt called upon to serve and which promised him rank and honours⁠—the power of the mind and the word which reigns smiling over blind, inarticulate life. With his youthful passion he devoted himself to it, and it repaid him with all it has to give, and it took from him mercilessly all it is wont to take as compensation.

It sharpened his eyes, and let him penetrate the big words which inflate men’s bosoms; it unlocked for him the souls of others and of himself, made him clairvoyant, and showed him the inside of things, all that lies behind words and actions. But what he saw was this: comedy and distress⁠—comedy and distress.

Then, along with the pain and the hauteur of knowledge, came lonesomeness; since he could not endure to be among the innocent with their good-natured muddled attitudes; and the mark on his brow disturbed them.⁠ ⁠… But he was sweetened more and more by his delight with words and form, for he would say (and he had written it down already) that the knowledge of the soul alone would inevitably make us dismal if it weren’t that the satisfaction of expression kept us alert and brisk.⁠ ⁠…

He lived in large cities and in the south where he expected the sun to give a rich ripeness to his art; and perhaps it was also the blood of his mother that drew him here. But since his heart was dead and without love, he dropped into adventures of the flesh, descended deep into debauchery and passionate guilt⁠—and suffered unspeakably from it all. Perhaps it was the heritage from his father, the tall, thoughtful, neatly dressed man with the wild flower in his buttonhole, which made him suffer so much down south and often aroused in him the faint melancholy memory of his former well-being as a boy, which he never found again in any of his pleasures.

A repugnance and hatred for the senses took hold of him; he hankered after purity and the contentment of respectability, yet he went on breathing the atmosphere of art, the sweet, mild, scent-laden atmosphere of a continual spring, where things bud and brew and sprout with the mysterious joy of creation. So it came down to this: vacillating between over-strong extremes, tossed back and forth between icy intellectualism and devouring sensuality, he led an exhausting life under the pangs of conscience, a fastidious, dissolute and extraordinary life, which he, Tonio Kröger, in the last analysis abhorred. “What vagrancy!” he thought at times. “Just how was it possible for me to run into all these eccentric adventures? At bottom, I am no gipsy in a green wagon.⁠ ⁠…”

But in proportion as his health was weakened, the mastery of his art was sharpened. He became picky, exacting, precious, subtle, easily irritated by the banal, and extremely sensitive in matters of tact and taste. When he came before the public for the first time, those who were concerned with such matters voiced much approval and delight, for it was a well-wrought thing that he had offered, full of humour and the knowledge of suffering. And his name, the very one his teachers had called him by when they reprimanded him, the very one with which he had signed the first rhymes to the walnut-tree, the fountain, and the sea, this sound compounded of South and North, this bourgeois name with its touch of exoticism, rapidly became a label to signify excellence. For the painful radicalism of his experiences was coupled to a rare, doggedly persistent, and fame-hungry industriousness; and this, battling with the hypercritical keenness of his tastes, produced unusual works under conditions of acute distress.

He didn’t write like someone who works to live, but like a person who wants to do nothing but work because he holds his mere existence as nothing, wishing to be taken into account only as a creator, and going about soberly and inconspicuously, like an actor who, without his makeup, is nothing so long as he has nothing to represent. He worked, unseen, in silence, alone, and was filled with disdain for those trivial writers whose talent was a social asset, who, whether they happened to be rich or poor, went about wildly and irresponsibly, giving their best to the choice of appropriate neckties, devoting themselves first of all to the problem of living happily, amiably, and artistically, unaware that good works originate only under the pressure of a poor life, that those who live do not work, and that a man must be dead in order to be totally a creator.

IV

“Am I intruding?” Tonio Kröger asked, at the door of the studio. He held his hat in his hand and even bowed a little, although Lisaweta Iwanowna was his friend and he said everything to her.

“Spare yourself, Tonio Kröger, and come in without ceremony!” she answered with her swift accent. “It is well known that you had the advantage of a good upbringing, and know what is proper.” She put her brush in her left hand with the palette, held out her right hand to him, and looked into his face, laughing and shaking her head.

“Yes, but you are working,” he said. “Let me look.⁠ ⁠… Oh, you have progressed.” And he observed alternately the two painted sketches leaning against chairs on either side of the easel, and the large canvas with its network of squares where, in the confused and shadowy charcoal outline, the first spots of colour were beginning to emerge.

It was in Munich, in a back building of Schellingstrasse, several stories high. Outside, beyond the broad north window, were sunshine, the twitter of birds, and the blue sky. The fresh sweet smell of spring streamed in through an open shutter and mingled with the odour of fixative and oils which filled the workroom. Unhindered, the golden light of the brilliant afternoon flooded the large barren studio; it shone confidently across the somewhat dilapidated floor, across the crude table beneath the window covered with bottles, tubes, and brushes, and across the unframed studies on the unpapered walls; it shone on the torn silk folding screen which marked off a little stylishly furnished living-room and cosy corner near the door; it shone on the unfinished work on the easel, and on the painter and the writer in front of it.

She was probably as old as he, which is to say a little beyond thirty. In her dark blue spotted smock she sat on a low stool and rested her chin on her hand. Her brown hair, done tight against her head and already a little grey at the sides, covered her temples in light waves and framed her dark, Slavic, strongly sympathetic face, with the short nose, the sharply wrought cheekbones, and the little black glittering eyes. Tense, distrustful, and with a kind of irritation, she examined her work slantingly and with squinting eyes.⁠ ⁠…

He stood beside her, held his right hand supported on his hip, and with his left he twirled his brown moustache rapidly. His slanting eyebrows were in sombre, strained agitation, and he was whistling softly to himself, as usual. He was dressed well and with the utmost care, in a conservatively cut suit of restful grey. But on his studied forehead, across which his dark hair was parted with such extraordinary simplicity and exactness, there was a twitching of the nerves. His southern features were already sharp, as though they had been gone over and marked with a hard pencil; while his mouth seemed so lightly outlined, his chin formed so softly.⁠ ⁠… After a time he ran his hand across his eyes and forehead, and turned away.

“I should not have come,” he said.

“Why shouldn’t you, Tonio Kröger?”

“I have just left off from working, Lisaweta, and things are just about the same in my head as on this canvas; a scaffolding, a faint first draft dirtied with corrections, and a few splotches of colour, yes. And now I come here and see the same thing. And I find here again the conflict and antagonism,” he said, sniffing the air, “which plagues me at home! It is strange. If you are ruled by a thought, you find it expressed everywhere; you can even smell it on the wind. Fixative and the aroma of spring, yes? Art and⁠—well, what is the other? Don’t say ‘nature,’ Lisaweta. ‘Nature’ is not exhausting. Ah, no, I should best have gone for a walk, although it is a question whether I would have felt any better if I had. Five minutes ago, not far from here, I met a colleague, Adalbet, the short-story writer. ‘God damn the spring!’ he said in his aggressive manner. ‘It always has been, and always will be, the most atrocious season! Can you lay hold of a sensible idea, Kröger, can you work out the slightest touch and effect in peace, when there is an indecent tingling in your blood, and you are disturbed by a lot of improper sensations which, as you examine them, turn out to be hopelessly trivial and completely worthless junk? For my part, I’m going now to the café. That is neutral territory, untouched by the change of seasons; it represents, you see, what we might call the cloistered and exalted sphere of the literary, where we are capable only of ideas with some distinction.⁠ ⁠…’ And he went to the café; and perhaps I should have gone along.”

Lisaweta was amused.

“Very good, Tonio Kröger. Very good⁠—that about the ‘indecent tingling.’ And he is certainly right to a degree, for spring really isn’t specially conducive to work. But now pay attention. Now, nevertheless, I am still working on this little thing here, this slight touch and effect, as Adalbet would say. Afterwards let’s go into the salon and drink tea, and you talk yourself out; for I see plainly enough that you are filled up today. Until then arrange yourself anywhere, on the chest there, for instance, if you aren’t afraid for your patrician clothes.⁠ ⁠…”

“Oh, leave me in peace about my clothes, Lisaweta Iwanowna! Do you want me to be running around in a torn velvet jacket or a red silk vest? As artists we are always adventurers enough inside ourselves. Externally we shall dress well, the devil! and act like respectable people.⁠ ⁠… No, I am not filled up,” he said, and looked on while she prepared a mixture on her palette. “You hear, there is simply a problem, an antagonism, on my mind and disturbing me in my work.⁠ ⁠… Now, what were we just speaking of? Of Adalbet, the short-story writer, and what a proud and firm man he is. ‘Spring is the most atrocious season,’ he said, and went into the café. For you have to know what you want, isn’t that so? See: I too am made nervous by spring, I too am confused by the sweet triviality of the memories and sensations that it arouses; except that I cannot bring myself to complain against it and despise it for that. For the fact is that spring makes me ashamed, ashamed of its pure naturalness and its triumphant youth. And I don’t know whether to envy or despise Adalbet for knowing nothing of these things.⁠ ⁠…

“We work poorly in the spring, of course; and why? Because we feel, and because anyone is a duffer to think that the creator dare feel. Every genuine and conscientious artist smiles at the naivete of this quack notion⁠—with melancholy perhaps, but he smiles. For what people say must never be the main thing, but only the material, unimportant of itself, out of which the structure is put together in times of a calm, playful superiority. If you are too close to what you have to say, if your heart beats too warmly over it, then you can be sure of a complete fiasco. You become pathetic, you become sentimental; something stodgy, heavy, ungoverned, unironical, unseasoned, boring, banal originates under your hands, and the result is nothing but indifference on the part of others and disillusion and distress on the part of yourself.⁠ ⁠… For it is really so, Lisaweta: emotion, warm hearty emotion is always banal and useless: and only the irritations and the cold ecstasies of our corrupt, our expert nervous system, are artistic. One must be something extrahuman and inhuman, before he will stand in a peculiarly distant and impartial relationship to the human, before he will be in a position where he will be tempted to play upon the human, to play with it, to present it effectively and tastefully. The gift for style, form, and expression already presupposes this cool and critical relationship with the human, even a certain human poverty and desolation. For the strong and healthy emotion⁠—there is no getting around it⁠—is without taste. It is all over with the artist as soon as he becomes a man and begins to feel. Adalbet knew that, and so he went into the café, into the ‘cloistered sphere,’ indeed!”

“Well, God help him, Batushka,” Lisaweta said, washing her hands in a tin basin. “You don’t need to follow him.”

“No, Lisaweta, I am not following him; and for the simple reason that I am now and then in a position where the springtime of my craft can shame me a little. You see, sometimes I receive letters from abroad, testimonials of praise and gratitude from my public, wonderful letters from people who have been moved. I read these letters, and am touched by the warm and helpless human emotions which my art has brought out; I am seized with a kind of pity for the enthusiastic naivete which speaks out of these lives; and I redden at the thought of how much these upright folks would be abashed if they got one look behind the scenes, if their innocence could ever conceive that a righteous, healthy, and respectable person simply does not write, mimic, compose.⁠ ⁠… None of which hinders me from using their admiration for my genius, for elevating and stimulating me; I take it tremendously in earnest, then make a face like an ape who is playing the great man.⁠ ⁠… Ah, don’t argue with me about that, Lisaweta! I tell you that I have often been tired to death of representing the human without participating in the human.⁠ ⁠… Is the artist a man at all? Let us ask ‘woman’ about that! It seems to me, we artists all share somewhat in the fate of those prepared papal singers⁠ ⁠… We sing with touching beauty, yet⁠—”

“You should be a bit ashamed, Tonio Kröger. Come to tea now. The water will be boiling immediately, and here are the cigarettes. You stopped at soprano-singing, and now go on. But you should be ashamed. If I didn’t know with what proud passionateness you are devoted to your calling⁠ ⁠…”

“Don’t speak of a ‘calling,’ Lisaweta Iwanowna! Literature is not a calling at all, but a curse, and that ends it. When does it begin to show itself, this curse? Early, frightfully early. At a time when one by rights should still be living in peace and accord with God and the world. You begin by feeling yourself set apart, in some mysterious antagonism to others, to the usual, the ordinary. The abyss of irony, disbelief, opposition, knowledge, feeling which separates you from people yawns deeper and deeper. You are alone, and henceforth there is no intercommunication. What a fate! Provided that your heart is sufficiently alive, sufficiently loving, to feel it as frightful!⁠ ⁠… Your self-consciousness takes fire, because you among thousands detect the mark on your brow and feel that it escapes no one. I knew an actor of genius who as a man had to fight against a sickly timidity and unsteadiness. His overly excited sense of his ego, together with his lack of a role, of something to perform, produced such an effect on this consummate artist and impoverished man. An artist, a real one, not one whose bourgeois calling is art, but one predestined and damned to art⁠—it takes little keenness to pick him out from a group of people. The sense of separateness, of not fitting in, of being known and looked at, something at once commanding and embarrassed, shows in his face. In the features of a prince who is walking in civilian dress among a crowd, you can observe something similar. But here no civilian clothes help, Lisaweta! Disguise yourself, mask yourself, dress like an attaché or like a lieutenant of the guard on furlough⁠—you hardly need to raise your eyes and speak a word, and everyone will know that you are not a human being, but something strange, something estranging, something different⁠ ⁠…

“But what is the artist? No question has demonstrated more acutely than this, humanity’s smugness and laziness of perception. ‘It is a gift,’ good people say humbly, when they are under the effects of an artist; and since, from their good-natured standpoint, pleasant and elevated effects must also have totally pleasant and elevated origins, no one suspects that perhaps here the most wretchedly conditioned, most utterly questionable ‘gift’ is involved.⁠ ⁠… It is well known that artists are very touchy⁠—now, it is also well known that this is not usually the case with people of good consciences and soundly established self-reliance.⁠ ⁠… You see, Lisaweta, in a more refined form I hold essentially to all the suspicions against the typical artist which any of my stoutly respectable forefathers up there in the narrow city would have brought against any mountebank and adventurous artist who might have entered his house. Listen to this. I know a banker, a grey-haired business man, who has a gift for writing stories. He makes use of this gift in his leisure hours, and his works are often quite distinguished. In spite of⁠—I say ‘in spite of’⁠—this sublime talent, this man is not entirely irreproachable. On the contrary, he has already had to serve a heavy sentence, and for very good reason at that. Yes, it happened very strangely that he became conscious of this gift for the first time while in the penitentiary, and his experiences as a convict form the central theme in all his productions. With a little boldness, one could deduce from this that in order to become a poet it is necessary to be at home in some kind of penitentiary. But doesn’t the suspicion arise that his experiences in the prison were less intimately connected with the roots and origins of his craft than was the element which brought him there? A banker who writes stories⁠—that is a rarity, is it not? But a noncriminal, a sound and irreproachable banker who writes stories⁠—that simply does not exist.⁠ ⁠… Yes, now you are laughing, and yet I was only half joking. No problem, none in the world, is more distressing than that of art and its effect. Take the most remarkable product of the most typical and therefore most powerful artists⁠—take such a morbid and deeply suggestive work as Tristan and Isolde, and observe the effect which this work exerts on a young, healthy man with thoroughly normal feelings. You see exaltation, strengthening, warm righteous enthusiasm, excitation perhaps to the point of actual ‘artistic’ creation.⁠ ⁠… The good dilettante! Among us artists it looks basically different from what he could ever imagine with his ‘warm heart’ and ‘noble enthusiasm.’ I have seen artists admired and fêted by women and young men, while I knew about them. In matters concerning the origin, and the conditions of art, and the phenomena which go hand in hand with art, we continually keep making the most remarkable discoveries⁠ ⁠…”

“About other people, Tonio Kröger⁠—pardon me⁠—or not merely about other people?”

He was silent. He knitted his slanting eyebrows and whistled to himself.

“Please let me have your cup, Tonio. It is not strong enough. And take another cigarette. Besides, you know very well that you see things in a manner in which they do not necessarily need to be seen.⁠ ⁠…”

“That is Horatio’s answer, my dear Lisaweta. ‘To look at things so,’ means ‘to look at them too closely,’ doesn’t it?”

“I say that we can look at them just as closely from another angle, Tonio Kröger. I am a mere stupid painter girl, and if I am able to make any objections to you, if I can somewhat protect your own calling from you, then it is sure to be nothing new which I advance, but merely a warning reminder to you of what you already know.⁠ ⁠… As for instance: the purifying, hallowing effect of literature; the destruction of the passions through knowledge and the word; literature as the road towards understanding, towards forgiveness and love; the emancipating power of speech; above all, the literary spirit as the noblest aspect of the human spirit, the literary man as the complete man, as saint⁠—to look at things in this way means not to look at them closely enough?”

“You have a right to speak like that, Lisaweta Iwanowna, and especially in view of the work of your poets, of the adorable Russian literature which so truly represents the holy literature you speak of. Yet I have not left your objections out of account, but they go along with all that is in my mind today.⁠ ⁠… Look at me. I do not seem inordinately cheerful, no? A bit old and sharp-featured and tired, isn’t that so? Now, returning to ‘knowledge,’ a person would let himself think that way who, essentially pious, softhearted, well-meaning, and a little sentimental, would be quite simply destroyed and annihilated by psychological clarity. Not to let oneself be overcome by the world’s sorrow; to observe, notice, accept even the wretchedest things, while keeping in good spirits in the perfect assurance of moral superiority over the repulsive invention of life.⁠—Yes, of course! Yet occasionally, in spite of all your delight in the expression, things become a little too much for you. Does understanding everything mean forgiving everything? I don’t know. There is something which I call the nausea of knowledge, Lisaweta: the condition wherein a man has simply to see through a thing in order to feel himself, not reconciled by any means, but disgusted to death⁠—the case of Hamlet the Dane, this typical man of letters. He knew what it meant: being called to knowledge without being born to it. Compelled even to see clearly through the tearful veil of the feelings, to recognize, to notice, to observe, and to lay the observed thing smilingly aside at the very moment when hands are clasping, when lips are meeting, when mortal eyes, blinded by emotion, grow dim⁠—it is disgraceful, Lisaweta, it is despicable, it is revolting⁠ ⁠… but what good is there in being revolted?

“Another, but no less amicable aspect of the matter is, of course, sophistication, indifference, and ironic weariness towards all truth; for it is a fact that nowhere else in the world are things more silenced and hopeless than in a circle of clever people who are already in full rout. All knowledge is old and boring. Pronounce some truth which perhaps has given you a certain youthful delight in its conquest and possession, and they will answer your ordinary enlightenment with a curt release of breath through the nose.⁠ ⁠… Oh, yes, literature makes weary, Lisaweta! In human society it can happen to a person, I assure you, that through sheer scepticism, through leaving his opinions unstated, he can be considered stupid, whereas he was simply haughty and lacking in courage.⁠ ⁠… So much for ‘knowledge.’ But as to the ‘word,’ isn’t it perhaps less a matter of salvation here than a chilling, a putting-on-ice, of the emotions? Seriously, there is an icy and revoltingly arrogant quality to this pat and superficial discharge of emotion through literary speech. If your heart is too full, if you feel yourself moved too much by some sweet or exalted experience: nothing simpler! You go to the man of letters, and everything is settled in the shortest possible time. He will analyse and formulate your affection for you, call it by name, express it and expatiate on it, will relieve you of the whole burden forever, and make you indifferent, and no charges asked. But you will go home relieved, cooled, and enlightened, and will wonder how anything in this matter could have been disturbing you with so sweet a tumult only a short while ago. And you want seriously to defend this cold and vain charlatan? Whatever has been expressed⁠—his credo runs⁠—has been discharged. If the whole world is expressed, then it is discharged, solved, done with.⁠ ⁠… Very good! Yet I am no nihilist⁠ ⁠…”

“You are no⁠—” Lisaweta said.⁠ ⁠… She was holding her spoon full of tea up to her mouth, and became rigid in this position.

“Well, yes⁠ ⁠… well, yes⁠ ⁠… come out of it, Lisaweta! I am not so, I tell you, with reference to living emotion. You see, the man of letters fails at bottom to understand that life may still go on living, that it is not ashamed of this, even after it has been expressed and ‘discharged.’ But see here, it goes on sinning undeviatingly, for all action is sin in the eyes of the mind.⁠ ⁠…

“I am near the end, Lisaweta. Listen to me. I love life⁠—this is a secret. Take it and keep it⁠—I have told it to no one else. People have said, people have even written and had printed, that I hate life, or fear or despise or shun it. I have enjoyed hearing this, it flattered me; but it is no less false for that reason. I love life.⁠ ⁠… You are smiling, Lisaweta, and I know why. But I beg you, don’t think what I am saying now is literature! Don’t think of Cesare Borgia or any drunken philosophy which has that for a slogan! He is nothing to me, this Cesare Borgia; I don’t put the least faith in him, and I will never, never understand how people can honour the extraordinary and the demonic as the ideal. No, ‘life’⁠—as it stands in eternal contrast to the mind and art⁠—not as a vision of bloody greatness and savage beauty, not as the irregular does it present itself to us irregular people; but the normal, the respectable, and the likable are the realm of our yearnings, they are life in all its seductive banality! That man is not an artist for long, my dear, whose last and deepest enthusiasm is for the refined, the eccentric, and the Satanic, who does not know the hankering after the harmless, simple, and living, after a little friendship, devotion, confidence, and human happiness⁠—the stealthy and devouring hankering, Lisaweta, after the bliss of mediocrity!⁠ ⁠…

“A human friend! Will you believe that it would make me proud and happy to possess a friend among human beings? But up to now I have had friends only among demons, goblins, profound sorcerers, and spectres drunk with knowledge, which is to say, among men of letters.

“Occasionally I get on to some platform, find myself in a room facing people who have come to hear me. You see, then it happens that I notice myself looking around among the public, that I catch myself spying secretly through the auditorium, and asking myself, who is it that came to me, whose applause and thanks penetrate to me, with whom does my art I create an ideal union here?⁠ ⁠… I do not find what I am looking for, Lisaweta. I find the herd and the community that is well known to me, a gathering of the first Christians, you might say, people with unwieldy bodies and fine souls, people who always fall down, so to speak⁠—you understand me, Lisaweta⁠—people to whom poetry is a delicate revenge on life; always simply the sufferers and yearners and the poor, and never anyone of those others, the blue-eyed, Lisaweta, who have no need of the mind!⁠ ⁠…

“And, after all, would it not be a regrettable inconsistency to wish that things were different? It is absurd to love life and yet be striving with all your faculties to draw it on your side, to win it over to the delicacies and the melancholies, the entire sickly nobility, of literature. The realm of art is widening on this earth, and the realm of health and innocence is falling away. Whatever is still left, we preserve as carefully as possible, and we should not want to seduce people into poetry who would much rather look at the snapshots in books on horses!

“For, in conclusion⁠—is there anything more miserable to look upon than life when it makes an attempt at art? We artists detest no one more basically than the dilettante, the man in life who thinks that he can also on occasion be an artist. I answer you, this kind of detestation is among my personal experiences. I happen to be out among society in some good house; we are eating, drinking, and chatting, we understand one another perfectly, and I feel cheerful and grateful that I am able to get lost for a while among harmless and regular people as one of them. Suddenly (this has happened to me) an officer rises, a lieutenant, a handsome and sturdy fellow whom I should never have thought capable of an act unworthy of his uniform, and asks in unmistakable words for permission to acquaint us with a short piece of verse which he has written. With a dismayed smile, we grant him this, and he carries out his program; taking a paper which he had up until now kept concealed in his coat pocket, he recites his work, something about music and love, in short, something just as deeply felt as it is ineffectual. But now I ask everyone: a lieutenant! A man of the world! He really didn’t have to do it!⁠ ⁠… Well, it turns out as it has to: long faces, silence, a little trumped-up applause, and the profoundest discomfiture on all sides. The first mental fact I became conscious of is that I feel myself involved in the blame for this disturbance which this unthinking young man has brought upon the company. And undoubtedly I too, in whose trade he has blundered, have mocking and distant glances directed towards me. But the second mental fact consists in this: that this man, for whose habits and character I had just been feeling the noblest respect, suddenly sinks, sinks, sinks in my eyes.⁠ ⁠… I am seized by a charitable sympathy. Along with a few other good-hearted and well-meaning gentlemen, I step up to him and speak to him. ‘My felicitations,’ I say. ‘Lieutenant! What a pleasant gift! No, that was splendid!’ And I just narrowly miss clapping him on the shoulder. But is charity the feeling with which one has to meet a lieutenant?⁠ ⁠… His fault! There he was standing, and in great embarrassment paying for the false notion that one dare pluck one leaf, a single one, from the laurel-tree of art, without giving his life for it. No, I stick by my colleague, the criminal banker.⁠—But don’t you find, Lisaweta, that I have a Hamletic eloquence today?”

“Have you finished now, Tonio Kröger?”

“No. But I shall say no more.”

“And it is enough, too.⁠—Are you waiting for an answer?”

“Do you have one?”

“I should think so.⁠—I have listened to you carefully, Tonio, from beginning to end, and I will give you the answer which fits everything you have said to me this afternoon and which is the solution for the problem that has disturbed you so much. Now then! The solution is this: that you, as you sit there, are quite simply a bourgeois.”

“Am I?” he asked, and collapsed slightly.⁠ ⁠…

“It seems that hits you hard, and it ought to. And for that reason I shall mitigate the sentence a bit, for I can do that: you are a bourgeois on the wrong path, Tonio Kröger⁠—a strayed bourgeois.”

—Silence. Then he stood up decisively and reached for his hat and stick. “I thank you, Lisaweta Iwanowna; now I can go home in comfort. I have been ‘discharged’!”

V

Towards fall Tonio Kröger said to Lisaweta Iwanowna:

“Yes, I am taking a trip now, Lisaweta; I must air myself a bit. I must away, I seek the open.”

“Well, what then, Little Father, does it so please you again to go to Italy?”

“God, forget about Italy, Lisaweta. I am indifferent to Italy even to the point of disdain! It has been a long time since I used to imagine that I belonged there. Art, sweet sensuality.⁠ ⁠… In short, I can’t do it. I renounce it. The whole bellezza makes me nervous. Nor can I stand all these frightfully vivacious people down there with their black animal eyes. These Romans have no conscience in their eyes. No, I’m going to Denmark for a while.”

“To Denmark?”

“Yes, and I promise myself something good from that. It happens that I have never been there, near as I was to the border all during my youth⁠—yet I have always known and loved the country. I surely must get this northern leaning from my father, since my mother was really more for bellezza in so far as she was not indifferent to everything. But take the books that are written up there, these deep, pure, and humoristic books, Lisaweta⁠—for me there is nothing like them, I love them. Take the Scandinavian meals, these incomparable meals which can be managed only in a strong salt air (I don’t know whether I shall still be able to manage them at all) and which I really know something about; for people eat somewhat like that where I come from. Just take the names, the Christian names, which people are graced with up there, and many of which are also used where I come from: a sound like Ingeborg, a harp stroke of the most immaculate poetry. And the sea⁠—they have the Baltic Sea up there!⁠ ⁠… In a word, I am going up for a trip, Lisaweta. I will see the Baltic Sea again, will hear these Christian names again, will read these books on the very spot; also I will stand on the platform of Kronborg, where the ghost came to Hamlet and brought destitution and death upon the poor, noble young man.⁠ ⁠…”

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

“The usual one,” he said with a shrug, and blushed noticeably. “Yes, I shall touch on my⁠—my point of exodus, Lisaweta, after thirteen years; and that can become somewhat comic.”

She smiled.

“That is what I wanted to hear, Tonio Kröger. And so, God be with you. And don’t neglect to write me, do you hear? I look forward to a letter rich in experience from your trip to⁠—Denmark.⁠ ⁠…”

VI

And Tonio Kröger travelled north. He travelled with comfort (for he liked to say that anyone who was so much more disturbed internally than other people had a perfect right to a little external comfort) and he never stopped until the towers of the narrow city from which he had come rose up before him into the grey air. There he made a brief strange stopover.⁠ ⁠…

A melancholy afternoon was already passing into evening when the train pulled into the smoke-filled and wonderfully familiar station; beneath the dirty glass roof the smoke was still gathered in a mass, moving back and forth in long shreds, just as at the time when Tonio Kröger, with nothing but scorn in his heart, had travelled away from here.⁠—He traced his baggage, gave orders to have it taken to the hotel, and left the station.

There stood the city cabs in a row, each black, unusually high and broad, and with its team of horses! He took none of them; he simply looked at them, as he looked at everything: the narrow gables and pointed towers which greeted him above the nearby roofs, the blond and portly people about him with their broad yet rapid manner of speaking⁠—and a nervous laughter arose in him which had some mysterious kinship to a sob. He went on foot, went slowly, the ceaseless pressure of the damp wind in his face, crossed the bridge with its mythological statues standing by the handrail, and walked some distance along by the harbour.

Great God, how tiny and remote it all seemed! Had all these narrow gable-lined streets always been so funny in their steep climb toward the town? The smokestacks and masts of the ships tossed lightly on the melancholy river in the wind and twilight. Should he go up that street, that one there, where the house stood that he had in mind? No, tomorrow. He was so sleepy now. His head was heavy from the trip, and slow clouded thoughts were passing through his mind.

Often during the thirteen years, when his digestion had troubled him, he had dreamed that he was home again in the old echoing house on the steep street, that his father was there too and was hard at him on account of his degenerate manner of living⁠—all of which he had always found quite reasonable. And now this neighbourhood was in no way different from one of those tough, deceiving dream fabrics in which we ask ourselves whether this is delusion or reality, and finally feel compelled to decide definitely for the latter only to awaken in the end.⁠ ⁠… He went through the draughty, almost deserted streets, held his head bent against the wind, and walked like a somnambulist in the direction of the hotel, the first in the city, where he was to pass the night. A bowlegged man, carrying a pole with a little flame at one end, was walking with a rolling sailor’s stride in front of him and lighting the gas lamps.

What was the matter with him? What was all this which, beneath the ashes of his weariness, without breaking in a clear flame, glowed so sombrely and painfully? Silent, silent, and no word! No speech! He would gladly have gone on this way for a long while, in the wind through these twilit, dreamily familiar streets. But everything huddled so narrow and close; one soon reached his destination.

In the upper city there were arc lamps, and they were already lit. There was the hotel, and those were the two black lions which lay in front of it and which he had been afraid of as a child. They were still looking at each other, with an expression as though they were going to sneeze. But they seemed to be much smaller than formerly. Tonio Kröger entered between them.

Since he came on foot, he was received without much ceremony. He was met by the porter and an elegant gentleman in black who did the honours and was always shooting his cuffs back into his sleeves with his little fingers; they eyed him critically and appraisingly from head to foot, visibly struggling to form some idea of him socially, to place him in the bourgeois hierarchy and assign him some notch in their respect. Yet they did not come to any satisfactory conclusion, so that they finally decided on a moderate politeness for him. A waiter, a mild man with whiskers as blond as bread, a swallowtail coat shiny with age, and rosettes on his noiseless shoes, led him up two flights into a clean, old-fashioned room. Beyond the window, in the twilight, he saw spread out the picturesque and medieval view of courts, gables, and the bizarre pile of the church near which the hotel was located. Tonio Kröger stood awhile before this window; then he sat down with folded arms on the expansive sofa, knitted his brows, and whistled to himself.

A light was brought, and his baggage arrived. At the same time the waiter laid the register on the table, and Tonio Kröger, with his head bent sideways, put down something on it which looked like his name, vocation, and residence. Then he ordered a light supper, and continued looking out into the open from his sofa corner. When his meal stood in front of him, he left it for a while untouched, finally took a few bites, and walked up and down the room for another hour, occasionally stopping and closing his eyes. Then he undressed slowly, and went to bed. He had a long sleep, with confused and strangely wistful dreams.

When he awoke, he saw his room filled with bright daylight. He was bewildered, and thought hurriedly where he was; and he arose to open the curtains. The slightly pale late-summer blue of the sky was streaked with strips of cloud torn by the wind; but the sun was shining on his native city.

He gave even more care to his toilet than usual, washed and shaved himself with extra thoroughness, and made himself as fresh and clean as though he were preparing for a visit to some good, correct house where he was supposed to make a tidy blameless impression. And during the operations of dressing he listened to the anxious beating of his heart.

How bright it was out there! He should have felt better if, like yesterday, the streets had lain in twilight. But now he should have to go through the clear sunlight under people’s eyes. Would he run across acquaintances, be stopped, questioned, and have to account for how he had spent these thirteen years? No, thank God, no one knew him any longer; and whoever remembered him would not recognize him, for he had really changed a little in the meantime. He observed himself attentively in the mirror, and suddenly he felt safer behind his mask, behind this face of his which showed the signs of early strain and looked older than his years.⁠ ⁠… He had breakfast brought in, and then went out, beneath the deprecatory glances of the porter and the elegant gentleman in black, through the vestibule, and between the two lions, out into the open.

Where was he going? He hardly knew. It was like yesterday. It was not so much that he saw himself surrounded again by this wonderfully dignified and old, familiar juxtaposition of gables, towers, arcades, wells; not so much that he felt again in his face the pressure of the wind, the strong wind which brought with it a sharp delicate fragrance from disstant dreams; as that his senses seemed obscured as by a veil, a blanket of fog⁠ ⁠… The muscles of his face relaxed; and he observed people and things more quietly. Yet perhaps, there on that street corner, he awoke.⁠ ⁠…

Where was he going? He felt as though the direction which he was taking had some connection with his melancholy and strangely remorseful dreams of the night.⁠ ⁠… He came to the market, passed under the arches of the town hall where butchers were weighing their wares with bloody hands, out on to the marketplace where the Gothic well stood high, complex, and pointed. Then he stopped before a house, a plain narrow house, like many others, with a curved, fretwork gable⁠—and he was lost in the contemplation of it. He read the nameplate on the door, and let his eyes rest for a time on each of the windows. Then he turned slowly to leave.

Where was he going? Home. But he took a roundabout way, went for a walk out beyond the gate, since he had time. He went over the Mill-wall and the Holsten-wall, and held his hat tight from the wind which moaned and whistled in the trees. Then he left the walls near the railroad station, watched a train puffing by in clumsy hastiness, counted the cars for a pastime, and peered after the man who was sitting in the rear of the very last one. And on the Lindenplatz he stopped before one of the pretty villas that stood there, gazed for a long time into the garden and up at the windows; and finally he got the idea of swinging the garden gate back and forth on its hinges, so that it creaked. Then for a time he observed his hand, which was cold and covered with rust, and walked on, walked through the old low gate along the harbour and up the steep windy street to the house of his parents.

It stood, grey and sober as it had been for three hundred years, its gable overtowering the neighbouring houses which surrounded it; and Tonio Kröger read the pious aphorism that stood over the entrance in half-obliterated letters. Then he took a deep breath and entered.

His heart beat anxiously, for he almost expected his father, in his office coat and with his pen behind his ear, to come out through one of the doors on the ground floor as he was passing, stop him, and bring him resolutely to account for his extravagant life⁠—which he would have found very reasonable. But he got by unmolested. The storm door was not closed, but only pushed to, and this seemed reprehensible to him; while at the time he felt like in certain light dreams in which the obstacles give way to us of their own accord, and we press forward unhindered, graced by a marvellous well-being.⁠ ⁠… The broad entrance, paved with large rectangular flagstones, resounded with his steps. Opposite the kitchen, in which all was silent, a scaffolding of ungainly but neatly varnished rafters thrust out from the wall, supporting the servants’ quarters above; these could be reached only by a sort of ladder which led up to them from the passage. But the large closets and the carved chest that had stood here were no longer there.⁠ ⁠… The son of the house mounted the heavy stairs, and supported himself with his hand on the white-enamelled, carved wooden banister, while he pulled himself up at each step and on the next let himself sink down again softly, as though he were testing timidly whether his former intimacy with this old solid handrail could be restored.⁠ ⁠… But on the landing he stopped before the entrance to the entresol. On the door a white placard was fastened, on which he could read in black letters: “Public Library.”

“Public Library?” Tonio Kröger thought, for he found that neither the public nor literature had any business here. He knocked on the door.⁠ ⁠… He heard a “Come in,” and went in its direction. Tense and melancholy, he looked in upon some extremely unsightly alterations.

The floor was three rooms deep, with its connecting doors standing open. The walls were covered almost to the ceiling with uniformly bound books which stood on dark shelves in long rows. In each room an indigent man sat writing behind a kind of counter. Two of them merely turned their heads towards Tonio Kröger, but the first stood up hastily, at the same time supporting himself with both hands on the tabletop, shoving his head forward, pursing his lips, raising his brows, and observing the visitor with diligently blinking eyes.⁠ ⁠…

“Pardon,” Tonio Kröger said, without turning his eyes from the many books. “I am a foreigner here; I am seeing the sights of the town. So this is the Public Library? Would you permit me to look around a bit at the collection?”

“Gladly!” the official said, and blinked still more violently.⁠ ⁠… “Certainly, that is free to everyone. Do you simply want to look around?⁠ ⁠… would you like a catalogue?”

“No, thank you,” Tonio Kröger answered. “I can easily find my way.” Then he began walking slowly along the walls, while he acted as though he were studying the titles on the books. Finally he took down one volume, opened it, and stepped over to the window with it.

This had been the breakfast room. In the mornings they had breakfasted here, not up there in the large dining-hall where the white forms of gods were stepping out of the blue tapestry.⁠ ⁠… That room there had served as a bedroom. His father’s mother had died there, old as she was, amid violent spasms, for she was a pleasure-loving woman of the world and clung to life. And later his father himself had breathed out his last sigh there, the tall, correct, somewhat melancholy and thoughtful gentleman with the wild flower in his buttonhole.⁠ ⁠… Tonio had sat at the foot of his deathbed, with hot eyes, completely and reverently given over to powerful, dumb feelings, to love and pain. And his mother too had knelt by the bed, his beautiful emotional mother, completely lost in hot tears, whereupon she went off into the blue distance with the southern artist.⁠ ⁠… But behind there, the smaller third room, now likewise completely filled with books guarded by an indigent man, had been his for several years. He had returned there after school, after he had taken a walk, as just now; by that wall had stood his table where in the drawer he had kept his first intimate and helpless verses.⁠ ⁠… The walnut-tree.⁠ ⁠… A penetrating sadness shot through him. He looked out sideways through the window. The garden lay in ruins, but the old walnut-tree stood in its place, cumbersomely groaning and moaning in the wind. And Tonio Kröger let his eyes slip back to the book which he held in his hands, a prominent work of poetry well known to him. He looked down at these black lines and groups of sentences, followed the skilful flow of the text for a piece, as it ascended in structural passion to a gesture, a touch and effect, and then broke off tellingly.

“Yes, that is well done,” he said, put down the work of poetry, and turned away. Then he saw that the official was still standing up and blinking his eyes with a mixed expression of officiousness and cautious distrust.

“An excellent collection, as I see,” Tonio Kröger said. “I have already gotten a general idea of it. I am much obliged to you. Goodbye.” Then he went out to the door; but it was a questionable exit, and he felt plainly that the official, disturbed over this visit, would stand there blinking for several minutes.

He felt no inclination to penetrate further. He had been home. Above, in the large rooms beyond the pillared hall, strangers were living⁠—he saw that. For the stairs at the top were closed by a glass door which did not use to be there, and there was some kind of nameplate on it. He went away, went down the stairs, across the echoing vestibule, and left his paternal house. In a corner of a restaurant, retiring to himself, he took a rich heavy meal, and then returned to the hotel.

“I have finished here,” he said to the elegant gentleman in black. “I leave this afternoon.” And he asked for his bill, and also for a cab which would bring him to the harbour and the steamer for Copenhagen. Then he went to his room and sat down at the table, sat still and upright, resting his cheek in his hand and looking down at the tabletop with sightless eyes. Later he settled his account and got ready his things. At the appointed time the cab was announced, and Tonio Kröger descended ready for the trip.

Below, at the foot of the stairs, the elegant gentleman in black was waiting for him.

“Pardon me!” he said, and shot his cuffs back into his sleeves with his little fingers. “Pardon me, sir, if we have to trouble you for a moment. Herr Seehaase⁠—the proprietor of the hotel⁠—requests a brief word with you. A formality.⁠ ⁠… He is in there. Would you be so kind as to come with me?⁠ ⁠… It is only Herr Seehaase, the proprietor of the hotel.”

And with gestures of encouragement he led Tonio Kröger to the rear of the lobby. There, indeed, Herr Seehaase was standing. Tonio Kröger knew him at a glance from old times. He was short, fat, and bowlegged. His trimmed whiskers had become grey; but he was still wearing a much cutaway dress-coat, and a little knitted green velvet cap to match. Furthermore, he was not alone. Next to him, beside a little writing-shelf fastened to the wall, stood a policeman wearing his helmet. His gloved right hand was resting on a paper with writing in different colours which lay before him on the desk; and he stared back with his noble soldierly face, as though he expected that Tonio Kröger would have to sink through the floor at the sight of him.

Tonio Kröger looked from one to the other, and waited for what might happen.

“You come from Munich?” the policeman finally asked in a well-meaning, lugubrious voice.

Tonio Kröger assented to this.

“You are travelling to Copenhagen?”

“Yes, I am en route to a Danish bathing-resort.”

“Bathing-resort?⁠—Yes, you must produce your papers,” the policeman said, pronouncing the “produce” with peculiar satisfaction.

“Papers⁠ ⁠…” He had no papers. He drew out his portfolio and looked in; except for some paper money, there was nothing inside but the proofs of a short story which he intended revising when he reached his destination. He did not like to deal with officials, and had never yet gotten a passport.

“I am sorry,” he said, “but I am carrying no papers with me.”

“So?” the policeman said. “None at all? What is your name?”

Tonio Kröger answered him.

“And is that so?” the policeman asked, straightening up and suddenly extending his nostrils as widely as he could.

“Absolutely so,” Tonio Kröger answered.

“What are you, then?”

Tonio Kröger gulped and named his trade with a firm voice. Herr Seehaase raised his head and looked into his face with curiosity.

“Hm!” the policeman said. “And you admit not being identical with an individual by the name of”⁠—he said “individual,” and then from the paper with different-coloured writing he spelled out a thoroughly intricate and romantic name which seemed adventurously compounded from the sounds of various races, and which Tonio Kröger had forgotten again the next moment⁠—“Who,” he went on, “of unknown parents and uncertain status, is wanted by the Munich police for several fraudulent activities and is probably fleeing to Denmark?”

“I don’t merely admit it,” Tonio Kröger said, with a nervous movement of his shoulders.⁠—That made a certain impression.

“How? Ah, of course! Why, certainly!” the policeman said. “But simply since you couldn’t produce anything!”

Also, Herr Seehaase intervened conciliatingly: “The whole thing is a formality,” he said, “nothing more! You must consider that the officer is simply doing his duty. If you could prove your identity somehow⁠ ⁠… a paper⁠ ⁠…”

All were silent. Should he end the matter by introducing himself, by disclosing to Herr Seehaase that he was no confidence man of uncertain status, was not by birth a gipsy in the green wagon, but the son of Consul Kröger, from the Kröger family? No, he had no desire to do that. And weren’t these burghers somewhat in the right after all? In a way he was quite in sympathy with them. He shrugged his shoulders and remained silent.

“What have you there?” the policeman asked. “There, in the valise?”

“Here? Nothing. It is some proofs,” Tonio Kröger answered.

“Proofs? How is that? Let me see once.”

And Tonio Kröger handed over his work. The policeman spread it out on the desktop and began reading. Herr Seehaase also stepped nearer and joined in the reading. Tonio Kröger looked over their shoulders and observed at what place they were. It was a good moment, a touch and effect, which he had worked out tellingly. He was content with himself.

“See!” he said. “There stands my name. I wrote this, and now it will be published, you understand.”

“Well, that is enough!” Herr Seehaase said decisively; he collected the pages, folded them, and gave them back to him. “That will do, Petersen!” he repeated curtly, shutting his eyes furtively and shaking his head in the negative. “We have no right to detain the gentleman any longer. The cab is waiting. I beg you to forgive the slight inconvenience, sir. The officer simply did his duty, but I told him at the start that he was on the wrong track⁠ ⁠…”

“So?” Tonio Kröger thought.

The policeman did not seem quite agreed. He still put in something about an “individual” and “produce.” But amid repeated expressions of regret Herr Seehaase led his guest back through the lobby, accompanied him between the two lions to the cab, and with assurances of respect shut the door behind him himself. And then the ridiculously high and broad cab rolled swaying, clattering, and banging down the steep streets to the harbour.

This was Tonio Kröger’s strange stopover in his native city.

VII

Night came on, and the moon had already risen in a swimming silver reflection, when Tonio Kröger’s ship reached the open sea. He was standing by the bowsprit, wrapped in his coat against the wind which was growing stronger and stronger; and he looked down into the dark roaming and driving of the strong smooth undulating masses which worked in among one another, slapping together, shooting apart in unexpected directions and suddenly lighting up with foam⁠ ⁠…

He was lulled by a delicious cradling movement. He had been a bit depressed when they had wanted to arrest him as a confidence man in his home town; yes, although he had in a way found it within reason. But then, after boarding the ship, he had watched the loading of the cargo as he used to do with his father during boyhood. The deep hold of the ship was filled, amid cries in a mixture of Danish and Low German. He had seen how, in addition to the bundles and chests, they had also let down in heavily barred cages a polar bear and a royal tiger, which must have come from Hamburg and were destined for a Danish menagerie. And this had distracted him. Then, as the ship was gliding between the even banks of the river, he had entirely forgotten officer Petersen’s cross-examination. And everything that had taken place before that⁠—his sweet, melancholy, and remorseful dreams during the night, the walk he had taken, the sight of the walnut-tree⁠—had become uppermost again in his mind. And now, as the sea was opening out, he saw from a distance the beach where, as a boy, he could hear the dreams of the sea in summer; he saw the glow from the lighthouse, and the lights of the Kurhouse, where he had lived with his parents.⁠ ⁠… The Baltic Sea! He bowed his head against the strong salt wind which came towards him freely and unimpeded, enveloping his ears and evoking a mild vertigo, a faint intoxication: the memory of all evil, of pain and error, of desires and strivings, passed lightly and easily away. And in the swishing, pattering, frothing, and groaning round about him, he seemed to hear the soughing and creaking of the old walnut-tree, the squeaking of a garden gate.⁠ ⁠… It was getting darker and darker.

“The stars, God, jes’ look at the stars!” A voice which seemed to come from the inside of a barrel spoke up suddenly with a sorrowfully chanting intonation. He knew it already. It belonged to a reddish-blond and simply dressed man with red eyelids and the cool damp appearance of a person who had just bathed. At dinner in the saloon he had been Tonio Kröger’s neighbour, and had with timid and retiring movements put away astounding quantities of lobster omelette. Now he was leaning beside him on the railing and looking up at the sky, while he held his chin between thumb and forefinger. Beyond a doubt he was in one of those extraordinary and solemnly meditative moods when the barrier between humans falls away, when the heart opens even to strangers, and the mouth speaks things to which otherwise it would be shyly closed.⁠ ⁠…

“Jes’ look, sir, at the stars. There they stand and twinkle; God knows the whole sky is full, and now I ask you, when we look up and think that many of them must be a hundred times greater than the earth, how do we feel then? We human beings have invented the telegraph and the telephone, and many other triumphs of modernity; yes, that we have. But when we look up there, then we must realize and understand that after all we are nothing but worms, miserable worms and no more⁠—am I right or wrong, sir? Yes, we are worms!” he answered himself and nodded up at the heavens, humble and contrite.

“Oof!⁠—no, that chap has no literature in his carcass!” Tonio Kröger thought, and immediately he recalled something which he had read recently: the essay of a famous French writer on cosmological and psychological questions; it had been a very fine bit of talk.

He gave the young man something like an answer to his deeply felt observation, and then they continued conversing together, while they leaned on the railing and looked out into the tempestuous, turbulently brilliant evening. It turned out that his travelling companion was a young merchant from Hamburg who was spending his vacation on this pleasure trip.⁠ ⁠…

“ ‘You ought,’ he said, ‘to take a little trip on the steamer to Copenhagen,’ says I, and here I am, and so far it is very beautiful. But that about the lobster omelette, that was not right, sir; you shall see, for it will be stormy tonight, the captain told me, and with such a troublesome meal in your stomach, that is no joke.”⁠ ⁠…

Tonio Kröger listened to all this engaging nonsense with a feeling of comfort and friendliness.

“Yes,” he said, “people always eat too heavily up here. That induces laziness and melancholy.”

“Melancholy?” the young man repeated and looked at him disconcertedly. “You must be a foreigner here, sir?” he asked suddenly.⁠ ⁠…

“Oh, yes, I come from quite a distance!” Tonio Kröger answered with a vague parrying movement of his arm.

“But you are right,” the young man said. “God knows, you are right in what you say about melancholy! I am nearly always melancholy, but especially on evenings like this, when the sky is full of stars”; and again he supported his chin between his thumb and forefinger.

“He surely writes verses,” Tonio Kröger thought; “the deeply, nobly felt verses of a merchant.”

The evening was advancing, and the wind had now become so violent that it interfered with their conversation. So they decided to sleep awhile, and they wished each other good night.

Tonio Kröger stretched out on the narrow bed in his cabin, but he found no rest. The strong wind and its pungent smell had strangely aroused him; and his heart was unsteady, as though he were anxiously expecting some new sweet experience. Also he was made acutely sick by the vibration which took place when the ship dropped down the steep hill of a wave and the screw worked convulsively outside the water. He got completely dressed again and came up in the open.

Clouds were racing past the moon. The sea was dancing. No curved and regular waves were advancing in order, but for a great distance, in the pale and flickering light, the sea was lashed into a choppy turmoil; it leaped and sprang up in gigantic pointed flame-like tongues; beside foam-filled chasms it threw out strange jagged forms; and with the strength of enormous arms in mad playfulness it seemed to sling the spray into every wind. The ship was having a hard trip; pounding, tossing, and groaning, it worked its way through the tumult, and often he heard the polar bear and the tiger, who were suffering from the sea voyage, roar from below. A man in an oilskin coat, the cape over his head and a lantern strapped to his body, crossed back and forth on the foredeck, balancing himself painfully with his legs wide apart. But then behind, bent low over the rail, the young man from Hamburg was standing, and he was having a sorry time of it. “God,” he said with a trembling, hollow voice, as he saw Tonio Kröger, “jes’ see once this riot of the elements, sir!” But then he was interrupted and turned away hastily.

Tonio Kröger clung to a taut rope and looked out into this wanton turmoil. A shout pressed up within him, and he seemed as though it would be strong enough to ring out above the storm and the flood; a song to the sea, inspired by love, rang inside him. “Yes, my boyhood’s savage friend, you and I are joined again.⁠ ⁠…” But then the poem was over. It was not finished, was not well-formed, was not calmly rounded out into something solid. His heart was alive.⁠ ⁠…

He stood this way for a long while. Then he stretched out on a bench outside the cabin and looked up at the sky where the stars were flickering. He even slept a little; and when the cold spray shot into his face, it seemed to him in his half-sleep like a caress.

Vertical chalk cliffs, ghostly in the moonlight, hove into sight and came nearer. That was Möen, the island; and again sleep intervened, broken by showers of the salty spray, which hit sharply into his face and made his features stiffen.⁠ ⁠… When he became fully awake it was already day, a chilly light-grey day, and the green sea was smoother. At breakfast he saw again the young merchant, who blushed deeply, probably through shame at having uttered such poetic and unpresentable things in the darkness; he stroked out his little reddish moustache with all five fingers and called out a militarily sharp “good morning,” only to avoid him uneasily from then on.

And Tonio Kröger landed in Denmark. He put up in Copenhagen, and gave tips to everyone who looked as though he expected one. Starting from his hotel room, he wandered around the city for three days while he carried his little traveller’s guide open before him, and conducted himself just like any sightseeing foreigner of the better classes. He observed the King’s New Market and the “Horse” in the centre of it, he looked up respectfully at the columns of the Frue Kirke, he stood a long while before Thorvaldsen’s noble and lovely sculptures, he climbed the Round Tower, saw palaces, and spent two lively evenings in the Tivoli. But this was not all that he saw.

On the houses (they often looked much like the old houses of his native city with the curving fretwork gables) he saw names which were known to him from the old days, seeming to stand for something tender and precious, and always containing something like a reproach, a complaint, a hankering after what was lost. And everywhere, while he breathed in the damp sea air in slow deliberate draughts, he saw eyes as blue, hair as blond, faces of the same form and nature as those he had observed in the strangely troubled and remorseful dreams of the night he spent in his native city. It was possible for some glance on the open street, some ringing word, some burst of laughter to touch him to the quick.

He could not stand it for long in the cheerful city. He was affected by an unrest, sweet and fond, half reminiscence and half expectancy; and along with this came a yearning to be lying quietly somewhere on the beach, free from the necessity of playing the diligently inquisitive tourist. So he boarded another ship, and one dismal day (the sea had turned black) he was sailing northwards along the coast of Seeland toward Helsingör. From here he continued his journey immediately by cab along the boulevard for three-quarters of an hour, always a little above the sea, until he stopped at his real and ultimate destination: a little white beach hotel with the green shutters, standing in the middle of a colony of squat houses, and with its wood-covered tower looking out over the sand and towards the Swedish coast. Here he alighted, took possession of the bright room which was being held in readiness for him, distributed all his belongings, and prepared to live here for a while.

VIII

It was already well on into September. There were no longer many guests in Aalsgaard. At mealtimes in the large, heavy-beamed dining-hall on the ground floor, with its high windows facing the glass veranda and the sea, the proprietress sat at the head of the table. An elderly spinster with white hair, colourless eyes, pinkish cheeks, and an unsteady twittering voice, she was always careful to arrange her red hands to advantage on the tablecloth. There was also a short-necked old gentleman with a steel-grey seaman’s beard and purplish face; he was a fish dealer from the capital, and could speak German. He seemed all choked up and apoplectic, for he breathed in short irregular gasps, and from time to time raised his ringed forefinger to one of his nostrils in order to press it shut and get a little air through the other by blowing violently. Nevertheless he was continually speaking to the bottle of liquor which stood before him at breakfast as well as at dinner and supper. Then too, there were three tall American boys with their guardian or tutor, who adjusted his spectacles in silence and played football with the boys all day. They wore their reddish-yellow hair parted in the middle, and had long motionless faces. “Please give me the Wurst things there,” the one said. “That’s not Wurst, that’s Schinken,” said another; and this was all that either they or the tutor contributed to the conversation. For otherwise they sat there quietly drinking hot water.

Tonio Kröger could not have wished for different table companions. He enjoyed his peace, listened to the Danish gutturals, the sharp and melancholy vowels, in which the fish dealer and the proprietress conversed at times; occasionally he exchanged a brief word with the former over the state of the barometer; then he would rise and pass through the veranda to the beach, where he had already spent long morning hours.

Often it was quiet and summer-like there. The sea lay smooth and inactive, in blue, bottle-green, and pinkish stripes, with silverish glittering reflections of light playing over it. The seaweed was drying into hay in the sunlight, and the jellyfish were evaporating where they lay. It smelled somewhat foul and also somewhat of the tar of the fishing-smack against which Tonio Kröger was leaning as he sat on the sand, turned so that he faced the open horizon and not the Swedish coast. But the soft sea breeze blew fresh and clean across everything.

And grey stormy days came. The waves bent their heads like steers setting their horns to strike, and ran raging against the banks of sand, which were covered with wet glistening seaweed, mussels, and washed-up bits of wood. Between the tenuous wave-hills, the valleys stretched out pale green and foamy beneath the low sky; but there, where the sun stood behind the clouds, a white velvet sheen lay on the water.

Tonio Kröger stood in the wind and noise, sunk in this heavy, drugging tumult which he loved so well. If he turned and walked away, everything around him suddenly seemed quiet and warm. But he knew that behind him was the sea; it called, allured, and greeted him. And he smiled.

He went towards the interior, on meadow paths through the solitude, and soon he was swallowed up in the beach woods which stretched far out over the neighbouring hills. He sat down on the moss, leaning against a tree in such a way that he could see a strip of the sea between the trunks. At times the wind carried to him the sound of the surf, which rang out as though boards were falling upon one another in the distance. The crows cawed above the treetops, hoarse, desolate, and forlorn.⁠ ⁠… He held a book on his knees, but he did not read a line in it. He was enjoying a profound forgetfulness, an untrammelled soaring beyond space and time; and only now and then it seemed as though his heart would be shot through with misery, a brief, piercing sensation of melancholy or remorse which he was too far sunk in indolence to examine for its name and origin.

So passed many a day, he could not have said how many, and he had no desire to know. But there came one on which something happened; it happened while the sun was standing in the sky and people were present, and Tonio Kröger was not so unusually astonished by it.

This day also began with delightful splendour. Tonio Kröger awakened very early and quite suddenly, leaped from his sleep with a faint and indeterminate terror, and thought that he was looking at a miracle, a magic, fairylike illumination. His room, with glass door and balcony fronting on the sound, and divided into living and sleeping-quarters by a thin white gauze curtain, was hung with pale-coloured wallpaper, and provided with light, cheery furniture, so that it always had a bright and friendly look. But now his eyes, heavy with sleep, saw everything lying before him in an unearthly clarity and illumination, all bathed in an unutterably delicate and vaporous rose hue which gilded the walls and furniture and gave the gauze curtain a mild red glow.⁠ ⁠… For a long while Tonio Kröger did not understand what was taking place. But as he stood before the glass door and looked out, he saw that it was the rising sun.

For several days it had been dull and rainy; but now the sky stretched out over the sea and the land, as clear and luminous as taut light-blue silk. Interlaced and bordered by clouds lit up with red and gold, the disk of the sun rose solemnly above the sparkling ruffled ocean, which seemed to tremble and glow beneath it.⁠ ⁠… So the day came on; and, confused and happy, Tonio Kröger jumped into his clothes, breakfasted before all the others below on the veranda, afterwards swam out a ways in the sound from the little wooden bathing-house, and then took an hour’s walk along the beach. As he returned, several omnibus-like wagons were standing in front of the hotel; and from the dining-room he observed, both in the adjoining reception room where the piano stood, and also on the veranda and on the terrace in front of it, numerous people of both sexes, in ordinary middle-class dress. They were in lively conversation, and were sitting at round tables enjoying beer and sandwiches. There were whole families, elderly people and young people, and even a few children.

At the second breakfast (the table was heavily laden with cold foods, smoked, salted, and baked) Tonio Kröger inquired what was going on.

“Guests!” said the fish dealer. “Excursionists from Helsingör who have come here for a ball! Yes, God help us, we won’t be able to sleep this night! There will be dancing, dancing and music, and I am afraid it will keep up for a long while. It is a family gathering, a reunion and trip to the country combined⁠—in short, a subscription ball or something of the sort; and they will be happy as the day is long. They came by boat and by carriage, and now they are having breakfast. After a while they will go further into the country, but in the evening they will come back, and then there will be a dance in the hall here. Yes, damn it all, we won’t sleep a wink⁠ ⁠…”

“That will be pleasant for a change,” Tonio Kröger said.

After this, nothing further was said for quite a while. The proprietress arranged her red fingers, the fish dealer blew through his right nostril in order to get a little air, and the Americans drank hot water and made long faces.

Then of a sudden this happened: Hans Hansen and Ingeborg Holm passed through the room.

Tonio Kröger, pleasantly tired after his bath and his fast walk, was leaning back in his chair eating smoked salmon on toast⁠—he sat facing the veranda and the sea. And suddenly the door opened, and the two came in, hand in hand⁠—sauntering, and without haste. Ingeborg, blonde Inge, was dressed in bright colours, as she used to be at Herr Knaak’s dancing-class. The soft flowery dress reached down to her ankles, and about her shoulders she wore a broad white v-shaped fichu which left her soft pliant neck exposed. Her hat was hanging on her arm by its knotted ribbons. She was perhaps just a little taller than before, and now wore her wonderful plait done up on her head.

But Hans Hansen was just the same as ever. He had on his reefer’s jacket with the gilt buttons, with the broad blue collar lying over it on his back and shoulders. The sailor cap with the short ribbons he held in his loose hand, and was swinging it carelessly back and forth. Ingeborg kept her narrow eyes turned away, perhaps a little embarrassed by the stare of the diners. But Hans Hansen now turned his head straight towards the breakfast table with utter defiance, and his steel-blue eyes measured one person after the other challengingly and with a certain amount of scorn. He even let Ingeborg’s hand go and swung his cap still more briskly back and forth, in order to show just what sort of man he was. So the two of them, with the quiet blue sea as a background, passed before Tonio Kröger’s eyes, went the length of the room, and disappeared through the far door into the music room.

This happened at eleven-thirty in the morning; and while the guests at the Kurhouse were still sitting at breakfast, the company in the adjoining room and on the veranda broke up and left the hotel through the nearby side entrance without anyone’s coming through the dining-hall. They could be heard outside climbing into the wagons amid jokes and laughter; and one vehicle after the other started gratingly along the boulevard and rolled away.⁠ ⁠…

“So they are coming back?” Tonio Kröger asked.⁠ ⁠…

“That they are!” said the fish dealer, “and God have mercy. They have arranged for music, you know, and I sleep here above this room.”

“That will be pleasant for a change,” Tonio Kröger repeated. Then he arose and left.

He spent the day as he spent the others, on the beach, in the woods; held a book on his knees and blinked into the sun. He had only one thought: that they would return and hold a dance in the hall as the fish dealer had promised; and he simply felt happy at this, with a sweet uneasy happiness such as he had not experienced for long dead years. Once, through some association of ideas, he recalled fleetingly a distant acquaintance, Adalbet, the short-story writer, who knew what he wanted and had gone to the café to escape the spring air. And he shrugged his shoulders at him.⁠ ⁠…

Dinner was eaten earlier than usual; and supper likewise they took sooner than ever before, in the music room, since in the hall preparations for the ball were already under way: everything had been plunged into such glorious disorder. Then, when it was dark and Tonio Kröger was sitting in his room, things became lively again on the boulevard and in the house. The excursionists were returning. In fact, from the direction of Helsingör new guests were arriving on bicycles and in wagons; and already he could hear a violin tuning up in the house downstairs, and a clarinet was nasally executing some trial runs.⁠ ⁠… All indications were that it would be a brilliant ball.

Now the little orchestra struck up a march; it carried up to him in a subdued steady rhythm; they were opening the dance with a polonaise. Tonio Kröger sat still for quite a while and listened. But when he heard the march tempo change into a waltz rhythm, he arose and slipped noiselessly out of his room.

From the corridor he could go down the back stairs to the side entrance of the hotel, and from there, without touching a room, reach the glass veranda. He took this route, quietly and stealthily, as though he were on forbidden paths; he felt his way carefully through the darkness, irresistibly drawn by this stupid and soulfully swaying music, whose tones already came to him clear and unsubdued.

The veranda was empty and unlighted, but the glass door was open into the hall, where the two large petroleum lamps with polished reflectors were shining brightly. He crept up softly; his skin tingled with thievish delight as he dared to stand here in the darkness and to spy unseen on her dancing in the light. Hastily and greedily he sent his glances after the two he was seeking.⁠ ⁠…

The general merriment seemed to have developed with perfect freedom, although the festivity had been opened hardly half an hour before. But they had already come here warm and excited, after having spent the whole day together, carefree, happy, and in perfect accord. In the music room, which Tonio Kröger could see into if he ventured a little closer, several elderly gentlemen had gathered at cards, smoking and drinking. But others, with their wives, were sitting in the foreground, on the plush chairs and against the walls of the hall, watching the dance. They spread their knees, and supported their hands on them, and puffed out their cheeks with an expression of well-being, while the mothers, wearing bonnets, their hands crossed beneath their breasts, and their heads bent sideways, were looking into the swarm of young people. A podium had been erected against one of the longer walls of the room, and there the musicians were doing their best. There was even a trumpet here; it blew with a certain cautious hesitancy, as though it were afraid of its own voice, which nevertheless was continually breaking down and tumbling all over itself.⁠ ⁠… The couples undulated, weaving in and out among one another, while others wandered about the room arm-in-arm. No one was dressed for a ball, but only as for some Sunday spent in the country during the summer: the cavaliers in ordinary suits which showed signs of having been spared throughout the week, and the young girls in light and cheerful dresses with bouquets of wild flowers on their bodices. Also a few children were in the room and danced with one another after their fashion, even when the music stopped. A long-legged man in a swallowtailed coat, a provincial lion with eyeglass and singed hair, a postal assistant or something of the sort, and like some fat comic figure out of a Danish novel, seemed to be master of ceremonies and head of the ball. Hurried, sweating, and with his whole soul in the matter, he was everywhere at once, waddling through the room in high importance, stepping forward artistically on the tips of his toes and intricately crossing his feet, which were encased in smooth pointed military boots. He swung his arms in the air, gave orders, called for music, clapped his hands. And through it all, the ribbons of the large variegated bow, which was fastened to his shoulder as a mark of his dignity and towards which he often turned his head lovingly, fluttered irregularly behind him.

Yes, they were there, the two who had passed by Tonio Kröger today in the sunlight; he saw them again, and gasped with pleasure as he caught sight of them both almost simultaneously. Here was Hans Hansen standing quite near him, close by the door. Bent forward a little, with his legs spread, he was carefully eating a large piece of sponge-cake, while holding his open hand beneath his chin to catch the crumbs. And there against the wall sat Ingeborg Holm, blonde Inge, and the assistant was just now waddling up to them, to invite them to the dance by a recherché bow, whereupon he placed one hand on his back and shoved the other gracefully into his bosom; but she shook her head, and made a sign that she was out of breath and would have to rest a little. Then the assistant took a seat next to her.

Tonio Kröger watched them, these two for whom he had suffered love in times past⁠—Hans and Ingeborg. They were not this so much by reason of specific attributes and similarity of dress, as through the identity of race and type, this light, steel-blue-eyed, and blonde-haired sort which created an impression of purity, of serene good nature, and of a modesty at once proud and homely. He looked at them; saw Hans Hansen standing there in his sailor suit as smart and well-formed as ever, broad in the shoulders and small in the hips; saw how Ingeborg laughingly tossed her head to one side with a kind of insolence, how she had a way of touching the back of her head with a not especially slender, not especially delicate girlish hand, so that the light sleeve slipped back from her elbow⁠—and suddenly he was seized with such a painful melancholy that he retired unwittingly into the darkness so that no one might observe the twitching of his face.

“Had I forgotten you?” he asked “No, never! Not you, Hans; nor you, blonde Inge! It was really you I was working for; and if I heard applause, I looked stealthily around me to see whether you had joined in it.⁠ ⁠… Have you read Don Carlos by now, Hans Hansen, as you promised me by your garden gate? Don’t do it! I don’t require it of you any more. What do you care about the king who cries because he is lonesome? You shall not make your bright eyes sad and dreamy from dwelling on verses and melancholy.⁠ ⁠… To be like you! To begin again, grow up like you; be upright, cheerful, and simple; regular, orderly, and on easy terms with God and the world, to be loved by the harmless and the happy, to take you for a wife, Ingeborg Holm, and have a son like you, Hans Hansen⁠—to live free from the curse of knowledge and the pains of creation, to love and praise in blessed mediocrity!⁠ ⁠… Begin again! But it would do no good. Everything would turn out again as it did before. For often people go astray because there simply is no right path for them.”

Now the music was silent; there was a pause, and refreshments were handed around. The assistant in person hurried about among the ladies, serving them from a tray of herring salad. But before Ingeborg Holm he even dropped on one knee as he held out the dish to her, and she blushed with pleasure at this.

Yet by now the people in the hall were beginning to notice the onlooker beyond the glass door; and distant, inquisitive glances from pretty, heated faces were directed towards him. But he held his ground regardless. Also, the eyes of Ingeborg and Hans brushed past him almost at the same moment, with that total indifference which almost has the appearance of disdain. Yet suddenly he became aware that someone’s gaze was penetrating to him and resting upon him. He turned his head, and his eyes immediately encountered those which he had felt were glued upon him. Not far from him a girl whom he had noticed before, with a pale, narrow, and delicate face, was standing. She had not danced much; the cavaliers had not been especially concerned about her; and he had seen her sitting against the wall with firmly compressed lips. She was now standing alone again. She was dressed in bright fragrant garments like the others, but beneath the transparent stuff of her dress her exposed shoulders gleamed frail and angular, and the lean neck was set so deep between the paltry shoulders that the quiet girl seemed almost a bit deformed. She held her hands, which were covered with short flimsy gloves, over her flat breast in such a way that the fingertips met gently. With bowed head, she was looking up at Tonio Kröger through black, swimming eyes. He turned away.⁠ ⁠…

Here, quite near him, Hans and Ingeborg were sitting. He had taken a seat next to this girl who might have been his sister; and, surrounded by other red-cheeked children of mankind, they were eating and drinking, chatting and enjoying themselves, bantering back and forth at one another with ringing voices, and laughing brightly into the air. Could he not approach them a little? Make whatever jovial remark might occur to him, something at least which they would have to answer with a smile? It would make him happy; he yearned to do it; he would then return more contentedly to his room, with the knowledge that he had restored some slight common bond with the two of them. He thought out what he could say, but he did not master the courage to say it. Then too, things must surely be the same as before: they would not understand him, would listen distantly to what he could say to them. For their language was not his language.

Now the dance seemed about to begin again. The assistant developed an all-embracing activity. He bustled about urging everyone to take partners, cleared away chairs and glasses with the help of the waiter, distributed instructions among the musicians, and, grasping the shoulders of clumsy people here and there who didn’t know what to do with themselves, he steered them along in front of him. What was going to be done next? Four by four, pairs were forming into carrés.⁠ ⁠… A terrible recollection made Tonio Kröger blush. They were to dance the quadrille.

The music struck up, and the pairs came together bowing. The assistant gave the command; he gave the command, by God, in French, and he pronounced the nasal sounds in an incomparably distinguished manner. Ingeborg Holm was dancing close by Tonio Kröger, in the carré stationed immediately in front of the glass door. She moved here and there, back and forth, stepping and turning. Often he caught a fragrance which came from her hair or from the delicate stuff of her dress; and he closed his eyes with an emotion which had been so well known to him from of old; all throughout these recent days he had caught faintly its aroma and acrid charm, and now again it filled him with its sweet oppressiveness. Just what was it? Yearning? Tenderness? Envy, self-contempt?⁠ ⁠… Moulinet des dames! Did you laugh, blonde Inge, did you laugh at me, when I danced the moulinet and made such a pitiable ass of myself? And would you laugh again today too, now that I have become something like a famous man? Yes, that you would; and you would be more than right about it! And if I, I all alone, had produced the nine symphonies, The World as Will and Idea, and the Last Judgment⁠—you would have an eternal right to laugh.⁠ ⁠… He looked at her, and he recalled a line of verse which he had not thought of for a long time and yet which had been so close and familiar to him! “I’d like to sleep, but you must dance.” He knew it so well, the melancholically Nordic, profoundly awkward unwieldiness of the emotions which spoke through it. Sleep.⁠ ⁠… To yearn that one might dare surrender simply and wholly to emotions which rest sweetly and indolently within themselves without becoming obligations to act and dance⁠—and yet be forced to dance, to execute nimbly and alertly the trying, trying and precarious knife-dance of art, without ever quite forgetting the humiliating anomaly of this having to dance while one loved.⁠ ⁠…

Suddenly everything dropped into a wild and boisterous movement. The carrés had broken up; and everyone pushed about, leaping and sliding: the quadrille was being ended with a gallop. The couples flew past Tonio Kröger to the mad double-quick beat of the music, with short, breathless laughter, chasséing, overtaking one another. One couple came up, carried along by the general chase, circling, and racing forward. The girl had a pale, delicate face, and thin, overly high shoulders. And suddenly, close in front of him, someone tripped, slipped, and tumbled.⁠ ⁠… The pale girl had fallen down. She fell so hard and violently that it almost looked dangerous⁠—and the cavalier along with her. He must have hurt himself so rudely that he quite forgot his partner; half raising himself, he began grimacing and rubbing his knees with his hands. And the girl, apparently completely dazed by the fall, was still lying on the floor. Then Tonio Kröger stepped forward, grasped her gently by the arms, and lifted her up. Worn out, confused, and unhappy, she looked up at him; and suddenly her delicate face coloured a dull red.

“Tak, O, mange Tak!” she said, and peered up at him with dark, swimming eyes.

“You should not dance any more, Fräulein,” he said softly. Then he looked around him once more in search of them, of Hans and Ingeborg, and went away, left the veranda and the hall, and went up to his room.

He was excited by this festival in which he had taken no part; he was tired out with envy. Like in the past⁠—it had been just like in the past! Hot-faced, he had stood in a dark place in pain over such folk as you, all you blond, vivacious, and happy people; and then had gone off to himself. Someone must come now! Now Ingeborg must come, must notice that he was gone, must follow him stealthily, lay her hand on his shoulder, and say: “Come in with us! Be happy! I love you!”⁠ ⁠… But she did not come at all. Such things never happened. Yes, it was like then, and he was happy as he had been then. For his heart was alive. But what had taken place in the meanwhile, between then and now?⁠—Torpor, desolation, ice, and intellect! And art!⁠ ⁠…

He undressed, lay down to rest, put out the light. He whispered two names into the pillows: these few chaste Nordic syllables which for him meant his true and original mode of love, suffering, and happiness, the deep simple feelings, the home. He looked back over the years between that time and the present. He recalled the arid adventures of sense, nerves, and thought which he had lived through; he saw himself corroded by irony and intellect, devastated and crippled by knowledge, half exhausted by the fevers and chills of creation, bandied about aimlessly, with qualms of conscience, between two crass extremes, between sanctimony and passion, overrefined, impoverished, wearied by cold and choicely aesthetic exaltations, led astray, laid waste, tormented, sick⁠—and he sobbed with regret and melancholy.

It was quiet and dark around him. But from below, subdued and undulating, life’s sweet trivial waltz-rhythm came up to him.

IX

Tonio Kröger was sitting in the north writing to Lisaweta Iwanowna, his friend, as he had promised.

“Dear Lisaweta, down there in Arcadia, where I shall soon return,” he wrote. “This is something in the nature of a letter, but it will disappoint you, for I intend to keep it somewhat general. Not that I have so little to say, or that I haven’t experienced one thing or another after my fashion. At home, in my native city, they even wanted to arrest me⁠ ⁠… but of that you shall hear by word of mouth. Often I have days now when I prefer to say something formal and general, instead of telling stories.

“Do you still know, Lisaweta, that you once called me a bourgeois, a strayed bourgeois? You called me that at a time when, led on by other confessions which I had let out previously, I confessed my love for what I called life. And I wonder whether you really knew how close that came to the truth, how much similarity there is between my bourgeois nature and my love of life. This trip has given me occasion to think over that.

“My father, you know, was a Nordic temperament; thoughtful, thorough, puritanically correct, and inclined to melancholy; my mother, of indeterminate exotic blood, beautiful, emotional, naive, at once indolent and passionate, and of an impulsive negligence! Beyond all doubt this was a mixture which contained extraordinary possibilities⁠—and extraordinary dangers. The result was this: a bourgeois who strayed into art, a Bohemian who yearns for the nursery, an artist with a bad conscience. For it is certainly my bourgeois conscience which permits me to see something profoundly unsteady, ambiguous, profoundly obnoxious, profoundly questionable in everything artistic, everything unusual, everything with genius; and which fills me with this fond weakness for the simple and good-hearted and comfortably normal, for respectability and the absence of genius.

“I stand between two worlds; I am not at home in either of them, and consequently I find things a bit different. You artists call me a bourgeois, and the bourgeois are tempted to arrest me.⁠ ⁠… I do not know which of the two distress me more bitterly. The bourgeois are stupid; but you devotees of beauty who characterize me as phlegmatic and without longing should consider that there is a kind of artistry so deep, so thorough and unescapable, that no longing seems sweeter to it or more desirable than the longing for the bliss of mediocrity.

“I admire the proud and the cold who adventure on the paths of the great demonic beauty, and scorn ‘man’⁠—but I do not envy them. For if anything is capable of making a poet out of a literary man, then it is this bourgeois love of mine for the human, the vivacious, and the ordinary. All warmth, all kindness, all humour derive from this; and it almost seems to me as though it were that very love of which it is written: One can talk with the tongues of men and angels, and yet words without this love would be a mere resounding brass, a ringing shell.

“What I have done is a trifle, not much, as good as nothing. I will do better, Lisaweta; that is a promise. As I write, the sound of the sea reaches me, and I close my eyes. I look into an unborn and capricious world that wants ordering and shaping; I see the confused shadows of human forms signalling me to call them up and release them: tragic ones, and ridiculous ones, and some that are both at once⁠—and to these I am very attached. But my deepest and most secret love belongs to the blond and the blue-eyed, the keenly vivacious, the happy, the amicable, and the ordinary.

“Do not find fault with this love, Lisaweta; it is good and fruitful. There is longing in it, and brooding envy, and just a little disdain, and a very shy happiness.”

I

On a spring afternoon of the year 19⁠—, when our continent lay under such threatening weather for whole months, Gustav Aschenbach, or von Aschenbach as his name read officially after his fiftieth birthday, had left his apartment on the Prinzregentenstrasse in Munich and had gone for a long walk. Overwrought by the trying and precarious work of the forenoon⁠—which had demanded a maximum wariness, prudence, penetration, and rigour of the will⁠—the writer had not been able even after the noon meal to break the impetus of the productive mechanism within him, that motus animi continuus which constitutes, according to Cicero, the foundation of eloquence; and he had not attained the healing sleep which⁠—what with the increasing exhaustion of his strength⁠—he needed in the middle of each day. So he had gone outdoors soon after tea, in the hopes that air and movement would restore him and prepare him for a profitable evening.

It was the beginning of May, and after cold, damp weeks a false midsummer had set in. The English Gardens, although the foliage was still fresh and sparse, were as pungent as in August, and in the parts nearer the city had been full of conveyances and promenaders. At the Aumeister, which he had reached by quieter and quieter paths, Aschenbach had surveyed for a short time the Wirtsgarten with its lively crowds and its border of cabs and carriages. From here, as the sun was sinking, he had started home, outside the park, across the open fields; and since he felt tired and a storm was threatening from the direction of Föhring, he waited at the North Cemetery for the tram which would take him directly back to the city.

It happened that he found no one in the station or its vicinity. There was not a vehicle to be seen, either on the paved Ungererstrasse, with its solitary glistening rails stretching out towards Schwabing, or on the Föhringer Chaussee. Behind the fences of the stonemasons’ establishments, where the crosses, memorial tablets, and monuments standing for sale formed a second, uninhabited burial ground, there was no sign of life; and opposite him the Byzantine structure of the Funeral Hall lay silent in the reflection of the departing day; its façade, ornamented in luminous colours with Greek crosses and hieratic paintings, above which were displayed inscriptions symmetrically arranged in gold letters, and texts chosen to bear on the life beyond; such as, “They enter into the dwelling of the Lord,” or, “The light of eternity shall shine upon them.” And for some time as he stood waiting he found a grave diversion in spelling out the formulas and letting his mind’s eye lose itself in their transparent mysticism, when, returning from his reveries, he noticed in the portico, above the two apocalyptic animals guarding the steps, a man whose somewhat unusual appearance gave his thoughts an entirely new direction.

Whether he had just now come out from the inside through the bronze door, or had approached and mounted from the outside unobserved, remained uncertain. Aschenbach, without applying himself especially to the matter, was inclined to believe the former. Of medium height, thin, smooth-shaven, and noticeably pug-nosed, the man belonged to the red-haired type and possessed the appropriate fresh milky complexion. Obviously, he was not of Bavarian extraction, since at least the white and straight-brimmed straw hat that covered his head gave his appearance the stamp of a foreigner, of someone who had come from a long distance. To be sure, he was wearing the customary knapsack strapped across his shoulders, and a belted suit of rough yellow wool; his left arm was resting on his thigh, and his grey storm cape was thrown across it. In his right hand he held a cane with an iron ferrule, which he had stuck diagonally into the ground, and, with his feet crossed, was leaning his hip against the crook. His head was raised so that the Adam’s-apple protruded hard and bare on a scrawny neck emerging from a loose sport-shirt. And he was staring sharply off into the distance, with colourless, red-lidded eyes between which stood two strong, vertical wrinkles peculiarly suited to his short, turned-up nose. Thus⁠—and perhaps his elevated position helped to give the impression⁠—his bearing had something majestic and commanding about it, something bold, or even savage. For whether he was grimacing because he was blinded by the setting sun, or whether it was a case of a permanent distortion of the physiognomy, his lips seemed too short, they were so completely pulled back from his teeth that these were exposed even to the gums, and stood out white and long.

It is quite possible that Aschenbach, in his half-distracted, half-inquisitive examination of the stranger, had been somewhat inconsiderate, for he suddenly became aware that his look was being answered, and indeed so militantly, so straight in the eye, so plainly with the intention of driving the thing through to the very end and compelling him to capitulate, that he turned away uncomfortably and began walking along by the fences, deciding casually that he would pay no further attention to the man. The next minute he had forgotten him. But perhaps the exotic element in the stranger’s appearance had worked on his imagination; or a new physical or spiritual influence of some sort had come into play. He was quite astonished to note a peculiar inner expansion, a kind of roving unrest, a youthful longing after far-off places: a feeling so vivid, so new, or so long dormant and neglected, that, with his hands behind his back and his eyes on the ground, he came to a sudden stop, and examined into the nature and purport of this emotion.

It was the desire for travel, nothing more; although, to be sure, it had attacked him violently, and was heightened to a passion, even to the point of an hallucination. His yearnings crystallized; his imagination, still in ferment from his hours of work, actually pictured all the marvels and terrors of a manifold world which it was suddenly struggling to conceive. He saw a landscape, a tropical swampland under a heavy, murky sky, damp, luxuriant, and enormous, a kind of prehistoric wilderness of islands, bogs, and arms of water, sluggish with mud; he saw, near him and in the distance, the hairy shafts of palms rising out of a rank lecherous thicket, out of places where the plant-life was fat, swollen, and blossoming exorbitantly; he saw strangely misshapen trees sending their roots into the ground, into stagnant pools with greenish reflections; and here, between floating flowers which were milk-white and large as dishes, birds of a strange nature, high-shouldered, with crooked bills, were standing in the muck, and looking motionlessly to one side; between dense, knotted stalks of bamboo he saw the glint from the eyes of a crouching tiger⁠—and he felt his heart knocking with fear and with puzzling desires. Then the image disappeared; and with a shake of his head Aschenbach resumed his walk along past the fences of the stonemasons’ establishments.

Since the time, at least, when he could command the means to enjoy the advantages of moving about the world as he pleased, he had considered travelling simply as an hygienic precaution which must be complied with now and then despite one’s feelings and one’s preferences. Too busy with the tasks arranged for him by his interest in his own ego and in the problems of Europe, too burdened with the onus of production, too little prone to diversion, and in no sense an amateur of the varied amusements of the great world, he had been thoroughly satisfied with such knowledge of the earth’s surface as anyone can get without moving far out of his own circle; and he had never even been tempted to leave Europe. Especially now that his life was slowly on the decline, and that the artist’s fear of not having finished⁠—this uneasiness lest the clock run down before he had done his part and given himself completely⁠—could no longer be waived aside as a mere whim, he had confined his outer existence almost exclusively to the beautiful city which had become his home and to the rough country house which he had built in the mountains and where he spent the rainy summers.

Further, this thing which had laid hold of him so belatedly, but with such suddenness, was very readily moderated and adjusted by the force of his reason and of a discipline which he had practised since youth. He had intended carrying his life work forward to a certain point before removing to the country. And the thought of knocking about the world for months and neglecting his work during this time, seemed much too lax and contrary to his plans; it really could not be considered seriously. Yet he knew only too well what the reasons were for this unexpected temptation. It was the urge to escape⁠—he admitted to himself⁠—this yearning for the new and the remote, this appetite for freedom, for unburdening, for forgetfulness; it was a pressure away from his work, from the steady drudgery of a coldly passionate service. To be sure, he loved this work and almost loved the enervating battle that was fought daily between a proud tenacious will⁠—so often tested⁠—and this growing weariness which no one was to suspect and which must not betray itself in his productions by any sign of weakness or negligence. But it seemed wise not to draw the bow overtightly, and not to strangle by sheer obstinacy so strongly persistent an appetite. He thought of his work, thought of the place at which yesterday and now again today he had been forced to leave off, and which, it seemed, would yield neither to patience and coaxing nor to a definite attack. He examined it again, trying to break through or to circumvent the deadlock, but he gave up with a shudder of repugnance. There was no unusual difficulty here; what balked him were the scruples of aversion, which took the form of a fastidious insatiability. Even as a young man this insatiability had meant to him the very nature, the fullest essence, of talent; and for that reason he had restrained and chilled his emotions, since he was aware that they incline to content themselves with a happy approximation, a state of semi-completion. Were these enslaved emotions now taking their vengeance on him, by leaving him in the lurch, by refusing to forward and lubricate his art; and were they bearing off with them every enjoyment, every live interest in form and expression?

Not that he was producing anything bad; his years gave him at least this advantage, that he felt himself at all times in full and easy possession of his craftsmanship. But while the nation honoured him for this, he himself was not content; and it seemed to him that his work lacked the marks of that fiery and fluctuating emotionalism which is an enormous thing in one’s favour, and which, while it argues an enjoyment on the part of the author, also constitutes, more than any depth of content, the enjoyment of the amateur. He feared the summer in the country, alone in the little house with the maid who prepared his meals, and the servant who brought them to him. He feared the familiar view of the mountain peaks and the slopes which would stand about him in his boredom and his discontent. Consequently there was need of a break in some new direction. If the summer was to be endurable and productive, he must attempt something out of his usual orbit; he must relax, get a change of air, bring an element of freshness into the blood. To travel, then⁠—that much was settled. Not far, not all the way to the tigers. But one night on the sleeper, and a rest of three or four weeks at some pleasant popular resort in the South.⁠ ⁠…

He thought this out while the noise of the electric tram came nearer along the Ungererstrasse; and as he boarded it he decided to devote the evening to the study of maps and timetables. On the platform it occurred to him to look around for the man in the straw hat, his companion during that most significant time spent waiting at the station. But his whereabouts remained uncertain, as he was not to be seen either at the place where he was formerly standing, or anywhere else in the vicinity of the station, or on the car itself.

II

The author of that lucid and powerful prose epic built around the life of Frederick of Prussia; the tenacious artist who, after long application, wove rich, varied strands of human destiny together under one single predominating theme in the fictional tapestry known as Maya; the creator of that stark tale which is called The Wretch and which pointed out for an entire oncoming generation the possibility of some moral certainty beyond pure knowledge; finally, the writer (and this sums up briefly the works of his mature period) of the impassioned treatise on “Art and the Spirit,” whose capacity for mustering facts, and, further, whose fluency in their presentation, led cautious judges to place this treatise alongside Schiller’s conclusions on naive and sentimental poetry⁠—Gustav Aschenbach, then, was the son of a higher law official, and was born in L⁠⸺, a leading city in the Province of Silesia. His forbears had been officers, magistrates, government functionaries, men who had led severe, steady lives serving their king, their state. A deeper strain of spirituality had been manifest in them once, in the person of a preacher; the preceding generation had brought a brisker, more sensuous blood into the family through the author’s mother, daughter of a Bohemian bandmaster. The traces of foreignness in his features came from her. A marriage of sober painstaking conscientiousness with impulses of a darker, more fiery nature had had an artist as its result, and this particular artist.

Since his whole nature was centred around acquiring a reputation, he showed himself, if not exactly precocious, at least (thanks to the firmness and pithiness of his personality, his accent) ripened and adjusted to the public at an early age. Almost as a schoolboy he had made a name for himself. Within ten years he had learned to face the world through the medium of his writing-table, to discharge the obligations of his fame in a correspondence which (since many claims are pressed on the successful, the trustworthy) had to be brief as well as pleasant and to the point. At forty, wearied by the vicissitudes and the exertion of his own work, he had to manage a daily mail which bore the postmarks of countries in all parts of the world.

Equally removed from the banal and the eccentric, his talents were so constituted as to gain both the confidence of the general public and the stable admiration and sympathy of the critical. Thus even as a young man continually devoted to the pursuit of craftsmanship⁠—and that of no ordinary kind⁠—he had never known the careless freedom of youth. When, around thirty-five years of age, he had been taken ill in Vienna, one sharp observer said of him in company, “You see, Aschenbach has always lived like this,” and the speaker contracted the fingers of his left hand into a fist; “never like this,” and he let his open hand droop comfortably from the arm of his chair. That hit the mark; and the heroic, the ethical about it all was that he was not of a strong constitution, and though he was pledged by his nature to these steady efforts, he was not really born to them.

Considerations of ill-health had kept him from attending school as a boy, and had compelled him to receive instruction at home. He had grown up alone, without comrades⁠—and he was forced to realize soon enough that he belonged to a race which often lacked, not talent, but that physical substructure which talent relies on for its fullest fruition: a race accustomed to giving its best early, and seldom extending its faculties over the years. But his favourite phrase was “carrying through”; in his novel on Frederick he saw the pure apotheosis of this command, which struck him as the essential concept of the virtuous in action and passion. Also, he wished earnestly to grow old, since he had always maintained that the only artistry which can be called truly great, comprehensive⁠—yes, even truly admirable⁠—is that which is permitted to bear fruits characteristic of each stage in human development.

Since he must carry the responsibilities of his talent on frail shoulders, and wanted to go a long way, the primary requirement was discipline⁠—and fortunately discipline was his direct inheritance from his father’s side. By forty, fifty, or at an earlier age when others are still slashing about with enthusiasm, and are contentedly putting off to some later date the execution of plans on a large scale, he would start the day early, dashing cold water over his chest and back, and then with a couple of tall wax candles in silver candlesticks at the head of his manuscript, he would pay out to his art, in two or three eager, scrupulous morning hours, the strength which he had accumulated in sleep. It was pardonable, indeed it was a direct tribute to the effectiveness of his moral scheme, that the uninitiated took his Maya world, and the massive epic machinery upon which the life of the hero Frederick was unrolled, as evidence of long breath and sustaining power. While actually they had been built up layer by layer, in small daily allotments, through hundreds and hundreds of single inspirations. And if they were so excellent in both composition and texture, it was solely because their creator had held out for years under the strain of one single work, with a steadiness of will and a tenacity comparable to that which conquered his native province; and because, finally, he had turned over his most vital and valuable hours to the problem of minute revision.

In order that a significant work of the mind may exert immediately some broad and deep effect, a secret relationship, or even conformity, must exist between the personal destiny of the author and the common destiny of his contemporaries. People do not know why they raise a work of art to fame. Far from being connoisseurs, they believe that they see in it hundreds of virtues which justify so much interest; but the true reason for their applause is an unconscious sympathy. Aschenbach had once stated quite plainly in some remote place that nearly everything great which comes into being does so in spite of something⁠—in spite of sorrow or suffering, poverty, destitution, physical weakness, depravity, passion, or a thousand other handicaps. But that was not merely an observation; it was a discovery, the formula of his life and reputation, the key to his work. And what wonder then that it was also the distinguishing moral trait, the dominating gesture, of his most characteristic figures?

Years before, one shrewd analyst had written of the new hero-type to which this author gave preference, and which kept turning up in variations of one sort or another: he called it the conception of “an intellectual and youthful masculinity” which “stands motionless, haughty, ashamed, with jaw set, while swords and spear-points beset the body.” That was beautiful and ingenious; and it was exact, although it may have seemed to suggest too much passivity. For to be poised against fatality, to meet adverse conditions gracefully, is more than simple endurance; it is an act of aggression, a positive triumph⁠—and the figure of Sebastian is the most beautiful figure, if not of art as a whole, at least of the art of literature. Looking into this fictional world, one saw: a delicate self-mastery by which any inner deterioration, any biological decay was kept concealed from the eyes of the world; a crude, vicious sensuality capable of fanning its rising passions into pure flame, yes, even of mounting to dominance in the realm of beauty; a pallid weakness which draws from the glowing depths of the soul the strength to bow whole arrogant peoples before the foot of the cross, or before the feet of weakness itself; a charming manner maintained in his cold, strict service to form; a false, precarious mode of living, and the keenly enervating melancholy and artifice of the born deceiver⁠—to observe such trials as this was enough to make one question whether there really was any heroism other than weakness. And in any case, what heroism could be more in keeping with the times? Gustav Aschenbach was the one poet among the many workers on the verge of exhaustion: the overburdened, the used-up, the clingers-on, in short all those moralists of production who, delicately built and destitute of means, can rely for a time at least on willpower and the shrewd husbandry of their resources to secure the effects of greatness. There are many such: they are the heroes of the period. And they all found themselves in his works; here they were indeed, upheld, intensified, applauded; they were grateful to him, they acclaimed him.

In his time he had been young and raw; and misled by his age he had blundered in public. He had stumbled, had exposed himself; both in writing and in talk he had offended against caution and tact. But he had acquired the dignity which, as he insisted, is the innate goad and craving of every great talent; in fact, it could be said that his entire development had been a conscious undeviating progression away from the embarrassments of scepticism and irony, and towards dignity.

The general masses are satisfied by vigour and tangibility of treatment rather than by any close intellectual processes; but youth, with its passion for the absolute, can be arrested only by the problematical. And Aschenbach had been absolute, problematical, as only a youth could be. He had been a slave to the intellect, had played havoc with knowledge, had ground up his seed crops, had divulged secrets, had discredited talent, had betrayed art⁠—yes, while his modellings were entertaining the faithful votaries, filling them with enthusiasm, making their lives more keen, this youthful artist was taking the breath away from the generation then in its twenties by his cynicisms on the questionable nature of art, and of artistry itself.

But it seems that nothing blunts the edge of a noble, robust mind more quickly and more thoroughly than the sharp and bitter corrosion of knowledge; and certainly the moody radicalism of the youth, no matter how conscientious, was shallow in comparison with his firm determination as an older man and a master to deny knowledge, to reject it, to pass it with raised head, in so far as it is capable of crippling, discouraging, or degrading to the slightest degree, our will, acts, feelings, or even passions. How else could the famous story of The Wretch be understood than as an outburst of repugnance against the disreputable psychologism of the times: embodied in the figure of that soft and stupid half-clown who pilfers a destiny for himself by guiding his wife (from powerlessness, from lasciviousness, from ethical frailty) into the arms of an adolescent, and believes that he may through profundity commit vileness? The verbal pressure with which he here cast out the outcast announced the return from every moral scepticism, from all fellow-feeling with the engulfed: it was the countermove to the laxity of the sympathetic principle that to understand all is to forgive all⁠—and the thing that was here well begun, even nearly completed, was that “miracle of reborn ingenuousness” which was taken up a little later in one of the author’s dialogues expressly and not without a certain discreet emphasis. Strange coincidences! Was it as a result of this rebirth, this new dignity and sternness, that his feeling for beauty⁠—a discriminating purity, simplicity, and evenness of attack which henceforth gave his productions such an obvious, even such a deliberate stamp of mastery and classicism⁠—showed an almost excessive strengthening about this time? But ethical resoluteness in the exclusion of science, of emancipatory and restrictive knowledge⁠—does this not in turn signify a simplification, a reduction morally of the world to too limited terms, and thus also a strengthened capacity for the forbidden, the evil, the morally impossible? And does not form have two aspects? Is it not moral and unmoral at once⁠—moral in that it is the result and expression of discipline, but unmoral, and even immoral, in that by nature it contains an indifference to morality, is calculated, in fact, to make morality bend beneath its proud and unencumbered sceptre?

Be that as it may. An evolution is a destiny; and why should his evolution, which had been upheld by the general confidence of a vast public, not run through a different course from one accomplished outside the lustre and the entanglements of fame? Only chronic vagabondage will find it tedious and be inclined to scoff when a great talent outgrows the libertine chrysalis-stage, learns to seize upon and express the dignity of the mind, and superimposes a formal etiquette upon a solitude which had been filled with unchastened and rigidly isolated sufferings and struggles and had brought all this to a point of power and honour among men. Further, how much sport, defiance, indulgence there is in the self-formation of a talent! Gradually something official, didactic crept into Gustav Aschenbach’s productions, his style in later life fought shy of any abruptness and boldness, any subtle and unexpected contrasts; he inclined towards the fixed and standardized, the conventionally elegant, the conservative, the formal, the formulated, nearly. And, as is traditionally said of Louis XIV, with the advancing years he came to omit every common word from his vocabulary. At about this time it happened that the educational authorities included selected pages by him in their prescribed school readers. This was deeply sympathetic to his nature, and he did not decline when a German prince who had just mounted to the throne raised the author of the Frederick to nobility on the occasion of his fiftieth birthday. After a few years of unrest, a few tentative stopping-places here and there, he soon chose Munich as his permanent home, and lived there in a state of middle-class respectability such as fits in with the life of the mind in certain individual instances. The marriage which, when still young, he had contracted with a girl of an educated family came to an end with her death after a short period of happiness. He was left with a daughter, now married. He had never had a son.

Gustav von Aschenbach was somewhat below average height, dark, and smooth-shaven. His head seemed a bit too large in comparison with his almost dapper figure. His hair was brushed straight back, thinning out towards the crown, but very full about the temples, and strongly marked with grey; it framed a high, ridged forehead. Gold spectacles with rimless lenses cut into the bridge of his bold, heavy nose. The mouth was big, sometimes drooping, sometimes suddenly pinched and firm. His cheeks were thin and wrinkled, his well-formed chin had a slight cleft. This head, usually bent patiently to one side, seemed to have gone through momentous experiences, and yet it was his art which had produced those effects in his face, effects which are elsewhere the result of hard and agitated living. Behind this brow the brilliant repartee of the dialogue on war between Voltaire and the king had been born; these eyes, peering steadily and wearily from behind their glasses, had seen the bloody inferno of the lazaret in the Seven Years’ War. Even as it applies to the individual, art is a heightened mode of existence. It gives deeper pleasures, it consumes more quickly. It carves into its servants’ faces the marks of imaginary and spiritual adventures, and though their external activities may be as quiet as a cloister, it produces a lasting voluptuousness, overrefinement, fatigue, and curiosity of the nerves such as can barely result from a life filled with illicit passions and enjoyments.

III

Various matters of a literary and social nature delayed his departure until about two weeks after that walk in Munich. Finally he gave orders to have his country house ready for occupancy within a month; and one day between the middle and the end of May he took the night train for Trieste, where he made a stopover of only twenty-four hours, and embarked the following morning for Pola.

What he was hunting was something foreign and unrelated to himself which would at the same time be quickly within reach; and so he stopped at an island in the Adriatic which had become well-known in recent years. It lay not far off the Istrian coast, with beautifully rugged cliffs fronting the open sea, and natives who dressed in variegated tatters and made strange sounds when they spoke. But rain and a heavy atmosphere, a provincial and exclusively Austrian patronage at the hotel, and the lack of that restfully intimate association with the sea which can be gotten only by a soft, sandy beach, irritated him, and prevented him from feeling that he had found the place he was looking for. Something within was disturbing him, and drawing him he was not sure where. He studied sailing dates, he looked about him questioningly, and of a sudden, as a thing both astounding and self-evident, his goal was before him. If you wanted to reach over night the unique, the fabulously different, where did you go? But that was plain. What was he doing here? He had lost the trail. He had wanted to go there. He did not delay in giving notice of his mistake in stopping here. In the early morning mist, a week and a half after his arrival on the island, a fast motorboat was carrying him and his luggage back over the water to the naval port, and he landed there just long enough to cross the gangplank to the damp deck of a ship which was lying under steam ready for the voyage to Venice.

It was an old hulk flying the Italian flag, decrepit, sooty, and mournful. In a cave-like, artificially lighted inside cabin where Aschenbach, immediately upon boarding the ship, was conducted by a dirty hunchbacked sailor who smirked politely, there was sitting behind a table, his hat cocked over his forehead and a cigarette stump in the corner of his mouth, a man with a goatee, and with the face of an old-style circus director, who was taking down the particulars of the passengers with professional grimaces and distributing the tickets. “To Venice!” he repeated Aschenbach’s request, as he extended his arm and plunged his pen into the pasty dregs of a precariously tilted inkwell. “To Venice, first class! At your service, sir.” And he wrote a generous scrawl, sprinkled it with blue sand out of a box, let the sand run off into a clay bowl, folded the paper with sallow, bony fingers, and began writing again. “A happily chosen destination!” he chatted on. “Ah, Venice! A splendid city! A city of irresistible attractiveness for the educated on account of its history as well as its present-day charms!” The smooth rapidity of his movements and the empty words accompanying them had something anaesthetic and reassuring about them, much as though he feared lest the traveller might still be vacillating in his decision to go to Venice. He handled the cash briskly, and let the change fall on the spotted table-cover with the skill of a croupier. “A pleasant journey, sir!” he said with a theatrical bow. “Gentlemen, I have the honour of serving you!” he called out immediately after, with his arm upraised, and he acted as if business were in full swing, although no one else was there to require his attention. Aschenbach returned to the deck.

With one arm on the railing, he watched the passengers on board and the idlers who loitered around the dock waiting for the ship to sail. The second class passengers, men and women, were huddled together on the foredeck, using boxes and bundles as seats. A group of young people made up the travellers on the first deck, clerks from Pola, it seemed, who had gathered in the greatest excitement for an excursion to Italy. They made a considerable fuss about themselves and their enterprise, chattered, laughed, enjoyed their own antics self-contentedly, and, leaning over the handrails, shouted flippantly and mockingly at their comrades who, with portfolios under their arms, were going up and down the waterfront on business and kept threatening the picnickers with their canes. One, in a bright yellow summer suit of ultra-fashionable cut, with a red necktie, and a rakishly tilted panama, surpassed all the others in his crowing good humour. But as soon as Aschenbach looked at him a bit more carefully, he discovered with a kind of horror that the youth was a cheat. He was old, that was unquestionable. There were wrinkles around his eyes and mouth. The faint crimson of the cheeks was paint, the hair under his brilliantly decorated straw hat was a wig; his neck was hollow and stringy, his turned-up moustache and the imperial on his chin were dyed; the full set of yellow teeth which he displayed when he laughed, a cheap artificial plate; and his hands, with signet rings on both index fingers, were those of an old man. Fascinated with loathing, Aschenbach watched him in his intercourse with his friends. Did they not know, did they not observe that he was old, that he was not entitled to wear their bright, foppish clothing, that he was not entitled to play at being one of them? Unquestioningly, and as quite the usual thing, it seemed, they allowed him among them, treating him as one of their own kind and returning his jovial nudges in the ribs without repugnance. How could that be? Aschenbach laid his hand on his forehead and closed his eyes; they were hot, since he had had too little sleep. He felt as though everything were not quite the same as usual, as though some dreamlike estrangement, some peculiar distortion of the world, were beginning to take possession of him, and perhaps this could be stopped if he hid his face for a time and then looked around him again. Yet at this moment he felt as though he were swimming; and looking up with an unreasoned fear, he discovered that the heavy, lugubrious body of the ship was separating slowly from the walled bank. Inch by inch, with the driving and reversing of the engine, the strip of dirty glistening water widened between the dock and the side of the ship; and after cumbersome manoeuvring, the steamer finally turned its nose towards the open sea. Aschenbach crossed to the starboard side, where the hunchback had set up a deck-chair for him, and a steward in a spotted dress-coat asked after his wants.

The sky was grey, the wind damp. Harbour and islands had been left behind, and soon all land was lost in the haze. Flakes of coal dust, bloated with moisture, fell over the washed deck, which would not dry. After the first hour an awning was spread, since it had begun to rain.

Bundled up in his coat, a book in his lap, the traveller rested, and the hours passed unnoticed. It stopped raining; the canvas awning was removed. The horizon was unbroken. The sea, empty, like an enormous disk, lay stretched under the curve of the sky. But in empty inarticulate space our senses lose also the dimensions of time, and we slip into the incommensurate. As he rested, strange shadowy figures, the old dandy, the goatee from the inside cabin, passed through his mind, with vague gestures, muddled dream-words⁠—and he was asleep.

About noon he was called to a meal down in the corridor-like dining-hall into which the doors opened from the sleeping-cabins; he ate near the head of a long table, at the other end of which the clerks including the old man had been drinking with the boisterous captain since ten o’clock. The food was poor, and he finished rapidly. He felt driven outside to look at the sky, to see if it showed signs of being brighter above Venice.

He had kept thinking that this had to occur, since the city had always received him in full blaze. But sky and sea remained dreary and leaden, at times a misty rain fell, and here he was reaching by water a different Venice than he had ever found when approaching on land. He stood by the forestays, looking in the distance, waiting for land. He thought of the heavyhearted, enthusiastic poet for whom the domes and bell towers of his dreams had once risen out of these waters; he relived in silence some of that reverence, happiness, and sorrow which had been turned then into cautious song; and easily susceptible to sensations already moulded, he asked himself wearily and earnestly whether some new enchantment and distraction, some belated adventure of the emotions, might still be held in store for this idle traveller.

Then the flat coast emerged on the right; the sea was alive with fishing smacks; the bathers’ island appeared; it dropped behind to the left, the steamer slowly entered the narrow port which is named after it; and on the lagoon, facing gay ramshackle houses, it stopped completely, since it had to wait for the barque of the health department.

An hour passed before it appeared. He had arrived, and yet he had not; no one was in any hurry, no one was driven by impatience. The young men from Pola, patriotically attracted by the military bugle calls which rang over the water from the vicinity of the public gardens, had come on deck, and warmed by their Asti, they burst out with cheers for the drilling bersagliere. But it was repulsive to see what a state the primped-up old man had been brought to by his comradeship with youth. His old head was not able to resist its wine like the young and robust: he was painfully drunk. With glazed eyes, a cigarette between his trembling fingers, he stood in one place, swaying backwards and forwards from giddiness, and balancing himself laboriously. Since he would have fallen at the first step, he did not trust himself from the spot⁠—yet he showed a deplorable insolence, buttonholed everyone who came near him, stammered, winked, and tittered, lifted his wrinkled, ornamented index finger in a stupid attempt at bantering, while he licked the corers of his mouth with his tongue in the most abominably suggestive manner. Aschenbach observed him darkly, and a feeling of numbness came over him again, as though the world were displaying a faint but irresistible tendency to distort itself into the peculiar and the grotesque: a feeling which circumstances prevented him from surrendering himself to completely, for just then the pounding activity of the engines commenced again, and the ship, resuming a voyage which had been interrupted so near its completion, passed through the San Marco canal.

So he saw it again, the most remarkable of landing places, that blinding composition of fantastic buildings which the Republic lays out before the eyes of approaching seafarers: the soft splendour of the palace, the Bridge of Sighs, on the bank the columns with lion and saint, the advancing, showy flank of the enchanted temple, the glimpse through to the archway, and the huge giant clock. And as he looked on he thought that to reach Venice by land, on the railroad, was like entering a palace from the rear, and that the most unreal of cities should not be approached except as he was now doing, by ship, over the high seas.

The engine stopped, gondolas pressed in, the gangway was let down, customs officials climbed on board and discharged their duties perfunctorily; the disembarking could begin. Aschenbach made it understood that he wanted a gondola to take him and his luggage to the dock of those little steamers which ply between the city and the Lido, since he intended to locate near the sea. His plans were complied with, his wants were shouted down to the water, where the gondoliers were wrangling with one another in dialect. He was still hindered from descending; he was hindered by his trunk, which was being pulled and dragged with difficulty down the ladder-like steps. So that for some minutes he was not able to avoid the importunities of the atrocious old man, whose drunkenness gave him a sinister desire to do the foreigner parting honours. “We wish you a very agreeable visit,” he bleated as he made an awkward bow. “We leave with pleasant recollections! Au revoir, excusez, and bonjour, your excellency!” His mouth watered, he pressed his eyes shut, he licked the corners of his mouth, and the dyed imperial turned up about his senile lips. “Our compliments,” he mumbled, with two fingertips on his mouth, “our compliments to our sweetheart, the dearest prettiest sweetheart⁠ ⁠…” And suddenly his false upper teeth fell down on his lower lip. Aschenbach was able to escape. “To our sweetheart, our handsome sweetheart,” he heard the cooing, hollow, stuttering voice behind him, while supporting himself against the handrail, he went down the gangway.

Who would not have to suppress a fleeting shudder, a vague timidity and uneasiness, if it were a matter of boarding a Venetian gondola for the first time or after several years? The strange craft, an entirely unaltered survival from the times of balladry, with that peculiar blackness which is found elsewhere only in coffins⁠—it suggests silent, criminal adventures in the rippling night, it suggests even more strongly death itself, the bier and the mournful funeral, and the last silent journey. And has it been observed that the seat of such a barque, this armchair of coffin-black veneer and dull black upholstery, is the softest, most luxuriant, most lulling seat in the world? Aschenbach noted this when he had relaxed at the feet of the gondolier, opposite his luggage, which lay neatly assembled on the prow. The rowers were still wrangling, harshly, incomprehensibly, with threatening gestures. But the strange silence of this canal city seemed to soften their voices, to disembody them, and dissipate them over the water. It was warm here in the harbour. Touched faintly by the warm breeze of the sirocco, leaning back against the limber portions of the cushions, the traveller closed his eyes in the enjoyment of a lassitude which was as unusual with him as it was sweet. The trip would be short, he thought; if only it went on forever! He felt himself glide with a gentle motion away from the crowd and the confusion of voices.

It became quieter and quieter around him! There was nothing to be heard but the splashing of the oar, the hollow slapping of the waves against the prow of the boat as it stood above the water black and bold and armed with its halberd-like tip, and a third sound, of speaking, of whispering⁠—the whispering of the gondolier, who was talking to himself between his teeth, fitfully, in words that were pressed out by the exertion of his arms. Aschenbach looked up, and was slightly astonished to discover that the lagoon was widening, and he was headed for the open sea. This seemed to indicate that he ought not to rest too much, but should see to it that his wishes were carried out.

“To the steamer dock!” he repeated, turning around completely and looking into the face of the gondolier who stood behind on a raised platform and towered up between him and the dun-coloured sky. He was a man of unpleasant, even brutal, appearance, dressed in sailor blue, with a yellow sash; a formless straw hat, its weave partially unravelled, was tilted insolently on his head. The set of his face, the blond curly moustache beneath a curtly turned-up nose, undoubtedly meant that he was not Italian. Although of somewhat frail build, so that one would not have thought him especially well suited to his trade, he handled the oar with great energy, throwing his entire body into each stroke. Occasionally, he drew back his lips from the exertion, and disclosed his white teeth. Wrinkling his reddish brows, he gazed on past his passenger, as he answered deliberately, almost gruffly: “You are going to the Lido.” Aschenbach replied: “Of course. But I have just taken the gondola to get me across to San Marco. I want to use the vaporetto.”

“You cannot use the vaporetto, sir.”

“And why not?”

“Because the vaporetto will not haul luggage.”

That was so; Aschenbach remembered. He was silent. But the fellow’s harsh, presumptuous manner, so unusual towards a foreigner here, seemed unbearable. He said: “That is my affair. Perhaps I want to put my things in storage. You will turn back.”

There was silence. The oar splashed, the water thudded against the bow. And the talking and whispering began again. The gondolier was talking to himself between his teeth.

What was to be done? This man was strangely insolent, and had an uncanny decisiveness; the traveller, alone with him on the water, saw no way of getting what he wanted. And besides, how softly he could rest, if only he did not become excited! Hadn’t he wanted the trip to go on and on forever? It was wisest to let things take their course, and the main thing was that he was comfortable. The poison of inertia seemed to be issuing from the seat, from this low, black-upholstered armchair, so gently cradled by the oar strokes of the imperious gondolier behind him. The notion that he had fallen into the hands of a criminal passed dreamily across Aschenbach’s mind⁠—without the ability to summon his thoughts to an active defence. The possibility that it was all simply a plan for cheating him seemed more abhorrent. A feeling of duty or pride, a kind of recollection that one should prevent such things, gave him the strength to arouse himself once more. He asked: “What are you asking for the trip?”

Looking down upon him, the gondolier answered: “You will pay.”

It was plain how this should be answered. Aschenbach said mechanically: “I shall pay nothing, absolutely nothing, if you don’t take me where I want to go.”

“You want to go to the Lido.”

“But not with you.”

“I am rowing you well.”

That is so, Aschenbach thought, and relaxed. That is so; you are rowing me well. Even if you do have designs on my cash, and send me down to Pluto with a blow of your oar from behind, you will have rowed me well.

But nothing like that happened. They were even joined by others: a boatload of musical brigands, men and women, who sang to guitar and mandolin, riding persistently side by side with the gondola and filling the silence over the water with their covetous foreign poetry. A hat was held out, and Aschenbach threw in money. Then they stopped singing, and rowed away. And again the muttering of the gondolier could be heard as he talked fitfully and jerkily to himself.

So they arrived, tossed in the wake of a steamer plying towards the city. Two municipal officers, their hands behind their backs, their faces turned in the direction of the lagoon, were walking back and forth on the bank. Aschenbach left the gondola at the dock, supported by that old man who is stationed with his grappling hook at each one of Venice’s landing-places. And since he had no small money, he crossed over to the hotel by the steamer wharf to get change and pay the rower what was due him. He got what he wanted in the lobby, he returned and found his travelling bags in a cart on the dock, and gondola and gondolier had vanished.

“He got out in a hurry,” said the old man with the grappling hook. “A bad man, a man without a license, sir. He is the only gondolier who doesn’t have a license. The others telephoned here.”

Aschenbach shrugged his shoulders.

“The gentleman rode for nothing,” the old man said, and held out his hat. Aschenbach tossed in a coin. He gave instructions to have his luggage taken to the beach hotel, and followed the cart through the avenue, the white-blossomed avenue which, lined on both sides with taverns, shops, and boarding houses, runs across the island to the shore.

He entered the spacious hotel from the rear, by the terraced garden, and passed through the vestibule and the lobby until he reached the desk. Since he had been announced, he was received with obliging promptness. A manager, a small frail flatteringly polite man with a black moustache and a French style frock coat, accompanied him to the third floor in the lift, and showed him his room, an agreeable place furnished in cherry wood. It was decorated with strong-smelling flowers, and its high windows afforded a view out across the open sea. He stepped up to one of them after the employee had left; and while his luggage was being brought up and placed in the room behind him, he looked down on the beach (it was comparatively deserted in the afternoon) and on the sunless ocean which was at flood tide and was sending long low waves against the bank in a calm regular rhythm.

The experiences of a man who lives alone and in silence are both vaguer and more penetrating than those of people in society; his thoughts are heavier, more odd, and touched always with melancholy. Images and observations which could easily be disposed of by a glance, a smile, an exchange of opinion, will occupy him unbearably, sink deep into the silence, become full of meaning, become life, adventure, emotion. Loneliness ripens the eccentric, the daringly and estrangingly beautiful, the poetic. But loneliness also ripens the perverse, the disproportionate, the absurd, and the illicit.⁠—So, the things he had met with on the trip, the ugly old fop with his twaddle about sweethearts, the lawbreaking gondolier who was cheated of his pay, still left the traveller uneasy. Without really providing any resistance to the mind, without offering any solid stuff to think over, they were nevertheless profoundly strange, as it seemed to him, and disturbing precisely because of this contradiction. In the meanwhile, he greeted the sea with his eyes, and felt pleasure at the knowledge that Venice was so conveniently near. Finally he turned away, bathed his face, left orders to the chambermaid for a few things he still needed done to make his comfort complete, and let himself be taken to the ground floor by the green-uniformed Swiss who operated the lift.

He took his tea on the terrace facing the ocean, then descended and followed the boardwalk for quite a way in the direction of the Hotel Excelsior. When he returned it seemed time to dress for dinner. He did this with his usual care and slowness, since he was accustomed to working over his toilette. And yet he came down a little early to the lobby where he found a great many of the hotel guests assembled, mixing distantly and with a show of mutual indifference to one another, but all waiting for meal time. He took a paper from the table, dropped into a leather chair, and observed the company; they differed agreeably from the guests where he had first stopped.

A wide and tolerantly inclusive horizon was spread out before him. Sounds of all the principal languages formed a subdued murmur. The accepted evening dress, a uniform of good manners, brought all human varieties into a fitting unity. There were Americans with their long wry features, large Russian families, English ladies, German children with French nurses. The Slavic element seemed to predominate. Polish was being spoken nearby.

It was a group of children gathered around a little wicker table, under the protection of a teacher or governess: three young girls, apparently fifteen to seventeen, and a long-haired boy about fourteen years old. With astonishment Aschenbach noted that the boy was absolutely beautiful. His face, pale and reserved, framed with honey-coloured hair, the straight sloping nose, the lovely mouth, the expression of sweet and godlike seriousness, recalled Greek sculpture of the noblest period; and the complete purity of the forms was accompanied by such a rare personal charm that, as he watched, he felt that he had never met with anything equally felicitous in nature or the plastic arts. He was further struck by the obviously intentional contrast with the principles of upbringing which showed in the sisters’ attire and bearing. The three girls, the eldest of whom could be considered grown up, were dressed with a chasteness and severity bordering on disfigurement. Uniformly cloister-like costumes, of medium length, slate-coloured, sober, and deliberately unbecoming in cut, with white turned-down collars as the only relief, suppressed every possible appeal of shapeliness. Their hair, brushed down flat and tight against the head, gave their faces a nunlike emptiness and lack of character. Surely this was a mother’s influence, and it had not even occurred to her to apply the pedagogical strictness to the boy which she seemed to find necessary for her girls. It was clear that in his existence the first factors were gentleness and tenderness. The shears had been resolutely kept from his beautiful hair; like a Prince Charming’s, it fell in curls over his forehead, his ears, and still deeper, across his neck. The English sailor suit, with its braids, stitchings, and embroideries, its puffy sleeves narrowing at the ends and fitting snugly about the fine wrists of his still childish but slender hands, gave the delicate figure something rich and luxurious. He was sitting, half profile to the observer, one foot in its black patent-leather shoe placed before the other, an elbow resting on the arm of his wicker chair, a cheek pressed against his fist, in a position of negligent good manners, entirely free of the almost subservient stiffness to which his sisters seemed accustomed. Did he have some illness? For his skin stood out as white as ivory against the golden darkness of the surrounding curls. Or was he simply a pampered favourite child, made this way by a doting and moody love? Aschenbach inclined to believe the latter. Almost every artist is born with a rich and treacherous tendency to recognize injustices which have created beauty, and to meet aristocratic distinction with sympathy and reverence.

A waiter passed through and announced in English that the meal was ready. Gradually the guests disappeared through the glass door into the dining hall. Stragglers crossed, coming from the entrance, or the lifts. Inside, they had already begun serving, but the young Poles were still waiting around the little wicker table; and Aschenbach, comfortably propped in his deep chair, and with this beauty before his eyes, stayed with them.

The governess, a small corpulent middle-class woman with a red face, finally gave the sign to rise. With lifted brows, she pushed back her chair and bowed, as a large woman dressed in grey and richly jewelled with pearls entered the lobby. This woman was advancing with coolness and precision; her lightly powdered hair and the lines of her dress were arranged with the simplicity which always signifies taste in those quarters where devoutness is taken as one element of dignity. She might have been the wife of some high German official. Except that her jewellery added something fantastically lavish to her appearance; indeed, it was almost priceless, and consisted of ear pendants and a very long triple chain of softly glowing pearls, as large as cherries.

The children had risen promptly. They bent over to kiss the hand of their mother who, with a distant smile on her well-preserved though somewhat tired and peaked features, looked over their heads and directed a few words to the governess in French. Then she walked to the glass door. The children followed her: the girls in the order of their age, after them the governess, the boy last. For some reason or other he turned around before crossing the sill, and since no one else was in the lobby his strange dusky eyes met those of Aschenbach who, his newspaper on his knees, lost in thought, was gazing after the group.

What he saw had not been unusual in the slightest detail. They had not preceded the mother to the table; they had waited, greeted her with respect, and observed the customary forms on entering the room. But it had taken place so pointedly, with such an accent of training, duty, and self-respect, that Aschenbach felt peculiarly touched by it all. He delayed for a few moments, then he too crossed into the dining-room, and was assigned to his table, which, as he noted with a brief touch of regret, was very far removed from that of the Polish family.

Weary, and yet intellectually active, he entertained himself during the lengthy meal with abstract, or even transcendental things; he thought over the secret union which the lawful must enter upon with the individual for human beauty to result, from this he passed into general problems of form and art, and at the end he found that his thoughts and discoveries were like the seemingly felicitous promptings of a dream which, when the mind is sobered, are seen to be completely empty and unfit. After the meal, smoking, sitting, taking an occasional turn in the park with its smell of nightfall, he went to bed early and spent the night in a sleep deep and unbroken, but often enlivened with the apparitions of dreams.

The weather did not improve any the following day. A land breeze was blowing. Under a cloudy ashen sky, the sea lay in dull peacefulness; it seemed shrivelled up, with a close dreary horizon, and it had retreated from the beach, baring the long ribs of several sandbanks. As Aschenbach opened his window he thought that he could detect the foul smell of the lagoon.

He felt depressed. He thought already of leaving. Once, years ago, after several weeks of spring here, this same weather had afflicted him, and impaired his health so seriously that he had to abandon Venice like a fugitive. Was not this old feverish unrest again setting in, the pressure in the temples, the heaviness of the eyelids? It would be annoying to change his residence still another time; but if the wind did not turn, he could not stay here. To be safe, he did not unpack completely. He breakfasted at nine in the buffet-room provided for this purpose between the lobby and the dining-room.

That formal silence reigned here which is the ambition of large hotels. The waiters who were serving walked about on soft soles. Nothing was audible but the tinkling of the tea-things, a word half-whispered. In one corner, obliquely across from the door, and two tables removed from his own, Aschenbach observed the Polish girls with their governess. Erect and red-eyed, their ash-blond hair freshly smoothed down, dressed in stiff blue linen with little white cuffs and turned-down collars⁠—they were sitting there, handing around a glass of marmalade. They had almost finished their breakfast. The boy was missing.

Aschenbach smiled. “Well, little Phaeacian!” he thought. “You seem to be enjoying the pleasant privilege of having your sleep out.” And suddenly exhilarated, he recited to himself the line: “A frequent change of dress; warm baths, and rest.”

He breakfasted without haste. From the porter, who entered the hall holding his braided cap in his hand, he received some forwarded mail; and while he smoked a cigarette he opened a few letters. In this way it happened that he was present at the entrance of the late sleeper who was being waited for over yonder.

He came through the glass door and crossed the room in silence to his sisters’ table. His approach⁠—the way he held the upper part of his body, and bent his knees, the movement of his white-shod feet⁠—had an extraordinary charm; he walked very lightly, at once timid and proud, and this became still more lovely through the childish embarrassment with which, twice as he proceeded, he turned his face towards the centre of the room, raising and lowering his eyes. Smiling, with something half-muttered in his soft vague tongue, he took his place; and now, as he turned his full profile to the observer, Aschenbach was again astonished, terrified even, by the really godlike beauty of this human child. Today the boy was wearing a light blouse of blue and white striped cotton goods, with a red silk tie in front, and closed at the neck by a plain white high collar. This collar lacked the distinctiveness of the blouse, but above it the flowering head was poised with an incomparable seductiveness⁠—the head of an Eros, in blended yellows of Parian marble, with fine serious brows, the temples and ears covered softly by the abrupt encroachment of his curls.

“Good, good!” Aschenbach thought, with that deliberate expert appraisal which artists sometimes employ as a subterfuge when they have been carried away with delight before a masterwork. And he thought further: “Really, if the sea and the beach weren’t waiting for me, I should stay here as long as you stayed!” But he went then, passed through the lobby under the inspection of the servants, down the wide terrace, and straight across the boardwalk to the section of the beach reserved for the hotel guests. The barefoot old man in dungarees and straw hat who was functioning here as bathing master assigned him to the bath house he had rented; a table and a seat were placed on the sandy board platform, and he made himself comfortable in the lounge chair which he had drawn closer to the sea, out into the waxen yellow sand.

More than ever before he was entertained and amused by the sights on the beach, this spectacle of carefree, civilized people getting sensuous enjoyment at the very edge of the elements. The grey flat sea was already alive with wading children, swimmers, a motley of figures lying on the sandbanks with arms bent behind their heads. Others were rowing about in little red and blue striped boats without keels; they were continually upsetting, amid laughter. Before the long stretches of bathing houses, where people were sitting on the platforms as though on small verandahs, there was a play of movement against the line of rest and inertness behind⁠—visits and chatter, fastidious morning elegance alongside the nakedness which, boldly at ease, was enjoying the freedom which the place afforded. Further in front, on the damp firm sand, people were parading about in white bathing cloaks, in ample, brilliantly coloured wrappers. An elaborate sand pile to the right, erected by children, had flags in the colours of all nations planted around it. Venders of shells, cakes, and fruit spread out their wares, kneeling. To the left, before one of the bathing houses which stood at right angles to the others and to the sea, a Russian family was encamped: men with beards and large teeth, slow delicate women, a Baltic girl sitting by an easel and painting the sea amidst exclamations of despair, two ugly good-natured children, an old maidservant who wore a kerchief on her head and had the alert scraping manners of a slave. Delighted and appreciative, they were living there, patiently calling the names of the two rowdy disobedient children, using their scanty Italian to joke with the humorous old man from whom they were buying candy, kissing one another on the cheek, and not in the least concerned with anyone who might be observing their community.

“Yes, I shall stay,” Aschenbach thought. “Where would things be better?” And his hands folded in his lap, he let his eyes lose themselves in the expanses of the sea, his gaze gliding, swimming, and failing in the monotone mist of the wilderness of space. He loved the ocean for deep-seated reasons: because of that yearning for rest, when the hard-pressed artist hungers to shut out the exacting multiplicities of experience and hide himself on the breast of the simple, the vast; and because of a forbidden hankering⁠—seductive, by virtue of its being directly opposed to his obligations⁠—after the incommunicable, the incommensurate, the eternal, the nonexistent. To be at rest in the face of perfection is the hunger of everyone who is aiming at excellence; and what is the nonexistent but a form of perfection? But now, just as his dreams were so far out in vacancy, suddenly the horizontal fringe of the sea was broken by a human figure; and as he brought his eyes back from the unbounded, and focused them, it was the lovely boy who was there, coming from the left and passing him on the sand. He was barefooted, ready for wading, his slender legs exposed above the knees; he walked slowly, but as lightly and proudly as though it were the customary thing for him to move about without shoes; and he was looking around him towards the line of bathing houses opposite. But as soon as he had noticed the Russian family, occupied with their own harmony and contentment, a cloud of scorn and detestation passed over his face. His brow darkened, his mouth was compressed, he gave his lips an embittered twist to one side so that the cheek was distorted, and the forehead became so heavily furrowed that the eyes seemed sunken beneath its pressure: malicious and glowering, they spoke the language of hate. He looked down, looked back once more threateningly, then with his shoulder made an abrupt gesture of disdain and dismissal, and left the enemy behind him.

A kind of pudency or confusion, something like respect and shyness, caused Aschenbach to turn away as though he had seen nothing. For the earnest-minded who have been casual observers of some passion, struggle against making use, even to themselves, of what they have seen. But he was both cheered and unstrung⁠—which is to say, he was happy. This childish fanaticism, directed against the most good-natured possible aspect of life⁠—it brought the divinely arbitrary into human relationships; it made a delightful natural picture which had appealed only to the eye now seem worthy of a deeper sympathy; and it gave the figure of this half-grown boy, who had already been important enough by his sheer beauty, something to offset him still further, and to make one take him more seriously than his years justified. Still looking away, Aschenbach could hear the boy’s voice, the shrill, somewhat weak voice with which, in the distance now, he was trying to call hello to his playfellows busied around the sand pile. They answered him, shouting back his name, or some affectionate nickname; and Aschenbach listened with a certain curiosity, without being able to catch anything more definite than two melodic syllables like “Adgio,” or still more frequently “Adgiu,” with a ringing u-sound prolonged at the end. He was pleased with the resonance of this; he found it adequate to the subject. He repeated it silently and, satisfied, turned to his letters and manuscripts.

His small portable writing-desk on his knees he began writing with his fountain pen an answer to this or that bit of correspondence. But after the first fifteen minutes he found it a pity to abandon the situation⁠—the most enjoyable he could think of⁠—in this manner and waste it in activities which did not interest him. He tossed the writing materials to one side, and he faced the ocean again; soon afterwards, diverted by the childish voices around the sand heap, he revolved his head comfortably along the back of the chair towards the right, to discover where that excellent little Adgio might be and what he was doing.

He was found at a glance; the red tie on his breast was not to be overlooked. Busied with the others in laying an old plank across the damp moat of the sand castle, he was nodding, and shouting instructions for this work. There were about ten companions with him, boys and girls of his age, and a few younger ones who were chattering with one another in Polish, French, and in several Balkan tongues. But it was his name which rang out most often. He was openly in demand, sought after, admired. One boy especially, like him a Pole, a stocky fellow who was called something like “Jaschu,” with sleek black hair and a belted linen coat, seemed to be his closest vassal and friend. When the work on the sand structure was finished for the time being, they walked arm-in-arm along the beach, and the boy who was called “Jaschu” kissed the beauty.

Aschenbach was half minded to raise a warning finger. “I advise you, Cristobulus,” he thought, smiling, “to travel for a year! For you need that much time at least to get over it.” And then he breakfasted on large ripe strawberries which he got from a peddler. It had become very warm, although the sun could no longer penetrate the blanket of mist in the sky. Laziness clogged his brain, even while his senses delighted in the numbing, drugging distractions of the ocean’s stillness. To guess, to puzzle out just what name it was that sounded something like “Adgio,” seemed to the sober man an appropriate ambition, a thoroughly comprehensive pursuit. And with the aid of a few scrappy recollections of Polish he decided that they must mean “Tadzio,” the shortened form of “Tadeusz,” and sounding like “Tadziu” when it is called.

Tadzio was bathing. Aschenbach, who had lost sight of him, spied his head and the arm with which he was propelling himself, far out in the water; for the sea must have been smooth for a long distance out. But already people seemed worried about him; women’s voices were calling after him from the bathing houses, uttering this name again and again. It almost dominated the beach like a battle-cry, and with its soft consonants, its long drawn u-note at the end, it had something at once sweet and wild about it: “Tadziu! Tadziu!” He turned back; beating the resistent water into a foam with his legs he hurried, his head bent down over the waves. And to see how this living figure, graceful and clean-cut in its advance, with dripping curls, and lovely as some frail god, came up out of the depths of sky and sea, rose and separated from the elements⁠—this spectacle aroused a sense of myth, it was like some poet’s recovery of time at its beginning, of the origin of forms and the birth of gods. Aschenbach listened with closed eyes to this song ringing within him, and he thought again that it was pleasant here, and that he would like to remain.

Later Tadzio was resting from his bath; he lay in the sand, wrapped in his white robe, which was drawn under the right shoulder, his head supported on his bare arm. And even when Aschenbach was not observing him, but was reading a few pages in his book, he hardly ever forgot that this boy was lying there and that it would cost him only a slight turn of his head to the right to behold the mystery. It seemed that he was sitting here just to keep watch over his repose⁠—busied with his own concerns, and yet constantly aware of this noble picture at his right, not far in the distance. And he was stirred by a paternal affection, the profound leaning which those who have devoted their thoughts to the creation of beauty feel towards those who possess beauty itself.

A little past noon he left the beach, returned to the hotel, and was taken up to his room. He stayed there for some time in front of the mirror, looking at his grey hair, his tired sharp features. At this moment he thought of his reputation, and of the fact that he was often recognized on the streets and observed with respect, thanks to the sure aim and the appealing finish of his words. He called up all the exterior successes of his talent which he could think of, remembering also his elevation to the knighthood. Then he went down to the dining-hall for lunch, and ate at his little table. As he was riding up in the lift, after the meal was ended, a group of young people just coming from breakfast pressed into the swaying cage after him, and Tadzio entered too. He stood quite near to Aschenbach, for the first time so near that Aschenbach could see him, not with the aloofness of a picture, but in minute detail, in all his human particularities. The boy was addressed by someone or other, and as he was answering with an indescribably agreeable smile he stepped out again, on the second floor, walking backwards, and with his eyes lowered. “Beauty makes modest,” Aschenbach thought, and he tried insistently to explain why this was so. But he had noticed that Tadzio’s teeth were not all they should be; they were somewhat jagged and pale. The enamel did not look healthy; it had a peculiar brittleness and transparency, as is often the case with anaemics. “He is very frail, he is sickly,” Aschenbach thought. “In all probability he will not grow old.” And he refused to reckon with the feeling of gratification or reassurance which accompanied this notion.

He spent two hours in his room, and in the afternoon he rode in the vaporetto across the foul-smelling lagoon to Venice. He got off at San Marco, took tea on the Piazza, and then, in accord with his schedule for the day, he went for a walk through the streets. Yet it was this walk which produced a complete reversal in his attitudes and his plans.

An offensive sultriness lay over the streets. The air was so heavy that the smells pouring out of homes, stores, and eating houses became mixed with oil, vapours, clouds of perfume, and still other odours⁠—and these would not blow away, but hung in layers. Cigarette smoke remained suspended, disappearing very slowly. The crush of people along the narrow streets irritated rather than entertained the walker. The farther he went, the more he was depressed by the repulsive condition resulting from the combination of sea air and sirocco, which was at the same time both stimulating and enervating. He broke into an uncomfortable sweat. His eyes failed him, his chest became tight, he had a fever, the blood was pounding in his head. He fled from the crowded business streets across a bridge into the walks of the poor. On a quiet square, one of those forgotten and enchanting places which lie in the interior of Venice, he rested at the brink of a well, dried his forehead, and realized that he would have to leave here.

For the second and last time it had been demonstrated that this city in this kind of weather was decidedly unhealthy for him. It seemed foolish to attempt a stubborn resistance, while the prospects for a change of wind were completely uncertain. A quick decision was called for. It was not possible to go home this soon. Neither summer nor winter quarters were prepared to receive him. But this was not the only place where there were sea and beach; and elsewhere these could be found without the lagoon and its malarial mists. He remembered a little watering place not far from Trieste which had been praised to him. Why not there? And without delay, so that this new change of location would still have time to do him some good. He pronounced this as good as settled, and stood up. At the next gondola station he took a boat back to San Marco, and was led through the dreary labyrinth of canals, under fancy marble balconies flanked with lions, around the corners of smooth walls, past the sorrowing façades of palaces which mirrored large dilapidated business-signs in the pulsing water. He had trouble arriving there, for the gondolier, who was in league with lace-makers and glassblowers, was always trying to land him for inspections and purchases; and just as the bizarre trip through Venice would begin to cast its spell, the greedy business sense of the sunken Queen did all it could to destroy the illusion.

When he had returned to the hotel, he announced at the office before dinner that unforeseen developments necessitated his departure the following morning. He was assured of their regrets. He settled his accounts. He dined, and spent the warm evening reading the newspapers in a rocking-chair on the rear terrace. Before going to bed he got his luggage all ready for departure.

He did not sleep so well as he might, since the impending breakup made him restless. When he opened the window in the morning the sky was as overcast as ever, but the air seemed fresher, and he was already beginning to repent. Hadn’t his decision been somewhat hasty and uncalled for, the result of a passing diffidence and indisposition? If he had delayed a little, if, instead of surrendering so easily, he had made some attempt to adjust himself to the air of Venice or to wait for an improvement in the weather, he would not be so rushed and inconvenienced, but could anticipate another forenoon on the beach like yesterday’s. Too late. Now he would have to go on wanting what he had wanted yesterday. He dressed, and at about eight o’clock rode down to the ground floor for breakfast.

As he entered, the buffet-room was still empty of guests. A few came in while he sat waiting for his order. With his tea cup to his lips, he saw the Polish girls and their governess appear: rigid, with morning freshness, their eyes still red, they walked across to their table in the corner by the window. Immediately afterwards, the porter approached him, cap in hand, and warned him that it was time to go. The automobile is ready to take him and the other passengers to the Hotel Excelsior, and from here the motorboat will bring the ladies and gentlemen to the station through the company’s private canal. Time is pressing.⁠—Aschenbach found that it was doing nothing of the sort. It was still over an hour before his train left. He was irritated by this hotel custom of hustling departing guests out of the house, and indicated to the porter that he wished to finish his breakfast in peace. The man retired hesitatingly, to appear again five minutes later. It is impossible for the car to wait any longer. Then he would take a cab, and carry his trunk with him, Aschenbach replied in anger. He would use the public steamboat at the proper time, and he requested that it be left to him personally to worry about his departure. The employee bowed himself away. Pleased with the way he had warded off these importunate warnings, Aschenbach finished his meal at leisure; in fact, he even let the waiter bring him a newspaper. The time had become quite short when he finally arose. It was fitting that at the same moment Tadzio should come through the glass door.

On the way to his table he walked in the opposite direction to Aschenbach, lowering his eyes modestly before the man with the grey hair and high forehead, only to raise them again, in his delicious manner, soft and full upon him⁠—and he had passed. “Goodbye, Tadzio!” Aschenbach thought. “I did not see much of you.” He did what was unusual with him, really formed the words on his lips and spoke them to himself; then he added, “God bless you!”⁠—After this he left, distributed tips, was ushered out by the small gentle manager in the French frock coat, and made off from the hotel on foot, as he had come, going along the white blossoming avenue which crossed the island to the steamer bridge, accompanied by the house servant carrying his hand luggage. He arrived, took his place⁠—and then followed a painful journey through all the depths of regret.

It was the familiar trip across the lagoon, past San Marco, up the Grand Canal. Aschenbach sat on the circular bench at the bow, his arm supported against the railing, shading his eyes with his hand. The public gardens were left behind, the Piazzetta opened up once more in princely splendour and was gone, then came the great flock of palaces, and as the channel made a turn the magnificently slung marble arch of the Rialto came into view. The traveller was watching; his emotions were in conflict. The atmosphere of the city, this slightly foul smell of sea and swamp which he had been so anxious to avoid⁠—he breathed it now in deep, exquisitely painful draughts. Was it possible that he had not known, had not considered, just how much he was attached to all this? What had been a partial misgiving this morning, a faint doubt as to the advisability of his move, now became a distress, a positive misery, a spiritual hunger, and so bitter that it frequently brought tears to his eyes, while he told himself that he could not possibly have foreseen it. Hardest of all to bear, at times completely insufferable, was the thought that he would never see Venice again, that this was a leave-taking forever. Since it had been shown for the second time that the city affected his health, since he was compelled for the second time to get away in all haste, from now on he would have to consider it a place impossible and forbidden to him, a place which he was not equal to, and which it would be foolish for him to visit again. Yes, he felt that if he left now, he would be shamefaced and defiant enough never to see again the beloved city which had twice caused him a physical breakdown. And of a sudden this struggle between his desires and his physical strength seemed to the aging man so grave and important, his physical defeat seemed so dishonourable, so much a challenge to hold out at any cost, that he could not understand the ready submissiveness of the day before, when he had decided to give in without attempting any serious resistance.

Meanwhile the steamboat was nearing the station; pain and perplexity increased, he became distracted. In his affliction, he felt that it was impossible to leave, and just as impossible to turn back. The conflict was intense as he entered the station. It was very late; there was not a moment to lose if he was to catch the train. He wanted to, and he did not want to. But time was pressing; it drove him on. He hurried to get his ticket, and looked about in the tumult of the hall for the officer on duty here from the hotel. The man appeared and announced that the large trunk had been transferred. Transferred already? Yes, thank you⁠—to Como. To Como? And in the midst of hasty running back and forth, angry questions and confused answers, it came to light that the trunk had already been sent with other foreign baggage from the express office of the Hotel Excelsior in a completely wrong direction.

Aschenbach had difficulty in preserving the expression which was required under these circumstances. He was almost convulsed with an adventurous delight, an unbelievable hilarity. The employee rushed off to see if it were still possible to stop the trunk, and as was to be expected he returned with nothing accomplished. Aschenbach declared that he did not want to travel without his trunk, but had decided to go back and wait at the beach hotel for its return. Was the company’s motorboat still at the station? The man assured him that it was lying at the door. With Italian volubility he persuaded the clerk at the ticket window to redeem the cancelled ticket, he swore that they would act speedily, that no time or money would be spared in recovering the trunk promptly, and⁠—so the strange thing happened that, twenty minutes after his arrival at the station, the traveller found himself again on the Grand Canal, returning to the Lido.

Here was an adventure, wonderful, abashing, and comically dreamlike beyond belief: places which he had just bid farewell to forever in the most abject misery⁠—yet he had been turned and driven back by fate, and was seeing them again in the same hour! The spray from the bow, washing between gondolas and steamers with an absurd agility, shot the speedy little craft ahead to its goal, while the one passenger was hiding the nervousness and ebullience of a truant boy under the mask of resigned anger. From time to time he shook with laughter at this mishap which, as he told himself, could not have turned out better for a child of destiny. There were explanations to be given, expressions of astonishment to be faced⁠—and then, he told himself, everything would be all right; then a misfortune would be avoided, a grave error rectified. And all that he had thought he was leaving behind him would be open to him again, there at his disposal.⁠ ⁠… And to cap it all, was the rapidity of the ride deceiving him, or was the wind really coming from the sea?

The waves beat against the walls of the narrow canal which runs through the island to the Hotel Excelsior. An automobile omnibus was awaiting his return there, and took him above the rippling sea straight to the beach hotel. The little manager with moustache and long-tailed frock coat came down the stairs to meet him.

He ingratiatingly regretted the episode, spoke of it as highly painful to him and the establishment, but firmly approved of Aschenbach’s decision to wait here for the baggage. Of course his room had been given up, but there was another one, just as good, which he could occupy immediately. “Pas de chance, Monsieur,” the Swiss elevator boy smiled as they were ascending. And so the fugitive was established again, in a room almost identical to the other in its location and furnishings.

Tired out by the confusion of this strange forenoon, he distributed the contents of his handbag about the room and dropped into an armchair by the open window. The sea had become a pale green, the air seemed thinner and purer; the beach, with its cabins and boats, seemed to have colour, although the sky was still grey. Aschenbach looked out, his hands folded in his lap; he was content to be back, but shook his head disapprovingly at his irresolution, his failure to know his own mind. He sat here for the better part of an hour, resting and dreaming vaguely. About noon he saw Tadzio in a striped linen suit with a red tie, coming back from the sea across the private beach and along the boardwalk to the hotel. Aschenbach recognized him from this altitude before he had actually set eyes on him; he was about to think some such words as “Well, Tadzio, there you are again!” but at the same moment he felt this careless greeting go dumb before the truth in his heart. He felt the exhilaration of his blood, a conflict of pain and pleasure, and he realized that it was Tadzio who had made it so difficult for him to leave.

He sat very still, entirely unobserved from this height, and looked within himself. His features were alert, his eyebrows raised, and an attentive, keenly inquisitive smile distended his mouth. Then he raised his head; lifted both hands, which had hung relaxed over the arms of the chair, and in a slow twisting movement turned the palms downward⁠—as though to suggest an opening and spreading outward of his arms. It was a spontaneous act of welcome, of calm acceptance.

IV

Day after day now the naked god with the hot cheeks drove his fire-breathing quadriga across the expanses of the sky, and his yellow locks fluttered in the assault of the east wind. A white silk sheen stretched over the slowly simmering Ponto. The sand glowed. Beneath the quaking silver blue of the ether rust-coloured canvasses were spread in front of the beach bathing houses, and the afternoons were spent in the sharply demarcated spots of shade which they cast. But it was also delightful in the evening, when the vegetation in the park had the smell of balsam, and the stars were working through their courses above, and the soft persistent murmur of the sea came up enchantingly through the night. Such evenings contained the cheering promise that more sunny days of casual idleness would follow, dotted with countless closely interspersed possibilities of well-timed accidents.

The guest who was detained here by such an accommodating mishap did not consider the return of his property as sufficient grounds for another departure. He suffered some inconvenience for two days, and had to appear for meals in the large dining-room in his travelling clothes. When the strayed luggage was finally deposited in his room again, he unpacked completely and filled the closet and drawers with his belongings; he had decided to remain here indefinitely, content now that he could pass the hours on the beach in a silk suit and appear for dinner at his little table again in appropriate evening dress.

The comfortable rhythm of this life had already cast its spell over him; he was soon enticed by the ease, the mild splendour, of his programme. Indeed, what a place to be in, when the usual allurement of living in watering places on southern shores was coupled with the immediate nearness of the most wonderful of all cities! Aschenbach was not a lover of pleasure. Whenever that was some call for him to take a holiday, to indulge himself, to have a good time⁠—and this was especially true at an earlier age⁠—restlessness and repugnance soon drove him back to his rigorous toil, the faithful sober efforts of his daily routine. Except that this place was bewitching him, relaxing his will, making him happy. In the mornings, under the shelter of his bathing house, letting his eyes roam dreamily in the blue of the southern sea; or on a warm night as he leaned back against the cushions of the gondola carrying him under the broad starry sky home to the Lido from the Piazza di San Marco after long hours of idleness⁠—and the brilliant lights, the melting notes of the serenade were being left behind⁠—he often recalled his place in the mountains, the scene of his battles in the summer, where the clouds blew low across his garden, and terrifying storms put out the lamps at night, and the crows which he fed were swinging in the tops of the pine trees. Then everything seemed just right to him, as though he were lifted into the Elysian fields, on the borders of the earth, where man enjoys the easiest life, where there is no snow or winter, nor storms and pouring rains, but where Oceanus continually sends forth gentle cooling breezes, and the days pass in a blessed inactivity, without work, without effort, devoted wholly to the sun and to the feast days of the sun.

Aschenbach saw the boy Tadzio frequently, almost constantly. Owing to the limited range of territory and the regularity of their lives, the beauty was near him at short intervals throughout the day. He saw him, met him, everywhere: in the lower rooms of the hotel, on the cooling water trips to the city and back, in the arcades of the square, and at times when he was especially lucky ran across him on the streets. But principally, and with the most gratifying regularity, the forenoon on the beach allowed him to admire and study this rare spectacle at his leisure. Yes, it was this guaranty of happiness, this daily recurrence of good fortune, which made his stay here so precious, and gave him such pleasure in the constant procession of sunny days.

He was up as early as he used to be when under the driving pressure of work, and was on the beach before most people, when the sun was still mild and the sea lay blinding white in the dreaminess of morning. He spoke amiably to the guard of the private beach, and also spoke familiarly to the barefoot, white-bearded old man who had prepared his place for him, stretching the brown canopy and bringing the furniture of the cabin out on the platform. Then he took his seat. There would now be three or four hours in which the sun mounted and gained terrific strength, the sea a deeper and deeper blue, and he might look at Tadzio.

He saw him approaching from the left, along the edge of the sea; he saw him as he stepped out backwards from among the cabins; or he would suddenly find, with a shock of pleasure, that he had missed his coming, that he was already here in the blue and white bathing suit which was his only garment now while on the beach, that he had already commenced his usual activities in the sun and the sand⁠—a pleasantly trifling, idle, and unstable manner of living, a mixture of rest and play. Tadzio would saunter about, wade, dig, catch things, lie down, go for a swim, all the while being kept under surveillance by the women on the platform who made his name ring out in their falsetto voices: “Tadziu! Tadziu!” Then he would come running to them with a look of eagerness, to tell them what he had seen, what he had experienced, or to show them what he had found or caught: mussels, seahorses, jellyfish, and crabs that ran sideways. Aschenbach did not understand a word he said, and though it might have been the most ordinary thing in the world, it was a vague harmony in his ear. So the foreignness of the boy’s speech turned it into music, a wanton sun poured its prodigal splendour down over him, and his figure was always set off against the background of an intense sea-blue.

This piquant body was so freely exhibited that his eyes soon knew every line and posture. He was continually rediscovering with new pleasure all this familiar beauty, and his astonishment at its delicate appeal to his senses was unending. The boy was called to greet a guest who was paying his respects to the ladies at the bathing house. He came running, running wet perhaps out of the water, tossed back his curls, and as he held out his hand, resting on one leg and raising his other foot on the toes, the set of his body was delightful; it had a charming expectancy about it, a well-meaning shyness, a winsomeness which showed his aristocratic training.⁠ ⁠… He lay stretched full length, his bath towel slung across his shoulders, his delicately chiselled arm supported in the sand, his chin in his palm; the boy called Jaschu was squatting near him and making up to him⁠—and nothing could be more enchanting than the smile of his eyes and lips when the leader glanced up at his inferior, his servant.⁠ ⁠… He stood on the edge of the sea, alone, apart from his people, quite near to Aschenbach⁠—erect, his hands locked across the back of his neck, he swayed slowly on the balls of his feet, looked dreamily into the blueness of sea and sky, while tiny waves rolled up and bathed his feet. His honey-coloured hair clung in rings about his neck and temples. The sun made the down on his back glitter; the fine etching of the ribs, the symmetry of the chest, were emphasized by the tightness of the suit across the buttocks. His armpits were still as smooth as those of a statue; the hollows of his knees glistened, and their bluish veins made his body seem built of some clearer stuff. What rigour, what precision of thought, were expressed in this erect, youthfully perfect body! Yet the pure and strenuous will which, darkly at work, could bring such godlike sculpture to the light⁠—was not he, the artist, familiar with this? Did it not operate in him too when he, under the press of frugal passions, would free from the marble mass of speech some slender form which he had seen in the mind and which he put before his fellows as a statue and a mirror of intellectual beauty?

Statue and mirror! His eyes took in the noble form there bordered with blue; and with a rush of enthusiasm he felt that in this spectacle he was catching the beautiful itself, form as the thought of God, the one pure perfection which lives in the mind, and which, in this symbol and likeness, had been placed here quietly and simply as an object of devotion. That was drunkenness; and eagerly, without thinking, the aging artist welcomed it. His mind was in travail; all that he had learned, dropped back into flux; his understanding threw up age-old thoughts which he had inherited with youth though they had never before lived with their own fire. Is it not written that the sun diverts our attention from intellectual to sensual things? Reason and understanding, it is said, become so numbed and enchanted that the soul forgets everything out of delight with its immediate circumstances, and in astonishment becomes attached to the most beautiful object shined on by the sun; indeed, only with the aid of a body is it capable then of raising itself to higher considerations. To be sure, Amor did as the instructors of mathematics who show backward children tangible representations of the pure forms⁠—similarly the god, in order to make the spiritual visible for us, readily utilized the form and colour of man’s youth, and as a reminder he adorned these with the reflected splendour of beauty which, when we behold it, makes us flare up in pain and hope.

His enthusiasm suggested these things, put him in the mood for them. And from the noise of the sea and the lustre of the sun he wove himself a charming picture. Here was the old plane-tree, not far from the walls of Athens⁠—a holy, shadowy place filled with the smell of agnus castus blossoms and decorated with ornaments and images sacred to Achelous and the Nymphs. Clear and pure, the brook at the foot of the spreading tree fell across the smooth pebbles; the cicadas were fiddling. But on the grass, which was like a pillow gently sloping to the head, two people were stretched out, in hiding from the heat of the day: an older man and a youth, one ugly and one beautiful, wisdom next to loveliness. And amid gallantries and skilfully engaging banter, Socrates was instructing Phaedrus in matters of desire and virtue. He spoke to him of the hot terror which the initiate suffer when their eyes light on an image of the eternal beauty; spoke of the greed of the impious and the wicked who cannot think beauty when they see its likeness, and who are incapable of reverence; spoke of the holy distress which befalls the noble-minded when a godlike countenance, a perfect body, appears before them; they tremble and grow distracted, and hardly dare to raise their eyes, and they honour the man who possesses this beauty, yes, if they were not afraid of being thought downright madmen they would sacrifice to the beloved as to the image of a god. For beauty, my Phaedrus, beauty alone is both lovely and visible at once; it is, mark me, the only form of the spiritual which we can receive through the senses. Else what would become of us if the divine, if reason and virtue and truth, should appear to us through the senses? Should we not perish and be consumed with love, as Semele once was with Zeus? Thus, beauty is the sensitive man’s access to the spirit⁠—but only a road, a means simply, little Phaedrus.⁠ ⁠… And then this crafty suitor made the neatest remark of all; it was this, that the lover is more divine than the beloved, since the god is in the one, but not in the other⁠—perhaps the most delicate, the most derisive thought which has ever been framed, and the one from which spring all the cunning and the profoundest pleasures of desire.

Writers are happiest with an idea which can become all emotion, and an emotion all idea. Just such a pulsating idea, such a precise emotion, belonged to the lonely man at this moment, was at his call. Nature, it ran, shivers with ecstasy when the spirit bows in homage before beauty. Suddenly he wanted to write. Eros loves idleness, they say, and he is suited only to idleness. But at this point in the crisis the affliction became a stimulus towards productivity. The incentive hardly mattered. A request, an agitation for an open statement on a certain large burning issue of culture and taste, was going about the intellectual world, and had finally caught up with the traveller here. He was familiar with the subject, it had touched his own experience; and suddenly he felt an irresistible desire to display it in the light of his own version. And he even went so far as to prefer working in Tadzio’s presence, taking the scope of the boy as a standard for his writing, making his style follow the lines of this body which seemed godlike to him, and carrying his beauty over into the spiritual just as the eagle once carried the Trojan stag up into the ether. Never had his joy in words been more sweet. He had never been so aware that Eros is in the word as during those perilously precious hours when, at his crude table under the canopy, facing the idol and listening to the music of his voice, he followed Tadzio’s beauty in the forming of his little tract, a page and a half of choice prose which was soon to excite the admiration of many through its clarity, its poise, and the vigorous curve of its emotion. Certainly it is better for people to know only the beautiful product as finished, and not in its conception, its conditions of origin. For knowledge of the sources from which the artist derives his inspiration would often confuse and alienate, and in this way detract from the effects of his mastery. Strange hours! Strangely enervating efforts! Rare creative intercourse between the spirit and a body! When Aschenbach put away his work and started back from the beach be felt exhausted, or in dispersion even; and it was as though his conscience were complaining after some transgression.

The following morning, as he was about to leave the hotel, he looked off from the steps and noticed that Tadzio, who was alone and was already on his way towards the sea, was just approaching the private beach. He was half tempted by the simple notion of seizing this opportunity to strike up a casual friendly acquaintanceship with the boy who had been the unconscious source of so much agitation and upheaval; he wanted to address him, and enjoy the answering look in his eyes. The boy was sauntering along, he could be overtaken; and Aschenbach quickened his pace. He reached him on the boardwalk behind the bathing houses; was about to lay a hand on his head and shoulders; and some word or other, an amiable phrase in French, was on the tip of his tongue. But he felt that his heart, due also perhaps to his rapid stride, was beating like a hammer; and he was so short of breath that his voice would have been tight and trembling. He hesitated, he tried to get himself under control. Suddenly he became afraid that he had been walking too long so close behind the boy. He was afraid of arousing curiosity and causing him to look back questioningly. He made one more spurt, failed, surrendered, and passed with bowed head.

“Too late!” he thought immediately. Too late! Yet was it too late? This step which he had just been on the verge of taking would very possibly have put things on a sound, free and easy basis, and would have restored him to wholesome soberness. But the fact was that Aschenbach did not want soberness: his intoxication was too precious. Who can explain the stamp and the nature of the artist! Who can understand this deep instinctive welding of discipline and licence? For to be unable to want wholesome soberness, is licence. Aschenbach was no longer given to self-criticism. His tastes, the mental caliber of his years, his self-respect, ripeness, and a belated simplicity made him unwilling to dismember his motives and to debate whether his impulses were the result of conscientiousness or of dissolution and weakness. He was embarrassed, as he feared that someone or other, if only the guard on the beach, must have observed his pursuit and defeat. He was very much afraid of the ridiculous. Further, he joked with himself about his comically pious distress. “Downed,” he thought, “downed like a rooster, with his wings hanging miserably in the battle. It really is a god who can, at one sight of his loveliness, break our courage this way and force down our pride so thoroughly.⁠ ⁠…” He toyed and skirmished with his emotions, and was far too haughty to be afraid of them.

He had already ceased thinking about the time when the vacation period which he had fixed for himself would expire; the thought of going home never even suggested itself. He had sent for an ample supply of money. His only concern was with the possible departure of the Polish family; by a casual questioning of the hotel barber he had contrived to learn that these people had come here only a short time before his own arrival. The sun browned his face and hands, the invigorating salt breezes made him feel fresher. Once he had been in the habit of expending on his work every bit of nourishment which food, sleep, or nature could provide him; and similarly now he was generous and uneconomical, letting pass off as elation and emotion all the daily strengthening derived from sun, idleness, and sea air.

His sleep was fitful; the preciously uniform days were separated by short nights of happy unrest. He did retire early, for at nine o’clock, when Tadzio had disappeared from the scene, the day seemed over. But at the first grey of dawn he was awakened by a gently insistent shock; he suddenly remembered his adventure, he could no longer remain in bed; he arose, and clad lightly against the chill of morning, he sat down by the open window to await the rising of the sun. Revived by his sleep, he watched this miraculous event with reverence. Sky, earth, and sea still lay in glassy, ghostlike twilight; a dying star still floated in the emptiness of space. But a breeze started up, a winged message from habitations beyond reach, telling that Eos was rising from beside her husband. And that first sweet reddening in the farthest stretches of sky and sea took place by which the sentiency of creation is announced. The goddess was approaching, the seductress of youth who stole Cleitus and Cephalus, and despite the envy of all the Olympians enjoyed the love of handsome Orion. A strewing of roses began there on the edge of the world, an unutterably pure glowing and blooming. Childish clouds, lighted and shined through, floated like busy little Cupids in the rosy, bluish mist. Purple fell upon the sea, which seemed to be simmering, and washing the colour towards him. Golden spears shot up into the sky from behind. The splendour caught fire, silently, and with godlike power an intense flame of licking tongues broke out⁠—and with rattling hoofs the brother’s sacred chargers mounted the horizon. Lighted by the god’s brilliance, he sat there, keeping watch alone. He closed his eyes, letting this glory play against the lids. Past emotions, precious early afflictions and yearnings which had been stifled by his rigorous programme of living, were now returning in such strange new forms. With an embarrassed, astonished smile, he recognized them. He was thinking, dreaming; slowly his lips formed a name. And still smiling, with his face turned upwards, hands folded in his lap, he fell asleep again in his chair.

But the day which began with such fiery solemnity underwent a strange mythical transformation. Where did the breeze originate which suddenly began playing so gently and insinuatingly, like some whispered suggestion, about his ears and temples? Little white choppy clouds stood in the sky in scattered clumps, like the pasturing herds of the gods. A stronger wind arose, and the steeds of Poseidon came prancing up, and along with them the steers which belonged to the blue-locked god, bellowing and lowering their horns as they ran. Yet among the detritus of the more distant beach waves were hopping forward like agile goats. He was caught in the enchantment of a sacredly distorted world full of Panic life⁠—and he dreamed delicate legends. Often, when the sun was sinking behind Venice, he would sit on a bench in the park observing Tadzio who was dressed in a white suit with a coloured sash and was playing ball on the smooth gravel⁠—and it was Hyacinth that he seemed to be watching. Hyacinth who was to die because two gods loved him. Yes, he felt Zephyr’s aching jealousy of the rival who forgot the oracle, the bow, and the lyre, in order to play forever with this beauty. He saw the discus, guided by a pitiless envy, strike the lovely head; he too, growing pale, caught the drooping body⁠—and the flower, sprung from this sweet blood, bore the inscription of his unending grief.

Nothing is more unusual and strained than the relationship between people who know each other only with their eyes, who meet daily, even hourly, and yet are compelled, by force of custom or their own caprices, to say no word or make no move of acknowledgement, but to maintain the appearance of an aloof unconcern. There is a restlessness and a surcharged curiosity existing between them, the hysteria of an unsatisfied, unnaturally repressed desire for acquaintanceship and intercourse; and especially there is a kind of tense respect. For one person loves and honours another so long as he cannot judge him, and desire is an evidence of incomplete knowledge.

Some kind of familiarity had necessarily to form itself between Aschenbach and young Tadzio; and it gave the elderly man keen pleasure to see that his sympathies and interests were not left completely unanswered. For example, when the boy appeared on the beach in the morning and was going towards his family’s bathing house, what had induced him never to use the boardwalk on the far side of it any more, but to stroll along the front path, through the sand, past Aschenbach’s habitual place, and often unnecessarily close to him, almost touching his table, or his chair even? Did the attraction, the fascination of an overpowering emotion have such an effect upon the frail unthinking object of it? Aschenbach watched daily for Tadzio to approach; and sometimes he acted as though he were occupied when this event was taking place, and he let the boy pass unobserved. But at other times he would look up, and their glances met. They were both in deep earnest when this occurred. Nothing in the elderly man’s cultivated and dignified expression betrayed any inner movement; but there was a searching look in Tadzio’s eyes, a thoughtful questioning⁠—he began to falter, looked down, then looked up again charmingly, and when he had passed something in his bearing seemed to indicate that it was only his breeding which kept him from turning around.

Once, however, one evening, things turned out differently. The Polish children and their governess had been missing at dinner in the large hall; Aschenbach had noted this uneasily. After the meal, disturbed by their absence, Aschenbach was walking in evening dress and straw hat in front of the hotel at the foot of the terrace, when suddenly he saw the nunlike sisters appear in the light of the arc-lamp, accompanied by their governess and with Tadzio a few steps behind. Evidently they were coming from the steamer pier after having dined for some reason in the city. It must have been cool on the water; Tadzio was wearing a dark blue sailor overcoat with gold buttons, and on his head he had a cap to match. The sun and sea air had not browned him; his skin still had the same yellow marble colour as at first. It even seemed paler today than usual, whether from the coolness or from the blanching moonlight of the lamps. His regular eyebrows showed up more sharply, the darkness of his eyes was deeper. It is hard to say how beautiful he was; and Aschenbach was distressed, as he had often been before, by the thought that words can only evaluate sensuous beauty, but not re-give it.

He had not been prepared for this rich spectacle; it came unhoped for. He had no time to entrench himself behind an expression of repose and dignity. Pleasure, surprise, admiration must have shown on his face as his eyes met those of the boy⁠—and at this moment it happened that Tadzio smiled, smiled to him, eloquently, familiarly, charmingly, without concealment; and during the smile his lips slowly opened. It was the smile of Narcissus bent over the reflecting water, that deep, fascinated, magnetic smile with which he stretches out his arms to the image of his own beauty⁠—a smile distorted ever so little, distorted at the hopelessness of his efforts to kiss the pure lips of the shadow. It was coquettish, inquisitive, and slightly tortured. It was infatuated, and infatuating.

He had received this smile, and he hurried away as though he carried a fatal gift. He was so broken up that he was compelled to escape the light of the terrace and the front garden; he hastily hunted out the darkness of the park in the rear. Strangely indignant and tender admonitions wrung themselves out of him: “You dare not smile like that! Listen, no one dare smile like that to another!” He threw himself down on a bench; in a frenzy he breathed the night smell of the vegetation. And leaning back, his arms loose, overwhelmed, with frequent chills running through him, he whispered the fixed formula of desire⁠—impossible in this case, absurd, abject, ridiculous, and yet holy, even in this case venerable: “I love you!”

V

During his fourth week at the Lido, Gustav von Aschenbach made several sinister observations touching on the world about him. First, it seemed to him that as the season progressed the number of guests at the hotel was diminishing rather than increasing; and German especially seemed to be dropping away, so that finally he heard nothing but foreign sounds at table and on the beach. Then one day in conversation with the barber, whom he visited often, he caught a word which startled him. The man had mentioned a German family that left soon after their arrival; he added glibly and flatteringly, “But you are staying, sir. You have no fear of the plague.” Aschenbach looked at him. “The plague?” he repeated. The gossiper was silent, made out as though busy with other things, ignored the question. When it was put more insistently, he declared that he knew nothing, and with embarrassing volubility he tried to change the subject.

That was about noon. In the afternoon there was a calm, and Aschenbach rode to Venice under an intense sun. For he was driven by a mania to follow the Polish children whom he had seen with their governess taking the road to the steamer pier. He did not find the idol at San Marco. But while sitting over his tea at his little round iron table on the shady side of the square, he suddenly detected a peculiar odour in the air which, it seemed to him now, he had noticed for days without being consciously aware of it. The smell was sweetish and drug-like, suggesting sickness, and wounds, and a suspicious cleanliness. He tested and examined it thoughtfully, finished his luncheon, and left the square on the side opposite the church. The smell was stronger where the street narrowed. On the corners printed posters were hung, giving municipal warnings against certain diseases of the gastric system liable to occur at this season, against the eating of oysters and clams, and also against the water of the canals. The euphemistic nature of the announcement was palpable. Groups of people had collected in silence on the bridges and squares; and the foreigner stood among them, scenting and investigating.

At a little shop he inquired about the fatal smell, asking the proprietor, who was leaning against his door surrounded by coral chains and imitation amethyst jewellery. The man measured him with heavy eyes, and brightened up hastily. “A matter of precaution, sir!” he answered with a gesture. “A regulation of the police which must be taken for what it is worth. This weather is oppressive, the sirocco is not good for the health. In short, you understand⁠—an exaggerated prudence perhaps.” Aschenbach thanked him and went on. Also on the steamer back to the Lido he caught the smell of the disinfectant.

Returning to the hotel, he went immediately to the periodical stand in the lobby and ran through the papers. He found nothing in the foreign language press. The domestic press spoke of rumours, produced hazy statistics, repeated official denials and questioned their truthfulness. This explained the departure of the German and Austrian guests. Obviously, the subjects of the other nations knew nothing, suspected nothing, were not yet uneasy. “To keep it quiet!” Aschenbach thought angrily, as he threw the papers back on the table. “To keep that quiet!” But at the same moment he was filled with satisfaction over the adventure that was to befall the world about him. For passion, like crime, is not suited to the secure daily rounds of order and well-being; and every slackening in the bourgeois structure, every disorder and affliction of the world, must be held welcome, since they bring with them a vague promise of advantage. So Aschenbach felt a dark contentment with what was taking place, under cover of the authorities, in the dirty alleys of Venice. This wicked secret of the city was welded with his own secret, and he too was involved in keeping it hidden. For in his infatuation he cared about nothing but the possibility of Tadzio’s leaving, and he realized with something like terror that he would not know how to go on living if this occurred.

Lately he had not been relying simply on good luck and the daily routine for his chances to be near the boy and look at him. He pursued him, stalked him. On Sundays, for instance, the Poles never appeared on the beach. He guessed that they must be attending mass at San Marco. He hurried there; and stepping from the heat of the square into the golden twilight of the church, he found the boy he was hunting, bowed over a prie-dieu, praying. Then he stood in the background, on the cracked mosaic floor, with people on all sides kneeling, murmuring, and making the sign of the cross. And the compact grandeur of this oriental temple weighed heavily on his senses. In front, the richly ornamented priest was conducting the office, moving about and singing; incense poured forth, clouding the weak little flame of the candle on the altar⁠—and with the sweet, stuffy sacrificial odour another seemed to commingle faintly: the smell of the infested city. But through the smoke and the sparkle Aschenbach saw how the boy there in front turned his head, hunted him out, and looked at him.

When the crowd was streaming out through the opened portals into the brilliant square with its swarms of pigeons, the lover hid in the vestibule; he kept under cover, he lay in wait. He saw the Poles quit the church, saw how the children took ceremonious leave of their mother, and how she turned towards the Piazzetta on her way home. He made sure that the boy, the nunlike sisters, and the governess took the road to the right through the gateway of the dock tower and into the Merceria. And after giving them a slight start, he followed, followed them furtively on their walk through Venice. He had to stand still when they stopped, had to take flight in shops and courts to let them pass when they turned back. He lost them; hot and exhausted, he hunted them over bridges and down dirty blind-alleys⁠—and he underwent minutes of deadly agony when suddenly he saw them coming towards him in a narrow passage where escape was impossible. Yet it could not be said that he suffered. He was drunk, and his steps followed the promptings of the demon who delights in treading human reason and dignity under foot.

In one place Tadzio and his companions took a gondola; and shortly after they had pushed off from the shore, Aschenbach, who had hidden behind some structure, a well, while they were climbing in, now did the same. He spoke in a hurried undertone as he directed the rower, with the promise of a generous tip, to follow unnoticed and at a distance that gondola which was just rounding the corner. And he thrilled when the man, with the roguish willingness of an accomplice, assured him in the same tone that his wishes would be carried out, carried out faithfully.

Leaning back against the soft black cushions, he rocked and glided towards the other black-beaked craft where his passion was drawing him. At times it escaped; then he felt worried and uneasy. But his pilot, as though skilled in such commissions, was always able through sly manoeuvres, speedy diagonals and shortcuts, to bring the quest into view again. The air was quiet and smelly, the sun burned down strong through the slate-coloured mist. Water slapped against the wood and stone. The call of the gondolier, half warning, half greeting, was answered with a strange obedience far away in the silence of the labyrinth. White and purple umbels with the scent of almonds hung down from little elevated gardens over crumbling walls. Arabian window-casings were outlined through the murkiness. The marble steps of a church descended into the water; a beggar squatted there, protesting his misery, holding out his hat, and showing the whites of his eyes as though he were blind. An antiquarian in front of his den fawned on the passerby and invited him to stop in the hopes of swindling him. That was Venice, the flatteringly and suspiciously beautiful⁠—this city, half legend, half snare for strangers; in its foul air art once flourished gluttonously, and had suggested to its musicians seductive notes which cradle and lull. The adventurer felt as though his eyes were taking in this same luxury, as though his ears were being won by just such melodies. He recalled too that the city was diseased and was concealing this through greed⁠—and he peered more eagerly after the retreating gondola.

Thus, in his infatuation, he wanted simply to pursue uninterrupted the object that aroused him, to dream of it when it was not there, and, after the fashion of lovers, to speak softly to its mere outline. Loneliness, strangeness, and the joy of a deep belated intoxication encouraged him and prompted him to accept even the remotest things without reserve or shame⁠—with the result that as he returned late in the evening from Venice, he stopped on the second floor of the hotel before the door of the boy’s room, laid his head in utter drunkenness against the hinge of the door, and for a long time could not drag himself away despite the danger of being caught and embarrassed in such a mad situation.

Yet there were still moments of relief when he came partly to his senses. “Where to!” he would think, alarmed. “Where to!” Like every man whose natural abilities stimulate an aristocratic interest in his ancestry, he was accustomed to think of his forbears in connection with the accomplishments and successes of his life, to assure himself of their approval, their satisfaction, their undeniable respect. He thought of them now, entangled as he was in such an illicit experience, caught in such exotic transgressions. He thought of their characteristic rigidity of principle, their scrupulous masculinity⁠—and he smiled dejectedly. What would they say? But then, what would they have said to his whole life, which was almost degenerate in its departure from theirs, this life under the bane of art⁠—a life against which he himself had once issued such youthful mockeries out of loyalty to his fathers, but which at bottom had been so much like theirs! He too had served, he too had been a soldier and a warrior like many of them⁠—for art was a war, a destructive battle, and one was not equal to it for long these days. A life of self-conquest and of in-spite-ofs, a rigid, sober, and unyielding life which he had formed into the symbol of a delicate and timely heroism. He might well call it masculine, or brave; and it almost seemed as though the Eros mastering him were somehow peculiarly adapted and inclined to such a life. Had not this Eros stood in high repute among the bravest of peoples; was it not true that precisely through bravery he had flourished in their cities? Numerous war heroes of antiquity had willingly borne his yoke, for nothing was deemed a disgrace which the god imposed; and acts which would have been rebuked as the sign of cowardice if they had been done for other purposes⁠—prostrations, oaths, entreaties, abjectness⁠—such things did not bring shame upon the lover, but rather he reaped praise for them.

In this way his infatuation determined the course of his thoughts, in this way he tried to uphold himself, to preserve his respect. But at the same time, selfish and calculating, he turned his attention to the unclean transactions here in Venice, this adventure of the outer world which conspired darkly with his own and which fed his passion with vague lawless hopes.

Bent on getting reliable news of the condition and progress of the pestilence, he ransacked the local papers in the city cafés, as they had been missing from the reading table of the hotel lobby for several days now. Statements alternated with disavowals. The number of the sick and dead was supposed to reach twenty, forty, or even a hundred and more⁠—and immediately afterwards every instance of the plague would be either flatly denied or attributed to completely isolated cases which had crept in from the outside. There were scattered admonitions, protests against the dangerous conduct of foreign authorities. Certainty was impossible. Nevertheless the lone man felt especially entitled to participate in the secret; and although he was excluded, he derived a grotesque satisfaction from putting embarrassing questions to those who did know, and as they were pledged to silence, forcing them into deliberate lies. One day at breakfast in the large dining-hall he entered into a conversation with the manager, that softly-treading little man in the French frock coat who was moving amiably and solicitously about among the diners and had stopped at Aschenbach’s table for a few passing words. Just why, the guest asked negligently and casually, had disinfectants become so prevalent in Venice recently? “It has to do,” was the evasive answer, “with a police regulation, and is intended to prevent any inconveniences or disturbances to the public health which might result from the exceptionally warm and threatening weather.”⁠ ⁠… “The police are to be congratulated,” Aschenbach answered; and after the exchange of a few remarks on the weather, the manager left.

Yet that same day, in the evening, after dinner, it happened that a little band of strolling singers from the city gave a performance in the front garden of the hotel. Two men and two women, they stood by the iron post of an arc-lamp and turned their whitened faces up towards the large terrace where the guests were enjoying this folk-recital over their coffee and cooling drinks. The hotel personnel, bell boys, waiters, and clerks from the office, could be seen listening by the doors of the vestibule. The Russian family, eager and precise in their amusements, had had wicker chairs placed in the garden in order to be nearer the performers; and they were sitting here in an appreciative semicircle. Behind the ladies and gentlemen, in her turban-like kerchief, stood the old slave.

Mandolin, guitar, harmonica, and a squeaky violin were responding to the touch of the virtuoso beggars. Instrumental numbers alternated with songs, as when the younger of the women, with a sharp trembling voice, joined with the sweetly falsetto tenor in a languishing love duet. But the real talent and leader of the group was undoubtedly the other of the two men, the one with the guitar. He was a kind of buffo baritone, with not much of a voice, although he did have a gift for pantomime, and a remarkable comic energy. Often, with his large instrument under his arm, he would leave the rest of the group and, still acting, would intrude on the platform, where his antics were rewarded with encouraging laughter. Especially the Russians in their seats down front seemed to be enchanted with so much southern mobility, and their applause incited him to let himself out more and more boldly and assertively.

Aschenbach sat on the balustrade, cooling his lips now and then with a mixture of pomegranate juice and soda which glowed ruby red in his glass in front of him. His nerves took in the miserable notes, the vulgar crooning melodies; for passion lames the sense of discrimination, and surrenders in all seriousness to appeals which, in sober moments, are either humorously allowed for or rejected with annoyance. At the clown’s antics his features had twisted into a set painful smile. He sat there relaxed, although inwardly he was intensely awake; for six paces from him Tadzio was leaning against the stone handrail.

In the white belted coat which he often wore at meal times, he was standing in a position of spontaneous and inborn gracefulness, his left forearm on the railing, feet crossed, the right hand on a supporting hip; and he looked down at the street-singers with an expression which was hardly a smile, but only an aloof curiosity, a polite amiability. Often he would stand erect and, expanding his chest, would draw the white smock down under his leather belt with a beautiful gesture. And then too, the aging man observed with a tumult of fright and triumph how he would often turn his head over the left shoulder in the direction of his admirer, carefully and hesitatingly, or even with abruptness as though to attack by surprise. He did not meet Aschenbach’s eyes, for a mean precaution compelled the transgressor to keep from staring at him: in the background of the terrace the women who guarded Tadzio were sitting, and things had reached a point where the lover had to fear that he might be noticed and suspected. Yes, he had often observed with a kind of numbness how, when Tadzio was near him, on the beach, in the hotel lobby, in the Piazza San Marco, they called him back, they were set on keeping him at a distance⁠—and this wounded him frightfully, causing his pride unknown tortures which his conscience would not permit him to evade.

Meanwhile the guitar-player had begun a solo to his own accompaniment, a street-ballad popular throughout Italy. It had several strophes, and the entire company joined each time in the refrain, all singing and playing, while he managed to give a plastic and dramatic twist to the performance. Of slight build, with thin and impoverished features, he stood on the gravel, apart from his companions, in an attitude of insolent bravado, his shabby felt hat on the back of his head so that a bunch of his red hair jutted out from under the brim. And to the thrumming of the strings he flung his jokes up at the terrace in a penetrating recitative; while the veins were swelling on his forehead from the exertion of his performance. He did not seem of Venetian stock, but rather of the race of Neapolitan comedians, half pimp, half entertainer, brutal and audacious, dangerous and amusing. His song was stupid enough so far as the words went; but in his mouth, by his gestures, the movements of his body, his way of blinking significantly and letting the tongue play across his lips, it acquired something ambiguous, something vaguely repulsive. In addition to the customary civilian dress, he was wearing a sport shirt; and his skinny neck protruded above the soft collar, baring a noticeably large and active Adam’s-apple. He was pale and snub-nosed. It was hard to fix an age to his beardless features, which seemed furrowed with grimaces and depravity; and the two wrinkles standing arrogantly, harshly, almost savagely between his reddish eyebrows were strangely suited to the smirk on his mobile lips. Yet what really prompted the lonely man to pay him keen attention was the observation that the questionable figure seemed also to provide its own questionable atmosphere. For each time they came to the refrain the singer, amid buffoonery and familiar handshakes, began a grotesque circular march which brought him immediately beneath Aschenbach’s place; and each time this happened there blew up to the terrace from his clothes and body a strong carbolic smell.

After the song was ended, he began collecting money. He started with the Russians, who were evidently willing to spend, and then came up the stairs. Up here he showed himself just as humble as he had been bold during the performance. Cringing and bowing, he stole about among the tables, and a smile of obsequious cunning exposed his strong teeth, while the two wrinkles still stood ominously between his red eyebrows. This singular character collecting money to live on⁠—they eyed him with a curiosity and a kind of repugnance, they tossed coins into his felt hat with the tips of their fingers, and were careful not to touch him. The elimination of the physical distance between the comedian and the audience, no matter how great the enjoyment may have been, always causes a certain uneasiness. He felt it, and tried to excuse it by grovelling. He came up to Aschenbach, and along with him the smell, which no one else seemed concerned about.

“Listen!” the recluse said in an undertone, almost mechanically. “They are disinfecting Venice. Why?” The jester answered hoarsely, “On account of the police. That is a precaution, sir, with such heat, and the sirocco. The sirocco is oppressive. It is not good for the health.” He spoke as though astonished that anyone could ask such things, and demonstrated with his open hand how oppressive the sirocco was. “Then there is no plague in Venice?” Aschenbach asked quietly, between his teeth. The clown’s muscular features fell into a grimace of comical embarrassment. “A plague? What kind of plague? Perhaps our police are a plague? You like to joke! A plague! Of all things! A precautionary measure, you understand! A police regulation against the effects of the oppressive weather.” He gesticulated. “Very well,” Aschenbach said several times curtly and quietly; and he quickly dropped an unduly large coin into the hat. Then with his eyes he signalled the man to leave. He obeyed, smirking and bowing. But he had not reached the stairs before two hotel employees threw themselves upon him, and with their faces close to his began a whispered cross-examination. He shrugged his shoulders; he gave assurances, he swore that he had kept quiet⁠—that was evident. He was released, and he returned to the garden; then after a short conference with his companions, he stepped out once more for a final song of thanks and leave-taking.

It was a rousing song which the recluse never recalled having heard before, a “big number” in incomprehensible dialect, with a laugh refrain in which the troupe joined regularly at the tops of their voices. At this point both the words and the accompaniment of the instruments stopped, with nothing left but a laugh which was somehow arranged rhythmically although very naturally done⁠—and the soloist especially showed great talent in giving it a most deceptive vitality. At the renewal of his professional distance from the audience he had recovered all his boldness again, and the artificial laugh that he directed up towards the terrace was derisive. Even before the end of the articulate portion of the strophe, he seemed to struggle against an irresistible tickling. He gulped, his voice trembled, he pressed his hand over his mouth, he contorted his shoulders; and at the proper moment the ungovernable laugh broke out of him, burst into such real cackles that it was infectious and communicated itself to the audience, so that on the terrace also an unfounded hilarity, living off itself alone, started up. But this seemed to double the singer’s exuberance. He bent his knees, he slapped his thighs, he nearly split himself; he no longer laughed, he shrieked. He pointed up with his finger, as though nothing were more comic than the laughing guests there, and finally everyone in the garden and on the verandah was laughing, even to the waiters, bell boys, and house-servants in the doorways.

Aschenbach was no longer resting in his chair; he sat upright, as if attempting to defend himself, or to escape. But the laughter, the whiffs of the hospital smell, and the boy’s nearness combined to put him into a trance that held his mind and his senses hopelessly captive. In the general movement and distraction he ventured to glance across at Tadzio, and as he did so he dared observe that the boy, in reply to his glance, was equally serious, much as though he had modelled his conduct and expression after those of one man, and the prevalent mood had no effect on him since this one man was not part of it. This portentous childish obedience had something so disarming and overpowering about it that the grey-haired man could hardly restrain himself from burying his face in his hands. It had also seemed to him that Tadzio’s occasional stretching and quick breathing indicated a complaint, a congestion, of the lungs. “He is sickly, he will probably not grow old,” he thought repeatedly with that positiveness which is often a peculiar relief to desire and passion. And along with pure solitude he had a feeling of rakish gratification.

Meanwhile the Venetians had ended and were leaving. Applause accompanied them, and their leader did not miss the opportunity to cover his retreat with further jests. His bows, the kisses he blew, were laughed at⁠—and so he doubled them. When his companions were already gone, he acted as though he had hurt himself by backing into a lamppost, and he crept through the gate seemingly crippled with pain. Then he suddenly threw off the mask of comic hard luck, stood upright, hurried away jauntily, stuck out his tongue insolently at the guests on the terrace, and slipped into the darkness. The company was breaking up; Tadzio had been missing from the balustrade for some time. But, to the displeasure of the waiters, the lonely man sat for a long while over the remains of his pomegranate drink. Night advanced. Time was crumbling. In the house of his parents many years back there had been an hour glass⁠—of a sudden he saw the fragile and expressive instrument again, as though it were standing in front of him. Fine and noiseless the rust-red sand was running through the glass neck; and since it was getting low in the upper half, a speedy little vortex had been formed there.

As early as the following day, in the afternoon, he had made new progress in his obstinate baiting of the people he met⁠—and this time he had all possible success. He walked from the Piazza of St. Mark’s into the English travelling bureau located there; and after changing some money at the cash desk, he put on the expression of a distrustful foreigner and launched his fatal question at the attendant clerk. He was a Britisher; he wore a woollen suit, and was still young, with close-set eyes, and had that characteristic stolid reliability which is so peculiarly and strikingly appealing in the tricky, nimble-witted South. He began, “No reason for alarm, sir. A regulation without any serious significance. Such measures are often taken to anticipate the unhealthy effects of the heat and the sirocco⁠ ⁠…” But as he raised his blue eyes, he met the stare of the foreigner, a tired and somewhat unhappy stare focused on his lips with a touch of scorn. Then the Englishman blushed. “At least,” he continued in an emotional undertone, “that is the official explanation which people here are content to accept. I will admit that there is something more behind it.” And then in his frank and leisurely manner he told the truth.

For several years now Indian cholera had shown a heightened tendency to spread and migrate. Hatched in the warm swamps of the Ganges delta, rising with the noxious breath of that luxuriant, unfit primitive world and island wilderness which is shunned by humans and where the tiger crouches in the bamboo thickets, the plague had raged continuously and with unusual strength in Hindustan, had reached eastwards to China, westwards to Afghanistan and Persia, and following the chief caravan routes, had carried its terrors to Astrachan, and even to Moscow. But while Europe was trembling lest the spectre continue its advance from there across the country, it had been transported over the sea by Syrian merchantmen, and had turned up almost simultaneously in several Mediterranean ports, had raised its head in Toulon and Malaga, had showed its mask several times in Palermo and Naples, and seemed permanently entrenched through Calabria and Apulia. The north of the peninsula had been spared. Yet in the middle of this May in Venice the frightful vibrions were found on one and the same day in the blackish wasted bodies of a cabin boy and a woman who sold greengroceries. The cases were kept secret. But within a week there were ten, twenty, thirty more, and in various sections. A man from the Austrian provinces who had made a pleasure trip to Venice for a few days, returned to his home town and died with unmistakable symptoms⁠—and that is how the first reports of the pestilence in the lagoon city got into the German newspapers. The Venetian authorities answered that the city’s health conditions had never been better, and took the most necessary preventive measures. But probably the food supply had been infected. Denied and glossed over, death was eating its way along the narrow streets, and its dissemination was especially favoured by the premature summer heat which made the water of the canals lukewarm. Yes, it seemed as though the plague had got renewed strength, as though the tenacity and fruitfulness of its stimuli had doubled. Cases of recovery were rare. Out of a hundred attacks, eighty were fatal, and in the most horrible manner. For the plague moved with utter savagery, and often showed that most dangerous form, which is called “the drying.” Water from the blood vessels collected in pockets, and the blood was unable to carry this off. Within a few hours the victim was parched, his blood became as thick as glue, and he stifled amid cramps and hoarse groans. Lucky for him if, as sometimes happened, the attack took the form of a light discomfiture followed by a profound coma from which he seldom or never awakened. At the beginning of June the pesthouse of the Ospedale Civico had quietly filled; there was not much room left in the two orphan asylums, and a frightfully active commerce was kept up between the wharf of the Fondamenta Nuove and San Michele, the burial island. But there was the fear of a general drop in prosperity. The recently opened art exhibit in the public gardens was to be considered, along with the heavy losses which in case of panic or unfavourable rumours, would threaten business, the hotels, the entire elaborate system for exploiting foreigners⁠—and as these considerations evidently carried more weight than love of truth or respect for international agreements, the city authorities upheld obstinately their policy of silence and denial. The chief health officer had resigned from his post in indignation, and been promptly replaced by a more tractable personality. The people knew this; and the corruption of their superiors, together with the predominating insecurity, the exceptional condition into which the prevalence of death had plunged the city, induced a certain demoralization of the lower classes, encouraging shady and antisocial impulses which manifested themselves in licence, profligacy, and a rising crime wave. Contrary to custom, many drunkards were seen in the evenings; it was said that at night nasty mobs made the streets unsafe. Burglaries and even murders became frequent, for it had already been proved on two occasions that persons who had presumably fallen victim to the plague had in reality been dispatched with poison by their own relatives. And professional debauchery assumed abnormal and obtrusive proportions such as had never been known here before, and to an extent which is usually found only in the southern parts of the country and in the Orient.

The Englishman pronounced the final verdict on these facts. “You would do well,” he concluded, “to leave today rather than tomorrow. It cannot be much more than a couple of days before a quarantine zone is declared.” “Thank you,” Aschenbach said, and left the office.

The square lay sunless and stifling. Unsuspecting foreigners sat in front of the cafés, or stood among the pigeons in front of the church and watched the swarms of birds flapping their wings, crowding one another, and pecking at grains of corn offered them in open palms. The recluse was feverishly excited, triumphant in his possession of the truth. But it had left him with a bad taste in his mouth, and a weird horror in his heart. As he walked up and down the flagstones of the gorgeous court he was weighing an action which would meet the situation and would absolve him. This evening after dinner he could approach the woman with the pearls and make her a speech; he had figured it out word for word: “Permit a foreigner, madam, to give you some useful advice, a warning, which is being withheld from you through self-interest. Leave immediately with Tadzio and your daughters! Venice is full of the plague.” Then he could lay a farewell hand on the head of this tool of a mocking divinity, turn away, and flee this morass. But he felt at the same time that he was very far from seriously desiring such a move. He would retract it, would disengage himself from it.⁠ ⁠… But when we are distracted we loathe most the thought of retracing our steps. He recalled a white building, ornamented with inscriptions which glistened in the evening and in whose transparent mysticism his mind’s eye had lost itself⁠—and then that strange wanderer’s form which had awakened in the aging man the roving hankerings of youth after the foreign and the remote. And the thought of return, the thought of prudence and soberness, effort, mastery, disgusted him to such an extent that his face was distorted with an expression of physical nausea. “It must be kept silent!” he whispered heavily. And: “I will keep silent!” The consciousness of his share in the facts and the guilt intoxicated him, much as a little wine intoxicates a tired brain. The picture of the diseased and neglected city hovering desolately before him aroused vague hopes beyond the bounds of reason, but with an egregious sweetness. What was the scant happiness he had dreamed of a moment ago, compared with these expectations? What were art and virtue worth to him, over against the advantages of chaos? He kept silent, and remained in Venice.

This same night he had a frightful dream, if one can designate as a dream a bodily and mental experience which occurred to him in the deepest sleep, completely independent of him, and with a physical realness, although he never saw himself present or moving about among the incidents; but their stage rather was his soul itself, and they broke in from without, trampling down his resistance⁠—a profound and spiritual resistance⁠—by sheer force; and when they had passed through, they left his substance, the culture of his lifetime, crushed and annihilated behind them.

It began with anguish, anguish and desire, and a frightened curiosity as to what was coming. It was night, and his senses were on the watch. From far off a grumble, an uproar, was approaching, a jumble of noises. Clanking, blaring, and dull thunder, with shrill shouts and a definite whine in a long drawn out u-sound⁠—all this was sweetly, ominously interspersed and dominated by the deep cooing of wickedly persistent flutes which charmed the bowels in a shamelessly penetrative manner. But he knew one word; it was veiled, and yet would name what was approaching: “The foreign god!” Vaporous fire began to glow; then he recognized mountains like those about his summer house. And in the scattered light, from high up in the woods, among tree trunks and crumbling moss-grown rocks⁠—people, beasts, a throng, a raging mob plunged twisting and whirling downwards, and made the hill swarm with bodies, flames, tumult, and a riotous round dance. Women, tripped by over-long fur draperies which hung from their waists, were holding up tambourines and beating on them, their groaning heads flung back. Others swung sparking firebrands and bare daggers, or wore hissing snakes about the middle of their bodies, or shrieking held their breasts in their two hands. Men with horns on their foreheads, shaggy-haired, girded with hides, bent back their necks and raised their arms and thighs, clashed brass cymbals and beat furiously at kettledrums, while smooth boys prodded he-goats with wreathed sticks, climbing on their horns and falling off with shouts when they bounded. And the bacchantes wailed the word with the soft consonants and the drawn out u-sound, at once sweet and savage, like nothing ever heard before. In one place it rang out as though piped into the air by stags, and it was echoed in another by many voices, in wild triumph⁠—with it they incited one another to dance and to fling out their arms and legs, and it was never silent. But everything was pierced and dominated by the deep coaxing flute. He who was fighting against this experience⁠—did it not coax him too with its shameless penetration, into the feast and the excesses of the extreme sacrifice? His repugnance, his fear, were keen⁠—he was honourably set on defending himself to the very last against the barbarian, the foe to intellectual poise and dignity. But the noise, the howling, multiplied by the resonant walls of the hills, grew, took the upper hand, swelled to a fury of rapture. Odours oppressed the senses, the pungent smell of the bucks, the scent of moist bodies, and a waft of stagnant water, with another smell, something familiar, the smell of wounds and prevalent disease. At the beating of the drum his heart fluttered, his head was spinning, he was caught in a frenzy, in a blinding deafening lewdness⁠—and he yearned to join the ranks of the god. The obscene symbol, huge, wooden, was uncovered and raised up; then they howled the magic word with more abandon. Foaming at the mouth, they raged, teased one another with ruttish gestures and caressing hands; laughing and groaning, they stuck the goads into one another’s flesh and licked the blood from their limbs. But the dreamer now was with them, in them, and he belonged to the foreign god. Yes, they were he himself, as they hurled themselves biting and tearing upon the animals, got entangled in steaming rags, and fell in promiscuous unions on the torn moss, in sacrifice to their god. And his soul tasted the unchastity and fury of decay.

When he awakened from the affliction of this dream he was unnerved, shattered, and hopelessly under the power of the demon. He no longer avoided the inquisitive glances of other people; he did not care if he was exciting their suspicions. And as a matter of fact they were fleeing, travelling elsewhere. Numerous bathing houses stood empty, the occupants of the dining-hall became more and more scattered, and in the city now one rarely saw a foreigner. The truth seemed to have leaked out; the panic, despite the reticence of those whose interests were involved, seemed no longer avoidable. But the woman with the pearls remained with her family, either because the rumours had not yet reached her, or because she was too proud and fearless to heed them. Tadzio remained. And to Aschenbach, in his infatuation, it seemed at times as though flight and death might remove all the disturbing elements of life around them, and he stay here alone with the boy. Yes, by the sea in the forenoon when his eyes rested heavily, irresponsibly, unwaveringly on the thing he coveted, or when, as the day was ending, he followed shamelessly after him through streets where the hideous death lurked in secret⁠—at such times the atrocious seemed to him rich in possibilities, and laws of morality had dropped away.

Like any lover, he wanted to please; and he felt a bitter anguish lest it might not be possible. He added bright youthful details to his dress, he put on jewels, and used perfumes. During the day he often spent much time over his toilet, and came to the table strikingly dressed, excited, and in suspense. In the light of the sweet youthfulness which had done this to him, he detested his aging body. The sight of his grey hair, his sharp features, plunged him into shame and hopelessness. It induced him to attempt rejuvenating his body and appearance. He often visited the hotel barber.

Beneath the barber’s apron, leaning back in the chair under the gossiper’s expert hands, he winced to observe his reflection in the mirror.

“Grey,” he said, making a wry face.

“A little,” the man answered. “Due entirely to a slight neglect, an indifference to outward things, which is conceivable in people of importance, but it is not exactly praiseworthy. And all the less so since such persons are above prejudice in matters of nature or art. If the moral objections of certain people to the art of cosmetics were to be logically extended to the care of the teeth, they would give no slight offence. And after all, we are just as old as we feel, and under some circumstances grey hair would actually stand for more of an untruth than the despised correction. In your case, sir, you are entitled to the natural colour of your hair. Will you permit me simply to return what belongs to you?”

“How is that?” Aschenbach asked.

Then the orator washed his client’s hair with two kinds of water, one clear and one dark, and it was as black as in youth. Following this, he curled it with irons into soft waves, stepped back, and eyed his work.

“All that is left now,” he said, “would be to freshen up the skin a little.”

And like someone who cannot finish, cannot satisfy himself, he passed with quickening energy from one manipulation to another. Aschenbach rested comfortably, incapable of resistance, or rather his hopes aroused by what was taking place. In the glass he saw his brows arch more evenly and decisively. His eyes became longer; their brilliance was heightened by a light touching-up of the lids. A little lower, where the skin had been a leatherish brown, he saw a delicate crimson tint grow beneath a deft application of colour. His lips, bloodless a little while past, became full, and as red as raspberries. The furrows in the cheeks and about the mouth, the wrinkles of the eyes, disappeared beneath lotions and cream. With a knocking heart he beheld a blossoming youth. Finally the beauty specialist declared himself content, after the manner of such people, by obsequiously thanking the man he had been serving. “A trifling assistance,” he said, as he applied one parting touch. “Now the gentleman can fall in love unhesitatingly.” He walked away, fascinated; he was happy as in a dream, timid and bewildered. His necktie was red, his broad-brimmed straw hat was trimmed with a variegated band.

A tepid storm wind had risen. It was raining sparsely and at intervals, but the air was damp, thick, and filled with the smell of things rotting. All around him he heard a fluttering, pattering, and swishing; and under the fever of his cosmetics it seemed to him as though evil wind-spirits were haunting the place, impure sea birds which rooted and gnawed at the food of the condemned and befouled it with their droppings. For the sultriness destroyed his appetite, and the fancy suggested itself that the foods were poisoned with contaminating substances. Tracking the boy one afternoon, Aschenbach had plunged deep into the tangled centre of the diseased city. He was becoming uncertain of where he was, since the alleys, waterways, bridges, and little squares of the labyrinth were all so much alike, and he was no longer even sure of directions. He was absorbed with the problem of keeping the pursued figure in sight. And, driven to disgraceful subterfuges, flattening himself against walls, hiding behind the backs of other people, for a long time he did not notice the weariness, the exhaustion, with which emotion and the continual suspense had taxed his mind and his body. Tadzio walked behind his companions. He always allowed the governess and the nunlike sisters to precede him in the narrow places; and loitering behind alone, he would turn his head occasionally to look over his shoulder and make sure by a glance of his peculiarly dark-grey eyes that his admirer was following. He saw him, and did not betray him. Drunk with the knowledge of this, lured forward by those eyes, led meekly by his passion, the lover stole after his unseemly hope⁠—but finally he was cheated and lost sight of him. The Poles had crossed a short arching bridge; the height of the curve hid them from the pursuer, and when he himself had arrived there he no longer saw them. He hunted for them vainly in three directions, straight ahead and to either side along the narrow dirty wharf. In the end he was so tired and unnerved that he had to give up the search.

His head was on fire, his body was covered with a sticky sweat, his knees trembled. He could no longer endure the thirst that was torturing him, and he looked around for some immediate relief. From a little vegetable store he bought some fruit⁠—strawberries, soft and overly ripe⁠—and he ate them as he walked. A very charming, forsaken little square opened up before him. He recognized it; here he had made his frustrated plans for flight weeks ago. He let himself sink down on the steps of the cistern in the middle of the square, and laid his head against the stone cylinder. It was quiet; grass was growing up through the pavement; refuse was scattered about. Among the weather-beaten, unusually tall houses surrounding him there was one like a palace, with little lion-covered balconies, and Gothic windows with blank emptiness behind them. On the ground floor of another house was a drug store. Warm gusts of wind occasionally carried the smell of carbolic acid.

He sat there, he, the master, the artist of dignity, the author of The Wretch, a work which had, in such accurate symbols, renounced vagabondage and the depths of misery, had denied all sympathy with the engulfed, and had cast out the outcast; the man who had arrived and, victor over his own knowledge, had outgrown all irony and acclimatized himself to the obligations of public confidence; whose reputation was official, whose name had been knighted, and on whose style boys were urged to pattern themselves⁠—he sat there. His eyelids were shut; only now and then a mocking uneasy side-glance slipped out from beneath them. And his loose lips, set off by the cosmetics, formed isolated words of the strange dream-logic created by his half-slumbering brain.

“For beauty, Phaedrus, mark me, beauty alone is both divine and visible at once; and thus it is the road of the sensuous; it is, little Phaedrus, the road of the artist to the spiritual. But do you now believe, my dear, that they can ever attain wisdom and true human dignity for whom the road to the spiritual leads through the senses? Or do you believe rather (I leave the choice to you) that this is a pleasant but perilous road, a really wrong and sinful road, which necessarily leads astray? For you must know that we poets cannot take the road of beauty without having Eros join us and set himself up as our leader. Indeed, we may even be heroes after our fashion, and hardened warriors, though we be like women, for passion is our exaltation, and our desire must remain love⁠—that is our pleasure and our disgrace. You now see, do you not, that we poets cannot be wise and dignified? That we necessarily go astray, necessarily remain lascivious, and adventurers in emotion? The mastery of our style is all lies and foolishness, our renown and honour are a farce, the confidence of the masses in us is highly ridiculous, and the training of the public and of youth through art is a precarious undertaking which should be forbidden. For how indeed could he be a fit instructor who is born with a natural leaning towards the precipice? We might well disavow it and reach after dignity, but wherever we turn it attracts us. Let us, say, renounce the dissolvent of knowledge, since knowledge, Phaedrus, has no dignity or strength. It is aware, it understands and pardons, but without reserve and form. It feels sympathy with the precipice, it is the precipice. This then we abandon with firmness, and from now on our efforts matter only by their yield of beauty, or in other words, simplicity, greatness, and new rigour, form, and a second type of openness. But form and openness, Phaedrus, lead to intoxication and to desire, lead the noble perhaps into sinister revels of emotion which his own beautiful rigour rejects as infamous, lead to the precipice, yes they too lead to the precipice. They lead us poets there, I say, since we cannot force ourselves, since we can merely let ourselves out. And now I am going, Phaedrus. You stay here; and when you no longer see me, then you go too.”

A few days later, as Gustav von Aschenbach was not feeling well, he left the beach hotel at a later hour in the morning than usual. He had to fight against certain attacks of vertigo which were only partially physical and were accompanied by a pronounced malaise, a feeling of bafflement and hopelessness⁠—while he was not certain whether this had to do with conditions outside him or with his own nature. In the lobby he noticed a large pile of luggage ready for shipment; he asked the doorkeeper who it was that was leaving, and heard in answer the Polish title which he had learned secretly. He accepted this without any alteration of his sunken features, with that curt elevation of the head by which one acknowledges something he does not need to know. Then he asked, “When?” The answer was, “After lunch.” He nodded, and went to the beach.

It was not very inviting. Rippling patches of rain retreated across the wide flat water separating the beach from the first long sandbank. An air of autumn, of things past their prime, seemed to lie over the pleasure spot which had once been so alive with colour and was now almost abandoned. The sand was no longer kept clean. A camera, seemingly without an owner, stood on its tripod by the edge of the sea; and a black cloth thrown over it was flapping noisily in the wind.

Tadzio, with the three or four companions still left, was moving about to the right in front of his family’s cabin. And midway between the sea and the row of bathing houses, lying back in his chair with a robe over his knees, Aschenbach looked at him once more. The game, which was not being supervised since the women were probably occupied with preparations for the journey, seemed to have no rules, and it was degenerating. The stocky boy with the sleek black hair who was called Jaschu had been angered and blinded by sand flung in his face. He forced Tadzio into a wrestling match which quickly ended in the fall of the beauty, who was weaker. But as though in the hour of parting the servile feelings of the inferior had turned to merciless brutality and were trying to get vengeance for a long period of slavery, the victor did not let go of the boy underneath, but knelt on his back and pressed his face so persistently into the sand that Tadzio, already breathless from the struggle, was in danger of strangling. His attempts to shake off the weight were fitful; for moments they stopped entirely and were resumed again as mere twitchings. Enraged, Aschenbach was about to spring to the rescue, when the torturer finally released his victim. Tadzio, very pale, raised himself halfway and sat motionless for several minutes, resting on one arm, with rumpled hair and glowering eyes. Then he stood up completely, and moved slowly away. They called him, cheerfully at first, then anxiously and imploringly; he did not listen. The swarthy boy, who seemed to regret his excesses immediately afterwards, caught up with him and tried to placate him. A movement of the shoulder put him at his distance. Tadzio went down obliquely to the water. He was barefoot, and wore his striped linen suit with the red bow.

He lingered on the edge of the water with his head down, drawing figures in the wet sand with one toe; then he went into the shallows, which did not cover his knees in the deepest place, crossed them leisurely, and arrived at the sandbank. He stood there a moment, his face turned to the open sea; soon after, he began stepping slowly to the left along the narrow stretch of exposed ground. Separated from the mainland by the expanse of water, separated from his companions by a proud moodiness, he moved along, a strongly isolated and unrelated figure with fluttering hair⁠—placed out there in the sea, the wind, against the vague mists. He stopped once more to look around. And suddenly, as though at some recollection, some impulse, with one hand on his hip he turned the upper part of his body in a beautiful twist which began from the base⁠—and he looked over his shoulder towards the shore. The watcher sat there, as he had sat once before when for the first time these twilight-grey eyes had turned at the doorway and met his own. His head, against the back of the chair, had slowly followed the movements of the boy walking yonder. Now, simultaneously with this glance it rose and sank on his breast, so that his eyes looked out from underneath, while his face took on the loose, inwardly relaxed expression of deep sleep. But it seemed to him as though the pale and lovely lure out there were smiling to him, nodding to him; as though, removing his hand from his hip, he were signalling to come out, were vaguely guiding towards egregious promises. And, as often before, he stood up to follow him.

Some minutes passed before anyone hurried to the aid of the man who had collapsed into one corner of his chair. He was brought to his room. And on the same day a respectfully shocked world received the news of his death.

When spring, which all men agree is the fairest season of the year, comes round again and happens to do honour to its name, I love to go for half an hour’s stroll in the open air before breakfast. I take this stroll whenever the early chorus of the birds has succeeded in rousing me betimes⁠—because I had been wise enough to terminate the preceding day at a seemly hour. And then I go walking⁠—hatless⁠—in the spacious avenue in front of my house, and sometimes in the parks which are more distant. Before I capitulate to the day’s work, I long to draw a few draughts of young morning air and to taste the joy of the pure early freshness of things. Standing on the steps which lead down from my front door, I give a whistle. This whistle consists of two tones, a base tone and a deeper quarter-tone⁠—as though I were beginning the first notes of the second phrase of Schubert’s unfinished symphony, a signal which may be regarded as equal in tonal value to a name of two syllables.

The very next moment, as I go on towards the garden gate, a sound is heard in the distance, a sound at first almost inaudible, then growing rapidly nearer and clearer⁠—a sound such as might ensue if a metal tag were to be set clinking against the brass trimmings of a leather collar. Then, as I turn round, I see Bashan curving in swift career around the corner of the house and heading for me full tilt as though he intended to knock me over. His efforts cause him to shorten his underlip a bit, so that two or three of his lower front teeth are laid bare. How splendidly they gleam in the early sun!

Bashan comes straight from his kennel. This is situated behind the house under the floor of the veranda, which is supported on pillars. It is probable that, after a night of divers and unknown adventures, he had been enjoying a short morning doze in this kennel, until my two-syllabic whistle roused him to swift activity. This kennel or miniature hut is equipped with curtains made of coarse material, and is lined with straw. Thus it chances that a stray straw or two may be clinging to Bashan’s coat⁠—already rather ruffled up from his lying and stretching⁠—or that one of these refractory straws may even be left sticking between his toes. This is a vision which always reminds me of the old Count Moor in Schiller’s Robbers⁠—as I once saw him in a most vivid and imaginative production, coming out of the Hunger Tower, with a straw between two of his toes.

Involuntarily I take up a flank position to the charging Bashan as he comes storming onward⁠—an attitude of defence⁠—for his apparent intention of lunging himself between my feet and laying me low is most amazingly deceptive. But always at the last moment and just before the collision, he manages to put on the brakes and to bring himself to⁠—something which testifies to his physical as well as his mental self-control. And now⁠—without uttering a sound⁠—for Bashan makes but scant use of his sonorous and expressive voice⁠—he begins to carry out a confused dance of welcome and salutation all about me, a dance consisting of rapid tramplings, of prodigious waggings⁠—waggings which are not limited to that member which is intended for their proper expression⁠—but which demand tribute of his entire hindquarters up to his very ribs, furthermore an annular contraction of his body, as well as darting, far-flung leaps into the air, also rotations about his own axis⁠—performances which, strange to say, he endeavours to hide from my gaze, for whenever I turn towards him, he transfers them to the other side. The very moment, however, I bend down and stretch out my hand, he is brought suddenly with a single leap to my side. There he stands, like a statue, with his shoulder-blade pressing against my shinbone. He stands aslant, with his strong paws braced against the ground, his face uplifted towards mine, so that he peers into my eyes from below and in a reversed direction. His stillness whilst I pat his shoulder and mutter friendly words, breathes forth the same concentration and emotion as the preceding delirium.

He is a short-haired setter⁠—if you will not take this designation too sternly and strictly, but with a grain of salt. For Bashan cannot really claim to be a setter such as are described in books⁠—a setter in accordance with the most meticulous laws and decrees. He is perhaps a trifle too small for this⁠—for he is somewhat under the size of a full-fledged setter. And then his legs are not quite straight, but somewhat disposed to bend outward, a condition of things which would also be scarcely in accordance with the ideal of a Simon-pure breed.

The slight disposition to dewlaps or “wattles,” that is, to those folds of skin about the neck which are capable of lending a dog such a dignified expression, becomes him admirably, though it is certain that this feature would also be objected to as a flaw by implacable experts on breeding, for I am told that in this species of dog the skin should lie close and firm about the throat.

Bashan’s colouring is very beautiful. His coat is a rusty brown in the ground colour, striped with black. But there are also considerable mixtures of white. These predominate on the chest, the paws, and the belly. His entire nose, which is very short, seems to be painted black. This black and rusty brown makes a pretty velvety pattern on his broad skull as well as on his cool earlaps. One of his most edifying external features is the whorl, tuft or tassel into which the white hair on his chest twists itself and which sticks out like the spike on certain ancient armour. To be sure, one of his rather arbitrary glories⁠—the colour of his hair⁠—might also appear a dubious point to those who rate racial laws higher than the values of personality. It is possible that the classic setter should be monochrome or decorated with shaded or toned spots, and not, like Bashan, with tiger-like stripes. But the most emphatic warning against classifying Bashan in any rigid or ironclad category, is a certain drooping manner of the hirsute appendages about the corners of his mouth and the underside of his jaws, features which might not incorrectly be designated as a kind of bristling moustache and goatee⁠—features which, if you will rivet your eye upon them from near or far, will remind you of a griffon or an Airedale terrier!

But what odds?⁠—setter or pointer or terrier⁠—Bashan is a fine and handsome animal. Look at him as he leans rigidly against my knee and looks up at me with a profound and concentrated devotion! His eye, ah, his eye! is beautiful, soft, and wise, even though a trifle glassy and protuberant. The iris is a rusty brown⁠—of the same colour as his coat, though it forms only a small ring in consequence of the tremendous expanse of the black mirrors of the pupils. On the outer periphery the colour blends into the white of the eye, swimming in it, as it were. The expression of his face, an expression of reasonable cheerfulness, proclaims the fine masculinity of his moral nature, which is reflected physically in the structure of his body. The vaulted chest, beneath whose smooth, supple, and clinging skin the ribs show powerfully, the drawn-in haunches, the nervous, clear-veined legs, the strong and well-shaped paws⁠—all proclaim a brave heart and much virile virtue⁠—proclaim peasant blood⁠—hunting blood. Yes, there can be no doubt of it⁠—the hunter and the tracker dominate prodigiously in Bashan’s education. He is a bona-fide setter⁠—if you must know⁠—even though he may not owe his existence to some snobbish bit of blue-blooded inbreeding. And this perhaps is what I would imply by the rather confused and unrelated words which I address to him whilst patting him on the shoulder-blade.

He stands and stares, listening intently to the tone of my voice. He finds that this tone is full of accents which decidedly approve of his existence, something which I am at pains to emphasise in my speech. And suddenly, with an upward lunge of the head and a swift opening and shutting of his jaws, he makes a snap towards my face, as though he intended to bite off my nose, a bit of pantomime that is obviously meant to be an answer to my remarks and which invariably throws me backward in a sudden recoil, laughing⁠—as Bashan well knows. He intends this to be a kind of air-kiss, half tenderness, half mischievousness⁠—a manoeuvre which has been peculiar to him from puppyhood on⁠—I had never observed it in the case of any of his predecessors. Moreover, he at once begs pardon for the liberty he has taken by waggings, short abrupt bows and an embarrassed air. And then we pass out of the garden-gate into the open.

We are now invested with a sound of rushing and roaring as of the sea. For my house fronts almost directly on the River Isar “rolling rapidly” as in the famous lines by Campbell, and foaming over flat terraces in its bed. We are separated from it only by the rows of poplars, by a strip of fenced-in grass which is planted with young maples and an elevated road which is fringed by great aspens, giants which conduct themselves in the same bizarre manner as willows and snow up the whole region with their white, seed-bearing fluff at the beginning of June. Up river, towards the city, I see a detachment of pioneers practising the building of a pontoon bridge. The thudding of their heavy boots upon the boards and the shouts of their officers echo across the stream. From the farther bank there come sounds of industrial activity, for yonder, at some distance downstream from the house, there is a locomotive plant working under increased pressure⁠—in accordance with the times. The tall windows of this great brick shed glow through the darkness at all hours of the night. New and beautifully lacquered engines hurry to and fro on their trial trips, a steam siren occasionally lets its heady howl be heard, a dull, thunderous pother makes the air quiver from time to time, and from the throats of several stacks the smoke creams darkly forth. This, however, is driven away by a kindly-disposed wind towards the distant tracts of woods, so that it seldom rolls across the river. Thus in the suburban, semi-rural solitude of this region, the whisperings of contemplative nature mingle with those of human activity. Over all lies the blank-eyed freshness of the morning hour.

According to the daylight-saving law, the time might be half-past seven when I take my walk; in reality it is half-past six. With arms crossed behind my back I stroll through the tender sunshine down the poplar-lined avenue, barred by the long shadows of the trees. From here I cannot see the river, but its broad and even flow is audible. There is a soft whispering in the trees, the penetrating twittering, fluting, chirping, and sob-like trill of the songbirds fills the air. Under the moist blue heavens an aeroplane coming from the east, a stark mechanical bird with a roaring voice, now swelling, and now softly ebbing away, steers its independent way across land and river, and Bashan delights my eye with beautiful leaps at full length to and fro across the low fence of the grass plot to the left.

Bashan is jumping because he actually knows that I take pleasure in his jumping. Often by means of calls and knockings upon the fence, have I encouraged him in it and praised him when he had fulfilled my wishes. And now, too, he comes after almost every jump so that I may tell him that he is a daring and elegant fence-vaulter, at which he also ventures a jump or two towards my face and beslobbers my thrust-out, defensive arm with the slaver of his mouth. These exercises, however, he likewise intends to be a kind of gymnastic morning toilet, for he smooths his ruffled coat by means of these athletic movements and rids himself of the straws which had disfigured it.

It is good thus to go walking in the morning, the senses rejuvenated, the spirit purged by the healing bath and long Lethean draught of the night. You look upon the day that lies before you, regard it with strong, serene confidence, but you hesitate lazily to begin it⁠—you are master of an unusually free and unburdened span of time lying between the dream and the day, your reward for the good use you have made of your time. The illusion that you are leading a life that is constant, simple, undissipated and benignly introspective, the illusion that you belong utterly to yourself, renders you happy. Man is disposed to regard his case or condition of the moment, be this glad or troubled, peaceful or passionate, for the true, essential, and permanent aspect of his life, and above all is in fancy inclined to elevate every happy extempore to a radiant rule and an unbreakable habit, whereas he is really condemned to live by improvisation, from hand to mouth, so to speak.

So, drawing in deep breaths of the morning air, you believe in your freedom and in your worth, though you ought to be aware, and at heart are aware, that the world is holding its snares ready to entangle you in them, and that in all probability you will again be lying in bed until nine tomorrow morning, because you had got into it at two the night before, heated, befogged, and full of passionate debate.⁠ ⁠… Well, so be it. Today you are the man of sobriety and the dew-clad early hour, the right royal lord of that mad hunter yonder who is just making another jump across the fence out of sheer joy that you are apparently content to live this day with him and not waste it upon the world you have left behind you.

We follow the tree-lined avenue for about five minutes, to that point where it ceases to be a road and becomes a coarse desert of gravel parallel to the course of the river. We turn our backs upon this and strike into a broad, finely-gravelled street which, like the poplar-lined road, is equipped with a cycle-path, but is still void of houses. This leads to the right, between low-lying allotments of wooded land, towards the declivity which bounds our riverbanks⁠—Bashan’s field of action towards the east.

We cross another street of an equally futuristic nature, which runs openly between the woods and the meadows, and which, farther up in the direction of the city and the tram-stop, is lined with a compact mass of flats. A slanting pebble path leads us to a prettily arranged dingle, almost like a kurgarten to the eye, but void of all humanity, like the entire district at this hour. There are benches along the rounded walks⁠—which enlarge themselves here and there to rondels or to trim playgrounds for the children and to spacious planes of grass on which are growing old and well-formed trees with deep pendant crowns, revealing only a short stretch of trunk above the grass. There are elms, beeches, limes, and silvery willows in parklike groups. I find great pleasure in this carefully-groomed park, in which I could not wander more undisturbed, if it were my own. It is perfect and complete. The gravel paths which curve down and around the gentle, sloping lawns, are even equipped with stone gutters. And there are far and pleasing glimpses between all this greenery, the architecture of a few villas which peer in from both sides and form the background.

Here for a little while, I stroll to and fro upon the walks, whilst Bashan, his body inclined in a centrifugal plane, and drunk with joy of the fetterless unlimited space about him, executes gallopades criss and cross and head over heels upon the smooth grassy surfaces. Or else with barkings wherein indignation and pleasure mix and mingle, he pursues some bird, which, either bewitched by fear or out of sheer mischief, flutters along always a few inches in front of his open jaws. But no sooner do I sit down upon a bench than he comes and takes up a position on my foot. It is one of the immutable laws of his life that he will run about only when I myself am in motion, and that as soon as I sit down he too should become inactive. The necessity for this is not quite obvious, but to Bashan it is as the laws of the Medes and Persians.

It is quaint, cosy, and amusing to feel him sitting upon my foot and penetrating it with the feverish glow of his body. A sense of gaiety and sympathy fills my bosom, as always when I am abandoned to him and to his idea of things. His manner of sitting is a bit peasant-like, a bit uncouth⁠—with his shoulder-blades turned outward and his paws turned in, irregularly. In this position his figure appears smaller and stockier than it really is, and the white whorl of hair upon his chest is thrust into comic prominence. But his head is thrown back in the most dignified manner and redeems his disregard for a fine pose by virtue of the intense concentrated attention it displays.

It is so quiet that both of us remain absolutely still. The rushing of the water reaches us only in a subdued murmur. Under such conditions the tiny secret activities in our immediate world take on a particular importance and preoccupy the senses⁠—the brief rustling of a lizard, the note of a bird, the burrowing of a mole in the ground. Bashan’s ears are erected, in so far as the muscular structure of flapping ears admits of this. He cocks his head in order to intensify his sense of hearing. And the nostrils of his moist black nose are in incessant and sensitive motion, responsive to innumerable subtle reactions.

He then lies down once more, being careful, however, to maintain his contact with my foot. He is lying in a profile position, in the ancient, well-proportioned, animalistic, idol-like attitude of the sphinx, with elevated head and breast, his thighs pressed close to his body, his paws extended in front of him. He is overheated, so he opens his jaws, a manoeuvre which causes the concentrated cleverness of his expression to pass into the purely bestial. His eyes twinkle and narrow to mere slits, and between his white and strong triangular teeth a long, rose-red tongue lolls forth.

It was a short, buxom, dark-eyed young woman who, with the help of her equally sturdy and dark-eyed daughter, keeps a hillside tavern not far from the Bavarian mountain resort called Tolz, who acted as go-between in the business of our making Bashan’s acquaintance and then acquiring him. That is over two years ago and he was only half a year old at the time. Anastasia⁠—this is the name of mine hostess⁠—knew that we had been compelled to have our Percy shot⁠—he was a Scotch collie, a harmless, somewhat weak-minded aristocrat, who had been visited in his old age by a painful and disfiguring skin disease⁠—and that for over a year we had been without a faithful guardian. She therefore rang us up from her perch in the hills and told us that she was boarding a dog who was sure to suit us to a dot, and that he was to be seen at any time.

The children coaxed and urged, and as the curiosity of their elders was scarcely less than their own, we all sallied forth the very next afternoon to climb the heights where Anastasia’s tavern lay. We found her in her roomy kitchen which was filled with warm and succulent vapours. There she stood with her round bare forearms and her dress open at the throat, with her face rosy and shiny, preparing the evening meal for her boarders, whilst her daughter, busily but quietly going to and fro, lent assistance. We were given a pleasant greeting, and the fact that we had not postponed our visit but had come to attend to business without delay, was favourably commented upon. In answer to our inquisitive glances, Resi, the daughter, steered us toward the kitchen table. Here she bent down, placed her hands upon her knees, and directed a few flattering and encouraging words under the table. There, tied to a table-leg with a frazzled rope, stood a creature of whom we had until then been unaware in the smouldering half-light of this kitchen. It was a vision, however, which would have induced anyone to burst into peals of pitying laughter.

There he stood on long, knock-kneed legs, his tail between them, his four feet close together, his back arched. He was trembling. It is possible that he was trembling out of fear, but one had the impression that it was due to a lack of flesh and fat. For the little apparition before us was a mere skeleton, a chest with a spinal column covered with rough hair and supported on four sticks. He had drawn back his ears, a muscular manoeuvre which, of course, immediately extinguishes every gleam of intelligent cheerfulness in a dog’s physiognomy. This effect in his still so childish face was so extreme that it expressed nothing but stupidity and misery as well as an insistent plea for consideration. There was also the fact to consider that the appendage which one might now call his goatee was at that time still more developed in relation to the rest of his face, something which gave to the aggregate woebegoneness of his appearance a trace of sour hypochondria.

We all bent down to address comforting and coaxing words to this picture of misery. Anastasia, from her post in front of the stove, mingled her remarks with the rapturous and pitying exclamations of the children, and retailed information as to the personality of her boarder. His name, she declared in her pleasant and even voice, was, for the time being, Lux. He was the son of most respectable parents. She was personally acquainted with his mother, and as for his father she had heard nothing but good of him. Lux was born on a farm at Huglfing, and it was only owing to special circumstances that his owners were willing to sell him so cheaply. For that reason they had brought him to the tavern⁠—in view of the lively traffic there. They had come in a small wagon and Lux had gallantly trotted the whole twenty kilometres, between the hind wheels. She had at once thought of us, for she knew we were looking for a good dog, and she felt quite certain that we could not help taking him. If we could decide upon taking him at once, it would be a fine thing all round. She was sure that we would have great joy of him, and as for him, he would no longer be alone in the world, but have a cosy berth, and she, Anastasia, would cease to worry about him. We ought, however, not to be prejudiced against him because of the faces he was now making. He was a bit cowed at present and not sure of himself, because of the strange surroundings. But we would soon see that he had a fine pedigree, that his parents were excellent stock.

Yes, we objected, but it was clear⁠—was it not⁠—that these parents of his had not been well matched?

Oh, yes, they had, and both of them were a fine breed, too! She, Anastasia, would guarantee that his points were all good. He was also unspoiled and very moderate in his demands⁠—something which was worth a good deal in such lean times as these. Up to the present he had supported himself entirely on potato-skins. She suggested that we take him home first, on probation, as it were. We were under no obligation at all. In case we did not like him she would take him back and return the small sum we had paid. She was not afraid to say this⁠—not afraid that we might take her at her word. For knowing us as she did, and knowing him, too⁠—both parties to the bargain⁠—she was convinced that we should learn to love him and never think of ever giving him up again.

She said a good deal more in this vein⁠—quietly, glowingly, and amiably⁠—the while she negotiated things on the stove, with the flames at times shooting up magically in front of her. And finally she came herself and with both hands opened Lux’s mouth in order to show us his fine teeth and for some mysterious reason also the rosy and riffled roof of his mouth.

Upon our asking, with professional air, whether he had already had the mange, she replied with a slight show of impatience, that she did not know. And as to his size when he had finally stopped growing?⁠—well, she declared with a smart promptness, this would be exactly that of our deceased Percy. There was a good deal more of talk to and fro, a good deal of warmhearted encouragement on the part of Anastasia, reinforced by pleas from the children, and a good deal of half-conquered irresolution on our part. We finally begged leave to be permitted to consider the matter for a short time, and this was graciously granted us. And so we descended to the valley, thoughtfully rehearsing and ruminating upon our impressions.

That bit of four-legged misery under the table had naturally captured the hearts of the children, and we grownups attempted in vain to smile away their lack of taste and judgment. We, too, felt a tugging at our hearts and realised all too clearly that we should be hard put to it to banish the vision of the unfortunate Lux from our memories. What was to become of him?⁠—if we turned away in contumely? Into whose⁠—into what hands would he fall? A terrible and mysterious figure arose in our fantasies: the knacker in his flaying-house, from whose loathsome attentions we had once saved Percy by means of a few chivalrous bullets from the rifle of a gamekeeper and the honourable burial-place we had given him at the edge of our garden. If we were minded to leave Lux to an unknown and possibly ghastly fate we should not have been so careless as to make his acquaintance, and to look upon his childish face with the goatee. But now that we were aware of his existence, a responsibility seemed laid upon us which we could dispute only with difficulty and with forced, halfhearted denials.

Thus it came about that the third day following saw us once more climbing up that gentle spur of the lower Alps. It was not that we had already decided upon the acquisition of Lux. But we saw that things being as they were, it was not likely that the matter would have any other outcome.

This time we found Anastasia and her daughter sitting opposite each other at the kitchen-table and drinking coffee. Between them, in front of the table, sat he who bore the preliminary name of Lux⁠—sat as he is still accustomed to sit today, his shoulder-blades twisted like a yokel’s, his paws turned in. Under his worn leather collar there was a little nosegay of wildflowers which decidedly augmented his appearance and lent it something festive, like that of an enterprising village youth on a Sunday or the bridegroom at a country wedding. The young hostess, who herself made a neat and pretty appearance in her peasant costume with its laced velvet bodice, had furbished him out in this fashion in order to celebrate his entry into his new home⁠—as she put it. And mother and daughter both assured us that they had been absolutely certain that we should come again to fetch Lux, and that they knew that we should come today.

Thus all further controversy and debate proved to be impossible, in fact, precluded almost before we had entered. In her own pleasant way, Anastasia thanked us for the purchase-money which we handed to her and which amounted to ten marks. It was clear that she had imposed this price upon us more in our own interests than in hers, or those of the farmer-folk who had Lux to sell⁠—that is, she felt that it was necessary to give a positive, computable value to poor Lux in our eyes. This we understood and gladly paid the tribute. Lux was detached from his table-leg, the end of the rope handed over to me, and thus we passed over the threshold of Anastasia’s kitchen, our procession attended by the most friendly wishes and congratulations.

It was, however, not a triumphal procession which proceeded on the hour’s march towards home with our new household companion⁠—the less so since our bridegroom soon lost his nosegay. It is true that we read amusement and also mocking and derogatory depreciation in the glances of the people we met, the opportunities for which became multiplied as we made our way through the market place⁠—longitudinally. To cap everything we soon discovered that Lux was suffering from a disorder of the bowels, apparently a chronic one, something which forced us to make frequent halts under the cynical eyes of the townspeople. We formed a protective circle and hid his internal misery from rude eyes, and solemnly asked ourselves whether it was not, after all, the mange which was thus displaying its most sinister symptoms? But this anxiety was uncalled-for, as the future proved to us, for we soon saw that we had to deal with a sound and hearty constitution which has proved itself proof against plagues and distempers up to this very moment.

As soon as we reached home, the servant-maids were called forth, so that they might make acquaintance with this new addition to the family and also deliver their humble judgment upon him. We saw that they had been prepared to express admiration, but after they had caught sight of him and read our own vacillating and uncertain looks, they broke into rude laughter, turned their backs upon him of the rueful countenance, and made motions of rejection in his direction. Confirmed by this in our doubt as to whether they would fully appreciate the humanitarian nature of the small fee which Anastasia had demanded, we declared that the dog had been presented to us. And then we led Lux to the veranda and set before him a welcoming feast composed of liberal scraps of considerable content.

But his timidity caused him to reject all this. He sniffed, to be sure, at the titbits which he was invited to consume, but stood aside shy and incapable of bringing himself to the pitch of believing that all these cheese-rinds and chicken-bones were really intended for him. On the other hand, he did not reject the sack which we had stuffed with seaweed and which we had made ready upon the floor for his comfort. And there he lay down with his paws tucked under him, whilst we retired to the inner rooms and consulted as to the name which he was finally to bear through all the years to come.

He still refused to eat on the following day. Then followed a period during which he devoured indiscriminately everything that came within the radius of his jaws, until he attained the necessary degree of quiet regularity and critical dignity in matters of diet. The process of his domiciling and civic habitation should be described in some bold and spacious manner. I shall not lose myself in a too meticulous portrayal of this process. It suffered an interruption through the temporary disappearance of Bashan. The children had led him into the garden and they had taken off the rope in order to give him freedom of action. During an unguarded moment he had escaped into the vastness of the outer world through the gap left between the lower part of the gate and the gravel path. His disappearance aroused grief and consternation⁠—at least among the master and mistresses of the house, for the servants were disposed to make light of the loss of a gift-dog, if they really regarded it as a loss at all.

The telephone began to play tempestuously between our domain and Anastasia’s mountain caravanserai, at which we hopefully adjudged him to be. But in vain, he had not shown himself there. Two days heavy with care went by, and then Anastasia reported that she had received tidings from Huglfing that Lux had appeared at the parental farm an hour and a half ago. He was there, no denying it⁠—the idealism of his instinct had drawn him back to the world of potato-parings. And in lonely one-day marches, facing all kinds of wind and weather, he had covered the twenty kilometres which he had once travelled between the wheels of the farm wagon. And so his former owners were obliged to hitch up this vehicle in order to deliver the fugitive home-comer into Anastasia’s hands once more. Two more days rolled by and then we again went forth to bring home the errant one. We found him fastened as before to the table-leg, unkempt and gaunt and splashed with the mud of the country roads. To be sure, he gave signs of recognition and of joy as he caught sight of us. But why then had he left us?

There came a time when it was clear that he had rid his mind of the charms of the farm, but had not yet fully taken root with us, so that his soul was masterless and like to a leaf that is set tumbling about by the wind. During this period it was necessary to keep a sharp eye on him whilst out walking, for he was all too prone to tear asunder unperceived the weak band of sympathy that bound us, and in a grand burst of independent living to lose himself in the woods⁠—where he would certainly have reverted to the condition of his savage forbears. Our solicitude preserved him from this sinister destiny. We strove to keep him on that high moral level which his kind had achieved at the side of man during thousands of years of association in common. And then a radical change of residence⁠—our removal to the city, or rather its suburbs⁠—led to his becoming wholly dependent upon us and entering upon an intimate connection with our household life.

A man in the Valley of the Isar had told me that dogs of this species might become obnoxious, for they were always anxious to be with the master. I was therefore warned against accepting the tenacious faithfulness which Bashan soon began to display towards me as all too personal in its origin. On the other hand, this made it easier for me to discourage it a little⁠—in so far as this may, in self-defence, have been necessary. We have to deal here with a remote and long-derived patriarchal instinct of the dog which determines him⁠—at least so far as the more manly, open-air loving breeds are concerned⁠—to regard and honour the man, the head of the house and the family, as the master, the protector of the home, the lord, and to find the goal and meaning of his existence in a peculiar relationship of loyal vassal-friendship, and in the maintenance of a far greater spirit of independence towards the other members of the family. It was this spirit that Bashan manifested towards me from the very beginning. His eyes followed me about with a manly trustfulness shining in them. He seemed to be asking for commands which he might fulfil but which I chose not to give, since obedience was not one of his strong points. He clung to my heels with the visible conviction that his inseparability from me was something firmly rooted in the sacred nature of things.

It went without saying that in the family circle he would lie down only at my feet and never at anyone else’s. It went equally without saying that in case I should separate from the others when out walking and pursue my own ways, he should join me and follow my footsteps. He also insisted upon my company when I was working, and when he chanced to find the door that gave upon the garden closed, he would come vaulting in through the window with startling suddenness, whereby a good deal of gravel would come rattling in upon the floor, and then with a sob and a sigh he would throw himself under my desk.

But there is a reverence which we pay to life and to living things which is too vigilant and keen not to be violated even by a dog’s presence when we feel the need of being alone, and it was then that Bashan always disturbed me in the most tangible fashion. He would step up to my chair, wag his tail, look at me with devouring glances, and keep up an incessant trampling. The slightest receptive or approving movement on my part would result in his climbing up on the armrests of the chair, and glueing himself against my chest, in order to force me to laugh by the air-kisses which he kept lunging in my direction. And then he would proceed to an investigation of the top of my desk, assuming, no doubt, that something edible was to be found there, since I was so often caught bending over it. And then his broad and hairy paws would smear or blur the wet ink of my manuscript.

Called sharply to account, he would lie down once more and fall asleep. But no sooner was he asleep than he would begin to dream, during which he would execute the movements of running with all his four feet stretched out, at the same time giving vent to a clear yet subdued ventriloquistic barking which sounded as if it came from another world. That this had a disturbing and distracting effect upon me need surprise no one, for, first of all, it was eerie, and then it stirred and burdened my conscience. This dream-life was all too clearly an artificial substitute for the real chase, the real hunt, and was prepared for him by his nature, because in his common life with me, the happiness of unrestrained movement in the open did not devolve upon him in that measure which his blood and his instincts demanded. This came home to me very strongly, but as it was not to be altered, it was necessary that my moral disquietude should be dispelled by an appeal to other and higher interests. This led me to affirm that he brought a great deal of mud into the room during bad weather, and moreover, that he tore the carpets with his claws. Hence, as a matter of principle, he was forbidden to remain in the house or to bear me company as long as I chanced to be in the house⁠—even though occasional exceptions were made. He understood this law at once and submitted to the unnatural prohibition, since it was precisely this which expressed in itself the inscrutable will of the master and lord of the house.

For this remoteness from me, which often continues, especially in the winter, for the greater part of the day, is merely a matter of being away⁠—no actual separation or lack of connection. He is no longer with me⁠—by my orders⁠—but then that is merely the carrying-out of an order, after all a kind of negative being-with-me, as he would say. As for any independent life which Bashan might lead without me during these hours⁠—that is not to be thought of. Through the glass door of my study I see him disporting in a clumsy, uncle-like manner with the children on the small patch of grass in front of the house. But constantly he comes running up to the door, and as he cannot see me through the muslin curtain which stretches across the pane, he sniffs at the crack between door and jamb so as to assure himself of my presence, and then sits down on the steps with his back turned towards the room, mounting guard. From my writing-table I can also see him moving at a thoughtful trot between the old aspens on the elevated highway yonder. But such promenades are merely a tepid pastime devoid of pride, joy, and life. And it would be unutterably unthinkable that Bashan should take to devoting himself to the glorious pleasures of the chase upon his own account, even though no one would hinder him from doing this, and my presence, as will be shown later, would not be particularly favourable towards such an objective.

He begins to live only when I go forth⁠—though, alas, he cannot always be said to begin life even then! For after I leave the house the question is whether I am going to turn towards the right, that is, down the avenue that leads into the open and to the solitude of our hunting-grounds, or towards the left in the direction of the tram station in order to ride to the city and into the great and spacious world. It is only in the first instance that Bashan finds that there is any sense in accompanying me. At first he joined me after I had chosen the great and spacious world, regarded with vast astonishment the car as it came thundering on, and, forcibly suppressing his shyness, made a blind and loyal jump upon the platform, directly amongst the passengers. But the storm of public indignation swept him off again, and so he resolved to go galloping alongside the roaring vehicle⁠—which bore so little resemblance to the farm wagon between the wheels of which he had once trotted. Faithfully he kept step as long as this was possible, and his wind would no doubt have held out too. But being a son of the upland farm, he was lost in the traffic of the metropolis; he got between people’s legs, strange dogs made flank attacks upon him; a tumult of wild odours such as he had never before experienced, vexed and confused his senses; house-corners, impregnated with the essences of old adventures, lured him irresistibly. He remained behind, and though he once more overtook the wagon on rails, this proved to be a wrong one, even though it exactly resembled the right one. Bashan ran blindly in the wrong direction, lost himself more and more in the disconcerting strangeness of the world. And it was more than two days before he came home, starved and limping⁠—to that last house along the river to which his master had also been sensible enough to return in the meantime.

This happened two or three times, then Bashan finally gave up accompanying me when I turned towards the left. He knows instantly what I intend to do as soon as I emerge from the doorway of the house⁠—make a trip to the hunting-grounds or a trip to the great world. He jumps up from the doormat upon which he has been awaiting my coming forth under the protecting arch of the entrance. He jumps up and at the same moment he sees what my intentions are. My clothing betrays these to him, the cane that I carry, also my attitude and expression, the cool and preoccupied look I give him, or the irritation and challenge in my eyes. He understands. Headlong he plunges down the steps and goes dancing before me in swift and sudden bounds and full of excitement towards the gate when my going forth seems to be certain. But when he beholds hope vanish, he subsides within himself, lays his ears close to his head and his eyes take on that expression of shy misery which is found in contrite sinners⁠—that look which misfortune begets in the eyes of men and also of animals.

At times he is really unable to believe what he sees and knows, that it is all up and that there is no use hoping for a hunt. His desires have been too intense. He repudiates the signs and symbols⁠—chooses not to see the city walking-stick, the careful citified clothes I am wearing. He pushes through the gate with me, switches around outside in a half turn, and seeks to draw me towards the right by starting to gallop in this direction and by turning his head towards me, forces himself to overlook the fateful “No” which I oppose to his efforts. He comes back when I actually do turn towards the left, accompanies me, snorting deeply, and ejaculating short, confused high notes which seem to arise from the tremendous tension in his interior, as I walk along the fence of the garden, and then he begins to jump back and forth over the pickets of the adjacent public park. These pickets are rather high, and he groans a little in his flight through the air out of fear lest he hurt himself. He makes these leaps impelled by a kind of desperate gaiety, scornful of all hard facts, and also to bribe me, to work upon my sympathies by his cleverness. For it is not yet quite impossible⁠—however improbable it may seem⁠—that I may nevertheless leave the city path at the end of the park, once more turn towards the left and lead him on to liberty⁠—even if only by way of the slightly roundabout way to the postbox. This happens, it is true, but it happens only rarely. Once this hope has dissolved into empty air, Bashan settles down upon his haunches and lets me go my way.

There he sits now, in yokel-like, ungraceful attitude, in the very middle of the road, and stares after my retreating form, down the whole long vista. If I turn my head, he pricks up his ears, but does not follow me. Nor would he follow me if I should call or whistle⁠—he knows this would all be to no purpose. Even from the very end of the avenue I can see him still sitting there, a small, dark, awkward shape in the middle of the high road. A pang goes through my heart⁠—I mount the tram with an uneasy conscience. He has waited so long and so patiently⁠—and who does not know what torture waiting can be! His whole life is nothing but waiting⁠—for the next walk in the open⁠—and this waiting begins as soon as he has rested after his last run. During the night, too, he waits, for his slumbers are distributed throughout the entire twenty-four hours of the sun’s revolution, and many a siesta upon the smooth lawn, whilst the sun beats upon his coat, or behind the curtains of his hut, must help to shorten the bare and empty spaces of the day. His nocturnal rest is therefore dismembered and without unity. He is driven by blind impulses hither and thither in the darkness, through the yard and the garden⁠—he runs from place to place⁠—and waits. He waits for the recurrent visit of the local watchman with the lantern, the heavy thud of whose footfall he accompanies against his own better knowledge with a terrible burst of heralding barks. He waits for the paling of the heavens, the crowing of the cock in the nearby nursery-garden, the stir of the morning wind in the trees, and for the unlocking of the kitchen entrance, so that he may slip in and warm himself at the white-tiled range.

But I believe that the torture of this nightly vigil is mild, compared to that which Bashan must endure in the broad of day, particularly when the weather is fair, be it winter or summer, when the sun lures into the open, and the desire for violent motion tugs in every muscle, and his master, without whom, of course, there can be no real enjoyment, persistently refuses to leave his seat behind the glass door.

Bashan’s mobile little body, through which life pulsates so swiftly and feverishly, has been, so to speak, exhausted with rest⁠—and there can be no thought of sleep. Up he comes to the terrace in front of my door, drops himself in the gravel with a sob which comes from the very depths of his being, and lays his head upon his paws, turning up his eyes with a martyr’s expression towards heaven. This, however, lasts only a few seconds, the new position irks him at once, he feels it to be untenable. There is still one thing he can do. He may descend the steps and pay attention to a small tree trimmed in the shape of a rose-tree and flanking the beds of roses, an unfortunate tree which, owing to these visits of Bashan, dwindles away every year and must be replanted. There he stands on three legs, melancholy and contemplative⁠—the slave of a habit, whether urged by Nature or not. Then he reverts to his four legs, and is no better off than before. Dumbly he gazes aloft into the branches of a group of ash-trees. Two birds are flitting from bough to bough with lively twitterings⁠—he watches feathered ones dashing away swift as arrows, and turns aside, seeming to shrug his shoulders at so much childish élan of life.

He stretches and strains as though he intended to tear himself asunder. This undertaking, for the sake of thoroughness, he divides into two parts: first of all, he stretches his front legs, lifting his hindquarters into the air, and then exercises these by stretching his hind legs far behind him. He yawns tremendously both times, with wide, red-gaping jaws and upcurled tongue. Well, now he has also achieved this⁠—the performance cannot be carried on any further, and having once stretched yourself according to all the rules of the game, it is inconceivable that you should immediately repeat the manoeuvre. So Bashan stands and gazes at the ground. Then he begins to turn himself slowly and searchingly about his own axis as though he wished to lie down and were not as yet certain as to the way in which this should be done. He changes his mind, however, and goes with lazy step to the middle of the lawn, where with a sudden, almost convulsive movement, he hurls himself upon his back in order to cool and scour this by a lively rolling hither and thither upon the mown surface of grass.

This must induce a mighty feeling of bliss, for stiffly he draws up his paws as he rolls and snaps into the air in all directions in a tumult of joy and satisfaction. All the more passionately he drains this rapture to the very dregs in that he knows that it is purely a fleeting rapture, and that one cannot very well wallow in this fashion more than ten seconds, and that that beneficent weariness which comes to one after such honest and happy efforts will not follow⁠—but merely disillusion and twofold disquietude⁠—the price paid for this delirium, this drug-like dissipation. For a moment he lies with twisted eyeballs upon his side as though he were dead. Then he rises and shakes himself. He shakes himself as only his kind is able to shake itself⁠—without having to fear a concussion of the brain. He shakes himself to a crescendo of flappings and rattlings, and his ears go slapping under his jawbone and his loose lips part from his white, bare triangular teeth.

And then? Then he stands motionless, in stark abstraction. He has reached the ultimate limit and no longer has a single idea as to what he shall do with himself. Under such circumstances as these, he has recourse to something extreme. He climbs up to the terrace, approaches the glass door⁠—scratches only once and very feebly. But this soft and timidly lifted paw, this soft, solitary scratching, upon which he had resolved, after all other counsel had failed, work mightily upon me, and I arise to open the door for him in order to let him in, although I know that this can lead to no good. For he immediately begins to leap and cavort, as a call to engage in manly enterprises. He pushes the carpet into a hundred folds, spreads confusion through the room, and my peace and quiet are at an end.

But now judge whether it is easy for me to sail off in the tram, after seeing Bashan wait thus, and leave him sitting as a melancholy little heap of misery deep within the converging lines of the avenue of poplars!

When the summer is on and the daylight is long and lingering, this misfortune may not be so overwhelming, for then there is always a good chance that at least my evening promenade will take me out into the open, so that Bashan, even though the period of waiting be arduous, may nevertheless still meet with his reward and, provided one has a certain amount of luck, be able to chase a rabbit. But in winter, it is all up for this day and Bashan must bury all hope for a full twenty-four hours. For then the night will have already fallen upon the hour of my second going-forth; the hunting grounds are buried in impenetrable darkness, and I must direct my steps towards regions artificially lighted, upstream, through streets and public parks, and this does not suit Bashan’s nature and simplicity of soul. It is true that at first he followed me even here, but soon gave this up and remained at home. It was not only that visible chances for gadding about were lacking⁠—the half-dark made him hesitant, he shied in confused alarm at man and bush. The sudden flapping of a policeman’s cape caused him to jump aside with a howl, and with the courage of horror to make a sudden dash at the policeman, who was also scared half to death and strove to even up the fright he had received by a torrent of harsh and threatening words directed at me and Bashan. And there were many other uncomfortable encounters whenever he went forth with me through the night and the mist. Apropos of this policeman, I will remark that there are three kinds of human beings to whom Bashan has a wholehearted aversion⁠—namely policemen, monks, and chimney-sweeps. He cannot tolerate them, and will sally forth against them with furious barks whenever they go past the house, or wherever they may chance to cross his path.

Moreover, winter is that season in which the world lies most vigilantly and insolently in ambush against our liberties and our virtues, and least willingly grants us a uniform and serene existence, an existence of seclusion and of quiet preoccupation, and so it happens that often the city draws me to itself a second time in one day⁠—in the evening⁠—when Society demands its rights. Then, late, at midnight, the last tram deposits me far out at its penultimate stop. Or I come jogging along on foot, long after the last tram has returned to town⁠—I come wandering distrait, tempered with wine, smoking, having passed the bourne of natural fatigue and wrapped in a sense of false security in relation to all things mundane. And then it happens that the embodiment of my own domesticity, as it were, my very retirement, comes to meet me and salutes and welcomes me not only without reproach or touchiness, but with extreme joy, and reintroduces me to my own fireside⁠—all in the shape of Bashan himself. It is pitch dark, and the river goes by with a rushing sound as I turn into the poplar avenue. A few steps more and I feel that I am be-capered and be-switched by paws and tail⁠—and have no clear idea of what is happening to me.

“Bashan?” I ask of the darkness.

And then the capering and the switching are intensified to the utmost. They pass into something dervish- and Berserker-like, though the silence continues. The very moment I stand still I feel two homely and wet and muddy paws upon the lapels of my overcoat, and there are such violent snappings and lappings close to my face, that I bend backward, whilst I pat those lean shoulders, wet with rain or snow.

Yes, the dear fellow has waited for me at the tram-stop, well aware of my comings and goings and doings; he had gone forth when the hour seemed to have arrived, and waited for me at the station⁠—waited, perhaps, a long and weary while in the snow or rain. And his joy at my arrival is devoid of all resentment at my cruel faithlessness, even though I had utterly neglected him today and reduced all his hopes and expectances to naught. So I am loud in my praise of him as I pat his shoulders and we turn towards home. I tell him that he has acted nobly, and deliver myself of momentous promises with regard to the day which is already under way. I assure him (that is to say not so much him as myself) that we shall go hunting together tomorrow without fail, no matter what the weather. Amidst resolutions such as these, my mood of universality evaporates, seriousness and sobriety slink back into my soul, and my fancy, now full of the hunting-grounds and their loneliness, is seized by apperceptions of higher, secret and wondrous obligations.

But I am moved to add further details to this transcript of Bashan’s character, so that the willing reader may see it in the nth degree of vivid verisimilitude. I might perhaps proceed with more or less skill by drawing a comparison between Bashan and the lamented Percy, for a contrariety more sharply defined than that which distinguished their respective natures is scarcely conceivable within one and the same species. As a basic consideration one must remember that Bashan enjoys perfect mental health, whilst Percy, as I have already intimated, was⁠—as is not uncommon with dogs of blue-blooded pedigrees⁠—a perfect fool his whole life long, crazy, a very model of overbred impossibility. Mention of this has been made in a more momentous connection, in a previous chapter.

I would merely mention here as a contrast Bashan’s simple and popular ways as these manifest themselves when going for walks or when making salutations⁠—occasions upon which the enunciation of his emotions remains within the bounds of common sense and a sound heartiness without ever touching the limits of hysteria⁠—limits which Percy often transgressed on these occasions and that in the most disconcerting fashion.

But the whole antithesis between the two creatures is by no means exhausted in this⁠—for this antithesis is in truth a mixed and complicated one. Bashan, you must know, is somewhat crude, like the common people themselves, but, like them, also soft and sentimental, whilst his noble predecessor combined more delicacy and possibilities of pain with an incomparably prouder and firmer spirit, and despite his silliness, far excelled that old yokel Bashan in the matter of self-discipline. It is not in defence of an aristocratic cult of values that I call attention to this mixture of opposite qualities, of coarseness and tenderness, of delicacy and resolution, but purely in the interests of life and actuality. Bashan, for example, is just the man for spending even the coldest winter nights in the open, that is on the straw behind the coarse burlap curtains of his kennel. A slight affection of the bladder prevents him from spending seven hours uninterruptedly in a locked room without committing a nuisance⁠—a weakness of his which caused us to lock him out during the inhospitable time of the year, setting a justifiable faith in his robust health. Only once, after a particularly icy and foggy night, did he make his appearance with moustaches and goatee miraculously frosted and iced and with that jerky, one-syllabic cough peculiar to dogs⁠—but a few hours, and lo, he had conquered the cold and was none the worse for it.

But never would we have dared to expose the silken-haired Percy to the inclemency of such a night. On the other hand, Bashan stands in great fear of even the slightest pain, and every twinge wrings from him a response, the whining complaint of which would arouse aversion, if its naive, folkish quality did not disarm one and set the springs of gaiety aflow. Again and again, during his prowlings in the underwood, I have heard him squeal aloud⁠—a thorn had chanced to prick him, or a resilient branch had switched him across the face, and if he happened to have scratched his belly a little in vaulting over the fence, or sprained his foot, I have been treated to an antique hero’s chorus, a three-legged limping approach, an uncontrollable wailing and self-lamentation. And the more sympathetically I talked to him, the more insistent his clamour became⁠—though in a quarter of an hour he would be swooping and running about as madly as before.

Percy was of a different metal. Percy would grit his teeth and keep mum. He feared the rawhide whip just as Bashan fears it, and unfortunately he got a taste of it oftener than Bashan; for, first of all, I was younger and more hot-tempered during his epoch than I am at present, and secondly, his heedlessness often assumed a wanton and sinister aspect which simply clamoured for chastisement and urged me to it. When, driven to extremities, I would take down the whip from the nail, then, it is true, he would crawl under the table or bench and make himself small, but never a howl passed his lips when the blow, and perhaps yet another, came humming down upon his back; at most he gave a low moan, in case the whip bit too hard. But Bully Bashan begins to shriek and whimper when I merely raise my arm. In short, he is without pride or dignity, without self-restraint or self-discipline. But his activities seldom call for armed punitive intervention⁠—the less so since I have long ago ceased to demand achievements from him which are contrary to his nature and insistence upon which might lead to a collision.

Tricks, for instance, I never expect from him⁠—it would be futile. He is no savant, no marketplace miracle-monger, no poodle-like valet⁠—no professor⁠—but a hunter-lad, full of go and vitality. I have already emphasised the fact that he is a splendid vaulter. If it be necessary, he will balk at no obstacle⁠—if it be too high, he will simply take a running jump and climb over it, letting himself drop down on the other side⁠—but take it he will. But the obstacle must be a real obstacle, that is, not one under which one may run or crawl; for then Bashan would consider it sheer insanity to jump over it. Such obstacles present themselves in the shape of a wall, a ditch, a barred gate, a fence without a hole. A horizontal bar, a stick held out, is no obstacle, and so, of course, one cannot well jump over it without bringing oneself into a silly contrariness to things as well as to one’s reason. Bashan refuses to do this. He refuses. Should you attempt to persuade him to jump over some sham obstacle, you would finally in your wrath be forced to take him by the scruff of the neck and to hurl him over it, barking and yapping. He will hereupon assume a mien as though he had magnanimously permitted you to attain your wishes and will celebrate the result by caperings and rapturous barks. You may flatter him, beat him, but here you will encounter a resistance of sheer reason against the trick pure and simple which you will never be able to overcome.

He is not unobliging, gratifying his master means a great deal to him⁠—he will vault over a hedge at my wish or command, and not only from his own impulses, and gladly will he reap his meed of praise and thanks for this. But even though you should beat him half to death, he will not jump over a pole or a stick, but run under it. He will beg a hundred times for forgiveness, for consideration, for mercy, for he fears pain, fears it, to the point of utter pusillanimity. But no fear and no pain can force him to do something which from a physical point of view would be mere child’s play for him, but for which all mental capacities are obviously lacking in him. To demand this act of him is not to confront him with the question as to whether he should or should not jump⁠—this question is already settled for him in advance, and the command simply means a clubbing. To demand the incomprehensible and therefore the impossible from him is, in his eyes, merely a pretext for a quarrel, for a disturbance of friendship and a chance to inflict a whipping, and is in itself the very inauguration of these things. This is Bashan’s conception of things, as far as I can see, and I doubt whether one can speak of mere ordinary stubbornness in this connection. Obduracy may finally be broken, yes, it even demands to be broken, but Bashan would seal his refusal to perform a trick or feat with his very life.

A wondrous soul! So friendly and intimate and yet so alien in certain traits, so alien that our language is incapable of doing justice to this canine logic. What relation has this, for instance, with that terrible circumstantiality, always so unnerving for the spectator, with which the meeting, the acquaintance or the mere recognition of dog and dog fulfil themselves? My picaroon forays with Bashan have made me the witness of hundreds of such meetings, or rather I should say forced me to be an unwilling, embarrassed witness. And every time, as long as the scene lasted, his usually transparent behaviour became inscrutable to me⁠—I found it impossible to effect a sympathetic penetration into the feelings, laws, and tribal customs which form the basis of his behaviour. In reality the meeting in the open of two dogs strange to each other, belongs to the most poignant, arresting, and pathetic of conceivable happenings. It takes place in an atmosphere of daemonry and strangeness. An inhibition operates here for which there is no exacter term⁠—the two cannot pass each other⁠—a terrible embarrassment prevails.

I need scarcely speak of cases in which the one party is locked inside some allotment, behind a fence or a hedge⁠—even then it is not easy to see what humour the two may be in, but the affair is comparatively less ticklish. They scent each other from vast distances. Bashan suddenly appears at my side, as though seeking protection, and gives way to whimperings which proclaim an indefinite grief and perturbation of soul, whilst at the same time the stranger, the prisoner, starts up a furious barking, to which he seems anxious to give the character of vigilance energetically announcing itself, but which now and again impulsively reverts to tones which resemble those of Bashan’s yearning, a tearfully jealous, a distressful whining. We approach the spot, drawing nearer and nearer. The strange dog has been awaiting us behind the fence⁠—there he stands⁠—scolding and lamenting his impotence, and makes wild leaps against the fence and pretends⁠—no one can tell just how much he pretends⁠—that he would infallibly tear Bashan to pieces, if he could but reach him. In spite of this, Bashan, who might easily remain at my side and walk past, goes towards the fence⁠—he must go⁠—he would go even contrary to my orders. Not to go would violate some immanent law⁠—far more deeply-rooted, more inviolable than my own prohibition. So he walks up to the spot and, with a humble and inscrutable mien, fulfils that act of sacrifice which, as he well knows, always brings about a certain pacification and temporary reconciliation with the other dog⁠—so long as he too performs the same act, even though it be in another spot and accompanied by low growlings and whines. Then both begin to chase wildly alongside the fence, the one on this, the other on the opposite side⁠—dumb and always keeping parallel to each other. Both simultaneously face about at the end of the fence and race back towards the other end, turn about and race back once more. Suddenly, however, in the very middle, they remain as if rooted to the ground, no longer longitudinal to the fence⁠—but at right angles with it, and touch noses through the rails. They stand thus for a considerable time, and then once more resume their strange and ineffectual race, shoulder to shoulder on either side of the fence. Finally, however, my dog makes use of his liberty and races off. This is always a terrible moment for the imprisoned one. This sudden lighting out is to him something unendurable; it is villainy unutterable and unparalleled⁠—to think that the other dog, his racial colleague, should really think of abandoning him!

So he raves, howls, acts like one possessed, races up and down his territory, all by himself, threatens to jump over the fence and strangle the traitor, and keeps on hurling the vilest curses after him. Bashan cannot help hearing all this pother, and he is most disagreeably affected by it, as his guilty and diffident air proclaims. Still he refuses to look back, and jogs easily along. During this the terrible maledictions to our rear gradually decline in intensity and slowly die away into low whinings and thin yowls.

Such is the customary course of events when one of the parties concerned happens to be under duress. But the strange contrariety of things reaches its apex when the rencontre takes place under equal conditions and both happen to be free of foot. It is extremely unpleasant to be obliged to describe this⁠—really, it is the most oppressive, embarrassing and ticklish situation conceivable. However⁠—

Bashan, who has just been blithely gambolling about, comes to me, simply forcing himself upon my attention with that peculiar sniffling and whining which arise from the very profounds of his nature. These sounds cannot be interpreted as the expression of any particular emotion, though I at once recognise them as an attempt to tell me of the approach of a strange dog. I peer sharply about me. No mistake⁠—there he comes⁠—and it is clear even from afar, as proclaimed by his cautious and hesitant advance, that he has become conscious of the other. My own anxiety is scarcely less than that of the other two⁠—I have premonitions that this meeting is going to be precarious and highly undesirable.

“Go ’way!” I say to Bashan. “What d’ye mean by clinging to my leg! Can’t you two carry on negotiations amongst yourselves⁠—and at a distance?”

I try to push him away with my stick, for if it should come to a battle of bites, which⁠—whether there be a reason for it or not⁠—is extremely probable, it is sure to take place around my feet and I shall become the centre of a most unedifying tussle.

“Go ’way!” I repeat hoarsely.

But Bashan does not go ’way. He continues to cling to me, tightly and helplessly. Only for a moment does he deign to move aside to sniff at a tree⁠—an operation which the stranger, as I observe out of the corner of my eye, is also performing yonder. The distance between the two is now only twenty paces⁠—the tension is fearful. The stranger has now assumed a crouching position like a tiger-cat, with head thrust forward, and in this highwaymanlike pose he awaits Bashan’s approach, apparently in order to seize him by the throat at the proper moment. This, however, does not take place, nor does Bashan appear to expect it. At all events he continues to advance straight towards the lowering one, though with palpitant hesitancy and an alert though tragic mien. He would do so⁠—would, in fact, be forced to do so, even though I were to leave him and pursue my path, abandoning him to all the perils of the situation. No matter how upsetting the rencontre may be, no thought can be given to evasion or escape. He goes as one that is under a spell⁠—a ban. Both are bound to each other by some secret and tenebrous tie, and neither dares belie this. We have now approached within two paces.

And then the other dog gets up quietly, just as though he had never assumed the looks or attitude of a lion couchant and stands there precisely as Bashan stands⁠—both with hangdog look, miserable and deeply embarrassed and both incapable of yielding an inch or of passing each other. They would like to be free of all this; they turn away their heads, squint sadly aside. Thus they shove and slink towards each other, side by side, tense and full of a troubled watchfulness, flank to flank, and begin to snuffle at each other’s hides.

It is during this procedure that the growlings begin. Sotto voce, I call Bashan by name and warn him, for this is the fateful moment which is to decide whether a tussle and biting-match is to take place, or whether I am to be spared this calamity. But the battle of bites, of tooth and claw, is upon us⁠—in a flash⁠—no one could say how or why. In a moment both of them are merely a tangle, a raving, chaotic tumult out of which arise horrible gutteral cries, as of dragons of the prime tearing each other. In order to avert a tragedy I am forced to interpose my stick, to seize Bashan by his collar or by the scruff of his neck, and to hoist him into the air with one arm with his antagonist hanging to him with locked jaws⁠—or face whatever other terrors may be awaiting me⁠—terrors which I am then fated to feel in every nerve during the greater part of the walk. But it also happens that the entire affair may pass off quite uneventfully, and, as it were, ebb away. Nevertheless, in both contingencies it is difficult to get away from the spot. For even if these twain do not happen to clamp themselves together by the teeth, they remain fettered by a tenacious inner bond. In this case things proceed as follows:⁠—

You imagine that the two dogs have already passed each other, for they are no longer hesitating flank to flank, but are aligned almost in keel formation, the one with his head turned in one direction, the other with his in the opposite direction. They do not see each other; they scarcely turn their heads, merely squinting towards the rear, straining the eyeball back as far as possible. Even though they are already separated by some short distance, the tenacious, sinister tie still holds and neither of them is sure whether the moment of liberation has arrived. Both would like to move off, but some inscrutable, conscientious anxiety prevents them from leaving the spot. Until at last⁠—at last!⁠—the ban is broken, and Bashan, redeemed, and with the air of having just been granted a new lease of life, goes bounding off.

I mention these things in order to indicate how strange and alien so close a friend may appear under certain circumstances⁠—times when his entire nature reveals itself as something eerie and obscure. I brood upon this mystery and find no answer save a shake of the head. It is only by intuition and not by reason that I am able to identify myself with it. Otherwise I am well acquainted with Bashan’s inner world, and am able to meet its every manifestation with sympathy and with cheerfulness⁠—to understand his play of features, his whole behaviour.

How well, for example, a solitary example, do I know that chirruping yawn to which he has recourse whenever he has been disappointed in the results of a walk. It may be that the walk was all too short or else barren of events in a sporting sense⁠—as sometimes happens when I have begun my day’s work a little later than usual and have gone into the open air with Bashan for a brief quarter of an hour before sitting down at my desk. He walks beside me then, and yawns. It is a shameless, impolite, wide-angle yawning⁠—the yawning of the beast, of the brute, and it is accompanied by a whistling, guttural note and by a hurt and bored look. It says, as clearly as words:⁠—

“A nice sort of master I’ve got! I went and fetched him from the bridge last night. And now he goes and sits behind that there glass door, and I’ve got to wait till he goes out, and me a-perishing with impatience. And then at last when he does go out, he turns round again and starts back home before I’ve had a sniff at a single bit o’ game! A fine sort of master, eh? And what a mean trick to play on a hound! Why, he ain’t fit to be called a master at all!”

Such are the sentiments expressed with rude clarity by these yawns of his⁠—and there is no mistaking them. I am also aware that he is perfectly right in cherishing such sentiments and that in his eyes I am guilty. And so my hand steals towards his shoulder for a pat or two, or I proceed to stroke the top of his skull. But he has no use for caresses under such circumstances. He refuses to acknowledge or accept them. He gives another yawn, and this still more rudely than before, if that be possible, and withdraws himself from my conciliatory hand. He withdraws himself, even though he is extremely fond of such caresses, in accordance with his earthy, all too earthy sentimentality, and in contradistinction to the impervious Percy. He particularly appreciates being scratched upon the throat, and he has acquired a droll but adroit energy in guiding one’s hand to the proper place by means of short movements of the head. That he ignores all tendernesses at present is due not only to his disillusion and disappointment, but also to the fact that he has no interest for such fondlings when in a state of movement, that is, a state of movement coordinated with mine. He is then obsessed by a masculine mood and spirit, and scorns all feminine touches. But an immediate change takes place as soon as I sit down. Then his heart expands and he becomes receptive to all friendly advances, and his manner of responding to them is full of rapturous and awkward insistence.

Often, when I chance to be seated on my chair in the angle of the garden wall or in the grass with my back against some favourite tree, reading a book, I am happy to interrupt my literary occupation in order to speak and play with Bashan. I repeat⁠—to speak with him. And what do I find to say? Well, the conversation is usually limited to repeating his name to him⁠—his name⁠—those two syllables which concern him more than all others, since they designate nothing but himself, and thus have an electrifying effect upon his entire being. I thus stir and fire his consciousness of his ego by abjuring him in different tones and in different degrees of emphasis to consider the fact that he is called Bashan and that he is Bashan. By keeping this up for a short time I am able to throw him into a state of veritable ecstasy, a kind of drunkenness of identity, so that he begins to rotate upon his own axis and to send loud barks towards heaven⁠—all out of sheer inner triumph and the proud compulsion of his heart. Or we amuse each other in that I flick him upon the nose, whilst he snaps at my hand as at a fly. This forces both of us to laugh, yes, even Bashan must laugh. This laugh of his⁠—to which I must instinctively respond, is for me the most wonderful and touching thing in the world. It is unutterably moving to see how his haggard canine cheek and the corners of his mouth quiver and jerk to the excitement of the teasing, how the dusky mien of the dumb creature takes on the physiognomic expression of human laughter, or how a troubled, helpless, and melancholy reflection of this appears and vanishes again to give way to the stigmata of fear and embarrassment, and then how it once more makes its wry appearance.⁠ ⁠…

But it is best to pause here and not involve myself deeper in detail. I must not allow my descriptions to exceed the limits which I have set. I merely wish to show my hero in all his glory and in his natural elements and in that position in life in which he is most himself and which casts the most favourable light upon his various gifts and accomplishments⁠—that is to say, the hunt or chase. I must, however, as a preliminary, make the reader more closely acquainted with the scene of these joys⁠—our hunting-grounds⁠—my landscape along the river. For there is a strange affinity between this and the person of Bashan. This strip of land is as dear to me as it is to him⁠—it is intimate and full of meaning⁠—like himself. Therefore, without further ado or novellistic preciosity, let the following suffice in the way of description:⁠—

In the gardens of our small but spaciously arranged colony of villas there are huge trees⁠—ancient giants which tower above the roofs. They offer a marked contrast to the tender saplings but recently planted. There can be no mistaking the fact that these trees are the original growth⁠—the aboriginal inhabitants of this region. They are the pride and beauty of this still youthful settlement. They have been carefully preserved and tended⁠—as far as this was possible. At those points where they happened to come into conflict with the surveyor’s lines or with the fences dividing the various lots or tracts of land, that is to say, where some mossy, silvery, venerable trunk happened to be standing precisely on the lines of demarcation, you will find that the fence has made a little loop around the tree-trunk or that a gap has been left in the concrete of the garden wall. In these openings the Old Ones now tower, half privately, half publicly, their naked branches loaded with snow or bedizened with their small-leafed, late-sprouting foliage.

These trees are of the species of the ash⁠—a tree which loves dampness as few others do. This quality at the same time offers a very significant commentary upon the essential peculiarity of our strip of country. It is not yet so very long ago that human ingenuity succeeded in turning it into something capable of cultivation and occupation⁠—possibly a decade and a half ago⁠—no longer. Before that it was a wilderness of swamps⁠—a veritable brooding-place for gnats and mosquitoes⁠—a waste in which willows, crippled poplars, and suchlike gnarled and twisted arboreal stuff mirrored itself in stagnant pools. This region, you must know, is subject to inundation. A few metres under the surface there is a strata of watertight soil. The ground has therefore always been swampy and water stood in every hollow. The draining of this fen was accomplished by lowering the surface of the river⁠—I have no head for engineering, but some such expedient was made use of, with the result that the water which could not seep downward was induced to flow off laterally. Hence there are many subterranean brooks which pour themselves into the river at different spots. Solidity has thus been given to the soil, at least the greater part of it, for if you happen to know the district as Bashan and I know it, you would be able to discover in the thickets downstream many a reedy sinkage which reminds you of pristine conditions. These are places of silence and secrecy, the damp coolth of which defies the hottest summer day, spots in which one is glad to rest and draw breath for a space.

The region really possesses its own peculiar character and is to be distinguished at first glance from the banks of the usual mountain river with their pine woods and mossy meadows. It has succeeded in retaining this original peculiarity even since it has come into the possession of the real estate company. Even outside the gardens, the aboriginal and original vegetation maintains the upper hand over the imported and the transplanted. It is true that in the avenues and parks the horse-chestnut seems to thrive as well as the swift-growing maple. Even beeches and all kinds of decorative shrubbery⁠—but all these, including the alien poplar which towers and ranges in rows of sterile masculinity⁠—are not native to the soil. I said that the ash was an indigenous tree here⁠—it is to be found everywhere, and it is of all ages⁠—from giants hundreds of years old to the soft shoots which, like so many weeds, sprout in masses from the gravel. It is the ash and its companions, the silver poplar and the aspen, the birch and the willow, both as a tree and a bush, which give distinctive character to this landscape. But these are all trees with small leaves, and this smallness and trimness of the foliage in conjunction with the frequently gigantic masses of the trees themselves, at once attract attention in this neighbourhood. The elm, however, is an exception, and we find it spreading its spacious leaves, fretted as by a jigsaw and shiny and sticky on their upper surface, to the sun. And everywhere there are great masses of creeping plants which weave themselves around the younger trunks in the woods and in a bewildering way entangle their leaves with these.

The slender alders form themselves into small groves in the hollows. The lime is scarcely to be met with at all, the oak never appears nor does the fir. Yet there are firs upon the eastern declivities which form the frontiers of our territory, for here the soil changes and with it the vegetation. There they rear black against the heavens and peer, sentinel-like, upon us in our lower levels.

From this bluff to the river is not more than a hundred metres⁠—I have paced the distance. It may be that the strip of riverbank widens, fan-like, a little farther downstream, but this divergence is in no way important. It is, however, remarkable what a diversity of landscape this limited region affords⁠—even, though one explore only the playground which lies along the river, explore it with restraint and moderation, like Bashan and myself. Our forays seldom exceed two hours, counting the advance and the retreat. The manifold nature of the views, however, and the fact that one is constantly able to change one’s walks and to arrange combinations that are eternally new, without ever becoming bored with the landscape, is due to the circumstance that it is divided into three very different regions or zones. One may devote oneself separately to any of these or one may combine them by means of slanting cross-paths. These three regions are the region of the river and its immediate bank on one side, the region of the bluff on the other, and the region of the forest in the middle.

The greater part of the breadth is occupied by the zone of the forest, the willow brakes, and the shrubbery of the bank⁠—I find myself hunting for a word which will more perfectly fix and define this wonderful terrain than the word wood, and yet I am unable to find one. There can be no talk of a wood in the usual sense of the term⁠—a kind of great pillared grove with moss and strewn leafage and tree-trunks of fairly uniform girth. The trees in our hunting-grounds are of different ages and circumference. Huge patriarchs of the willow and poplar families are to be found among them, especially along the river, though they are also to be encountered in the inner woods. Then there are others already full-grown which might be ten or fifteen years old, and finally a legion of thin stems⁠—wild nurseries of nature’s own crop of young ashes, birches, and elders. These do not, however, call forth any impression of meagreness, because, as I have already indicated, they are all thickly wrapped about with creepers. These give an air of almost tropical luxuriance to the whole. Yet I suspect that these creepers hinder the growth of their hosts, for during the years I have lived here, I do not remember having observed that any of these little stems had grown perceptibly thicker.

All trees belong to a closely-related species. The alder is a member of the birch family; in the last analysis the poplar is nothing else than a willow. And one might even say that all of them approach the fundamental type of the latter. All foresters and woodmen know that trees are quite ready to accept a certain adaptation to the character of the circumjacent vicinity⁠—a certain imitation or mimicry of the dominant taste in lines and forms. It is the fantastic, witch-like, distorted line of the willow which prevails here⁠—this faithful companion and attendant of still and of flowing waters, with the crooked finger, projecting, broom-like, branching boughs, and it is these features which the others obviously seek to imitate. The silver poplar crooks herself wholly in the style of the willow, and it is often difficult to tell her from the birch which, seduced by the genius loci, also frequently affects the most extravagant crookednesses⁠—though I would not go so far as to say that this dear and friendly tree was not to be found, and numerously found, in exceedingly shapely specimens. These, when the afternoon light is fervent and favourable, are even most enchanting to the eye.

The region knows it as a small silvery trunk with sparse single leaves in the crown, as a sweet grown-up limber virgin with the prettiest of chalky stems and a trim and languishing way of letting the locks of her foliage hang. But it also makes its appearance as a creature of absolutely elephantine proportions with a waist which no man could span with his arms and a rind which has preserved traces of its erstwhile whiteness only high up towards the top, whilst near the ground it has become a coarse, calcined and fissured bark.

As to the soil⁠—this has little resemblance to that of a forest. It is pebbly, full of clay and even sand, and no one would dream of calling it fertile. And yet within limits it is fertile⁠—even to luxuriance. A tall grass flourishes upon it, though this often assumes a dry, sharply angular and meagre character. In winter it covers the ground like trampled hay. Sometimes it degenerates into reeds, whilst in other parts it is soft, thick, and lush, mixed with hemlock, nettles, colt’s foot, all manner of creeping, leafy stuff, high, rocket-like thistles, and young and tender tree-shoots. It is a favourite hiding-place for pheasants and quail, and the vegetation runs in billows against the gnarled boles of the tree-roots. Out of this chaos of undergrowth and ground thicket the wild vine and the wild hop-plant go gyrating up in spirals, draping broad-leaved garlands upon the trees and even in winter clinging to the trunks with tendrils which resemble hard and unbreakable wire.

This domain is neither forest nor park⁠—it is an enchanted garden⁠—nothing less. I will stoutly defend this term⁠—even though it refers to a poor, limited, and even crippled bit of nature, the glories of which may be exhausted with a few simple botanical names. The ground is undulant; it rises and falls in regular waves. This feature gives a fine completeness to the views⁠—the eye is led into the illimitable even at the sides. Yes, even if this wood were to stretch for miles to the right and left, even if it were to be as broad as it is long, instead of merely measuring a hundred and some odd paces from the centre to the extreme edge on either side, one could not feel more secluded, more lost, or isolated. Alone the ear is reminded by the regular and rushing sound of waters to the west that the river hovers within a friendly distance, near yet invisible. There are little gulches filled to the brim with bushes of elder, common privet, jasmine, and black elderberry, so that one’s lungs on steamy June days are almost overcome by perfume. And then again there are sinkages in the ground⁠—mere gravel-pits along the slopes and bottoms of which only a few willow shoots and a little dry sage manage to flourish.

All this has not ceased to exert a magic influence upon me, even though the place, for many a year, has been as a daily haunt to me. In some way I am fantastically moved and touched by all this, for example, by the massed foliage of the ash-trees, which reminds me somehow of the contours of huge bulls. These creeping vines and reedy thickets, this dampness and this drouth, this meagre jungle⁠—to sum up my impressions as a whole⁠—affect me a little like being transported to the landscape of another period of the Earth’s growth, even to a submarine landscape⁠—as though one were wandering at the bottom of the sea. This vision has a certain contact with reality, for water once stood or ran everywhere hereabout, especially in those seepages which have now assumed the shape of square meadow-basins surrounded by nurseries of ash-trees and serve sheep for drink and pasture. One of these ponds lies directly behind my house.

My delectable wilderness is crisscrossed by paths, by strips of trampled grass and also by pebbly trails. Obviously none of these were made, they simply grew through the agency of use. Yet no man could say by whom these paths have been trodden into the soil. It is only now and then, and usually as an unpleasant exception, that Bashan and I meet anyone here. When such meetings do occur, my companion comes to a sudden halt in startled surprise and gives vent to a single muffled bark which gives a pretty clear expression to my own feelings in connection with the encounter. Even on fine sunny afternoons in the summer, when great numbers of pedestrians from the city come pouring into the neighbourhood (it is always a few degrees cooler here than elsewhere), we two are able to wander quite undisturbed on the inner ways. The public is apparently unaware of these, besides, the river is a great attraction and draws them mightily. Hugging its banks as closely as possible, that is, when there is no flooding, the human river wanders out into the countryside and then comes rolling back in the evening. At most we chance to stumble upon a pair of lovers kissing in the bushes. With wide, shy, yet insolent eyes, they regard us from their bower, as though stubbornly bent on challenging us, daring us to say anything against their being here, defying us to give any open disapproval of their remote and guerilla lovemaking⁠—intimations which we silently answer in the negative by beating a flank retreat, Bashan with that air of indifference with which all things that do not bear the scent of the wild about them affect him, and I with a perfectly inscrutable and expressionless face which allows no trace either of approval or disapproval to be seen.

But these paths are not the only means of traffic and communication in my domain. You will find streets there, or⁠—to be more precise⁠—preparations that may once have been streets, or were once destined to be such. It is like this: traces of the path-finding and path-clearing axe and of a sanguine spirit of enterprise in the realm of real estate reveal themselves for quite a distance beyond the built-up part of the country and the little villa colony. Some speculative soul had peered deeply into the untold possibilities of the future, and had proceeded upon a bold and audacious plan. The society which had taken this tract of territory in hand some ten or fifteen years before had cherished plans far more magnificent than those which came to pass, for originally the colony was not to have been confined to the handful of villas which now stand there. Building lots were plentiful, for more than a mile downstream everything had been prepared, and is no doubt still prepared for possible buyers and for lovers of a settled suburban manner of life.

The councils of this syndicate had been dominated by large and lofty ideals. They had not contented themselves with building proper jetties along the banks, with the creation of riverside walks and quays and with the planting of parks and gardens. They had gone far beyond all this, the hand of cultivation had invaded the woods themselves, had made clearings, piled up gravel, united the wilderness by means of streets, a few lengthwise and still more crosswise. They are well-planned and handsome streets, or sketches of streets, in coarse macadam, with the hint of a curb and roomy sidewalks. On these, however, no one goes walking but Bashan and myself⁠—he upon the good and durable leather of his four paws⁠—I upon hobnailed boots, because of the macadam.

The villas which should long ago have risen hospitably along these streets, according to the calculations and intentions of the society, have, for the present, refused to materialise, even though I have set so excellent an example as to build my own house in these parts. They have remained absent, I say, for ten, for fifteen years, and so it is small wonder that a certain discouragement has settled down upon the neighbourhood, and that a disinclination for further expenditures and for the completion of that which was so magnificently begun, should make itself felt in the bosom of the society.

Everything had progressed admirably up to a certain point. Things had even gone so far as the christening of the new streets. For these thoroughfares without inhabitants have right and regular names, just like ordinary or orthodox streets in the city or in the civilised suburbs. But I would give much to know what dreamy soul or retrospective “highbrow” of a speculator had assigned them. There is a Goethe and a Schiller, a Lessing and a Heine Street⁠—there is even an Adalbert Stifter Street upon which I stroll with particular sympathy and reverence in my hobnailed boots. Square stakes are visible, such as may be seen in at the corners of the raw and uncompleted streets in the suburbs where there are no corner houses. Little blue enamelled shields with white letters are fastened to these stakes. These shields, alas, are not in the best condition. They have stood here far too long, giving a name to adumbrations of streets in which no one cares to live, and they have been singled out to bear the stigmata of disappointment, fiasco, and arrested development to which they give public expression. They are wrapped in an air of forlorn disquietude and neglect. Nothing has been done for their upkeep nor for their renewal, and the weather and the sun have played havoc with them. The enamel, to a great extent, has split and cracked off, the white letters have been eaten away by rust, so that in place of their smooth and glittering whiteness there are only brown spots and gaps with hideous, jagged edges⁠—disfigurements which tear the image of the name asunder and often render it illegible.

One of these blue enamelled signboards imposed a tremendous strain upon my intellect when I first came hither and penetrated this region on my tours of exploration. It was a signboard particularly long in shape and the word street (strasse) had been preserved without a break. But of the actual name which, as I have indicated, was very long, or rather had been very long, the letters were nearly all completely “blinded” or devoured by rust. The reddish-brownish gaps gave one some idea of their number, but nothing was decipherable except the half of a capital S and an e in the middle, and another e at the end. This riddle was a little too much for my astuteness⁠—I was face to face with too many unknown quantities. So I stood there for a long time, my hands upon my back, staring at the long signboard and studying it closely. And then I gave it up and went strolling along the rudimentary pavement with Bashan. But whilst I thought that I was occupying myself with other things, this particular thing kept working within the mnemonic depths of me. My sub-intelligence kept scenting out the destroyed name, and suddenly it shot into my consciousness. I stood still⁠—as in a fright. I rushed back and once more planted myself in front of the signboard. I counted and compared and tested the elements of my guess. Yes, it fitted, it “worked out!” We were wandering in the street which had been called “Shakespeare.”

These signboards befit the streets which justify their metallic existence, and these streets the signboards which give them a local habitation and a name. Both of them are dreamily and wonderfully lapped in forgetfulness and decay. They pursue their way through the wood which they have invaded⁠—but the wood refuses to rest. It refuses to leave these streets inviolate for a decade or more until settlers choose to pitch their tents or villas here. So the wood calmly goes to work and makes preparations to close the streets, for the green things that grow here have no fear of gravel or macadam⁠—they are used to it and thrive in it and on it. So everywhere upon the streets and upon the pavements the purple-headed thistles, the blue sage, silvery willow shrubs, and the green of young ash-tree sprouts begin to take root and shoot forth.

There can be no doubt⁠—these parklike streets with the poetic names are running wild⁠—the jungle is once more devouring them. Whether one be disposed to lament the fact or rejoice over it⁠—it is certain that in another ten years the Goethe, Schiller, and Heine Streets will no longer be passable, and will very likely have vanished utterly. At present, to be sure, there is no cause for complaint. Surely, from a pictorial and romantic point of view, there are no lovelier streets in all the world than precisely these in precisely their present condition. Nothing could be more grateful to the soul than to ramble through this negligence, this incompleteness⁠—that is, when one is well and sturdily shod and need not fear the coarse gravel. It is edification to the spirit to survey the manifold wild vegetation of the tract and the groves of tiny-leafed trees fettered by their soft dampness⁠—sweet glimpses which frame and shut in these perspectives. Just such a group of trees was painted three hundred years ago by that great master of landscapes⁠—he who came out of Lorraine. But what am I saying?⁠—such as he painted? It was this one⁠—and none other⁠—which he painted. He was here; he knew the region, and if that rhapsodical member of the real estate company who christened the streets in my park had not so rigidly restricted himself to literature, then one or the other of these rust-corroded signs might well cause me to guess at the name of Claude Lorraine.

I have now described the region of the central wood. But the sloping land towards the east also possesses charms which are not to be despised, at least so far as Bashan and myself are concerned, and for reasons which will be revealed later. One might also call it the zone of the brook, for it is a brook which gives it an idyllic landscape quality. With the charm of its banks of forget-me-nots it forms a counterpart on the hitherside to the zone of the puissant river yonder⁠—the roar and rushing turbulence of which one is still able to hear in this spot⁠—but only very faintly and softly and only when the west wind is blowing. There where the first cross street, running from the avenue of poplars between the meadow ponds and the clumps of trees towards the slope, debouches at the foot of this slope, there is a path that leads towards the left. This is used in wintertime as a bobsled run by the youth of the region, and slants towards the lower-lying levels.

Where the run becomes level the brook begins its course, and it is here that master and dog love to amble beside it on the right bank or the left⁠—which again affords variety⁠—and also to make excursions along the slope with its variegated configuration. To the left extend meadows studded with trees. A country nursery lies not far away and reveals the back of its farm buildings. Sheep are usually at pasture here, cropping the clover. They are under the chairmanship⁠—so to speak⁠—of a not very clever little girl in a red frock. This little girl seems to suffer from a veritable passion to rule and command. She is constantly crouching low, propping her hands upon her knees and shouting with all her might in a cacophonous voice. And yet she is horribly afraid of the ram, who takes on huge and majestic proportions on account of the thickness of his wool and who refuses to be bullied and does whatever he pleases.

Whenever Bashan’s appearance causes a panic among the sheep, the child invariably raises its hideous outcry, and these panics occur quite regularly and quite contrary to Bashan’s intentions⁠—for, if you could peer into his inmost soul, you would discover that sheep are a matter of absolute indifference to him. He treats them like so much empty air, and by his indifference and his scrupulous and even contemptuous carefulness he even seeks to prevent the outbreak of the dunderheaded hysteria which dominates their ranks. Though their scent is certainly strong enough for my own nostrils (yet not unpleasantly so), it is not the scent of the wild that emanates from them, and so Bashan, of course, has not the slightest interest in hounding them. Nevertheless, a simple sudden motion on his part, or even his mere shaggy appearance, is sufficient to cause the whole herd, which but a moment ago was peacefully grazing, widely separated and bleating in the quavering treble of the lambs and in the deeper contralto and bass of the ewes and the ram, to go storming off in a solid mass neck and neck, whilst the stupid child, crouching low, shouts after them until her voice cracks and her eyes pop out of her head. Bashan, however, looks up at me as much as to say: Judge for yourself whether I am to blame. Have I given them any cause for this?

On one occasion, however, something quite contrary happened, something perverse and incomprehensible⁠—something still more extraordinary and unpleasant than the panic. One of the sheep, quite an ordinary specimen of its kind, of average size and average sheepish visage, with a small upward curving mouth which appeared to smile and gave an expression of almost mocking stupidity to its face, seemed to be spellbound and fascinated by Bashan and came to join him. It simply followed him⁠—detached itself from the herd, left the pasture and clung to Bashan’s heels, quietly smiling in exaggerated foolishness, and following him whithersoever he turned. He left the path⁠—the sheep did likewise; he ran and it followed at a gallop; he stood still, and it stood still⁠—immediately behind him and smiling its mysterious Mona Lisa smile.

Displeasure and embarrassment became visible in Bashan’s face. The situation into which he had been plunged was really ridiculous. There was neither sense nor significance in it⁠—neither in a good or a bad sense. The whole thing, confound it⁠—was simply preposterous⁠—nothing of the kind had ever happened to him⁠—or to me. The sheep went farther and farther from its basis, but this did not seem to trouble it in the least. It followed the discomfited and irritated Bashan farther and farther, visibly determined not to separate from him ever again, but to follow him whithersoever he might go. He remained close beside me, not so much out of fear, since there was no occasion for this, as out of shame at the dishonour of the situation in which he found himself. Finally, as though his patience were at an end, he stood still, turned his head, and growled ominously. This caused the sheep to bleat, and its bleating sounded like the wicked laughter of a human being, which so terrified poor Bashan that he ran away with his tail between his legs⁠—and the sheep straight after him, with comic jumps and curvetings.

We were already at a considerable distance from the herd. In the meantime the half-witted little girl was screaming as though she would burst, still crouching and bending upon her knees and even drawing these up as high as her face, so that from a distance she looked like a raving and malformed gnome. And then a farm-maid, with an apron over her skirts came running up, either in answer to the cries of the obsessed little one or because she had noticed the happenings from afar. She came running, I say, with a pitchfork in one hand. With the other she supported her bodice, which, I surmise, was unsupported and which was visibly disposed to shake a trifle too violently as she ran. She came up panting and at once proceeded to shy the sheep, which was slowly pacing along, like Bashan himself, into the proper direction with the fork, though without success. The sheep, it is true, sprang aside with a swift flank movement, but in an instant it was once more on Bashan’s trail. Nothing seemed to be able to induce it to give up.

I then realised that the only thing to do was to turn tail myself, and so I turned round. We all retraced our steps, Bashan at my side, behind him the sheep, and behind the sheep the maid with the pitchfork, whilst the child in the red frock kept on yelling and stamping. It was not enough, however, that we should go back as far as the herd⁠—it was necessary to finish the job and to proceed to the final destination. We were obliged to enter the farmyard and then the sheep-stable with the broad sliding-door which the maid with muscular arm rolled to one side before us. We thereupon marched in, and after we were all inside, we three were forced to make a swift and adroit escape so as to be able to shove the stable door to before the very nose of the beguiled sheep, making it a prisoner. It was only after this operation had been gone through that Bashan and I were able to resume our interrupted promenade amidst the fervent thanks of the maid. During the entire walk, however, Bashan persisted in maintaining a humble and disconsolate air.

So much for the sheep. Closely adjacent to the farm buildings on the left there is an extensive colony of small market-gardens. These are owned and tended by the clerks and working men of the city, and are the source of much joy, exercise, and considerable supplies of cheap flowers and vegetables. The gardens have a cemetery-like effect with their many arbours and summer houses, built in imitation of tiny chapels and with their countless small, fenced-in plots. The whole is enclosed by a wooden fence with an ornamental gateway. No one, however, except the small amateur gardeners, is permitted to have admittance through this wooden grille. At times I see some bare-armed man there digging up his little vegetable garden, a square rod or so in size, and always it seems to me as though he were digging his own grave. Beyond these gardens lie open meadows which are covered with molehills and which extend to the edge of the central wooded region. Here, in addition to the molehills, there are also great numbers of field-mice⁠—a fact which must be solemnly remarked in view of Bashan and his multiform joy in the chase.

On the other side, that is to say, to the right, the brook and the slope continue⁠—the latter, as I have already indicated, in diverse configuration. At first, covered with fir-trees, it displays a dusky and sunless visage. Later it transforms itself to a sandpit which warmly refracts the beams of the sun; still later it converts itself into a gravel-pit, and then to a cataract of bricks⁠—just as though a house had been demolished higher up and the dwbris hurled down the slope. This has imposed temporary difficulties upon the course of the brook. But the brook rises equal to the occasion; its waters mount a trifle and spread themselves out, stained red by the dust of the broken brick and also discolouring the grass along the bank. After this they flow the dearer and the more gaily on their way with glistenings here and there upon the surface.

I have a great love for brooks, as I have for all bodies of water⁠—from the ocean to the smallest, scum-covered puddle. When I happen to be in the mountains during the summer and chance to hear the secret splashing and gossip of such a streamlet, then I must follow the liquid call, even though it be distant, and I cannot rest until I have found its hiding-place. Then, face to face, I make acquaintance with the talkative child of the crags and the heights. Beautiful are the proud torrential brooks which come down in crystalline thunder between pines and steep terraces of stone, form green, ice-cold pools in rocky baths and basins, and then go plunging to the next step in a dissolution of snowy foam. But I am also fond of looking upon the brooks of the flatland, whether they be shallow, so as scarcely to cover the polished, silvery, and slippery pebbles of their beds, or as deep as little rivers which⁠—protected on both banks by low, overhanging willows⁠—go shouldering themselves forward with a vigorous thrust, flowing more swiftly in the middle than at the sides.

Who, being free to make his choice, would not follow the course of the waters on his wanderings? The attraction which water exercises upon the normal man is natural and mystically sympathetic. Man is a child of water. Our bodies are nine-tenths water, and during a stage of our prenatal development, we even have gills. As for myself, I gladly confess that the contemplation of water in every shape and form is for me the most immediate and poignant joy in nature⁠—yes, I will even go so far as to say that true abstractedness, true self-forgetfulness, the real merging of my own circumscribed existence in the universal, is granted to me only when my eyes lose themselves in some great liquid mirror. Thus, in the face of the sleeping or the charging and crashing of the on-rushing sea, I am like to be transported into a condition of such profound and organic dreams, of such a remote absence from myself, that all sense of time is lost and tedium becomes a thing without meaning, since hour upon hour spent in such identification and communion melt away as though they were but minutes. But I also love to lean upon the rail of a bridge that crosses a brook, and remain fixed to it as with thongs, losing myself in the vision of the flowing, streaming and whirling element⁠—quite immune to the fear or impatience with which I ought to be filled in view of that other streaming and flowing that goes on about me⁠—the swift, fluid flight of time. Such love of the water, and all that water means, renders the tight little territory which I inhabit the more important and precious to me in that it is surrounded on both sides by water.

The local brook is of the simple and faithful species. There is nothing very remarkable about it⁠—its character is based upon friendly averages. It is of a naivete as clear as glass, without subtlety or deception, without an attempt to simulate depth by means of murkiness. It is shallow and dear and quite innocently reveals the fact that its bottom harbours castaway tin pots and the carcass of a lace-boot in a coat of green slime. It is, however, deep enough to serve as a habitation to pretty, silvery-gray and extremely nimble little fish, which, I presume, are minnows and which dart away in wide zigzag lines at our approach. My brook widens here and there into ponds with fine willows along the edges. One of these willows I always regard lovingly as I pass by. It grows⁠—I had almost said she grows⁠—close to the bluff, and thus at some distance from the water. But it stretches one of its boughs longingly towards the brook and has really succeeded in reaching the flowing water with the silvery foliage that plumes the tip of this bough. There it stands, with fay-like fingers wet in the stream and draws pleasure from the contact.

It is good to walk here, lightly assailed by the warm summer wind. The weather is warm, so it is probable that Bashan will go wading into the brook to cool his belly⁠—only his belly, for he has a distinct aversion to bringing the more elevated parts of his anatomy in contact with the water. There he stands, with his ears laid back and an expression of piety and alertness upon his face, and lets the water swirl around him and past him. After this he comes sidling up to me in order to shake himself⁠—an operation which, according to his own conviction, must occur in my immediate vicinity. The vigour with which he shakes himself causes a thin spray of water and mud to fly my way. It is no use warding him off with flourished stick and intense objurgations. Under no conditions will he tolerate any interference with anything that appears to him natural, inevitable, and according to the fitness of things.

Farther on the brook, in pursuing its course towards the setting sun, reaches a small hamlet which commands a view towards the north⁠—between the woods and the slope⁠—and at the entrance to this hamlet lies the tavern. Here the brook once more broadens into a pond. The women of the village kneel at the edge of this and wash their linen. A little footbridge crosses the stream. Should you venture over you will set foot upon a road which leads from the village towards the city, running between the edge of the wood and the edge of the meadow. Should you leave this road on the right you would be able to reach the river in a few steps by means of a wagon-road that cuts through the wood.

We are now within the zone of the river. The river itself lies before us green and streaked with white and full of liquid roarings. It is actually only a great mountain torrent. Its everlasting rushing sound can be heard with a more or less muffled reverberation everywhere throughout the region. Here it swells and crashes overwhelmingly upon the ears. It might, in fact, serve as a substitute for the sacred and sounding onset of the sea⁠—if no sea is to be had. The ceaseless cry of innumerable land-gulls intermingles with the voice of the stream. In autumn and in winter, and even during the spring, these gulls go circling round and round the mouths of the overflow-pipes, filling the air with their screams. Here they find their food until the season grows milder and permits them to make their way to the lakes in the hills⁠—like the wild and half-wild ducks which also spend the cool and the cold months in the vicinity of the city, balance themselves on the waves, permit themselves to be carried by the current which turns them round and rocks them at will, and then just at the moment when some rapid or whirlpool threatens to engulf them, fly up with light and vibrant wing and settle down once more upon the water⁠—a little farther upstream.

The region of the river is arranged and classified as follows:⁠—close to the edge of the wood there stretches a broad level of gravel. This is a continuation of the poplar avenue which I have mentioned so frequently, and runs, say, for about a kilometre downstream, that is to say, to the little ferryman’s house⁠—of which more anon. Behind this the thicket comes closer to the river channel. The purpose of this desert of gravel is clear; it is the first and most prominent of the longitudinal streets, and was lavishly planned by the real estate company as a charming and picturesque esplanade for elegant turnouts⁠—with visions of gentlemen on horseback approaching spick-and-span landaus and victorias glistening in their enamel and engaging in delicate badinage with smiling and “beauteous” ladies reclining at ease under dainty parasols.

Close to the ferryman’s house there is a huge signboard in a state of advanced decreptitude. This proclaims what was to have been the immediate goal, the temporary termination of the carriage corso. For there in broad and blatant letters you may read that this corner site is for sale for the erection of a park café and a fashionable refreshment “establishment.” Well, the purpose remains unfulfilled, and the building site is empty.

For in place of the park café, with its little tables, its hurrying waiters, and glass-and-cup sipping and straw-sucking guests, there is only the big wooden signboard⁠—aslant⁠—a resigned, collapsing bid without a bidder, and the corso itself only a waste of coarsest gravel, covered with willow bushes and with blue sage almost as thickly as the Goethe or Lessing Streets.

Alongside the esplanade, nearer to the river, there runs a smaller gravel way which is also overgrown with insurgent shrubbery. It is characterised by grass mounds which arise at intervals and from which telegraph-poles mount into the air. Yet I am fond of frequenting this road on my walks, first because of the change, and second because the gravel permits of clean though somewhat difficult locomotion, when the clayey footpath yonder does not appear passable during days of heavy rain. This footpath, actually the real promenade, runs for miles along the river and then finally degenerates into wild, haphazard trails along the bank. It is lined along the riverside with saplings, maple and birch, and on the land side it is flanked by the mighty primitive inhabitants of the region⁠—willows, aspens, and silver poplars⁠—all of them colossal in their dimensions. The escarpment plunges steeply and sheerly towards the riverbed. It is protected by ingenious works of woven willow-withes and by a concrete armour along its lower parts against the mounting flood water which once or twice a year comes rolling hither⁠—when the snows melt in the mountains or the rain overdoes itself. Here and there the slope hospitably offers one the use of wooden steps, half ladders and half stairs, by means of which one may, with a fair degree of comfort, descend into the actual riverbed, which is usually quite dry. It is the reserve gravel bed of the big wild brook, and is about six metres wide.

The stream behaves like all other members of its family, the small as well as the smallest, that is to say, according to the weather and the water conditions in the upper mountain regions. Sometimes its course will be a mere green flowing tunnel with the rocks scarcely covered and with the gulls appearing to stand stilt-legged on the very surface itself. And then, again, it will assume a most formidable character, swelling into a wide stream, filling its bed with gray watery fury and tumult, and bearing along in its headlong course all kinds of unseemly objects such as old baskets, pieces of wooden crates, bushes, and dead cats in its circling wrath, and showing a great disposition to flooding and to deeds of violence.

The reserve or overflow channel is also armoured against high water by the same parallel, slanting, and hurdle-like arrangements of willow branches. It is covered with beach-grass and wild oats as well as with the show-plant of the neighbourhood, the dry, omnipresent blue sage. It offers good walking, thanks to the strip of quay formed of tooled and even stone, which runs along the extreme limit of the water. This gives me a further, and in fact favourite, possibility of adding variety to my promenades.

It is true that the unyielding stone is not particularly good going, but one is fully recompensed by the intimate proximity of the water. Then one is also able now and then to walk in the sand beside the quay. Yes, there is real sand there between the gravel and the beach-grass, sand that is a trifle mixed with clay and not so sacredly pure as that of the sea, but nevertheless real sand that has been washed up. I am thus able to fancy myself strolling upon a real strand down there, inscrutably drawing my foot along the perilous edge of the salt flood. There is no lack of surgings, even if there is of surges, nor of the clamour of gulls, nor of that kind of space-annihilating monotony which lulls one into a sort of narcotic absentmindedness. The level cataracts are rushing and roaring all around, and halfway to the ferryman’s house⁠—the voice of a waterfall joins the chorus⁠—from over yonder where the canal, debouching at a slant, pours itself into a river. The body of this fall is arched, smooth, glassy like that of a fish, and an everlasting boiling tumult goes on at its base.

It is beautiful here when the sky is blue and the flat ferry decorated with a pennant in honour of the weather or some other festival occasion. There are other boats in this spot, but the ferry is fastened to a wire rope which in turn is fastened to another and thicker wire cable. This is stretched across the river in such a way as to let a pulley run along it. The current itself furnishes the motive power for the ferryboat and a pressure from the ferryman’s hand upon the rudder does the rest. The ferryman lives in the ferry-house with his wife and child, and this house lies a short distance from the upper footpath. It has a little garden and a henhouse, and is evidently an official dwelling and therefore rent-free. It is a kind of villa of liliputian proportions, lightly and whimsically built with little bays and gables, and appears to boast of two rooms below and two above. I love to sit on the bench in front of the garden close to the upper footpath. Bashan then squats upon my foot; the hens of the ferryman amble about me and give their heads a forward jerk with every step. And usually the cock comes to perch upon the back of the bench and lets the green Bersaglieri feathers of his tail hang down behind, sitting beside me thus and measuring me luridly from the side with his red eye.

I watch the traffic on the ferry. It could scarcely be called strenuous, nor even lively, for it consummates itself, at large and liberal intervals. So I find all the more pleasure in the scene when a man or a woman with a market-basket appears on the farther bank and demands to be carried across the river. For the poetic element in that fine call, “Ferry ahoy!” remains full of human captivation as in ancient days, even though the action fulfils itself, as here, in new and progressive forms. Double steps of wood for the coming and the departing traveller lead down the escarpment on both sides into the bed of the river and to the landing-places. And on both sides there is an electric button affixed to the rail.

A man appears on the other bank, stands still and peers across the water. No longer, however, as in former times, does he hollow his hands into a trumpet and shout through them. He walks towards the push-button, stretches out his arms and performs a slight pressure with his thumb. There is a clear, thin tinkle in the house of the ferryman. This is the modern “Ferry ahoy!” and it is poetic even thus. There stands the prospective passenger and watches and waits. And almost at the very moment at which the bell tinkles, the ferryman comes out of his little house, just as though he had stood or sat behind the door, merely waiting for the signal. The ferryman, I repeat, comes out⁠—and in his walk there is something which suggests that he has been set in motion directly by the pressure upon the push button⁠—just as one may shoot at a door in a tiny hut among the targets in the shooting-galleries. If you chance to make a bull’s-eye, it flies open and a tiny figure comes out⁠—say a milkmaid or a soldier.

Without showing the slightest sign of undue haste the ferryman walks with swinging arms through his little garden, crosses the footpath, descends the wooden steps to the river, pushes off the ferry, and holds the rudder whilst the pulley runs along the taut wire, and the boat is driven across by the current. The boat bumps against the other bank; the stranger jumps in; upon reaching the hither bank he hands the ferryman a nickel coin and leaps up the wooden steps with alacrity. He has conquered the river, and turns either to the right or to the left. Sometimes when the ferryman is prevented from being at his post, either through illness or more urgent household affairs, then his wife or even his child will come out of the house and fetch the stranger across. They are able to perform this office as well as he⁠—even I could attend to it. The job of the ferryman is an easy one and requires no special capacity or training. Surely he is a lucky man, this ferrymaster, in having such a job and being able to live in the neat dwarf villa. Any fool would at once be able to step into his place, and the knowledge of this keeps him modest and grateful. On the way back to his house he greets me very politely (with Grüss Gott) as I sit there on the wooden bench between the dog and the rooster. It is clear that he wishes to remain on a good footing with everyone.

A smell of tar, a wind brushing across the waters, and a plashing sound against the wooden sides of the boats. What more could I desire? Sometimes I am seized by another memory of home. It comes upon me when the water is deep and still and there is a somewhat musty odour in the air, and then these things take me back to the Laguna, back to Venice, where I spent so many years of my youth. And then again there is storm and there is flood, and the everlasting rain comes pouring down. Wrapped in a rubber coat, with wet and streaming face, I brace myself against the stiff west wind along the upper way, a wind that tears the young poplars from their poles and makes it clear why the trees here incline away from the west and have crowns which grow only from one side of the branches. When we go walking in rains such as these, Bashan frequently stands still and shakes himself so that he is the dark centre of a dull, gray flurry of water. The river at such times is a different river. Swollen, murky-yellow, it comes rolling on, wearing upon its face an ominous catastrophic look. This storm-flood is full of a lurching, crowding, tremendous haste, an insensate hurry. It usurps the entire reserve channel up to the very edge of the escarpment, and leaps up against the concrete walls, the protective works of willow boughs, so that one involuntarily utters thanks to the wise forethought which established these defences. The eerie thing about these flood-waters is that the river grows quiet, much quieter than usual, in fact it becomes almost silent. The customary surface rapids are no longer visible; the stream rolls too high for these. But the spots where these rapids were, are to be recognised by the deeper hollows and the higher waves, and by the fact that the crests of these waves curl over backwards and not forwards⁠—like the waves of the current. The waterfall no longer plays a part, its glistening curved body is now flat and meagre, and the pother at its base has vanished through the height of the water level.

So far as Bashan is concerned, his astonishment at such a change in the aspect of things is beyond expression. He remains in a state of constant amazement. He is unable to realise that the places in which he has been accustomed to trot and run should have vanished, should have utterly vanished⁠—think of it!⁠—and that there should be nothing there but water⁠—water! In his fright he scampers up the escarpment in a kind of panic⁠—away from the plunging, spattering flood and looks around at me with waggings of his tail, after which he casts further dubious glances at the water. A kind of embarrassment comes upon him⁠—and he gives way to a trick of his⁠—opening his mouth obliquely and thrusting his tongue into the corners⁠—a play of feature which affects one as being as much human as it is animal. As a means of expression it is somewhat unrefined and subservient, but thoroughly comprehensible. The whole effect is about the same as would be conveyed by a rather simple-minded yokel in the face of an awkward situation, provided he went so far as to scratch his head as Bashan scratches his neck.

Having occupied myself in some detail with the zone of the river, and described the whole region, I believe that I have succeeded in giving my readers a picture of it. I rather like my own description of the place, or rather the place as presented in my description, but I like it still better as a piece of nature. For there is no doubt that as a piece of living nature, it is still more diversified and vivid, just as Bashan himself is in reality warmer, more lively and lovable than in this counterfeit presentment. I am attached to this stretch of landscape and grateful to it, and so I have described it with something of the meticulosity with which the old Dutch masters painted. It is my park and my solitude, and it is for this reason that I have sought to conjure it up before the reader’s eye. My thoughts and my dreams are mingled and intergrown with its scenes, like the leaves of its creepers with the stems of its trees.

I have looked upon it at all hours and at all seasons; in autumn when the chemical smell of the fading leaves fills the air, when the white legions of the thistledown have all been blown to the winds, when the great beeches of the Kurgarten spread a rust-coloured carpet of leaves about them on the meadows, and when afternoons dripping with gold merge into theatrically romantic twilights with the crescent moon swimming in the skies, with a milky brew of mist hovering over the levels and the afterglow of the sunset smouldering through the black silhouettes of the trees. And also in winter when all the gravel is covered with snow and soft and smooth, so that one may walk upon it in one’s rubber overshoes, and when the river goes shooting black between the pale frost-bound shores and the cry of hundreds of freshwater gulls fills the air from morning to evening. Nevertheless the easiest and most familiar intercourse with this landscape is during the mild months, when no special equipment in the way of defensive clothing is necessary, and one may go for a quick stroll for a quarter of an hour, betwixt and between two showers of rain, and, in passing, bend aside the branch of a black alder tree and cast a look into the wandering waves. It is possible that visitors have been to call upon me, and I have been left behind, stranded, as it were, within my own four walls, crushed by conversation, and with the breath of the strangers apparently still hanging in the air. It is good then to go at once and loaf for a little along the Heine or Schiller Street, to draw a breath of fresh air and to anoint myself with Nature. I look up to the heavens, peer into the green depths of the world of tender and delicate leaves, my nerves recover themselves and grow quiet⁠—peace and serenity return to my spirit.

Bashan is always with me on such forays. He had not been able to prevent an invasion of the house by the outer world in the shape of the visitors, even though he had lifted up his voice in loud and terrible protest. But that had done no good, and so he had stepped aside. And now he is jubilant that he and I are once more together in the hunting-grounds. With one ear turned carelessly inside out, and loping obliquely, as is the common habit of dogs⁠—that is, with his hind legs moving not directly behind his front legs, but somewhat to the side, he goes trotting on the gravel in front of me. And suddenly I see that some tremendous emotion has seized him, body and soul. His short bobbed tail begins to wave furiously. His head lunges forward and to one side, his body stretches and extends itself. He jumps hither and thither, and the next moment, with his nose still glued to the ground, he goes darting off. He has struck a scent. He is on the spoor of a rabbit.

The region is rich in game, and so we go a-hunting it. That is to say, Bashan goes hunting and I look on. In this wise we hunt: rabbits, quail, field-mice, moles, ducks and gulls. But we do not by any means fight shy of bigger game; we also track pheasants and even deer⁠—whenever such first-rate quarry⁠—as sometimes happens⁠—strays into our hunting-grounds. This always furnishes an exciting spectacle⁠—when the long-legged, lightly-built animal, the furtive deer, all yellow against the snow and with its white-tufted hindquarters bobbing, goes flying before little old Bashan who is straining every nerve. I follow the course of events with the greatest interest and tension. It is not as if anything were ever to result from this chase, for that has never happened and never will happen. But the lack of tangible results does not in the least diminish either Bashan’s joy or his passion for hunting, nor does it in any way minimise my pleasure. We pursue the chase for its own sake and not for the sake of prey or booty or any other utilitarian purpose.

Bashan, as I have said, is the active member. He does not expect any save a moral support from me, since no personal and immediate experience has taught him a more pronounced and practical manner of cooperation. I lay particular stress upon the words “personal” and “immediate,” for it is more than probable that his ancestors, in so far as they belonged to the tribe of setters, were familiar with more actual methods of hunting. On occasion I have asked myself whether some memory of this might not survive in him and whether this could not be aroused by some accidental impulse. It is certain that on Bashan’s plane of existence the life of the individual is less differentiated from the species than in our case. Birth and death signify a far less profound vacillation of the balance of being; perhaps the inheritances of the blood are more perfectly preserved, so that it would merely be an apparent contradiction to speak of inborn experiences, unconscious memories which, once aroused, would be able to confuse the creature in the matter of its own personal experiences and cause it to be dissatisfied with these. I once courted this thought, but then rid myself of it, just as Bashan had obviously rid himself of the thoughts of the brutal incident of which he had been a witness and which gives me occasion for these deliberations.

When I go forth to hunt with him, it usually chances to be noon⁠—half-past eleven or twelve o’clock⁠—sometimes, especially on very warm summer days, it may even be late afternoon, say six o’clock or later. It may be that this is even our second going-out. In any case my mental and spiritual atmosphere is quite different from what it was during our first careless stroll in the morning. The virgin freshness of the early hour has vanished long since. I have worried, and have struggled in the interval with this or that. I have been forced to grit my teeth and overcome one difficulty after the other⁠—I have had a tussle with some person or other. At the same time I have been obliged to keep some diffuse and complicated matter firmly in mind and my head is weary, especially after a successful mastery of the problem. Hence this going a-hunting with Bashan distracts and enlivens me. It infuses me with new life, putting me into condition for the rest of the day and for triumph over the tasks that are still lowering in my path. It is really largely the impulse of gratitude which forces me to describe these hunting trips.

Things, to be sure, are not so neatly arranged that Bashan and I could go forth in pursuit of any one special species of the game which I have mentioned⁠—that we should, for instance, specialise on rabbits or ducks. No, on the contrary, we hunt everything that chances to cross our path⁠—I had almost said that chances to come within range of our guns. We need not go very far in order to strike game. The hunt may literally begin immediately outside the garden gate, for there are great numbers of field-mice and moles in the hollows of the meadows close behind the house. To be exact and sportsmanlike⁠—I am aware that these fur-bearing animals cannot, of course, be regarded as game in the strict sense of the term. But their secret, subterranean habits, especially the nimble craftiness of the mice, which are not blind o’ day like their excavating and tunnelling brethren, and often go gambolling upon the surface, and then when danger approaches go flicking into the little black burrow without one’s being able to distinguish their legs or their movements⁠—these things work tremendously upon Bashan’s hunting instincts. These are also the only animals of the wild which occasionally become his prey⁠—a field-mouse, a mole⁠—these are titbits which are not to be despised in such lean and meagre days as these⁠—when one often finds nothing more palatable than a thick barley soup in the stoneware bowl beside one’s kennel.

I have scarcely taken a dozen steps with my cane along the poplar avenue, and Bashan has, as an overture, scarcely got through with his preliminary leaps and lunges, than he is seen to be performing the most extraordinary capricoles towards the right. He is already gripped by the passion for the chase, and is blind and deaf to all things save the exciting but hidden goings-on of the living things about him. With every nerve taut and tense, waving his tail, carefully lifting his feet, he goes slinking through the grass, sometimes pausing in mid-step, with one foreleg and one hindleg in air, then peering with cocked head into the hollows, an action which causes the flaps of his erected ears to fall forward on both sides of his eyes. And then raising both forepaws, he will suddenly jump forward and will stare with dumbfounded expression at a spot where but a moment before there was something and where now there is nothing. And then he begins to dig.⁠ ⁠…

I feel a strong desire to go to him and await the result, but then we should never be able to leave the spot. Bashan would expend his entire stock of joy-in-the-chase right here in this meadow, and this stock is meant to last him for the entire day. And so I walk on⁠—untroubled by any thought that he might not be able to overtake me⁠—even though he should remain behind for a long time without having observed in what direction I had gone. To him my track and trail are as clear as that of a bit of game. Should he have lost sight of me, he is sure, with head lowered between his forepaws, to come tearing along this trail. I hear the clinking of his brass license-tag, his firm gallop behind me⁠—and then he goes shooting past me and turns with wagging tail once more to report himself on duty.

Out yonder, however, in the woods or in the broad meadows alongside the brook, I often halt and watch when I catch him digging for a mouse, even though it should be late and I in danger of exceeding the time I have apportioned for my walk. The passionate devotion with which he goes to work is so fascinating to observe, his profound enthusiasm is so contagious, that I cannot but wish him success with all my heart, and naturally I also wish to be a witness of this success. The spot he is attacking may have made quite an innocent impression in its outward aspect⁠—it is, let us say, some mossy little mound at the foot of a birch and possibly penetrated by its roots. But did not my Bashan hear the quarry, scent it, perhaps even see it as it switched away? He is absolutely certain that his bit of game is sitting there under the earth in some snug runlet or burrow; all that is necessary is to get at it, and so he goes digging away for all he is worth in absolute devotion to his task and oblivious to the world. He proceeds not ragingly, but with a certain fine deliberation, with the tempered passion of the real sportsman⁠—it is wonderful to see. His small, tiger-striped body beneath the smooth coat of which the ribs align themselves and the muscles play, is hollowed, is concave in the middle; his hindquarters, with the stump of a tail vibrating to quick time, is erected vertically. His head is between his forepaws and thrust into the slant hole he has already dug. With averted face he continues with the rapid strokes of his iron claws to tear up the earth more and more⁠—lumps of sod, pebbles, shreds of glass, and bits of roots fly all about me. Sometimes his snortings are heard in the silence of the fields⁠—that is when he has succeeded in penetrating some little distance, and in wedging his snout into the entrance to the burrow in order, by means of his scent, to keep check upon the clever, still, and timid creature within there.

His breathing sounds muffled, he ejects his breath in a blast in order to be able to empty his lungs quickly⁠—and to draw in the delicate, acrid, distant, and yet disguised odour of the mice. What emotions must surge through the breast of the little animal down there when it hears this hollow and muffled snorting? Well, that is its own affair, or perhaps God’s affair, who has decreed that Bashan shall be the enemy and persecutor of these earth-mice. And then⁠—is not fear only an intensified feeling for life? If no Bashan existed the little mouse would very likely be bored to death. And what use or purpose would then be served by its beady-eyed cleverness and its art of swift mining operations, factors that fairly well equalise the conditions of the battle, so that the success of the party upon the offensive always remains highly problematical, even improbable. Indeed I feel no compassion for the mouse; inwardly I take sides with Bashan, and sometimes I cannot remain content with the role of a mere spectator. I get my walking-stick into play whenever some firmly-bedded pebble, some tough cord of a root is in his way and help him to get rid of these obstacles. Then sometimes, in the midst of his hot and furious activity, he will throw up his head and bestow upon me a swift and fervent glance of gratitude and approval. With munching jaws and glinting teeth he goes working his way into the stubborn, fibrous ground⁠—tears away clods, throws them aside, sends his resonant snorts once more into the depths, and then, fired to renewed action by the provocative scent, sets his claws once more into furious action.⁠ ⁠…

In the great majority of cases this is all love’s labour lost. With the moist earth clinging to his nose and sprinkled about his shoulders, Bashan makes another quick and superficial survey of the territory and then gives it up and jogs indifferently on.

“There was nothing doing, Bashan,” I remark to him, when he chances to look at me. “Nothing doing,” I repeat, shaking my head and raising my brows and my shoulders, so as to make the message plainer. But it is not at all necessary to comfort him; his failure does not depress him for a moment. To hunt is to hunt, the titbit of game is the least of all considerations. It was, take it all in all, a magnificent effort he thinks⁠—in so far as he still happens to think of this violent business he has just been through. For now he is already on new adventure bent⁠—adventures of which there is, indeed, no lack in the three zones of this domain.

Sometimes, however, he happens to catch the mouse. And then something occurs which never fails to strike me with horror⁠—for Bashan devours his prey alive, with hide and hair. Perhaps the unfortunate creature had not been properly advised by its instincts of self-preservation and had chosen a spot for its burrow which was too soft, too unprotected and too easily excavated. Perhaps the little creature’s tunnels had not been sunk deep enough, or it had been paralysed by fright and prevented from burrowing to deeper levels. Or it had perchance lost its head and, crouching a few inches under the surface with its little beady eyes popping out of their sockets with horror, listened to that terrible snorting coming nearer and nearer. No matter, the iron claws disinter it, uncover it, fling it into the air, into the pitiless glare of the day! Hapless little mouse! you had good cause to be frightened, and it is well that this immense and comprehensible fright has already reduced you to a kind of semi-unconsciousness. For now the tiny rodent is to be converted into pap and pulp.

Bashan has caught it by the tail; he tosses it upon the ground twice or thrice; a very faint squeak is heard, the last that is vouchsafed to the godforsaken little mouse. And then Bashan snaps it up, and it disappears between his jaws and the white, gleaming teeth. He stands there with legs four square and forepaws braced. His neck is lowered and thrust forth as he chews⁠—he catches at the titbit again and again and throws it into the proper position in his mouth. The tiny bones are heard to crack, a shred of fur hangs for a moment from the corner of his mouth; he draws it in and then all is over. Bashan then executes a kind of dance of joy and triumph, circling around me as I stand leaning on my cane with cold shudders rushing up and down my spine. “You’re a fine fellow!” I say to him in a kind of gruesome recognition of his victory. “You scoundrel! you murderer! you cannibal!”

These words cause him to dance still more wildly, and, one might say, almost to laugh aloud. So I proceed on my way, somewhat chilled in the limbs owing to the tragedy I have just witnessed, and yet inwardly enlightened by the brutal humour of life. The thing, after all, is quite in order, in Nature’s order. A mouselet which had been ill-advised by its faulty instincts has simply been converted into pap and pulp. Nevertheless I am inwardly gratified when in such instances as the foregoing, it did not become necessary for me to help along the natural order of things with my cane, but remained a simple and passive spectator.

Startling and even terrifying is it when some pheasant suddenly bursts from the thicket in which, sleeping or waking, it had hoped to remain undiscovered, some coign of concealment from which Bashan’s delicate and unobtrusive nose had after a little searching managed to rouse it. Thumping and flapping, with frightened and indignant cries and cacklings, the large, rust-red and long-tailed bird lifts itself awing, and with all the silly heedlessness of a hen, goes scattering upon some tree from which it begins to scold, whilst Bashan, erect against the trunk, barks up at the fowl, stormily, savagely. The meaning behind this barking is clear. It says plainly enough: “Get off! get off that perch! Tend to business. Fly off, so I can have my bit o’ fun. Get off⁠—I want to chase you!” The pheasant cannot, apparently, resist this powerful voice, and off it scuds, making its way with heavy flight through the branches, still cackling and complaining, whilst Bashan, full of manly silence, pursues it smartly along the level ground.

This is sufficient for Bashan’s bliss; his wish and his will go no farther. What would have happened had he caught the bird? Nothing, I assure you, absolutely nothing. I once saw him with a bird between his claws. He had probably come upon it whilst it lay in deep sleep, so that the clumsy thing had had no time to lift itself from the ground. On that occasion Bashan had stood over the fowl, an utterly bewildered victor, and did not know what to do next. With one wing raked wide open and with its head drawn aside to the very limit of its neck, the pheasant lay in the grass and screamed, screamed without a single pause⁠—a passerby might have thought that some old woman was being murdered in the bushes. I hurried up, bent upon preventing something horrible. But I was soon convinced that there was nothing to fear. Bashan’s all-too conspicuous confusion, the half-curious, half-disgusted mien with which, head aslant, he looked down upon his prisoner, assured me of that. This old wives’ screeching and dinning in his ears, very likely got upon his nerves⁠—the whole affair apparently caused him more embarrassment than triumph. Was it in victory or in shame that he pulled a couple of feathers out of his victim’s dress, very, very cautiously with his mouth, refraining from all use of his teeth, and then threw them aside with an angry toss of his head?

He followed this tribute to his predatory instincts by taking his paw off his victim and letting it go free⁠—not out of magnanimity, to be sure, but simply because the situation bored him, and because it really had nothing in common with the stir and gaiety of the chase. Never had I seen a more astonished bird! It had closed its account with life, and for a brief space it seemed that it no longer knew what use to make of life, for it lay in the grass as though dead. It then tottered along the ground for a bit, swung clumsily upon a tree, appeared about to fall from it, summoned its strength, and then with heavily-dragging feathery raiment went fluttering off into the distance. It no longer squawked, but kept its bill shut. Silently the bird flew across the park, the river, the forest beyond the river, away, away, as far as its short wings could carry it. It is certain that this particular pheasant never returned to this particular spot.

There are, however, a good many of his breed in our hunting-grounds, and Bashan hounds and hunts them in an honourable sportsmanlike manner and according to the rules of the game. The only real blood-guilt that lies heavy upon his head is the devouring of the field-mice, and this, too, appears as something incidental and negligible. It is the scenting-out, the drive, the pursuit, which serve him as a noble end in themselves⁠—all who were able to observe him at this brilliant game would come to the same conclusion. How beautiful he grows, how ideal, how perfect to the end and purpose! It is thus that the awkward and loutish peasant lad of the hills becomes perfect and picturesque when you see him standing amidst the rocks and cliffs as a hunter of the gemsbok. All that is noble, genuine, and fine in Bashan is driven to the surface and achieves a glorious efflorescence in such hours as these. That is why he pants for these hours with such intensity and why he suffers so poignantly when they pass unused.

Bashan is no toy spaniel; he is the veritable woodsman and pathfinder, such as figure heroically in books. A great joy in himself, in his own existence cries from every one of the martial, masculine, and striking poses which he assumes and which succeed one another with almost cinematographic rapidity. There are few things which are able so to refresh my eyes as the sight of him, as he goes sailing through the underbrush in a light, feathering trot and then suddenly stands at gaze, with one paw daintily raised and bent inward, sagacious, vigilant, impressive, with all his faculties in a radiant intensification. And then amidst all this imposing statuesqueness it is possible that he may give vent to a sudden squeak, or yelp, occasioned, very likely, by having caught his foot in something thorny. But this too, is all in order with the course of nature and with the perfection of the picture⁠—this cheery readiness to be splendidly simple. It is capable of diminishing his dignity only as a breath dims a mirror; the superbness of his carriage is restored the very next moment.

I look upon him⁠—my Bashan⁠—and I am reminded of a time during which he lost all his pride and his gallant poise, and was once more reduced to that condition of bodily and mental dejection in which we first saw him in the kitchen of that tavern in the mountains, and from which he so painfully lifted himself to a faith in his own personality and in life. I do not know what ailed him⁠—he began to bleed from the mouth or the nose or the ears⁠—even today I have no clear idea of his particular malady. But wherever he went in those days, he left marks of blood behind him⁠—in the grass of the hunting-grounds, in the straw of his kennel, on the floor of the house when he entered it⁠—and yet there was no external injury anywhere visible. At times his entire nose seemed to be covered with red paint. Whenever he sneezed he would send forth a spray of blood, and then he would step in the drops and leave brick-red impressions of his paws wherever he went. Careful examinations were made, but these led to no results and thus brought about increased anxieties. Were his lungs attacked? or was he afflicted by some mysterious distemper of which we had never heard?⁠—something to which his breed was subject? Since the strange as well as unpleasant phenomena did not cease after some days, it was decided that he must go to the Dog’s Hospital.

Kindly but firmly Bashan’s master imposed upon him on the day following⁠—it was about noon⁠—the leathern muzzle⁠—that mask of stubborn meshes which Bashan loathes above all things and of which he always seeks to rid himself by violent shakings of his head and furious rubbings of his paws. He was fastened to the braided leash and thus harnessed was led up the avenue⁠—on the left-hand side⁠—then through the local park and a suburban street into the group of buildings belonging to the High School. We passed beneath the portal and crossed the courtyard. We then entered a waiting-room, against the walls of which sat a number of persons all of whom, like myself, held a dog on a leash⁠—dogs of different breeds and sizes, who regarded one another with melancholy eyes through their leather muzzles. There was an old and motherly dame with her fat and apoplectic pug, a footman in livery with a tall and snow-white Russian deerhound, who emitted from time to time a dry and aristocratic cough; a countryman with a dachshund⁠—apparently a case for orthopedic science, since all his feet were planted upon his body in the most crooked and distorted manner, and many others. The attendant at this veterinary clinic admitted the patients one after the other into the adjoining consulting-room. At length the door to this was also opened for me and Bashan.

The Professor was a man of advanced age, and was clad in a long, white operating coat. He wore gold-rimmed spectacles, his head was crowned with gray curls and his whole manner was so amiable and conveyed such an air of wise kindliness that I would immediately have entrusted myself and my family to him in any emergency. Whilst I gave him my account of things, he smiled paternally upon his patient, who sat there in front of him and turned up to him a pair of humble and trustful eyes.

“He’s got fine eyes,” said the doctor, without allowing Bashan’s hybrid goatee to disturb him, and declared that he was ready to make an investigation at once. Bashan, quite helpless with astonishment, was now, with the aid of the attendant, spread upon the table. It was moving to see how the old doctor applied the stethoscope to the breast of the tiger-striped little manikin and performed his auscultation, just as I had seen it done in my case more than once. He listened to the swift workings of the tiny canine heart, and sounded his entire organic internal functions from different points of his exterior. Hereupon, tucking his stethoscope under his arm, he began to examine Bashan’s eyes with both hands, his nose as well as the roof of his mouth, and then ventured upon delivering a preliminary prognosis.

The dog, said he, was a trifle nervous and anaemic, but otherwise in good condition. It might be epistaxis or haemathemesis. But it might also be a case of tracheal or pharyngeal hemorrhage⁠—this was by no means precluded. For the present one would be most inclined to call it a case of haemoptysis. It was necessary to keep the animal under careful observation. I should do best to leave him here and then call and inquire again in the course of a week.

Thus instructed, I expressed my thanks and gave Bashan a farewell pat on the shoulder. I saw how the attendant led Bashan across the courtyard towards the entrance to a building at the rear, and how Bashan, with a bewildered and anxious expression on his face, looked back at me. And yet he should have felt flattered, just as I could not help feeling flattered by hearing the Professor declare him to be nervous and anaemic. No one who had stood at his cradle would ever have imagined that it was written in his horoscope that he was one day to be said to be suffering from two such fashionable ailments, or that Medical Science would be called in to deliberate over him with such gravity and solicitude.

From that day on my walks were to me what unsalted food is to the palate⁠—they gave me little pleasure. No silent tumult of joy burst upon me when I went out⁠—under way no proud, high, mad helter-skelter of the chase surrounded me. The park seemed to me desolate⁠—I was bored. I did not fail to make inquiries by telephone during the interval of waiting. The answer, communicated from some subordinate quarter, was to the effect that the health of the patient was as good as could be expected under the circumstances⁠—circumstances which, for good reasons or for bad, one did not trouble to designate more clearly. As soon as the day arrived on which I had taken Bashan to the veterinary institution, and the week was up, I once more made my way to the place.

Guided by numerous signboards with inscriptions and pointing hands, liberally affixed to walls and doors, I managed, without going astray, to negotiate the door of the clinical department which sheltered Bashan. In accordance with the command upon an enamelled plate on the door, I forbore to knock, and walked in. The rather large room in which I found myself gave me the impression of a wild-beast house in a menagerie. The atmosphere incidental to such a house also prevailed here, with the exception that the odour of the menagerie seemed to be mingled here with all kinds of sweetish medicinal vapours⁠—a cloying and rather disturbing mixture. Cages with bars were set all around the walls, and nearly all of them were occupied. Resolute barks saluted me from one of these. A man, evidently the keeper, was busy with a rake and a shovel before the open door of one of these cages. He was pleased to respond to my greeting without interrupting his work, and then left me for the present entirely to my own impressions.

My first survey of the scene, whilst the door was still open, had at once revealed to me the whereabouts of Bashan, and so I went up to him. He lay behind the bars of his cage upon some loose stuff which must have been made of tanbark or something similar, and which added its own peculiar aroma to the odour of the animals and of the carbolic acid or lysoform. He lay there like a leopard, though a very weary, very disinterested and disappointed leopard. I was shocked by the sullen indifference with which he greeted my entrance and advance. He merely gave a feeble thump or two upon the floor of his cage with his tail, and only after I had spoken to him did he deign to raise his head from his paws, but only to drop it again almost immediately and to blink moodily to one side. A stoneware vessel full of water stood at the back of his cage. Outside, attached to the bars of his cage, there was a small wooden frame with a card, partly-printed, partly handwritten, which contained an account of Bashan’s name, breed, sex, and age. Beneath this there was a fever-index curve.

“Bastard setter,” I read. Name: Bashan. Male. Two years old. Brought in on such and such a day and month of the year⁠—to be observed for occult hemorrhages. And then followed the curve of Bashan’s temperature, drawn in ink and showing no great variations. There were also details in figures regarding the frequency of Bashan’s pulse. So his temperature was being taken and even his pulse counted⁠—nothing was lacking in this respect. It was his frame of mind which occasioned me worry.

“Is that one yourn?” asked the attendant who, implements in hand, had in the meantime approached me. He was a stocky, round-bearded and red-cheeked man, wearing a kind of gardener’s apron, with brown, somewhat bloodshot eyes, the moist and honest glances of which had something astonishingly doglike in them.

I answered his question in the affirmative, referred to the order I had received to call again today, to the telephone conversations I had carried on, and declared that I had come to see how everything stood. The man cast a glance at the card. Yes, he said, the dog was suffering from occult hemorrhages, and that kind of thing always took a long time⁠—especially if one didn’t know where the hemorrhages came from. Well, wasn’t that always the case? No, one didn’t know anything about it as yet. But the dog was there to be observed and he was being observed. The hemorrhages were still occurring, were they? Yes, they came on now and then. And they were being observed? Yes, most carefully.

“Has he any fever?” I asked, trying to make something out of the chart hanging on the bars. No, no fever. The dog had quite a normal temperature and pulse, about ninety beats in the minute⁠—that was the normal number, that was about right, they ought not to be less, but if they were fewer, then he would have to be observed still more sharply. The dog⁠—if it wasn’t for these here occult hemorrhages, was really in pretty good condition. Of course he had howled at first, a full twenty-four hours, but after that he had got used to things. Of course, he didn’t eat much, but then he got very little exercise, and it was also a question of how much he was accustomed to eat. What food did they give him? Soup, said the man. But as he had already remarked, the dog didn’t eat much of it.

“He has a very depressed look,” I said, affecting an expert air. Yes, no doubt of that, said the man, but then that didn’t really mean much. For it wasn’t very nice for a dog to have to be cooped up in that way and be observed. They were all depressed more or less, that is to say, the good-natured ones, but there were some as got mean and nasty. But he couldn’t say as this here dog had. This dog of mine was a good-natured sort and wouldn’t think of biting⁠—even though one were to observe him till Doomsday. I agreed with what the man said, though indignation and anxiety gnawed at my heart. How long, I asked him, did one think it was necessary to keep Bashan here? The man cast another glance at the chart. Another week, he remarked, would be necessary to observe him properly⁠—that’s what the Professor had said. I might come after another week and inquire again⁠—that would make two weeks in all, and then I would be able to get exact information about the dog and about curing his occult hemorrhages.

I went⁠—after I had made another attempt to cheer up Bashan’s spirits by talking to him. But he was as little affected by my going away as by my coming. He seemed to be oppressed by a feeling of dark hopelessness⁠—and contempt. “Since you have been capable,” his attitude seemed to declare, “of having me put into this cage, I expect nothing more from you.” And was it not in truth enough to make him despair of all reason and justice? What had he done that this should happen to him? How came it that I not only permitted it, but even took the initial steps? I had meant to act well by him. He had begun to bleed from the nose, and though this did not appear to disturb him in any way, I had nevertheless thought it fitting that veterinary science should be consulted, as befitted a dog in good circumstances, and I had also learned that he was rather anaemic and nervous⁠—like the daughter of an earl. How could I know that such a fate awaited him? How could I make him understand that he was having honours and attention bestowed upon him by being locked behind bars⁠—like a jaguar⁠—in being deprived of air, sunshine, and exercise, and instead of being able to enjoy these blessings, tormented with a thermometer day after day?

Such were the questions which I put to myself as I walked home. Whilst I had up to then only missed Bashan, I now began to be afflicted with a positive anxiety for him, for the welfare of his soul, and was forced to contend with doubt and self-accusatory thoughts. After all, was it not mere vanity and egoistic conceit which had induced me to take him to this canine infirmary? Besides, was it not possible, that a secret wish had been the wellspring of this action, a wish to get rid of him for a time, a certain ignoble curiosity to free myself from his incessant watching, and to see how it would feel to be able to turn calmly to the right or to the left without bringing about emotional cataclysms in the animated world without⁠—emotional tempests whether of joy or sorrow, or bitter disillusionment? It was not to be denied⁠—since Bashan’s internment I was enjoying a definite feeling of independence such as I had not known for a long time. When I glanced through the glass door of my study there was no one there to annoy me with the spectacle of his martyrdom of patience. No one came with paw hesitatingly raised, so that, giving way to a burst of pitying laughter, I should be forced to deny my own fixed resolution and go forth earlier than I had intended. No one questioned my right to go into the house or into the park, just as the spirit moved me. This was a comfortable condition of things, quieting and full of the charm of novelty. But as the accustomed incentive was lacking, I almost ceased to go walking at all. My health suffered in consequence, and whilst my condition grew to be remarkably like that of Bashan in his cage, I indulged in the moral reflection that the fetters of sympathy would have been more conducive to my own comfort than the egoistic freedom for which I had panted.

The second week elapsed in good time, and so, on the day appointed, I and the bearded attendant stood once more in front of Bashan’s barred habitation. The inmate lay upon his side, stretched out in a posture of absolute indifference upon the tanbark of his cage, bits of which flecked his coat. He was staring backward at the chalky wall of his prison with eyes that were glassy and dull. He did not move. His breathing was scarcely perceptible. Only, from time to time, his chest⁠—which displayed every rib⁠—rose in a sob which he breathed forth with a soft and heartrending tremolo of his vocal chords. His legs seemed to have grown too long, his paws huge and unshapely⁠—due to his terrible emaciation. His coat was extremely rough and dishevelled and crushed, and, as already remarked, soiled from wallowing in the tanbark. He paid no attention to me, and it seemed that he would never again be able to summon up enough energy to take an interest in anything.

The hemorrhages, said the attendant, had not quite disappeared⁠—they still happened now and then. Their origin was not as yet quite clear, but in any case they were of a harmless nature. I was free to leave the dog there for a still longer period of observation⁠—in order to make quite sure⁠—or I might take him home with me, where he would no doubt get rid of the evil⁠—all in good time. I then drew out the plaited leather leash from my pocket and said that I would take Bashan with me. The attendant thought that would be very sensible. He opened the barred door and we both called Bashan by name, alternately and both together⁠—but he did not stir. He merely kept staring at the whitewashed wall opposite. He made no resistance when I thrust my arm into the cage and pulled him out by the collar. He gave a kind of convulsive flounce about and landed on his legs on the floor. There he stood with his tail between his legs, his ears retracted, a very picture of misery.

I picked him up, gave the attendant a tip, and left the ward of this canine hospital. I then proceeded to pay my bill in the office of the institution. This bill, at seventy-five pfennigs a day and the veterinary’s fee for the first examination, amounted to twelve marks, fifty pfennigs. I then led Bashan home, clothed in the stern yet sweetish atmosphere of the clinic which still permeated my companion’s coat.

He was broken in body and in soul. Animals are more unrestrained and primitive, less subject to inhibitions of all kinds, and therefore in a certain sense more human in the physical expression of their moods than we. Forms and figures of speech which survive among us only in a kind of mental or moral translation, or as metaphors, are still true and valid when applied to them. They live up to the expression in the fullest, freshest sense of the term⁠—and in this there is something wonderfully enlivening to the eye. Bashan, as one would say, “let his head hang,” or “had a hangdog look.” He did actually hang his head⁠—hung it low like some wrack of a wornout cab-horse which, with abscesses on its legs and periodical shivers undulant along its sides, stands at its post with a hundredweight of woe pulling its poor nose, swarming with flies, towards the pavement.

These two weeks, at the veterinary high school, as I have already said, had reduced him to the very condition in which I had first found him in the foothills. Perhaps I ought to say that he was only the shadow of himself⁠—if this would not be an insult to the proud and joyous Bashan. The smell of the dog-hospital which he had brought with him, vanished in the wash trays, after several ablutions with soap and hot water⁠—vanished⁠—all save a few floating and rebellious whiffs. A bath may be said to exercise a spiritual influence, may be said to possess a symbolic significance to us human beings⁠—but no one would dare to say that the physical cleansing of poor Bashan, meant the restoration of his customary spirits. I took him to the hunting-grounds on the very first day of his homecoming. But he went slinking at my heels with silly look and lolling tongue, and the pheasants were jubilant over a close season. At home he would remain lying for days as I had last seen him stretched out in his cage at the hospital, and staring with glassy eyes, inwardly limp and without a trace of his wholesome impatience, without making a single attempt to force me to go forth for a walk. On the contrary I was forced to fetch him from his berth at the tiny door of his kennel and to spur him on and up. Even the wild and indiscriminate way in which he wolfed his food, reminded me of his sordid youth.

And then it was a great joy to see how he found himself again, how his greeting gradually took on the old, warmhearted, playful impetuosity, how, instead of coming towards me with a sullen limp, he would once more come storming upon me in swift response to my morning whistle, so that he might put his forepaws on my chest and snap at my face. It was wonderful to see how the joy in his mere body and in his senses returned to him in the wide spaces and the open air⁠—and to observe those daring and picturesque positions he would assume, those swift plunging pounces with drawn-up feet which he would make upon some tiny creature in the high grass⁠—all these things came back and refreshed my eyes. Bashan began to forget. That hateful incident of his internment, an incident so absolutely senseless from Bashan’s point of view, sank into oblivion, unredeemed, to be sure, unexplained by any clear understanding⁠—something which, after all, would have been impossible. But time swallowed it up and enveloped it, even as time must heal these things where human beings are concerned, and so we went on with our lives as before, whilst the inexpressible thing sank deeper and deeper into forgetfulness. For some weeks longer it happened that Bashan would occasionally sport an incarnadined nose, then the phenomenon vanished, and became a thing of the past. And so, after all, it mattered little whether it had been a case of epistaxis or of haemathemesis.⁠ ⁠…

There⁠—I have told the story of the clinic⁠—against my own better resolution. May the reader forgive this lengthy digression and return with me to the chase in the hunting-grounds which we had interrupted. Ah, have you ever heard that tearful yowling with which a dog, mustering his utmost forces, takes up the pursuit of a rabbit in flight⁠—that yowling in which fury and bliss, longing and ecstatic despair mix and mingle? How often have I heard Bashan give vent to this! It is a grand passion, desired, sought for and deliriously enjoyed which goes ringing through the landscape, and every time this wild cry comes to my ear from near or far, I am given a shock of pleasant fright, and the thrill goes tingling through all my limbs. Then I hurry forwards, or to the left or right, rejoicing that Bashan is to get his money’s worth today, and I strive mightily to bring the chase within my range of vision. And when this chase goes storming past me in full and furious career, I stand banned and tense, even though the negative outcome of the venture is certain from the beginning, and I look on whilst an excited smile draws taut the muscles of my face.

And what of the rabbit⁠—the timid, the tricky? He switches his ears through the air, crocks his head backwards at an angle, and runs for dear life in long, lunging leaps, throwing his whitish-yellow scut into the air. Thus he goes scratching and scudding in front of Bashan, who is howling inwardly. And yet the rabbit in the depths of his fearsome and flighty soul ought to know that he is in no serious danger and that he will manage to escape, just as his brothers and sisters and he himself have always managed to escape. Not once in all his life has Bashan managed to catch a single rabbit, and it is practically beyond the bounds of possibility that he ever should. Many dogs, as the old proverb goes, bring about the death of the rabbit⁠—a clear proof that a single dog cannot manage it. For the rabbit is a master of the quick and sudden turnabout⁠—a feat quite beyond the capacity of Bashan, and it is this feat which decides the whole matter. It is an infallible weapon and an attribute of the animal that is born to fight with flight⁠—a means of escape which can be applied at any moment and which it carries in its instincts in order to put it into use at precisely that moment when victory is almost within Bashan’s grasp. And alas, Bashan is then betrayed and sold.

Here they come shooting diagonally through the woods, flash across the path on which I am standing, and then go dashing towards the river, the rabbit dumb and bearing his inherited trick in his heart, Bashan yammering in high and heady tones. “No howling now!” I say or think to myself. “You are wasting strength, strength of lung, strength of breath, which you ought to be saving up and concentrating⁠—so that you can grab him!” I am forced to think thus, because I am on Bashan’s side, because his passion is infectious⁠—imperatives which force me to hope fervently that he will succeed⁠—even at the peril of seeing him tear the rabbit to pieces before my eyes. Ah, how he runs! How beautiful it is, how edifying to see a living creature unfolding all its forces in some supreme effort. My dog runs better than this rabbit; his muscular system is stronger; the distance between them has visibly diminished⁠—ere they are lost to sight. I leave the path and hurry through the park towards the left, going in the direction of the riverbank. I emerge upon the gravelly street just in time to see the mad chase come ravening on from the right⁠—the hopeful, infinitely thrilling chase⁠—for Bashan is almost at the heels of the rabbit. He is silent now; he is running with his teeth set, the close proximity of the scent urges him to the final effort.

“One last plunge, Bashan,” I think, and would like to shout to him⁠—“just one more⁠—aim well! keep cool! And beware of the turnabout!” But these thoughts have scarcely flashed through my brain than the “turnabout,” the “hook,” the volte-face, has taken place⁠—the catastrophe is upon us. My gallant dog makes the decisive forward plunge⁠—but⁠ ⁠… at the selfsame moment there is a short jerk, and with pert and limber swiftness the rabbit switches aside at a right angle to the course⁠—and Bashan goes shooting past the hindquarters of his quarry⁠—shooting straight ahead, howling, desperate and with all his feet stemmed as brakes⁠—so that the dust and gravel go flying. By the time he has overcome his momentum, flung himself right about and gained leeway in the new direction⁠—whilst, I say, he has done this in agony of soul and with wailings of woe, the rabbit has won a considerable handicap towards the woods⁠—yes, he is even lost to the eyes of his pursuer, for during the convulsive application of his four brakes, the pursuer could not see whither the pursued had turned.

“It’s no use,” I think, “it may be beautiful, but it is surely futile.” The wild pursuit vanishes in the distances of the park and in the opposite direction. “There ought to be more dogs⁠—five or six⁠—a whole pack of dogs! There ought to be dogs to cut him off on the flank, dogs to cut him off ahead, dogs to drive him into a corner, dogs to be in at the death.” And in my mind’s eye, in my excitement, I behold a whole pack of foxhounds with lolling tongues go storming upon the rabbit in their midst.

I think these things and dream these dreams out of a sheer passion for the chase, for what has the rabbit done to me that I should wish him to meet with so terrible an end? It is true that Bashan is closer to me than the long-eared one, and it is quite in order that I should share his feelings and accompany him with my good wishes for his success. But then the rabbit is also a warm, furry, breathing bit of our common life. He has played his trick upon my hunting dog not out of malice, but out of the urgent wish to be able to nibble soft tree-shoots a little longer and to bring forth young.

Nevertheless my thoughts continue to weave themselves about the matter and about. As, for example: “It would, of course, be quite another matter, if this”⁠—and I lift and regard the walking-stick in my hand⁠—“if this cane here were not so useless and benign an instrument, but a thing of more serious construction and constitution, pregnant with lightning and operative at a distance, by means of which I could come to the assistance of the gallant Bashan and hold up the rabbit, so that he would remain flop upon the spot⁠—after doing a fine salto mortale. Then there would be no need of other hounds, and Bashan would have done his duty if he had merely brought me the rabbit.”

The way things shape themselves, however, it is Bashan who sometimes goes tumbling head over heels when he tries to meet and counter that damnable quick turn, and sometimes it is also the rabbit who does the somersault, though this is a mere trifle to the latter, something quite in order and inconsequential and certainly by no means identified with any feeling of abject misery. For Bashan, however, it means a severe concussion, which might some time or other lead to his breaking his neck.

Often a rabbit-chase comes to an end in a few minutes, that is to say, when the rabbit succeeds after a few hot lengths of running, in ducking into the underbrush and hiding, or in throwing his pursuer off his trail by means of feints and quick double turns, so that the four-legged hunter, sorely puzzled and uncertain, jumps hither and thither, whilst I shout bloodthirsty advice to him and with frantic gesticulations of my cane try to point out to him the direction in which I saw the rabbit escape.

Sometimes the hunt extends itself throughout the length and breadth of the landscape, so that Bashan’s voice, wildly yowling, sounds like a hunting-horn ringing through the region from afar, now nearer and now farther away, whilst I, awaiting his return, calmly go my ways. And, great Heavens! in what a condition he does return! Foam drips from his jaws, his thighs are lax and hollow, his ribs flutter, his tongue hangs long and loose from his maw, inordinately gaping, something which causes his drunken and swimming eyes to appear distorted and slant, Mongolian, the while his breathing goes like a steam-engine.

“Lie down, Bashan!” I command him, “take a rest, or you’ll have apoplexy of the lungs!” I halt so as to give him time to recover. In winter when there is a cold frost and I see him pumping the icy air with hoarse pantings into his overheated interior and then puffing it forth in the form of white steam, or else swallowing whole handfuls of snow in order to cool his thirst, I grow quite terrified. Nevertheless, whilst he lies there, gazing up at me with confused eye, now and again snapping up his dribblings, I cannot refrain from poking a bit of fun at him, because of the unalterable futility of his efforts.

“Bashan! where’s that rabbit! Aren’t you going to fetch me that rabbit!” Then he begins to thump the ground with his tail, and interrupts for a moment whilst I am speaking the spasmodic pumping machinery of his sides. He snaps in embarrassment, for he does not know that my ridicule is intended merely to conceal from him and from myself an accretion of shame and guilty conscience, because I, on my part, was not man enough to “hold up” the rabbit⁠—as is the duty of a real master. He is unaware of all this, and so it is easy for me to make fun and to put the matter as though he were in some way to blame.⁠ ⁠…

Strange things sometimes occur during these hunts. I shall never forget how the rabbit once ran into my very arms. It happened along the river, or rather upon the small and clayey bank above it. Bashan was in full cry after his quarry and I was approaching the zone of the riverbank from the direction of the wood. I broke through the thistle stalks along the gravel slope and sprang down the grass-covered declivity on to the path at the very moment that the rabbit, with Bashan some fifteen paces behind him, was coming towards me in long bounds from the direction of the ferryman’s house, towards which I was turning. Bunny came running along the middle of the path straight towards me.⁠ ⁠…

My first, hunter-like and hostile impulse was to take advantage of the situation and to bar his way, driving him, if possible, back into the jaws of his pursuer, who came on yelping in poignant joy. There I stood, as though rooted to the spot, and, slave that I was to the fever of the chase, I simply balanced the stick in my hand whilst the rabbit came nearer and nearer. I knew that a rabbit’s vision is very poor, that alone the sense of hearing and the sense of smell are able to convey warnings to him. He might therefore possibly mistake me for a tree as I stood there⁠—it was my plan and my lively desire that he should do this, and so succumb to a fatal error, the consequences of which were not quite clear to me, but of which I nevertheless thought to make use. Whether the rabbit really made such an error during the course of his advance, is not quite clear.⁠ ⁠… I believe that he noticed me only at the very last moment, for what he did was so unexpected that all my schemes and deliberations were at once reduced to nothing, and a deep, sudden, and startling change took place in my state of mind.

Was the little animal beside itself with mortal fear? Enough, it leaped upon me, just like a little dog, ran up my overcoat with its tiny paws, and, still upright, struggled to bore itself into the depths of my chest⁠—the terrible chest of the master of the chase. With upraised arms and my body bent backwards, I stood there and looked down upon the rabbit who, on his part, looked up at me. We stood thus for only a second, perhaps it was only the fraction of a second, but thus and there we stood. I saw him with such strange, disconcerting minuteness, saw his long ears, of which one stood upright, whilst the other hung down, saw his great, clear, protuberant, shortsighted eyes, his rough lip, and the long hairs of his whiskers, the white on his breast and the little paws. I felt, or seemed to feel the pounding of his harried little heart. It was very strange to see him thus plainly and to have him so close to me, the little familiar spirit of the place, the secret throbbing heart of the landscape, this ever evasive creature which I had seen only for a few brief moments in its meadows and downs as it went scudding comically away. And now in the extremity of its need and helplessness it was nestling up against me and clutching my coat, clutching at the breast of a man⁠—not the man, it seemed to me, who was Bashan’s master, but the breast of one who is also the master of the rabbit and of Bashan and of Bashan’s master. This lasted, as I have said, only a brief moment or so, and then the rabbit had dropped off, had once more taken to his unequal legs and jumped down the escarpment to the left, whilst Bashan had now arrived in his place⁠—Bashan with horrible hue-and-cry and with all the heady tones of his frenetic hunting-howls⁠—all of which suffered swift interruption on his arrival. For a well-aimed blow of the stick delivered with malice prepense by the master of the rabbit, sent him yelping with smarting hindquarters down the slope to the right, up which he was forced to climb⁠—with a limp⁠—before he was once more able, after considerable delay, to take up the trail of the no longer visible quarry.

And then finally there is the hunt after waterfowl to which I must also dedicate a few lines. This hunt can take place only during winter and the colder part of the spring, before the birds migrate from their quarters near the city to the lakes⁠—the suburbs here serving them merely as a kind of emergency halting-place in obedience to the demands of the stomach. This hunt is less exciting than the rabbit hunt is likely to be, but like this it has something that is attractive both to hunter and to hound, or rather to the hunter and his master. The master is captivated by these forays after the wild fowl chiefly in consideration of the landscape, since the friendly nearness of the water is connected with them, but also because it diverts and edifies him to study the form of life practised by these swimmers and flyers, thus emerging a little out of his own rut and experimenting with theirs.

The attitude towards life assumed by the ducks is more amiable, more bourgeois, and more comfortable than that of the gulls. Nearly always they appear to be full and contented, little troubled by the cares of subsistence⁠—no doubt because they always chance to find what they seek, and because the table, so to speak, is always set for them. For, as I observe, they eat nearly everything⁠—worms, snails, insects, or even green ooze from the water, and enjoy vast stretches of leisure which enable them to sit and sun themselves on the stones, with bills tucked comfortably under one wing for a little siesta or preening and oiling their plumage so that it does not come into contact with the water at all, but rather causes this to pearl off from the surface in a string of nervous drops. Or you may catch them going for a mere pleasure ride or swim upon the racing stream, lifting their pointed tails into the air, and turning and twisting and shrugging their shoulders in bland self-satisfaction.

But in the nature of the gulls there is something wild and hectic, dreary and sad and monotonous; they are invested with an air of desperate and hungry depredation. Almost all day long they go crying around the waterfall in bevies and in slant transverse flight, or curving about the place where the brownish waters pour from the mouths of the great pipes into the stream. For the swift, darting plunge for fish which some of these gulls practise is scarcely sufficiently rich in results to still their raw and ranging mass-hunger, and the titbits with which they are frequently forced to content themselves as they swoop above the overflows and carry away mysterious fragments in their bent beaks, must sometimes be far from appetising. They do not like the banks of the river. But when the water is low they stand and huddle in close crowds upon the rocks, which are then free of water, and these they cover with their white feathery masses⁠—just as the crags and islets of the northern seas squirm and writhe with untold numbers of nesting eider-ducks.

When Bashan, barking from the shore across the intervening flood, threatens their security, then it is a fine sight to see them all rise simultaneously into the air with loud cries and caws. But there is no need of their feeling themselves menaced; there is no real danger. For quite apart from his inborn aversion to water, Bashan harbours a very wise and entirely justifiable fear of the current of the river. He knows that his strength could not possibly cope with this and that it would infallibly bear him off, God knows whither or to what distances, presumably as far as the Danube, where he would arrive, however, in an extremely disfigured condition. This is a contingency of which we have already had ocular evidence in the shape of bloated cadavers of cats which were en route to those far-off parts. He will never venture into the river farther than the first submerged stones that line the bank⁠—even though the fierce and ecstatic lust of the chase should be tugging at his limbs⁠—even though he should wear a mien as though he were about to plunge himself into the waves⁠—yes, the very next moment! Full confidence, however, may be placed in his caution, which remains active and vigilant beneath all this external show of passionate abandon. There is a distinct purpose behind all these mimetic onsets, these spectacular preparations for action⁠—they are empty threats which in the last analysis are not really dictated by passion at all, but are calculated with the utmost sangfroid merely to intimidate the webfooted foe.

But the gulls, true to their names, are far too poorly equipped in head and heart to be capable of mocking his efforts. Bashan cannot get at them, but he can send his barks against them, send his voice thundering across the water. This voice has the effect of something material⁠—an onset which flutters them and cows them and which they are unable to resist for long. True, they make the attempt to do so; they remain seated, but an uneasy movement goes through the writhing mass. They turn their heads, ever and anon one of them will lift its wings upon a chance, until suddenly the whole crew, like a whitish cloud, from the core of which come bitter and fatalistic caws, goes rustling and rushing up into the air⁠—with Bashan jumping about hither and thither on the stones in order to scare and scatter them and keep them in motion. For that is the thing to do⁠—to keep them in motion⁠—they must not be permitted to rest; they must fly upstream and downstream, so that he may chase them.

Bashan goes scouring along the banks, nosing along their entire length, for everywhere there are ducks at rest, with bills tucked cunningly and comfortably under their wings, and wherever he chances to go they fly up in front of his nose, so that his progress is like a gay sweeping-clean and whirling up of the entire strip of sand. They glide and plump into the water which buoys and turns them about in security, or they go flying over his head with bills and necks outstretched, whilst Bashan, running along the bank, measures the power of his legs with that of their pinions.

He is ravished and grateful if they will but fly, if they will only deign to give him an opportunity for a bit of glorious coursing up and down the river. They are no doubt aware of these wishes of his, and are even capable of utilising them for their own benefit. I saw a mother duck with her brood⁠—it was in the spring, and the river was already void of birds⁠—this one alone had remained behind with her young who were not yet able to fly, and she was guarding them in a slime-covered puddle which had been left by the last flood-water and which filled a depression in the dry bed of the stream. It was there that Bashan chanced upon them⁠—I observed the scene from the upper way. He sprang into the puddle, sprang into it with barkings and savage truculent motions, and scattered the family of ducks in a most deplorable fashion. To be sure, he did no harm to any member of this family, but he frightened them all beyond expression, and the ducklings, flapping their stumps of wings, plunged wildly in all directions.

The mother duck, however, was seized by that maternal heroism which will hurl itself blindly and full of mad courage even against the most formidable foe in order to protect the brood, and which frequently knows how to bewilder and fluster this foe by a delirious courage which apparently exceeds the limits of nature. With every feather ruffled and with bill horribly agape, the bird fluttered repeatedly against Bashan’s face in attack after attack, making one heroic offensive after another against him, hissing portentously the while. And actually her wild and uncompromising aspect brought about a confused retreat on the part of the enemy, without, however, inducing him to quit the field of battle for good, for with a great hullabaloo and clamour he still persisted in advancing anew. The duck-mother thereupon changed her tactics and chose the part of wisdom since heroism had shown itself to be impracticable. It is more than likely that she knew Bashan from some previous experience, was fully acquainted with his weaknesses and childish desires. So she abandoned her little ones⁠—that is, she apparently abandoned them. She took refuge in cunning, flew up, flew across the river, “pursued” by Bashan⁠—pursued, as was his firm belief⁠—whilst in reality it was she who led him, led him by the fool’s tether of his dominant passion. She flew with the stream, then against it, farther and farther, whilst Bashan raced beside her, so far downstream and away from the puddle with the ducklings that I lost sight of both the duck and the dog as I walked on. Later on my good dolt came back to me, quite winded and panting furiously. But when we again passed that puddle, it was empty of its erstwhile tenants.

Such were the tactics of the mother-duck, and Bashan was sincerely grateful. But he abominates those ducks who in the sleek placidity of their bourgeois-like existence, refuse to serve him as objects of the hunt, and who, whenever he comes tearing along, simply let themselves slip into the water from the stones along the banks, and then in ignoble security rock themselves before his nose, not impressed in the least by his mighty voice, and not in the least deceived, like the nervous gulls, by his theatrical lunges towards the river.

There we stand on the stones, side by side, Bashan and I, and there, two paces from us, in insolent security, the duck sways lightly upon the waves, with her bill pressed in pretentious dignity against her breast, and though stormed at by Bashan’s maddened voice, absolutely undisturbed in her serenity, soberness, and common sense. She keeps rowing against the current, so that she remains approximately in about the same spot. For all that she is drawn a little downstream. Only a yard or two from her there is a whirlpool, a beautiful foaming cascade towards which she turns her conceited and upstanding tail. Bashan barks and braces his forefeet against the stones, and inwardly I bark with him, for I cannot forbear sharing some of his feelings of hatred against the duck and her cool, insolent, matter-of-factness, and so I hope that evil may overtake her.

“Pay at least some attention to our barking,” is the mental speech I hurl at her, “and not to the rapids, so that you may be drawn by accident into the whirlpool and thus expose yourself to danger and discomfiture before our eyes.” But this angry hope of mine is also doomed to remain unfulfilled, for precisely at the moment when she nears the edge of the cascade in the stream, the duck flutters a bit and flies a few yards upstream and sits down in the water once more⁠—the shameless hussy!

I am unable to think of the vexation with which we both contemplate the duck under these circumstances without recalling to mind an adventure which I shall recount at the close. It was attended by a certain satisfaction for me and my companion, and yet there was something painful in it, something disturbing and confusing. Yes, it even led to a temporary chill in the relationship between Bashan and myself, and could I have foreseen this, I would rather have avoided the spot where this adventure awaited us.

It was a good distance out and downstream, and beyond the ferryman’s house⁠—there where the wilderness of the river bank approaches close to the upper road along the river. We were going along this, I with a leisurely step, and Bashan, a trifle in front of me, with an easy and somewhat lopsided lope. He had been chasing a rabbit, or, if you prefer, had permitted himself to be chased by him. He had also routed out three or four pheasants and was now graciously minded to pay a little attention to me, so that his master might not feel utterly neglected. A small bevy of ducks with extended necks and in triangular formation flew over the river. They were flying pretty high and closer to the other bank than to ours, so that we could not consider them as game at all, so far as hunting purposes were concerned. They flew in the direction in which we were walking, without regarding us or even being aware of our presence, and we too merely cast a desultory and intentionally indifferent glance at them.

It then came to pass that on the farther bank, which was of the same steepness as our own, a man came beating out of the bushes. As soon as he had stepped upon the scene of action he assumed a pose which caused both of us, Bashan as well as myself, to halt and to turn round and face him and watch what he would do. He was a rather tall, fine figure of a man, somewhat rough and ready, so far as his externals were concerned. He had drooping moustaches and wore puttees, a small green Alpine hat which was well pulled over his forehead, wide, loose trousers which were made of a kind of hard velveteen or so-called corduroy or Manchester cloth, and a jacket to match. This was behung with all kinds of belts and leather contraptions, for he carried a rucksack strapped to his back and a gun which also hung from a strap. Or it would be more proper to say that he had carried this, for scarcely had he come into view, than he drew the weapon towards him and leaning his cheek aslant against the butt, raised the barrel obliquely towards the heavens. He had set one be-putteed leg in front of the other, the barrel rested in the hollow of his extended left hand with the elbow bent under this⁠—the other elbow, however, that of the right arm, the hand of which rested on the trigger, was extended very sharply towards the side. It revealed his face with squinting, aiming eye, much foreshortened and boldly exposed to the clear light of the skies.

There was something most decidedly operatic in this apparition of the man as he stood reared against the skies amidst this open-air scenery of bushes, river, and sky. Our intense and respectful regard, however, endured for only a moment⁠—then there came the dull, flat report from over yonder⁠—something which I had attended with great inner tension and which therefore caused me to start. A tiny jet of light, pale in the broad of day, blazed forth at the same time, and was followed by a tiny cloudlet of smoke that puffed after it. The man then inclined himself forward and once more his attitude and his action were reminiscent of the opera. And with the gun hanging from the strap, which he clutched in his right fist, he raised his face towards the skies. Something was going on up there, whither we too were now staring. There was a brief, confused scattering⁠—the triangle of ducks flew apart, a wild, panic-stricken fluttering ensued, as when a puff of wind sets loose sails a-snapping, an attempt at a glide⁠—as of an aeroplane⁠—followed, then suddenly the body which had been struck became a mere inanimate object and fell swift as a stone upon the surface of the water near the opposite bank.

This was only the first half of the proceedings. But I must interrupt my narrative here in order to turn the living light of my memory upon Bashan. There are a number of coined phrases and ready-made figures of speech which I might use for describing his behaviour⁠—current terms⁠—terms which in most cases would be both valid and appropriate. I might say, for example, that he was thunderstruck. But this term does not please me, and I do not wish to use it. Big words, the big, well-worn words, are not very suitable for expressing the extraordinary. One may best achieve this by intensifying the small words and forcing them to ascend to the very acme of their meaning. So I will say no more than that Bashan started at the report of the gun and the accompanying phenomena⁠—and that this starting was the same as that which is peculiar to him when confronted with something striking, and that all this was well known to me though it was now elevated to the nth degree. It was a start which flung his whole body backward, wobbling to right and left, a start which jerked his head in rash recoil against his chest and which, in recovering himself, almost tore his head from his shoulders, a start which seemed to cry from every fibre of his being: “What, what! What was that? Hold! in the name of a hundred thousand devils! How was that!”

He listened to⁠—he regarded everything with a kind of indignation such as extremes of surprise are apt to cause⁠—drank everything in, as it were, and there in his heart of hearts these things were already existing⁠—there, in some form or other they had always been⁠—no matter what astounding novelties may have been sprung upon him here. Yes, whenever these things came upon him, causing him to leap to the right and the left and turn himself half around his own axis, it always seemed to me as though he were attempting to catch a glimpse of himself and inquiring: “What am I? Who am I? Am I really I?” At the very moment in which the corpse of the duck fell upon the water, Bashan made a leap forward, towards the edge of the escarpment, as though he wished to go down into the riverbed and plunge himself into the water. But then he thought of the current, clamped the brakes upon this sudden impulse, grew ashamed, and once more confined his efforts to staring.

I regarded him with anxiety. After the fall of the duck, I was of the opinion that we had seen enough, and proposed that we should go on. But he had already sat himself down upon his haunches. His face, with ears erected to their utmost extent, was addressed towards the other bank, and when I said to him: “Well, Bashan, shall we go on?” he merely gave a flirt of his head in my direction, as though one should say, not without a certain rudeness: “Please do not disturb me!” and kept on looking. And so I gave in, crossed my feet, leaned on my stick, and also went on watching to see what might now take place.

The duck⁠—one of those very ducks which had so often in impudent security rocked itself on the water before our very noses, was driving on the water⁠—a wreck⁠—no one could tell which part of the bird was bow and which stern. The river is quieter here; the fall is not so great as farther upstream. Nevertheless the carcass of the duck had been seized at once by the current, whirled about its axis and was beginning to float off. It was clear that if our good man was not merely concerned with having made a good potshot and a killing, but also with a more practical purpose, then he would be obliged to put his best leg forward. This he did without losing a moment⁠—everything happened with immense rapidity. No sooner had the duck landed in the water than the man leaped, scrambled, almost tumbled down the escarpment. He carried the shotgun in his outstretched arm, and once more I was reminded of the opera and the romantic novel, as he went leaping down over the stage-like setting of the stone slope⁠—like some robber chieftain or smuggler bold in a melodrama. With careful calculation he kept a little to the right in an oblique direction, for the drifting duck was being carried away from him and it was necessary to head it off. This he actually succeeded in doing with the butt of his double-barrelled gun⁠—extending this towards his kill with his body bent far forward and with his feet in the water. He managed to halt it in its downward course. And then carefully and not without much effort he steered and piloted it against the stones with the guiding gun-butt and so drew it ashore.

The job was done and the man drew a breath of relief. He laid his gun upon the bank beside him, pulled his rucksack from his shoulder, stuffed his booty into it, drew the sack shut by its cords, slung it upon his shoulders. Then supporting himself on his gun as on a cane, and thus pleasantly laden, he climbed complacently up the loose stone of the slope and made for the covert.

“Well, he’s got his bit of roast game for tomorrow,” I thought approvingly, yet not without envy. “Come, Bashan, let’s go⁠—there’s really nothing more to see.” But Bashan simply stood up and turned himself once around himself, then sat down and stared after the man, even after he had already left the scene of action and vanished among the bushes. I did not again ask him to come along⁠—I refused to do this as a matter of principle. He knew where we were living, and if he thought it reasonable to sit here still longer and stare, after everything was over and there was absolutely nothing more to see, well that was his own affair. It was a long way back, and I, for my part, was going to return. And then at last he gave ear and came.

During this exceedingly painful journey homeward, Bashan refrained from all further inclination to indulge in the sport of the chase. He did not canter on ahead of me in a diagonal direction as was his wont when he was not in the right mood for trailing and beating-up the game. He walked a little behind me, keeping regular step and drew down his mouth in a way which I would be bound to notice when I turned around to look at him. This might have been tolerated, and I was not going to let it ruffle or upset me⁠—on the contrary, I was disposed to laugh and shrug my shoulders. But then every thirty or fifty steps he began to yawn, and it was this which embittered me. It was this shameless, wide-angle, rudely bored yawning, accompanied by a little piping guttural sound which clearly said: “My God! talk about a master! Why, he isn’t a master at all. He’s simply rotten!” This insulting sound nearly always disturbs me, but this time it was sufficient to shake our friendship to its very foundations.

“Go!” I said, “go away! Go to your master, the man with the thunder-club, and join up with him. He does not appear to own a dog, and so he might give you a job. He may need you in that business of his. He is, of course, only a plain man in corduroys and no particular class, but in your eyes, no doubt, he is the finest gentleman in the world⁠—a real master for you. And so I honestly advise you to go and make up to him⁠—now that he has put a flea in your ear⁠—to keep the others company.” (Yes, I went to such extremes as this.) “We need not inquire whether he has a hunting permit or not, and it’s quite possible that you might get into difficulties when you happen to be caught some fine day whilst engaged in your shady work, but then that is your business, and the advice which I have given you is, as I have already remarked, most sincere.

“The devil take your hunting,” I went on, “Did you ever bring me a single rabbit for our table out of all those which I permitted you to chase? Is it my fault that you don’t know how to do a quick turn and go pounding into the gravel with your nose like a fool at the very moment you should be showing your agility? Or have you ever brought me a pheasant⁠—which would have been just as welcome in these lean times? And now you are⁠—yawning! Go to that fellow with the puttees, I say. You will soon see whether he is the sort of man who will scratch your throat and get you to laugh. I’d be surprised if he can laugh himself. At best, I am sure, his laugh must be a very coarse one. Perhaps you are under the impression that he would call in the aid of science and permit you to be observed in case you decide to have occult hemorrhages, perhaps you are under the delusion that once you were his dog, you would also have a chance to be nervous and anaemic. If so, you had better go to him. And yet it is possible that you are making a great mistake with regard to the degree of respect which this kind of master would display towards you. There are, for example, certain fine points and differences for which such gun-bearing persons have a very sharp nose, natural merits or demerits⁠—or, to make my allusions clearer, very awkward questions regarding pedigree and breed. If I must express myself with superlative clearness, then I must say that these are things which not everybody is disposed to ignore with that delicacy and humanity to which you have been accustomed. And should your husky master⁠—upon your first difference of opinion with him, reproach you with that goatee of yours, and call you an unpleasant name, then think of me and of the words which I am now addressing to you.⁠ ⁠…”

It was in such bitter irony that I spoke to Bashan as he slunk behind me on the way home, and even though I spoke inwardly and did not permit my words to be heard, so as not to appear eccentric, I am nevertheless convinced that he understood perfectly well what I meant, and that he was capable of following at least the main line of my argument. In short, the quarrel was serious, and having reached home, I purposely let the garden gate fall to close behind me and he was forced to run and clamber over the fence. Without casting a single glance behind me, I went into the house, and heard him give a squeak, as a sign that he had prodded his belly on one of the pointed pickets⁠—something which merely produced a mocking shrug of the shoulders on my part.

But all this happened long ago⁠—more than half a year ago. And the same thing occurred as in the matter of the clinical interim. Time and oblivion have buried it deep, and upon the floating surface of these⁠—which constitute the base of all life⁠—we continue to live on. Bashan, to be sure, appeared to be rather contemplative for a few days, but he has long ago recovered his full and undiminished joy in hunting mice, pheasants, rabbits, and waterfowl, and our return home means to him merely attendance upon the next going forth. Whenever I reach my front door I turn round and face him once more, and that is the signal for him to come jumping up the steps in two great leaps in order that he may raise himself on his hind legs and stem his forepaws against the front door, so that I can pat his shoulder and say goodbye.

“Tomorrow, Bashan,” I remark, “we’ll go out again⁠—in case I don’t have to make a trip into the big outside world.” And then I hurry into the house to rid myself of my hobnailed boots, for the soup has been served and stands smoking on the table.