The Bride of Dreams Part 9

It was three weeks before the body of my father was found. A stormy nor-wester had thrown it high up on sh.o.r.e at the foot of the dunes not far from the mouth of the Rhine, and a clam-digger came to claim the promised reward. My mother went there with me and prayed a long time by the side of the body. I did too, in my own way; that is to say, with a constant reservation, as one might write a letter to someone whose address one was not sure of. Nevertheless every prayer is a suggestion in which through words of invocation one creates an image of a Deity and through forcibly uttered exhortations and protestations changes one's own soul. Is there in any act greater possibility for self-deception? As a child and youth, it is still possible to observe oneself praying and to continue in the belief that one is acting worthily and honestly. But for a man, self-observation during this act usually also carries with it shame at the game that he is playing and the pose that he a.s.sumes.

The body lay in a coffin, already closed, in a tiny church of the fisher village, and it seemed as though my father's surviving spirit mocked me for the trifling words with which I, foolish boy, thought to reach and to move the soul of clouds and sea, of sun and stars. How childish the burning candles and the chanting voice of the priest seemed, with the roaring of the wind over the reed-covered sand hills, and the glowing eye with which the setting sun looked upon her earth from across the sea.

When the funeral was over, we decided to leave Holland for my native country. There, in Rome, I would, if anywhere, find my way back to the mother church. Solemn, talking little, full of expectation, and usually deep in thought, I travelled swiftly across the continent in the company of the two women. Italy, that I had not seen for many years, lured me with a thousand sweet memories, with the combined charm of the wonderland of sun and beauty which it is to all Northerners, and of the world of dear childish moods, whose deceiving sweetness increases with distance and length of separation, and can make even the most barren country gleam as a place of refuge and consolation. With a little more experience of life I might have considered beforehand that the real Italy could not fulfil all the blessed promises of the imaginary Italy.

At the beginning they did indeed all seem to be realized. It commenced with sunshine, and the vintage - golden light upon browning foliage, merry country folk and song; a gleam of a better world after the dull and solemn North: a glorious sensation of being at home among people who like myself dared to say something graceful and to do something wanton; the beloved flexible and vigorous sounds of my mother tongue, and the great joy of the people's craving for beauty and elegance down into the very lowest circles: roughness and wildness not without a certain dignity, not simply rude and coa.r.s.e as with the Northern barbarians: a poor lad in rags who sings something on the street that penetrates my inmost soul. Ah! how little the rude among this Dutch people can do or say that penetrates my soul! If my reason did not tell me, what then could convince my heart that they and I are beings of a kind?

I cannot dwell here on the charm with which my native land stirred my emotions when I beheld it again. It has nothing to do with the task and the duty that I fulfil in these writings. Hundreds of writers can delight you with subtle sensuous fancies and can comfort you for a moment with beautiful visions, warming the cold indolent spirit by colorful, glowing or gracefully woven words. My task is to give lasting consolation through the unsensual force of unchanging thought, so that you will know a point of rest in all sorrows and can taste every pleasure with calmer attention.

In Rome my disillusionment came with the rainy days of winter. Then all at once it penetrated my consciousness from every side, like a cold draft through broken window panes - the realization that something was still wanting here, that in the North had been attained: an established order of inst.i.tutions, a general moral integrity. The half-forgotten shadows of my childhood, hidden behind the beautiful, came to view, called forth by kindred miseries. We had to live comparatively simply, and my dignified old mother, as well as I, had to climb the four chilly, dimly lighted, stony flights to our apartment, where it was cold and uncomfortable too. To let Lucia go about alone in Rome, like an English girl in London, was simply out of the question. I myself had to be very much on my guard against suspicious persons who whisperingly accosted me with foul proposals. And a stroll through the section San Lorenzo on a bleak December day, where I saw, how my poor people, kept in ignorance and filth, manfully battle against suffering and misery, made me feel that Italy, when her glorious sunlight fades, is still ever the land of the "sofferenza" and still deserves the cry of lamentation:

"Ahi, selva Italia! di dolore ostello!"

This sorrowful word never leaves me; often do I sigh it through the stillness of my gloomily respectable house, the abode of the old Dutch merchants; and then too perchance I scream it out into the gale on the open sea-dike where my petty fellow citizens cannot hear it.

In this gray, beclouded, chilly land, where the bleak, restless wind bends low and razes to the ground everything that standing alone would lift up its head, less rude anguish is suffered nevertheless than among the sunny, luxuriant, blue-skied hills of my beautiful native land.

But this does not imply that the Italians should envy this so much more methodical, cleanly and prosperous nation. For glowing life and blooming beauty fare still more madly among the Hollanders, and sharp anguish is more salutary to man, and preferred by the genitive soul of humanity, than the unfelt evil of ugliness, of dullness and of the great and beautiful pa.s.sions stifled by fear. Everywhere in the present world a minority sensitive to beauty exists among a great horde of cads. But in no country is the minority n.o.bler, but smaller also, and the horde more caddish than in Holland - and in imagination I often see the Neapolitan tramp and loafer stand out as a prince or n.o.bleman among the inmates of a Dutch village inn, or hall for more respectable entertainment. But your purse and your life are safer and the average standard of middle-cla.s.s respectability higher here below the sea level than in most countries above.

The first ones that I sought in my native land were the priests, whom my father had always made me shun. My mother's sentimental wisdom did not satisfy the wants of my reason, and she herself thought that I should be easily and swiftly convinced of what, to her, seemed so evidently true, if I but heard someone versed in the eloquence and the logical argumentative power which her intuitive knowledge lacked.

But ah me! we were sadly mistaken there, my mother and I.

Her position and rank enabled her to refer me to the very best address; and none less than one of the most powerful and influential prelates of the age, an intimate of the Vatican and a political celebrity, was to guide me, youthful errant, back into the path of salvation. I was much impressed by his great name, and in the beginning I also could not withhold myself from the suggestion that goes out from each one into whose hands the herd has pressed the magic rose of deference and subjugation. But neither his environment, - a gloomy apartment tastelessly furnished in bourgeois style, - nor his outward appearance, a bony, half jovial, half cautiously cunning, more or less boorish face upon a heavy unwieldy body, was adapted to strengthen my illusion. He was very genial, talkative, good-natured, and made a little kindly intended speech to which I sat and listened with the conviction that I must be making a confused, distressed and foolish appearance.

Subsequently he committed me to the care of one of his younger disciples, a pale, seemingly timid, but, as was soon manifest, very strong-willed, ambitious young priest, who scrutinized me with well-nigh impertinent searchingness, like a doctor his patient.

I did not let my mother notice the tremendous shock that I experienced at this first visit, as she betrayed her hopeful expectation by a painful agitation. For her sake, too, I went on and moved in the circles which I could not really believe quite so bad as my father had pictured them. But I could not carry it through very long. Even on the street I would shudder with repulsion when I saw the insignificant, coa.r.s.e, often positively unpleasant and villainous faces peering out from under the rough, black felt hats. It was as though they bore upon their foreheads the mark of guilt for the misery in which my poor people were toiling. And no sooner had I gained sufficient knowledge of the sentiments, the desires, the ideas that peopled the spiritual world of the young man appointed as my shepherd, then I knew once for all that his labor would be vain.

He was not an insignificant man, the young priest, nor was he an ign.o.ble character. At the time I learned, in one moment, to conceive for him a deadly hatred and contempt. But these are some of our Italian extravagances. I expected and longed for a hero to help me - and when anyone came to me with this pretension, but fell considerably below the mark of a hero, I wished him to the devil and would have liked to kick him out of my door. Here in my house of meditation by the sea, I have learned to consider that the young priest possessed many talents, great learning, a keen knowledge of human nature, a clear, practical mind, an ambition careful enough not to seek base means for attaining the firmly desired goal, and a religious conviction which, whether inborn, acquired, or adopted, needed no further confirmation, and gave him sufficient tranquillity of mind to set himself with all his might to acquire the things which, among those his religion allowed, seemed to him the most desirable.

But oh! the deadly and sterile a.s.surance of these people. Their confession of faith was not a living, blooming thing that under continuous distress and delight, daily revealed itself as richer and more beautiful; not a constantly changing, flowing stream, with its substance watering and making fruitful the entire world; it was a heavy, unchanging, tightly shut, square strongbox that stood in a comer of their lives, safe and well stocked, from which, at stated times only, and in proportion to their moral needs, they went to cut off the coupons of tranquillity of mind and spiritual consolation.

He was so astonishingly calm, so tremendously sure of himself, so well versed in his patriarchs, so practised in all logical disputes, so thoroughly at home in all the eaves and the alleys, the case-mates and the bastions of the citadel of his faith, that it seemed as though he might dare take it up with all the doubters on earth. And yet how poor he seemed to me, how naked and miserable, locked up in his formulated system, like a bug in the hollow of a dead piece of wood, helplessly adrift upon the wild waters of reality. He was not a narrow-minded fanatic either, and knew the issues of science as well or better than I - but he had his words, his formulas, his logical snares and ropes, in which he caught all these troublesome and unmanageable truths and hitched them to his car of faith: the true word, the correct argument, the convincing phraseology that is the fine and artfully painted panorama which the devil employs to separate us from the free true world.

I was exacting in those days and was not contented with the people, who were no better than they could be. I did not understand that they felt it as a duty to submit to the ideas of the group, just as I felt it my duty to break loose from it. I did not recognize the relative value of their virtues, because they seemed to me like cyphers, in front of which the unit of highest virtue, the naught-fearing love of reality, was missing. And I was still too timid and too modest to give every man his due cold-bloodedly, to break the bond of absolute sincerity with him, and to mount the steep path of pride which each truly pious man, - as you and I, dear reader, - alas! is obliged to take against his will and pleasure, under penalty of losing time, life and strength, and the subtle discernment of G.o.d's loving signal light, in idle strife and struggle.

I shall not name the man here at present: he is already a cardinal, and when you read this he may be pope. Through negative influence he has exerted a tremendous effect upon my life. My mother admired and honored him highly, and it was as though with her own hand she thereby took the shining halo from her head and smashed it upon the pavement. I could not be mistaken in this priest: the very highest humanity, the fine tentacles constantly reaching out toward the divine, the continuous growing and seeking, the true life were wanting in him. When I wanted to ascend this path, he became blind and lame and refused to follow, escaping and evading me by all kinds of winding rhetorical paths, with a perfectly innocent expression of ignorance upon his pale, calm and self-satisfied countenance. It was as though his eyes congealed - of my burning desires they knew nothing. He could say every thing that he believed, felt and desired, and the unutterable that made him feel and desire thus and so was to him a word, not a vehemently and helplessly loved and longed-for reality, as it was to me. This I saw, I felt, I apprehended; there was no possibility of doubt. And thus I learned two most important truths: first that all talk about the chiefest part of our being is mere talk, that is to say, prattle and chatter, worth no more, no less, and just as misleading and inadequate for mutual communication and conviction, as all speech; secondly, that even the best men in their most profound and sacred feelings let themselves be ruled by other men, or groups of men, not necessarily better than they, and that they do not realize this constraint, but go on thinking that they themselves conceive and feel and accept with independent judgment what is thrust on them by other human beings or human groups.

For this priest considered himself more G.o.dly, wiser and better than my mother and I, and all his masterly eloquence only proved the contrary to me; and yet I saw that my mother was servile to him and adopted from him what he again had adopted from the large group of his equals and kindred spirits, and that all this took place without their realizing it, through personal influence, and never, as they contended, through the clear sense of the absolute, with the free judgment directed only by G.o.d's subtle guidance. What became now of all the beautiful light of Grace and Revelation? persuasion! nothing else! impress of personality on personality! as the teacher impels the child, the market crier his peasants, the general his loyal soldiers, the judge the timid witness, and as the ruling idea - public opinion - impels every individual, wholly beyond all reason or judgment, or absolute sense, no matter how strongly, we all may imagine the contrary.

These are subtle, cruel truths that deeply and grievously penetrate a youthful spirit if it be open to them. You, dear reader, as an all-renouncing lover of truth, know them as well as I. You know how terribly corrosive, like a sharp acid, is their discovery, leaving scarcely any of our ideals uncontaminated and sound. And consider besides that my spirit was broken by the terrible memory of the struggle which for years I had carried on with my father, and of his awful death caused by my clinging to ideals that now indeed all seemed nerveless illusions.

In my artlessness I had thought that the church in which my mother found peace and consolation would elect none but chosen heroes among men as her servants and priests. The very best would scarcely be good enough for such a dignity.

Instead of this I saw how the first youngster that came along, with a little hard pegging and servility could work his way up to the priesthood; how the average stood no higher than the common ma.s.ses; and how, among my people, they were more looked down upon and derided than venerated. And even the very best among them, the highest dignitaries, were not the heroes, the poets and the sages, who by virtue of their great human gifts were fitted to be the elect and leaders; but merely the clever and ambitious, who possessed a little more of that particular proficiency which helps one on in politics, too - but has nothing to do with the divine.

If ever I stood close to ruin, it was then. I had lost all hold. My beloved was far away in the arms of one whom I deemed unworthy; my saint had lost her crown; my father's voice now seemed to ask me with mocking emphasis whether it had not been better either to continue living with him or to go with him into death.

Do you know who saved me, dear reader? Not the beautiful Lucia, whom I pitied with tender compa.s.sion because she was, after all, nothing but a slight feather upon my mother's breath, - but none less than Satan himself. Satan saved me, Satan, dear reader; hold this well in mind!

Here is the profound explanation of his nature: he saved me because he manifested himself so clearly and unmistakably that I simply had to continue believing in him. And whoever believes in evil as evil cannot be lost. Just as I, even as later the young scapegrace Nietzsche, wanted to make a bolt over good and evil, I faced Satan, and the evil one was so kind that he did me a better turn than any kind human being ever did me.

As if to manifest himself very plainly, Satan, following the custom of all mighty principles, became incarnate. I came into contact with a young seminary student, who bore the name of an archangel and with it a face that resembled that of the prince of fallen angels more closely than any known to me. He even, as if to emphasize this, twisted his black locks above his low forehead in such a way that two horns appeared to be hidden under them. His eyelids hung rather low over his brown eyes, that peeped out furtively, and narrowing, twinkled kindly, while the straight thin-lipped mouth, above the long chin, uttered the most cruel sarcasms in a high, almost feminine voice.

And yet it was just this man who attracted me more than anyone I had met in clerical circles. In the first place, by reason of his wit; for he was an Irishman and full of those sharp and delicious jokes to which I was very susceptible; but also, because he was the only one who seemed to understand something of my great, dumb, impotent wrath at the universal unwillingness of mankind - which at the time I had not yet learned to look upon as impotence - to recognize the contradiction between their teachings and their life. Once when he had attended a conversation between my young teacher and myself, in which, as was my wont, I had made fruitless efforts to make him sensible of what was lacking in the entire priestly inst.i.tution and to free myself from the meshes of his arguments, he said in leaving:

"You come at an opportune moment, dear Count Muralto! The role of ingenue has long been vacant in our company. But you need not a.s.sume it any more toward the directors. They are already aware of it now, and there is such a thing as laying it on too thick."

This remark aroused in me great astonishment and interest. I immediately began to question Michael. Above all, I wished to know how he found it possible, with such thoughts in his head, to wish to become a priest.

"That's not so difficult," said Michael, "if only you learn to keep order in your thoughts. It all depends on order and exactness, on a careful double bookkeeping. Every good business man has a private bank-account which has nothing to do with the business. In the same way we must learn to keep our private thoughts out of the business. That is all."

"I am afraid that I shall never learn to look upon the most sacred office as a merchant's trade."

"Well played, dear ingenue!" said Michael; "but on the verge of foolishness. To look down upon merchants and business is no longer nave, but foolish. Without merchants the Holy Father himself would starve in prison. The whole world is a trading concern and there's no harm in that. Our business we rightly call the sacred business because, at all events, it is still the most trustworthy firm in existence. I consider it a great honor that I may be its youngest servant and am thankful that at the same time it can, if I keep my wits about me, also become a pleasure. The demand that I keep the private account of my ideas carefully separate from the ledger of the firm, so as not to cause confusion, I consider very just and moderate. It is so in all large and practical affairs. There's nothing like order, said the farmer as he screwed the lid on the coffin of his grandmother, who lay in a trance and wanted to get out again. Can you make a uniform that will fit every soldier? Can you fashion a net in which each little fish will find a mesh exactly fitting its own dimensions? No doctrine is true for everyone, and no law is just for all. Each must have a care that he get through the meshes."

"I must admit, brother Michael, that I think your cynicism more tolerable and more upright than the obstinate hypocrisy of our prelates. And what you say about the law that cannot be just for all seems to me worthy of consideration."

"Cynicism! hypocrisy!" brother Michael cried out with a silencing gesture. "My dear young man, how wildly you throw your rotten apples. A dog is a good-natured and clever animal, but for that reason it is not doggish to discriminate correctly. And as long as you artless blockheads do not understand that proper and successful hypocrisy is the primal Christian virtue, the practising of which belongs to the highest religious duties already taught by the Trinity, so long nothing will come of the Kingdom of G.o.d."

After this conversation, about which I said nothing to my mother, I changed and my att.i.tude became more reserved, cautious and suspicious.

More and more I began with profound amazement to understand the curious and appalling condition of our social system. But meanwhile the turbulent pa.s.sions in me were not calmed and my difficulties remained the same. As long as I lived in the hopeful suspense of the shipwrecked who believes that the haven of safety is in sight, the dogs were still.

But when this again ended in disappointment, they grew restive, bold and troublesome. With every weakening of the spirit and joy in life our wild beasts get a looser rein, as a ship when its course is blocked pays less attention to the rudder.

The more I was disappointed in humanity, the more I began to give ear to the women who in Rome, more vociferous than in London, rioting and ranting often like unto a band of maenads, go out at night, upon the hunt for men. And it was not many weeks before just that peculiar temptation which does not put itself forth with wanton or charming thoughtlessness, but with good-natured and cold shamelessness debases itself, had discovered me in my defencelessness and made of me an easy prey.

The complex feeling of self-contempt, shame, a.s.sumed light-heartedness, fear of undesired encounters, and yet more despicable fear of thieves and cut-throats, that in the shadow of the dark doorways of Rome's disreputable houses, luxuriantly flourishes in the soil of a bad conscience, is not deserving of envy; especially when, as in my case, there is the aggravating circ.u.mstance that, in face of an entire haughty priesthood, one has dared to consider oneself a better man, and has shown this more or less.

Thus it was a monstrous shock for me and a most miserable cold douche of temerity over my proud aristocrat's heart when at such a moment, my temptress having struck a match on the wall, the brightly flickering flame suddenly lit up the satanic visage of brother Michael, who, after first having leered at me cautiously and a bit perplexed, broke out into a truly devilish burst of laughter.

"Well met! Well met!" he cried out in his mother tongue, and then the witches' words from Macbeth: "When shall we three meet again?"

I confess, dear reader, that I stood there most miserably confused and ashamed, absolutely and utterly without self-control. But I stuttered out something resembling a reproach and a justification:

"I, at least, wear no clerical garb."

"Neither do I," said Michael; "I am incognito on private business."

"Oh!" said I scornfully; "concerning the double book-keeping!"

"Exactly, dear ingenue!" said Michael, with his most sweetish smile.

"Concerning the double book-keeping, you have remembered it well. But go on, don't let me disturb you! Perhaps I'll be back later."

But in my fright I had already turned about, and ran swiftly up the street, followed by some not very flattering remarks from the woman who had been disappointed in her pursuit. Michael overtook me.

"Two negatives const.i.tute one positive," said he. "Two sinners together arouse virtue. It seems to me we might as well have converted the fair sinner also."

Like an instinct for self-preservation in the most desperate danger, so man follows an instinct of self-justification in the most hopeless disgrace.

"Brutes we both of us are, Michael, but I at least acknowledge it. I loathe myself. You, tomorrow, must don your saintly garb and hide under it your rottenness and foulness. I do not envy you."