"Whom are you laughing at?" I screamed at the waiter; and I felt my face
turn pale, and my lips involuntarily set together.
"I am not laughing," replied the waiter, moving away from me.
"Yes, you are: you are laughing at this gentleman. And what right have you
to come, and to take a seat here, when there are guests? Don't you dare to
sit down!"
The porter, muttering something, got up, and turned to the door.
"What right have you to make sport of this gentleman, and to sit down by
him, when he is a guest, and you are a waiter? Why didn't you laugh at me
this evening at dinner, and come and sit down beside me? Because he is
meanly dressed, and sings in the streets? Is that the reason? and because I
have better clothes? He is poor, but he is a thousand times better than you
are; that I am sure of, because he has never insulted any one, but you have
insulted him."
"I didn't mean any thing," replied my enemy the waiter. "Perhaps I
disturbed him by sitting down."
The waiter did not understand me, and my German was wasted on him. The rude
porter was about to take the waiter's part; but I fell upon him so
impetuously that the porter pretended not to understand me, and waved his
hand.
The hunch-backed dish-washer, either because she perceived my wrathful
state, and feared a scandal, or possibly because she shared my views, took
my part, and, trying to force her way between me and the porter, told him
to hold his tongue, saying that I was right, but at the same time urging me
to calm myself.
"_Der Herr hat Recht; Sie haben Recht_," she said over and over again. The
minstrel's face presented a most pitiable, terrified expression; and
evidently he did not understand why I was angry, and what I wanted: and he
urged me to let him go away as soon as possible.
But the eloquence of wrath burned within me more and more. I understood it
all,--the throng that had made merry at his expense, and his auditors who
had not given him any thing; and not for all the world would I have held my
peace.
I believe, that, if the waiters and the porter had not been so submissive,
I should have taken delight in having a brush with them, or striking the
defenceless English lady on the head with a stick. If at that moment I had
been at Sevastópol, I should have taken delight in devoting myself to
slaughtering and killing in the English trench.
"And why did you take this gentleman and me into this room, and not into
the other? What?" I thundered at the porter, seizing him by the arm so that
he could not escape from me. "What right had you to judge by his appearance
that this gentleman must be served in this room, and not in that? Have not
all guests who pay, equal rights in hotels? Not only in a republic, but in
all the world! Your scurvy republic!... Equality, indeed! You would not
dare to take an Englishman into this room, not even those Englishmen who
have heard this gentleman free of cost; that is, who have stolen from him,
each one of them, the few centimes which ought to have been given to him.
How did you dare to take us to this room?"
"That room is closed," said the porter.
"No," I cried, "that isn't true; it isn't closed."
"Then you know best."
"I know,--I know that you are lying."
The porter turned his back on me.
"Eh! What is to be said?" he muttered.
"What is to be said?" I cried. "You conduct us instanter into that room!"
In spite of the dish-washer's warning, and the entreaties of the minstrel,
who would have preferred to go home, I insisted on seeing the head waiter,
and went with my guest into the big dining-room. The head waiter, hearing
my angry voice, and seeing my menacing face, avoided a quarrel, and, with
contemptuous servility, said that I might go wherever I pleased. I could
not prove to the porter that he had lied, because he had hastened out of
sight before I went into the hall.
The dining-room was, in fact, open and lighted; and at one of the tables
sat an Englishman and a lady, eating their supper. Although we were shown
to a special table, I took the dirty minstrel to the very one where the
Englishman was, and bade the waiter bring to us there the unfinished
bottle.
The two guests at first looked with surprised, then with angry, eyes at the
little man, who, more dead than alive, was sitting near me. They talked
together in a low tone; then the lady pushed back her plate, her silk dress
rustled, and both of them left the room. Through the glass doors I saw the
Englishman saying something in an angry voice to the waiter, and pointing
with his hand in our direction. The waiter put his head through the door,
and looked at us. I waited with pleasurable anticipation for some one to
come and order us out, for then I could have found a full outlet for all my
indignation. But fortunately, though at the time I felt injured, we were
left in peace. The minstrel, who before had fought shy of the wine, now
eagerly drank all that was left in the bottle, so that he might make his
escape as quickly as possible.
He, however, expressed his gratitude with deep feeling, as it seemed to me,
for his entertainment. His teary eyes grew still more humid and brilliant,
and he made use of a most strange and complicated phrase of gratitude. But
still very pleasant to me was the sentence in which he said that if
everybody treated artists as I had been doing, it would be very good, and
ended by wishing me all manner of happiness. We went out into the hall
together. There stood the servants, and my enemy the porter apparently
airing his grievances against me before them. All of them, I thought,
looked at me as though I were a man who had lost his wits. I treated the
little man exactly like an equal, before all that audience of servants; and
then, with all the respect that I was able to express in my behavior, I
took off my hat, and pressed his hand with its dry and hardened fingers.
The servants made believe not pay the slightest attention to me. One of
them only indulged in a sarcastic laugh.
As soon as the minstrel had bowed himself out, and disappeared in the
darkness, I went up-stairs to my room, intending to sleep off all these
impressions and the foolish childish anger which had come upon me so
unexpectedly. But finding that I was too much excited to sleep, I once more
went down into the street with the intention of walking until I should have
recovered my equanimity, and, I must confess, with the secret hope that I
might accidentally come across the porter or the waiter or the Englishman,
and show them all their rudeness, and, most of all, their unfairness. But
beyond the porter, who when he saw me turned his back, I met no one; and I
began to promenade in absolute solitude along the quay.
"This is an example of the strange fate of poetry," said I to myself,
having grown a little calmer. "All love it, all are in search of it; it is
the only thing in life that men love and seek, and yet no one recognizes
its power, no one prizes this best treasure of the world, and those who
give it to men are not rewarded. Ask any one you please, ask all these
guests of the Schweitzerhof, what is the most precious treasure in the
world, and all, or ninety-nine out of a hundred, putting on a sardonic
expression, will say that the best thing in the world is money.
"'Maybe, though, this does not please you, or coincide with your elevated
ideas,' it will be urged, 'but what is to be done if human life is so
constituted that money alone is capable of giving a man happiness? I cannot
force my mind not to see the world as it is,' it will be added, 'that is,
to see the truth.'
"Pitiable is your intellect, pitiable the happiness which you desire! And
you yourselves, unhappy creatures, not knowing what you desire, ... why
have you all left your fatherland, your relatives, your money-making trades
and occupations, and come to this little Swiss city of Lucerne? Why did you
all this evening gather on the balconies, and in respectful silence listen
to the little beggar's song? And if he had been willing to sing longer, you
would have been silent and listened longer. What! could money, even
millions of it, have driven you all from your country, and brought you all
together in this little nook of Lucerne? Could money have gathered you all
on the balconies to stand for half an hour silent and motionless? No! One
thing compels you to do it, and will forever have a stronger influence than
all the other impulses of life: the longing for poetry which you know,
which you do not realize, but feel, always will feel so long as you have
any human sensibilities. The word 'poetry' is a mockery to you; you make
use of it as a sort of ridiculous reproach; you regard the love for poetry
as something meet for children and silly girls, and you make sport of them
for it. For yourselves you must have something more definite.
"But children look upon life in a healthy way: they recognize and love what
man ought to love, and what gives happiness. But life has so deceived and
perverted you, that you ridicule the only thing that you really love, and
you seek for what you hate and for what gives you unhappiness.
"You are so perverted that you did not perceive what obligations you were
under to the poor Tyrolese who rendered you a pure delight; but at the same
time you feel yourselves needlessly obliged to bow before some lord, which
gives you neither pleasure nor profit, but rather causes you to sacrifice
your comfort and convenience. What absurdity! what incomprehensible lack of
reason!
"But it was not this that made the most powerful impression upon me this
evening. This blindness to all that gives happiness, this unconsciousness
of poetic enjoyment, I can almost comprehend, or at least I have become
wonted to it, since I have almost everywhere met with it in the course of
my life; the harsh, unconscious churlishness of the crowd was no novelty to
me: whatever those who argue in favor of popular sentiment may say, the
throng is a conglomeration of very possibly good people, but of people who
touch each other only on their coarse animal sides, and express only the
weakness and harshness of human nature. But how was it that you, children
of a humane people, you Christians, you simple people, repaid with coldness
and ridicule the poor beggar who gave you a pure enjoyment? But no, in
your country there are asylums for beggars. There are no beggars, there can
be none; and there can be no feelings of sympathy, since that would be a
confession that beggary existed.
"But he labored, he gave you enjoyment, he besought you to give him
something of your superfluity in payment for his labor of which you took
advantage. But you looked upon him with a cool smile as upon one of the
curiosities in your lofty brilliant palaces; and though there were a
hundred of you, favored with happiness and wealth, not one man or one woman
among you gave him a _sou_. Abashed he went away from you, and the
thoughtless throng, laughing, followed and ridiculed not you, but him,
because you were cold, harsh, and dishonorable; because you robbed him in
receiving the entertainment which he gave you: for this they jeered _him_.
"'_On the 19th of July, 1857, before the Schweitzerhof Hotel, in which were
lodging very opulent people, a wandering beggar minstrel sang for half an
hour his songs, and played his guitar. About a hundred people listened to
him. The minstrel thrice asked you all to give him something. No one person
gave him a thing, and many made sport of him._'
"This is not an invention, but an actual fact, as those who desire can find
out for themselves by consulting the papers for the list of those who were
at the Schweitzerhof on the 19th of July.
"This is an event which the historians of our time ought to describe in
letters of inextinguishable flame. This event is more significant and more
serious, and fraught with far deeper meaning, than the facts that are
printed in newspapers and histories. That the English have killed several
thousand Chinese because the Chinese would not sell them any thing for
money while their land is overflowing with ringing coins; that the French
have killed several thousand Kabyles because the wheat grows well in
Africa, and because constant war is essential for the drill of an army;
that the Turkish ambassador in Naples must not be a Jew; and that the
Emperor Napoleon walks about in Plombières, and gives his people the
express assurance that he rules only in direct accordance with the will of
the people,--all these are words which darken or reveal something long
known. But the episode that took place in Lucerne on the 19th of July seems
to me something entirely novel and strange, and it is connected not with
the everlastingly ugly side of human nature, but with a well-known epoch in
the development of society. This fact is not for the history of human
activities, but for the history of progress and civilization.
"Why is it that this inhuman fact, impossible in any country,--Germany,
France, or Italy,--is quite possible here where civilization, freedom, and
equality are carried to the highest degree of development, where there are
gathered together the most civilized travellers from the most civilized
nations? Why is it that these cultivated human beings, generally capable of
every honorable human action, had no hearty, human feeling for one good
deed? Why is it that these people who in their palaces, their meetings, and
their societies, labor warmly for the condition of the celibate Chinese in
India, about the spread of Christianity and culture in Africa, about the
formation of societies for attaining all perfection,--why is it that they
should not find in their souls the simple, primitive feeling of human
sympathy? Has such a feeling entirely disappeared, and has its place been
taken by vainglory, ambition, and cupidity, governing these men in their
palaces, meetings, and societies? Has the spreading of that reasonable,
egotistical association of people, which we call civilization, destroyed
and rendered nugatory the desire for instinctive and loving association?
And is this that boasted equality for which so much innocent blood has been
shed, and so many crimes have been perpetrated? Is it possible that
nations, like children, can be made happy by the mere sound of the word
'equality'?
"Equality before the law? Does the whole life of a people revolve within
the sphere of law? Only the thousandth part of it is subject to the law:
the rest lies outside of it, in the sphere of the customs and intuitions of
society.
"But in society the lackey is better dressed than the minstrel, and insults
him with impunity. I am better dressed than the lackey, and insult him with
impunity. The porter considers me higher, but the minstrel lower, than
himself; when I made the minstrel my companion, he felt that he was on an
equality with us both, and behaved rudely. I was impudent to the porter,
and the porter acknowledged that he was inferior to me. The waiter was
impudent to the minstrel, and the minstrel accepted the fact that he was
inferior to the waiter.
"And is that government free, even though men seriously call it free, where
a single citizen can be thrown into prison because, without harming any
one, without interfering with any one, he does the only thing that he can
to prevent himself from dying of starvation?
"A wretched, pitiable creature is man with his craving for positive
solutions, thrown into this everlastingly tossing, limitless ocean of
_good_ and _evil_, of combinations and contradictions. For centuries men
have been struggling and laboring to put the _good_ on one side, the _evil_
on the other. Centuries will pass, and no matter how much the unprejudiced
mind may strive to decide where the balance lies between the _good_ and the
_evil_, the scales will refuse to tip the beam, and there will always be
equal quantities of the _good_ and the _evil_ on each scale.
"If only man would learn to form judgments, and not to indulge in rash and
arbitrary thoughts, and not to make reply to questions that are propounded
merely to remain forever unanswered! If only he would learn that every
thought is both a lie and a truth!--a lie from the one-sidedness and
inability of man to recognize all truth; and true because it expresses one
side of mortal endeavor. There are divisions in this everlastingly
tumultuous, endless, endlessly confused chaos of the _good_ and the _evil_.
They have drawn imaginary lines over this ocean, and they contend that the
ocean is really thus divided.
"But are there not millions of other possible subdivisions from absolutely
different standpoints, in other planes? Certainly these novel subdivisions
will be made in centuries to come, just as millions of different ones have
been made in centuries past.
"Civilization is _good_, barbarism is _evil_; freedom, _good_; slavery,
_evil_. Now, this imaginary knowledge annihilates the instinctive,
beatific, primitive craving for the _good_ that is in human nature. And who
will explain to me what is freedom, what is despotism, what is
civilization, what is barbarism?
"Where are the boundaries that separate them? And whose soul possesses so
absolute a standard of good and evil as to measure these fleeting,
complicated facts? Whose wit is so great as to comprehend and weigh all the
facts in the irretrievable past? And who can find any circumstance in which
there is no union of _good_ and _evil_? And because I know that I see more
of one than of the other, is it not because my standpoint is wrong? And who
has the ability to separate himself so absolutely from life, even for a
moment, as to look upon it from above?
"One, only one infallible Guide we have,--the universal Spirit which
penetrates all collectively and as units, which has endowed each of us with
the craving for the right; the Spirit which impels the tree to grow toward
the sun, which stimulates the flower in autumn-tide to scatter its seed,
and which obliges each one of us unconsciously to draw closer together. And
this one unerring, inspiring voice rings out louder than the noisy, hasty
development of culture.
"Who is the greater man, and who the greater barbarian,--that lord, who,
seeing the minstrel's well-worn clothes, angrily left the table, who gave
him not the millionth part of his possessions in payment of his labor, and
now lazily sitting in his brilliant, comfortable room, calmly opines about
the events that are happening in China, and justifies the massacres that
have been done there; or the little minstrel, who, risking imprisonment,
with a franc in his pocket, and doing no harm to any one, has been going
about for a score of years, up hill and down dale, rejoicing men's hearts
with his songs, though they have jeered at him, and almost cast him out of
the pale of humanity; and who, in weariness and cold and shame, has gone
off to sleep, no one knows where, on his filthy straw?"
At this moment, from the city, through the dead silence of the night, far,
far away, I caught the sound of the little man's guitar and his voice.
"No," something involuntarily said to me, "you have no right to commiserate
the little man, or to blame the lord for his well-being. Who can weigh the
inner happiness which is found in the soul of each of these men? There he
stands somewhere in the muddy road, and gazes at the brilliant moonlit sky,
and gayly sings amid the smiling, fragrant night; in his soul there is no
reproach, no anger, no regret. And who knows what is transpiring now in the
hearts of all these men within those opulent, brilliant rooms? Who knows if
they all have as much unencumbered, sweet delight in life, and as much
satisfaction with the world, as dwells in the soul of that little man?
"Endless are the mercy and wisdom of Him who has permitted and formed all
these contradictions. Only to thee, miserable little worm of the dust,
audaciously, lawlessly attempting to fathom His laws, His designs,--only to
thee do they seem like contradictions.
"Full of love He looks down from His bright, immeasurable height, and
rejoices in the endless harmony in which you all move in endless
contradictions. In thy pride thou hast thought thyself able to separate
thyself from the laws of the universe. No, thou also, with thy petty,
ridiculous anger against the waiters,--thou also hast disturbed the
harmonious craving for the eternal and the infinite."....