For the first time surely in that city, separated from England by
lands and seas, a certain number of people, very limited, it is
true, might admire small, bachelor's apartments, fitted up with
tapestry, sculpture, and stained-glass, from the London factory
of Morris, Faulkner, Marshall & Co. The drawing-room was not
large, but there was in it absolutely nothing which had its
origin elsewhere than in that factory founded by a famous poet
and member of the pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. The famous poet and
artist, William Morris, had become a manufacturer for the purpose
of correcting aesthetic taste in the multitude, and filling
people's dwellings with works of pure beauty. The objects in this
apartment were really beautiful. The tapestry on the walls
represented a series of pictures taken from romances of
knighthood, and from marvellous legends: Tristan and Isolde, on
the deck of a ship; Flor and Blancheflor, in a garden of roses;
the monk Alberich, in a Dominican habit, descending into hell.
The tapestry on the furniture was full of winged heads and
fantastic flowers; on all sides were seen great art in weaving
and masterly borders, which recalled the margins of old
prayer-books. Dulled and dingy colors, producing the impression
of things which had emerged from the mist of ages, and only glass
window-screens, framed in columns and pointed arches, were
brilliant with the colors of rubies, sapphires, and emeralds. The
window-panes were stained with roses and with the figures of
saints having pale profiles and wearing bright robes. On one of
the tables was a bronze pulpit in the form of a Gothic chapel; in
another place was a lamp-support, which represented the Triumph
of Death; Death was a woman with the wings of a bat; she was in a
flowing robe; she had curved talons on her feet, and a scythe in
her hand. This was a sculptured copy of Orcagna, from the Campo
Santo of Pisa. In the middle of the dining-room, which was seen
beyond an open door, stood a table, in the style of the
eighteenth century. Altogether simple was this table, and like
those under which, instead of carpets, men (of that century) used
to put a layer of hay. The side table (fourteenth century), with
painted carvings; a box (fourteenth century, a copy from the
Museum of Cluny), with fantastic beasts carved on its cover, and
with small figures on the front side, on very narrow niches,
figures representing the twelve peers of France; another box,
which was in the bedroom, was like this one, but the carving
which covered it represented the anointing of Louis XI at Rheims
(Museum of Orleans). It stood at the feet of Brother Alberich,
who, in his white habit, was entering the black jaws of hell; it
took the place of a sofa, there being no sofa in the room. Both
these boxes of wood and iron, immensely artistic, though merely
copies of authentic relics, served as places in which to keep
objects of art, and served as seats also. Besides these, there
were only a few stools, with arms carved in trefoil shape
(fourteenth and fifteenth century), and still fewer armchairs,
immensely deep and wide--so-called cathedras--covered with most
wonderful stuffs; but everything was there which was needed, if
the dwelling was to preserve a purely Middle Age character as to
style. In the air, slightly colored by the brightly
stained-glass, hovered something archaic and exotic--hoary
antiquity reigned--and a critical spirit with the odor of
mysticism might be felt floating around there. But all this
seemed quite comprehensible and natural to anyone who knew Baron
Emil, the owner of that dwelling--a trained and exacting
aesthete--moreover, the baron was of that school called
Mediaeval; and as a Mediaevalist he professed homage for Middle
Ages romances and legends; for subtle works of art and for
inspirations touching a world beyond the present which resulted
from them.
Three years before Maryan Darvid, in company with, or more
strictly under the protection of Kranitski, entered for the first
time this dwelling, which had been recently furnished. The baron
had brought home, from one of the Mediterranean islands, the
mortal remains of his mother, who had died just before; he had
received from her a great inheritance, and to put his interests
in order he had settled in his native city for a period.
Kranitski, long a friend in the house of his father and mother,
had known him from childhood, and exhibited on greeting him an
outburst of tenderness. This amused the baron, but pleased him
also a little. "He is a trifle odd, good, poor devil--on the
whole: gentle, perfectly presentable, and active." Kranitski was
very active. He went to the boundary to take out of the
custom-house everything which had come to the baron's address
from England; and then helped him in the arrangement of the
dwelling, which was attended with considerable labor.
Upholsterers and other assistants lost their heads at sight of
those knights, ladies, monks, peers of France, and the Triumph of
Death, which came out of the boxes. Kranitski was astonished at
nothing, for he had read much, and knew many things also, but he
could not be very enthusiastic in this case. When the
installation was accomplished, with his active and skilful
assistance, he thought: "The place is funereal, and there is
little comfort here." He looked askance somewhat at the boxes
with the peers of France and Louis XI. on them. The covers of
these boxes, rough with carving, did not seem to him the most
agreeable places to sit on. He said nothing, however, for he was
ashamed to confess that he did not understand or did not favor
that which was the flower of the newest exotic fashion. He
visited the baron and spent many hours in his dwelling, and soon
he took there a second man--a young friend of his. When Maryan
Darvid found himself for the first time in the company and at the
house of a Mediaevalist, he was confused, like a man who is
standing in the presence of something immensely above him. Almost
ten years older, the baron surpassed Maryan immeasurably in all
branches of knowledge, both of books and life; and his little
dwelling was a marvel of originality and outlay. Maryan felt poor
both in body and spirit. Though a yearly allowance of six
thousand received from his father had not been enough up to that
time, it seemed to him then a chip, only fit to be kicked away.
As to the mental side, he was simply ashamed that he could still
find any pleasant thing in that world which surrounded him, and
in the life which he was leading. Commonness, cheapness,
vulgarity! The meaning of these words he understood clearly after
he had been in the baron's society. Even earlier he had begun to
feel the need of something loftier; something beyond those
pleasures of the senses--of fancy and of vanity--which he had
experienced, though these were considerable. The substance and
nature of these pleasures lay on the surface--they were
accessible to a considerable number of people. The baron, in the
manner usual with him, speaking somewhat through his nose and
teeth, said:
"We, the experienced and disenchanted, seek for new shivers, just
as alchemists of the Middle Ages sought for gold. We are in
search of the rare and of the novel."
In search of the rare and the novel in shivers, or universal
impressions: sensuous, mental, and aesthetic, Maryan went once
with the baron, and a second time alone, on a journey through
Europe. He visited many countries and capitals. To investigate
the Salvation Army, he joined its ranks for a period in England.
In Germany he was connected with the almost legendary,
politico-religious sect which bears the name Fahrende Leute; and,
again, for some time, in an immense wagon drawn by gigantic
Mechlenburgers, he wandered through the mountainous Hartz forest
and along the banks of the picturesque Saal; he spent most time
in Paris, where, with the theosophists he summoned up spirits,
and with the decadents, otherwise known as incoherents, and still
otherwise as the accursed poets; in the club of hashish-eaters he
had dreams and visions brought on by using narcotics. Besides, he
saw many other rare and peculiar things; but he was ever hampered
by slender financial means and the need of incurring great debts;
and was irritated by the impossibility of finding anything which
could satisfy him permanently, or, at least, for a long period.
He felt satisfactions, but brief ones. Everything of which he had
dreamed seemed less after he had attained it--more common, weaker
than in his imagining. The brightness was dimmed; on the glitter
there were defects; the warm inspirations which came from afar,
grew stiff when they were touched, stiffened, as oil does when
floating on water. In the taste of things, sweetness and tartness
became insipid and nauseous, the moment they reached his palate.
This was by no means a surfeit devoid of appetites; but, on the
contrary, such an immense flood of appetites that the insurgent
wave of them struck the region of the impossible with fury,
because it could not rush over that barrier. This was also an
inflammation of the fancy, which had risen from an active mind,
and which early and numerous experiences had turned into a
festering wound. Finally, it was also the placing of self on some
imagined summit, standing apart and aloft, beyond and above all.
I--and the rabble. What is not I, and a handful like me--is the
rabble. What is to be mine cannot be of the rabble; what is of
the rabble must be not of mine. This pride was not of birth or
money; it might be called nervous mental arrogance. Mental
summits other than those of the rabble, and other requirements of
the nerves; the highest bloom of human civilization--sickly, but
the highest; the crash, but also the coronation of mankind. In
all this there was a principle--one, but indestructible: the
respect of individuality; the preservation of it from all
limitations and changes which might come from outside; a respect
reaching the height of worship. Everything might be, according to
time and place, a painted pot; but individuality (that is, the
way in which a man's wishes, tastes, way of thinking were
fashioned) was sacred--the only sacred thing. It was not
permitted to give this into captivity to anyone or anything, or
to submit it to criticisms, or corrections. I am what I am; and I
will remain myself. I will and I am obliged to know how to
will--something like the superhuman preached by Friedrich
Nietsche. The baron's dwelling was not only original and
fabulously expensive, but it had in itself besides, that which
the Germans define by the word Stimmung. A number of young
polyglots examined for a long time various languages of Europe to
find a word which would answer best to the German Stimmung, till
Maryan first, possessing the greatest linguistic capacity, came
on the Polish expression nastroj (tone of mind). Yes, they
agreed, universally, that the baron's dwelling produced a tone of
mind; an impression not of what was in it, but of something of
which it was the mysterious expression or symbol. It produced an
impression which had its cause beyond this world. To believe in
something beyond this world does not mean to profess a
religion--as that of Buddha, Zoroaster, or Chrystos. No, of
course not; that would be well for early ages and infantile
people; ..old ones, too, run wild after fables, for the principle
of the beautiful is in these fables; but they do not let fables
lead them off by the nose. An impression from beyond the world is
something entirely different; it is a shiver of delights which
are unknown here, and only anticipated, coming from a world
inaccessible to the senses. That such a world exists is shown by
the enormous poverty of this one, and the mad monotony of those
sources of pleasure which are contained in the world accessible
to human senses. A poet is so far a poet, an aesthete so far an
aesthete, as he is able, by intuition and unheard-of delicacy of
nerves, to burst into the world above the senses and to
experience the taste, or rather the odor, which goes before it.
For it is an absolute condition that the feeling should be hazy,
something in the nature of an odor; or, better still, the echo of
an odor. No key of a musical instrument is to be touched; no
definite features are to be drawn; the tone of mind alone is to
be produced. The baron's dwelling gave the tone of mind for
another world. He and his associates believed in another world,
beyond the earth and the grave; on the basis of the poverty and
commonness of the world before the grave--that is, in despair of
the case. For them it was not subject to doubt--that world, the
slight odors of which flew to them in moments when they were in
the tone of mind, was filled with perfect beauty, nothing but
beauty; a beauty which, in this world, even by itself alone,
raises men above the level of the rabble. If this beauty did not
exist, we should be justified in accepting Hartmann's theory of
the collective suicide of mankind, and in throwing a "bloody
spittle of contempt" at life. A "bloody spittle," as is known
from Arthur Rimbaud's sonnets on consonants, stands before the
eyes of everyone who pronounces the vowel i, just as the vowel a
brings up the picture of "black, shaggy flies, which buzz around
terribly fetid objects."
"Ah, no, my friend! No, no! That passes my power! In heaven's
name I beg you not to say another word!"
With this exclamation Arthur Kranitski, like a pike out of water,
struggled in the immensely deep cathedra; and, with his arms in
the air kept calling out:
"Terribly fetid objects! Bloody spittle! that is not poetry--it
is not even decent! And those shaggy flies whirling
around--that--No! I feel a nausea, which mounts to my throat. No,
my friends, I will never agree that that is poetry!"
His voice broke, so wounded was he in his aesthetic conceptions.
The young men laughed. That dear, honest Pan Kranitski is an
innocent. In spite of his forty and some years clearly sounded,
and his romantic experiences, his love for good eating and other
nice things, the highest point of extravagance of all sorts for
him were Boccaccio, Paul de Kock, Alfred Musset--simpletons, or
babies.
Kranitski, after his first impression, had a feeling of shame.
"Pardon, my dears! An innocent! Not so much of an innocent as may
seem to you. I am far from being an innocent; I understand
everything and am able to experience everything. But, do you see,
there is a difference in tastes. Clearness, simplicity, harmony,
these are what I like, but yours--yours--"
Again he was carried away by aesthetic indignation, so, throwing
himself back in the chair, with outspread arms, he finished:
"Your making poetry of spittle and foul odor is--do you know
what? it is sprinkling a cloaca with holy water! That is what it
is."
In the little drawing-room between the screens of stained glass
and that part of the wall on which a knight of the Pound Table
was bowing to Isolde stood a small organ, and before the organ,
at the midday hour, sat Baron Emil playing one of the grandest
fugues of Sebastian Bach. Small and fragile, in his morning dress
of yellowish flannel, in stockings with colored stripes, and
shoes of yellow leather with very sharp tips, he was resting his
shoulder against the arm of the chair carved in a trefoil
(fourteenth century); he stretched his arms stiffly and rested
his long bony fingers on various keys of the piano. His delicate,
sallow features had an expression of great solemnity; his small,
blue eyes looked dreamily into space, and from the glass shade,
brightened by the sunlight falling in through the window, purple
and blue rays fell on his faded forehead and ruddy, closely cut
hair.
Besides the baron, who was playing, was present Kranitski, who
had come an hour before and heard from the servant that the baron
was sleeping yet. But that was not true, for a few minutes after
Kranitski heard farther back in the building an outburst of
female laughter, to which the nasal voice of the baron, who spoke
rather long about something, gave answer. The guest smiled and
whispered to the "Triumph of Death," at which he was looking,
"Lili Kerth."
Then he sank into the cathedra so that in spite of his lofty
stature he almost disappeared in it. Soon the baron appeared at
the door, and, accustomed to seeing Kranitski at various times,
he nodded to him with a brief "Bon jour!" and turned to the
organ. Sitting at the organ he threw these words over his arm:
"We expect Maryan at lunch."
"But she?" inquired Kranitski from the depth of the long and high
arms of the cathedra.
"She will finish her toilet and go."
Then he played the Bach fugue. He played, and Kranitski, sank in
the chair, listened and grew sadder and sadder. During recent
days he had grown evidently old; he had become thin; wrinkles had
appeared on his forehead. His person had lost elasticity and
self-confidence, lie looked like a man who had received a heavy
blow, but he was, as always, dressed carefully, the odor of
perfumes was around him, and a colored handkerchief appeared in
his coat pocket. In presence of the baron's music he grew sad and
then sadder. That music made the place more and more church-like.
The figures of saints on the shade under the golden haloes seemed
to melt in profound adoration. The "Triumph of Death" spread its
wings on the background of subdued colors in the chamber; in that
atmosphere the organ and silence sang a majestic duet. Kranitski
began to feel the tone of mind mightily. His shoulders bent
forward mechanically; he took out of his pocket the gold
cigarette case, and thought, while turning it in his fingers:
"Everything passes! Everything is behind me--love and the rest!
The grave swallows all things. The days fly, like dust, fly into
the past--into eternity! Eternity! the enigma."
All at once into the duet, sung by the organ and silence, broke
the loud rattle of a door, then the rustle of silk skirts, till
there had shot through the dining-room, and halted in the door of
the drawing-room, a creature who was pretty, not large,
excessively noisy, and active of body. She had a short skirt,
small feet, a fur-lined cape of the latest style, and a gigantic
hat which shaded a small, dark, thin, wilted face, with eyes
burning like candles and hair gleaming like Venetian gold. The
silk, the sable, the incredibly long ostrich feathers, the
diamonds in her ears, and the loud burst of laughter cut through
the music of Bach like a silver saw.
"Eh bien, ne veus-tu pas me dire bon jour, toi, grand beta?
Tiens, voila!" (Well, wilt thou not say good-day to me, thou
great beast? Here it is!) With the expression voila! was heard a
loud kiss, impressed on the check of the baron, then Lili Kerth,
the gleaming of silk, diamonds, eyes, and hair turned toward the
door of the antechamber and saw Kranitski.
"Oh, te voila aussi, vieux beau!" (Oh, here thou art too, old
beau!) She sprang toward the cathedra, and, wringing her hands,
exclaimed:
"What a funereal face!" And she spoke on, or rather babbled on in
French: "Hast disappointments? That is bad! But one must not
think of them. Do as I do. I have disappointments, but I mock at
them. This is how I treat disappointments."
She made a stop so elastic that her little foot flew into the
air, and she touched Kranitski's chin with the point of her shoe.
That was a model indication of the method with which one should
treat disappointments.
"Now adieu to the company!" cried she, and rattling her bracelets
she vanished.
In the chamber there was silence again, in the midst of which
Tristan gave a knightly bow to Isolde, and the monk Alberich let
himself down into the jaws of hell; "Triumph of Death" spread her
bat-wings, and the saints with their golden haloes crossed their
pale hands on their bright robes.
The baron was sitting before the organ with his head dropped to
his breast. Kranitski, buried in the cathedra, panted aloud for
some seconds till he said, with a complaining voice:
"It is abominable! I do not wish a cocotte to throw her foot on
my neck when I am thinking of eternity. What confounded tastes
you have! Immediately after leaving Lili Kerth to play that
divine Bach. Nonsense! mixture! I am not a monk, far from it--but
such shaking up in one bottle of the profane and the sacred, no,
that is vileness swaddled in art. Yes, yes, I beg forgiveness
once more, but in the Holy Scriptures something is said about a
gold ring in a pig's nose. Voila!"
The baron smiled under his ruddy mustache and said, after a
while:
"That is subtle and not to be understood by everyone. Bach after
Lili Kerth--that is the bite, that is the irony of things. Do you
know Baudelaire's quatrain?"
He stood up, and, without declamation, even carelessly, through
his nose and teeth, gave the quatrain:
"Quand chez le debauche l'aube blanche et vermeil,
Entre en societe de l'Ideal rongeur,
Par l'operation d'un mystere vengeur,
Dans la brute assoupie un Ange se reveille."
With his hands in the pockets of his flannel sack he paced
through the room.
Maryan had translated that quatrain quite beautifully. Without
interrupting his pacing he repeated the translation.
The bell rang in the antechamber; Maryan entered the
drawing-room. He was paler than usual and had dark lines under
his eyes, which were very bright. Kranitski rushed from the
cathedra, and, seizing the young man by both hands, looked into
his face with tenderness:
"At last, at last! I have not seen you for almost a fortnight. I
have not left the house. I had a little hope that you would visit
me."
"All right, all right!" answered Maryan, and touching the hand of
the baron, he sat down on the box on which was the anointing of
Louis XI, he rested his shoulders on the bare foot of Alberich
and became motionless.
Maryan continued to be so motionless that not only the limbs of
his body, but the features of his face seemed benumbed. Had it
not been for his eyes, which were gleaming brightly, he might
have been mistaken at a distance for a stuffed and elegantly
dressed manikin. Baron Emil and Kranitski knew what this meant.
According to Maryan that was a chill into which he fell always
after disappointment or disenchantment. He was possessed at such
times by a lack of will, which made all movements, even those
which were physical, unendurable and difficult. At the same time
he had such a contempt for all things on earth that it did not
seem worth the while to him to move hand or lips for any cause.
Some French writer has called such a condition of desiccation of
the heart's interior. Maryan found that definition quite
appropriate. When he sat motionless, deaf and dumb, or walked
like an automaton moved by springs, he felt exactly as if the
interior of his heart were drying up.
The baron, too, passed through similar states with some
differences, however, for feeling contempt instead of lack of
will, he felt a "red anger," or what the French call colere
rouge. He was carried away then by the wish to shut his fist,
heat and break, in fact he did beat the servants sometimes, and
break costly articles. He considered the desiccation of his
friend's heart in its interior portions with respect, even with
sympathy. He, with hands thrust into his yellowish flannel
pockets, walked up and down in the chamber and hissed through his
teeth:
"We are all stunted. We are breaking down! bah! it is time. The
world is old. Children of an aged father born with internal
cancer."
Kranitski, hearing this, thought: "Why should a man break down
and get a cancer when he is young and rich?" But he did not
oppose. He pitied Maryan. He looked at him with an expression of
eyes similar to that with which loving nurses look on sick or
capricious children.
At lunch Maryan's handsome face was sallow and motionless as a
wax mask; as a wax mask it stood out on the background of the
high arms of the chair. He was as silent as a stone. He had no
appetite. He ate only a little caviar, and then fell to
swallowing an endless number of small cups of black coffee, which
the baron himself prepared, according to some special recipe, and
poured out. The baron himself drank goblet after goblet of wine,
and as to the rest he yawned a great deal more than he ate. But
Kranitski's appetite was a success. After some weeks of Widow
Clemens' meagre kitchen he ate eggs, cutlets, cheese, till his
eyes were gleaming. According to his old acquaintances gastronomy
had always been his weak point--and women. But he drank little
and did not play cards. In spite of hearty eating he did not
forget the duties of a welcome guest. He kept up conversation
with the master of the house, who told him carelessly of a rare
and beautiful picture found at some collector's.
"A real, a genuine Overbeck. We were to examine it with Maryan,
but since Maryan did not come--" He turned to young Darvid: "Why
did you not come?"
There was no answer. The waxen mask, supported on the arm of the
chair, remained motionless and gazed with gloomy eyes into space.
"Overbeck!" began Kranitski, and added, "a pre-Raphaelite."
Over Maryan's fixed features ran a quiver caused by better
thoughts. Without the least movement of features or posture he
grumbled:
"Nazarene."
Kranitski corrected himself hurriedly and with a shamed face.
"Yes, pardon! A Nazarene."
"But, naturally, a Nazarene pure blood," said the baron, growing
animated, "the uninitiated confound Nazarenes with
pre-Raphaelites quite erroneously. They form a separate school.
This Overbeck is a find. I will say more, it is a discovery. If
it were dragged out of that den and taken abroad one might do a
splendid business with it."
Warmed by a considerable quantity of wine, his complexion made
somewhat rosy, the baron fell to giving Kranitski an idea which
had circled long in his brain: "There is in Poland a number of
ancient families who are failing financially, and who possess
many remnants of former wealth. There are frequently things of
high value not only objects of pure art, but the most various
products of former wealth and taste; as, for instance, hangings,
tapestry belts, china, tapestry, furniture, and jewellery. The
owners, pushed to the wall by evil circumstances, would sell
willingly, and for a trifle, articles which have great value now
in both hemispheres. One must search for them, it is true, almost
as the humanists once sought for Greek and Latin manuscripts, but
whoever could find, purchase, and sell these would open a real
mine of great profits. In Europe, England is the country most
favorable for commercial operations of this kind, but the richest
field is America. To buy here for a trifle and sell in the United
States for gold weighed out to you. But, before beginning
business, one should go to America, examine the field, form
connections, take initial steps. Above all approach the
undertaking with considerable capital and great knowledge."
While explaining his idea and the plan of operations which had
come to his head long before, and drawing from the glass
excellent liquid, the baron became animated, grew young, his
little eyes under their ruddy brows gleamed sharply. And even
Maryan said all at once in grumbling tones:
"It is an idea!"
"Is it not?" laughed the baron.
Kranitski listened in silence, with curiosity. Then, halting a
little, he said, with some indecision:
"If your project becomes a fact then you will take me as your
agent. I know a little of those things; I know where to look for
them, and I offer you my earnest services--very earnest."
In spite of the jesting tone one could note in his imploring
look, and in his smile full of timid, uncertain quivers, that he
felt keenly the need of fixing himself to someone or something
and escaping from the great void yawning under him.
All three lighted cigars and went to the drawing-room where
Maryan sat again on the Louis XI box, Kranitski sank into a
cathedra, and the baron opened at the window one sheet of an
English paper, which shielded him before the light from his knees
to the crown of his head. He was silent rather long, then from
behind the paper curtain was heard his nasal voice:
"Crushing!"
"What?" inquired Kranitski.
"The fair at Chicago."
And he read aloud an account of the preparations for the colossal
exhibition which was to be in that American city.
He accompanied the reading with judgments which contained
comparisons: The old part of the world--the old civilizations,
the old common methods and proceedings.
Besides narrow spaces, familiar horizons--too familiar. But
America was something not worn to rags yet. By a wonderful chance
the baron had not been there, but when he thought of America
Rimbaud's verses occurred to him. He rose, and, walking through
the chamber, gave the following:
"Divine vibration of green seas,
The peace of fields spotted with animals;
Silences traversed by worlds, by angels."
"And by millions!" called Maryan from the foot of the white monk
Alberich.
He took his shoulders from the monk's robe, and added:
"Nowhere are there such colossal fortunes, and such powerful
means of getting them, as on those fields spotted with animals."
And all at once, as it were, the desiccating interior of his
heart became animated, he rose and began to walk quickly through
the chamber, passed the slowly walking baron, and said:
"It is an idea! One must dwell on it. I must go there, or
somewhere else--do something with myself. I am driven from this
place by one of the greatest disappointments which I have ever
known. I reached the bottom of disenchantments yesterday. That is
why I did not come to look at the Overbeck. I was buried. My last
painted pot burst. I was disappointed in a man for whom I had
felt something like honor."
He spoke English. The baron asked him in English also:
"What has happened?"
And Kranitski, with a little worse accent in the same language,
repeated the question a number of times.
Maryan, continuing to walk through the chamber, narrated the
conversation with his father and the ultimatum given him. The
baron laughed noiselessly, and inquired; Kranitski gave out cries
of indignation. Maryan, with a fiery face and feverish movement,
added:
"I had thought that man worthy of my admiration. Logical,
consequent, unconquerable, formed of one piece. A magnificent
monolith. No sentiments, no prejudices. Permitting no one to
disturb the development of his individuality. I understood that
his method of rearing me, and then pushing me to the highest
spheres of life, pointed to this, that I was to live for his
honor. I was to be one of the columns of that temple which he had
raised to his own glory. But just that absoluteness with which he
used everything for his own purposes roused in me homage. The
power of producing was in him equal to his power of egotism. So
must it be with every individuality fashioned by nature not on a
model, but originally. I did not know him much, and desired a
nearer acquaintance. I was certain that we should understand each
other perfectly; that I should behold from nearby a magnificent
monolith. Meanwhile it was stuck over with labels of various
kinds of trash, and covered with half a hundred stains of the
past--"
"He remembered the school of training and labor in time," laughed
Kranitski.
"Peste!" hissed the baron. "What a rheumatism of thought!"
"Moral principles!" added Kranitski, "he himself practises them
beautifully. Let him give even half of his millions to that
poverty which is ashamed to beg. Oh, he will not! He will not do
that! By the help of moral principles it is easy to put sacred
burdens on other men's shoulders."
"That is it," added Maryan, "on other men's shoulders you have
hit the point, my old man. Yes! So many years he cared for
nothing; he considered nothing; now on a sudden he has thrown
down the edifice which he himself built. I know not as to others;
but, as for me, I shall stick to my rights. I cannot permit
myself to fall a victim to this sad accident, that my father is a
mental rheumatic."
He stopped, meditated a moment, then added:
"That is even more than rheumatism of thought; it is the
exudation of a decaying past, filling the brain with the
corruption--of a corpse."
"Corruption of a corpse! very apt this expression!" exclaimed the
baron.
Kranitski made a wry face in the cathedra, and muttered:
"No, no. What horror! I will never agree to that phrase."
But no one heard this quiet protest. Now the baron in his turn,
walking more and more quickly through the room, spoke on.
Maryan remained sitting on the Louis XI box while the baron
walked and complained of the narrowness of relations and the low
level of civilization in the city:
"This is the real fatherland of darned socks. Everything here has
the mustiness of locked up store-houses. There is a lack of room
and ventilation. In England William Morris, a great poet,
establishes a factory for objects pertaining to art, and makes
millions. I beg you to show anything similar in this place.
Darvid has made a colossal fortune only because he was not blind,
and did not hold on to his father's fence. Nationality and
fa-ther-land, each is a darned sock--one of those labels which
men with parti-colored clothes paste on a gate before which
diggers are standing. One must escape from this position. One
must know how to will."
The baron said, that as soon as he could bring certain plans of
his to completion and regulate certain property interests, and
even before regulating them, he would occupy himself with
completing his new plan. He turned to Maryan:
"Will you be my partner? It would be difficult for me to get on
without you. You have an excellent feeling for art--you are
subtle--"
"Why not," answered Maryan. "But one should go first of all and
examine the field; one should go to America before the
exhibition."
"Naturally, before the exhibition, so as to begin action before
it is over. In the question of capital--"
"I will sell my personal property, which has some value, and
incur another debt," said Maryan, carelessly.
The baron halted; he thought awhile; his faded face took on that
expression of roguery which the French call polissonnerie;
joyousness seized him.
"We will shoot off!" cried he; and he made a movement with his
foot like that which a street-sweeper makes to catch a bark shoe
thrown up in the air.
Maryan rose, shook himself out of his lethargy, and said, almost
with delight:
"It is an idea. To America!"
Then from the abyss of the immensely deep and broad cathedra
Kranitski's voice was heard, orphan-like, timid:
"But will you take me with you, my dears? When you shoot off you
will take me with you, will you not?"
There was no answer. The baron was sitting already before the
organ and had begun to play some grand church composition; in the
dignified sound of that music Tristan made a knightly bow to
Isolde, and the "Triumph of Death," with its dark outline, was
reflected on the background of Alberich's white habit, while the
saints painted with golden haloes on the windows clasped their
pale hands above their bright robes.