MR. TOKER’S ILLUSTRIOUS GUESTS
By this time there had assembled a still larger crowd than before,
visitors having come to join the house-party. Whoever had letters of
introduction to either Mr. Toker or to one of his guests, was invited
once and for all to spend the evening in the Rose-Palace.
When Franka entered the room, Mr. Toker came toward her: “Ah, here you
are.... I was just looking for you. A gentleman is here who is eager to
be introduced to you. I will bring him immediately.”
He went away, and after a few moments came back with a strikingly
distinguished-looking young man:—
“Miss Garlett, here is Prince Victor Adolph, of ——, who tells me that he
has heard you speak in his father’s city and now is highly pleased to be
able to bring his homage to you.”
After saying this, Mr. Toker withdrew and joined his other guests.
Franka greeted her new acquaintance with a bow. “I am very glad to meet
you.... Your Highness was at my lecture?”
“Yes, gnädiges Fräulein, and I am very much pleased to be able to hear
you again. The problem that you are treating interests me deeply.”
He spoke very deliberately in a low tone, almost timidly.
“Is that so, Prince? Are you really interested in the tasks that
confront young women? For that is the theme which I took for my lecture
in your home city.”
“Heavens, I am interested in everything that is in any degree
revolutionary.”
“A remarkable taste for an heir to a throne.”
“I shall never mount the throne—thank God!”
“That is a pity, for revolutionary monarchs are exactly what our epoch
might make use of.”
“Do you think our epoch needs monarchs?”
This tone surprised Franka and appealed to her. In order to be able to
continue the conversation, she sat down on a sofa which was just behind
her. At her invitation Victor Adolph took his place on the sofa at a
respectful distance from her. She let her eyes rest with pleasure on his
figure. He was slender, sinewy, and very tall; his head with its blond
curly hair was held high, as if he were a very haughty man; but this
impression was contradicted by an exceedingly gentle expression about
the mouth; the red lips were not concealed by his slight mustache; his
eyes were intensely blue and full of vivacity; his eyebrows rather
delicate and straight, also thick and almost black. His age was about
twenty-six. Taken all in all, he was a fine specimen of the genus “Man.”
With no less pleasure Victor Adolph’s eyes rested on the womanly form
next him. Indeed, Franka now looked womanly and not girlish as at her
first arrival at the Sielenburg. Both the years and her work had matured
her. The earnest and passionate mental work which she had to accomplish
in her chosen mission had imprinted on her face an expression of almost
gloomy resolution, but this wholly disappeared when she opened her mouth
to speak, or still more when she smiled; then dimples showed in her
cheeks and made her look much younger than she was. Her figure also,
though still slim and supple, had lost its former ethereal delicacy. It
was the figure of a majestic Diana, not of an emaciated nymph, such as
“the new art” liked to paint. For the matter of that, at this time the
fashion had changed; the angular, the osseous, thin-as-a-rail style was
no longer held up as the ideal of feminine beauty. Arms like sticks,
making a triangle at the elbow and terminating in huge hands;
rectangular shoulders, from between which rises conically a neck
displaying all the tendons; hips so narrow that the whole figure has the
shape of a perpendicular worm, writhing even when it is not stepped
on—all this, according to general taste, had given place again to the
round, soft, and wavy line which has always prevailed as the line of
beauty in the creations of Nature.
Franka practiced the greatest simplicity in her dress; she wore only
smooth materials of one color, without any adornment of puffs,
furbelows, or the like. Even though her toilette followed the fashion
there was a stamp of originality and a personal touch in it. Her sleeves
had invariably the well-known open Garlett shape. She always wore a
bouquet of fresh violets at her belt. Her hair also was constantly
dressed in the same way, the heavy black braids coiled on top of her
head and worn like a diadem. As adornment she wore only pearls, although
the Sielen family jewels consisted of diamonds and all kinds of precious
stones.
Victor Adolph’s eyes studied her from head to foot—he was a great
connoisseur and appraiser of the art of feminine dress: art in the true
sense of the word; for only an artistic sense can succeed in so
conforming the style, the color, and the character of a gown to the
peculiarities of its wearer, so that the two make a harmonious picture.
That evening, Franka wore a gown of light pale lilac; her silken shoes
and stockings were also of lavender; a long string of pearls hung around
her neck, and she had the bunch of violets at her breast, her white arms
as usual were without gloves, her hands innocent of rings.
“You asked if our epoch needs monarchs? Prince, that is a strange
question in your mouth.”
“I have more than once noticed that if I say anything reasonable it
arouses astonishment, because I happen to be a prince. Doesn’t that in
itself imply that princes are superfluous? Indeed, is not the whole
history of social progress marked by the gradual disappearance of once
acknowledged necessities?”
Thus they talked for a while about generalities, but their interest and
their thoughts were not so much directed to the subject of their
conversation as to the mutual observation of their personalities; what
they each felt was that they were satisfied with each other and that
they were sympathetic. But others soon joined them and Prince Victor
Adolph took his leave.
In another corner of the salon stood John A. Toker surrounded by a dozen
of his most distinguished guests.
“I have just learned, my good friends,” said Mr. Toker, “that in the
course of the next few days the heads of two European countries are
coming here in order to be present at some of our public functions—the
King of Italy and the President of the French Republic. We must manage
it so that the address ‘The War in the Air’ which is put down on our
programme will be heard by these exalted personages. In the first place,
there is nothing more interesting to the leaders of the nations than the
subject, War. There is no surer guarantee of their fame:—if they carry
it on, they are glorious War-Lords; if they manage to avoid it, then
they are sublime Princes of Peace. In the second place, the way in which
the war-problem is treated among us can only prove useful when it
reaches the rulers of human society.”
“Or the wide masses,” remarked one of the bystanders.
“Well, yes,” assented Toker; “the masses also constitute a ruling order.
Whoever wishes the welfare of human society will not care whether it is
attained from above or from below. Best of all, when both meet and
complement each other.”
The same bystander again remarked: “Opposites do not complement, but
mutually destroy each other.”
“Ah, my worthy friend,” retorted Toker, “we must not be checked in our
endeavors by such generalities. If phrases like that do contain a truth,
still we must find out whether they can be applied to the special case
that lies before us. A thing must be seized from _all_ sides. That
offers the best chance of finally hitting upon the right side or several
right sides. Not merely one road leads to Rome. All of you, my dear
Knights of the Rose, are a living proof to me how varied are the ways
that lead to the heights of Humanity—every one of you has struck out in
a different path, and yet they all meet in—”
“Lucerne!” interpolated some one.
Toker nodded. “Quite right! In Lucerne: that means, since our
‘Rose-Week,’ something else than the mere name of a city.”
With joyous pride he glanced around and summed up in his mind the
valuation of the intellects there assembled. In fact, he had good reason
to be proud, for among the great men who had come to Lucerne at his
invitation were.... Yet, the form in which this story is told, allowing
events to be projected into the future, precludes calling the Knights of
the Rose Order by name.... So, then, no names—only a few incomplete
data:—
A French author, regarded by his countrymen as the greatest of the
living authors. No longer young, he has an enormous list of books to his
credit; all brilliantly worked out with historical, prehistoric, and
imaginary background, full of irony and full of wrath against social
follies and absurdities, upright, bold, a warm worshiper before the
altar of beauty.
A young Russian poet. The events of the Manchurian War, the horrors of
the succeeding revolution, and of the still more horrible
counter-revolution still played on his soul, just as the tempest plays
on the strings of an æolian harp, enticing forth the most magical tones.
He is waging a fierce, relentless war against society’s most arrant
enemy: against stupidity in all its forms; especially in the form of
superstition and in that of the criminal folly which impels men to
enthrall, to persecute, and to tear one another to pieces. His eyes are
unspeakably sad, but resolution speaks from his features. He wields his
lash savagely and pitilessly, not because he hates or despises
mankind—on the contrary, he sees in it a temple from which he will drive
the profaners in holy wrath.
A great tragédienne of the Latin stock. When she plays, she appears to
express the lament of her own sorrow. Seeing her you involuntarily think
of what some artless Madonna paintings show; a bleeding heart surrounded
with a wreath of thorns. All the majesty that halos misfortune is
expressed in her carriage, in the accent of her voice. She is beautiful,
but her beauty is as it were veiled behind a dark crape. Truly her art
is many-sided and she plays even gay parts; but what especially
characterizes her is the reflection of human suffering which seems
rather the exposure of her own. You cannot be a spectator of her acting
and fail to be deeply moved, and a soul subjected to such emotion is a
soul ennobled at least during the time while the emotion lasts.
A German writer; a deep student of natural sciences. A prophet of an
infinitely poetic natural philosophy, thereby exposed to the scornful
and supercilious arrogance of technical and special scientists. Not for
him, to pigeonhole, to ticket, and to number; his outlook embraces the
wide, all-circling horizon; his spirit penetrates into the All-Spirit;
his knowledge and love of Nature soar up into worship; his books are
literary masterpieces. And for this reason pedants are quivering with
scorn, so that their very souls, being so dry, crack if his name is
mentioned.
A French statesman and politician, a senator, and experienced diplomat:
a man of the world to his finger-tips; full of witty turns and repartees
in conversation; full of clear, conclusive logic in public speech; one
of the most consistent and fearless speakers in the Senate. Fearlessness
characterizes his eloquence, for he speaks against the tendencies of the
day, against the chauvinistic-patriotic majority, against the proposals
of his personal friend, the Minister of the Navy. In matters of
international arbitration he is not only quick to support and suggest,
but moreover to accomplish. To him are due agreements, compromises,
treaties; many a web of ancient misunderstandings and jealousies has
been obliterated from the world through his agency, and on this account
the fanatical supporters of nationalism have even threatened his life.
An American inventor—one might rather say a wholesale inventor. People
call him the wizard. He conducts his experiments _en gros_, by the
bushel! The number of marvelous works for which his contemporaries and
those to come have to thank him, the things which lift men up to higher
levels of life, are beyond reckoning; and what is finest about them is
that not one of his instruments and pieces of apparatus is designed or
fitted to serve purposes of destruction. The Mecca of all those who
register patents—the ministries of war—is closed to his inventions. What
he has elaborated and accomplished serves not for making human bodies
into pulp; it has the modest aim of making life easier, more beautiful,
and more enjoyable, and of enriching human society. One of his latest
“trouvailles”—that of casting houses out of cement—had, at the time of
the last Rose-Week at Lucerne, already found so much popular acceptance
that quite commonly these cheap, quickly erected, and at the same time
æsthetic and hygienic domiciles were being built,—that is to say,
cast,—and simultaneously an end was put to one of the greatest of
evils—the wretched housing of the poor, from which a third of the
prevalent vice and illness springs.
A dramatic author from England; sparkling with wit and intellect, who
writes the bitterest satires, but with a background of tenderness; also
an ameliorator of the world and mankind, not, indeed, by saying to men,
“Become better,” but by endeavoring, by his ridicule, to exterminate
whatever makes them bad. He tears off hypocritical masks and shows the
ugly grimaces behind them; on the other hand, he has the knack of
entwining a gentle halo around poor and humble forms, around the
oppressed, the misunderstood, the mistaken. Humor has been defined as a
smile and a tear; in his humor the contrast is much stronger: it is the
sobbing laughter of scorn.
A Scandinavian woman devoted to philosophy, full of the profound gentle
wisdom of experience: an aged woman, who had never married or borne
children, but who speaks with the tongue of angels about the sacredness
of marriage and the rights of His Majesty the Child: a champion of free,
proud individuality—that is to say, pretty much the same thing as Goethe
called personality and designated as the loftiest happiness.
An American statesman: the man whose motto runs: “The same moral law
that holds among individuals must also prevail among nations”; a motto
which is diametrically opposed to the principles on which hitherto the
“classical polities” of the most celebrated European statesmen have been
founded. Our American looks back on a long, beneficent career. Peaceful
victories, positive, not negative, peaceful victories, have been won by
him. His great work has been the successful bringing together of the two
halves of America into one great Union. Moreover, during his
administration he has concluded a large number of permanent arbitration
treaties with the States of Europe. Practically unknown to the general
European public, he has cultivated a large part of that soil which
modern culture has won away from the ancient dominion of War. Toker had
a high regard for this man, who of all his guests stood nearest to him.
Another poet. The son of a small European country. To belong to a
first-class Power is certainly not a condition, not even necessarily a
help, to individual greatness. Dreamy, mysterious almost unreal are this
poet’s stage productions. His prose works, on the contrary, are those of
a clear, perspicuous thinker.
A German historian: one who has triumphantly introduced a new method
into his range of studies—that of a philosophical synthesis. In his
view, history is not the arraying of events in sequence, not the
biographies of single personages who chance to stand in the foreground,
but a process of social development which conditions the events and the
personages—not the reverse. And he sees and proves that the way of this
development leads always to higher organization; and, because he knows
that and because he makes it known, he aids in hastening humanity’s
course along this way.
Still another inventor. This one had not as yet won world-repute, for
his invention was of too recent occurrence. But Toker knew him and his
work, and knew that he merited a Grand Cross in the Order of the
Rose-Knights, not only for the greatness of his invention, but also for
the greatness of the object which would be attained by it. Its first
introduction to the public, its first demonstration, was to surprise the
world during this very week.
A young composer from Russian Poland: a man whose works had come to the
notice of the world during the last two years, but had taken the world
by storm. His operas and symphonies had the most up-to-date richness of
orchestration, the greatest originality of harmony, but were permeated
by a heavenly sweetness of melody, such as had not in long years,
perhaps never before, been heard. For this Rose-Week he had brought his
latest creation, never as yet publicly performed,—a quartette for
violin, harmonium, harp, and baritone voice, entitled “Le Chant des
Roses.” It was perfectly appropriate that music and song should also
have their part in this festal week which stood under the symbol of
Height Achievement.