II

My parents were Italian aristocrats and my childhood days in the

paternal home in Milan and our country estate near Como loom up vaguely

before me in pictures half memories, half dreams. I cannot clearly

distinguish what is purely memory and what a dream, or dream-memory, of

these olden days. Memory is like tradition; one does not remember the

first impression, but only the memory of it, and who knows how much

that was already distorted; and so the picture changes from year to

year, like a vaguely-told tale.

My childhood days fell towards the middle of the nineteenth century. It

was my time of luxury and state. Our home was a palace with a pillared

courtyard, wide stairway of stone with statuary, and a marble dolphin

spouting water. We had carriages and servants and I wore velvet suits

with wide lace collars and colored silk ties. I remember my father at

the time as a tall, dark, proud man, most fastidiously groomed and

dressed. He had shiny black whiskers and long, thick, wavy and glossy

hair that fell over his forehead with an artful curl. He wore tight

trousers with gaiters and patent leather shoes that always creaked

softly. He had a calm but very decided manner, and impressed me

immensely by his gentle way of giving orders and the confidence with

which he could make himself obeyed. Only my mother resisted him with a

power equally unshakable and equally restrained. As a child I saw this

conflict daily and, without appearing to do so or being myself quite

conscious of it, gave it much thought.

My mother was a very fair blonde Northern woman whom I heard praised

for her great beauty - a fact a child is unable to determine for

himself about his own mother. I know that she had large, gray eyes with

dark rings underneath, and that it often seemed as though she had wept.

Her voice, her complexion, her expression, everything vividly suggested

tears to me. And in the silent struggle with my father her resistance

was that of an aggrieved, painful, sensitive nature: his was cool, more

indifferent and gay, but none the less firm. I never heard them

quarrel, but I saw the politely tempered tension in the dignified

house, during the stately meals, even as the servants saw it. Yet my

father would sometimes hum a tune from an opera and joke and laugh

boisterously with his friends; but mother always went about silently

and gravely, gliding over the thick carpets like a spectre and, at her

best, showing but a wan smile.

We were wealthy and prominent people and my parents felt that very

strongly. And when I think about it now, here in my little provincial

town in Holland, where I shine my own boots, then after all I feel

compassion for the two - for my cool, well-bred father, as well as for

my pale, languishing, distinguished mother. For they considered their

high position just and righteous, and complete, and did not see in how

much it was wanting. My mother did not see how tasteless the fashion

was, - her draped and be-ruffled gown in which she thought herself so

elegant and stately, - her own physical beauty and natural grace barely

saving her from becoming an object of absolute ridicule. And my father

did not know how much his traditional power of heredity had already

been undermined by the democratic ideas everywhere astir.

Our luxury too was strangely deficient in many respects. I have

suffered bitter cold in the great chilly palace; at night one might

break one's neck on the dark stone stairway; in some parts an ofttimes

very foul and disgusting stench prevailed; the servants slept in stuffy

hovels; there was a lavatory of which my father was very proud and

which had cost enormous sums of money, but where in broad daylight one

had to light a candle in order to wash ones hands.

I feel compassion for my proud father when I think of how he collected

art treasures and bought paintings by distinguished artists of the

time, which he would contemplate for hours through a monocle, and which

formed the subject of long intricate critical speculations with his

friends - paintings which after all were really only trifling daubs of

no value whatever at the present time.

It was a dream of wholly successful social glory dreamed by my Italian

parents as confidently as that other dream, dreamed by the Dutch

merchants of this little seaport town. And this Italian dream I dreamed

with them in perfect soberness. I can still become wholly absorbed in

the illusion. I see the purple velvet with the white plume and the

large diamond on my mother's hat, - a small, round bonnet, on the

thick, blonde hair gathered into a net. I stand by her side in the

carriage and feel myself the little prince, the little son of the

Contessa - and see the people bowing with profound respect. I breathe

the faint, fine perfume of frankincense and lavender exhaling from my

mother's clothes. And I recollect my sensation of calm and pride at the

meals with the heavy pretentious plate, the great bouquets of roses,

the violet hose of the clergy who were our guests, the fragrance of the

heavy wine.

And I am touched when I think of the self-delusion of so proud,

arbitrary, critical and sceptical a man as my father, who was

prejudiced so completely by this illusion of his greatness. He would

have looked down scornfully upon the civic pomp of these

seventeenth-century Hollanders and yet that was assuredly finer, even

as was the older Italian civilization, which my father thought to

surpass while he was really living in a state of sad decline.

It is quite comprehensible that in this family feud I sided with my

mother, and that my sister, who was older than I, took my father's

part. Also that my father would by no means submit to this, and that I

very soon began to notice that I myself was the main subject of the

strife, which fact did not tend to increase my modesty. It is strange

how, as children, we take part in these conflicts, apparently wholly

absorbed in our books and games and yet quite aware of the significant

glances, the tears and passions hidden before us, the conversations

suddenly arrested at our entrance, the artificial tone employed toward

us children, the peculiar signs of dreary suspense, of momentous events

beyond our ken imminent in the family circle and which we know we must

pass without comment. Little as I was, I knew full well that the

priests were on my mother's side and that my father fought against a

coalition. But with my mother I felt a sense of warmth, gentleness and

tenderness, and had already been won over to her side long before I

knew what the contest was about. Her beauty, which I heard praised; the

deference I saw her met with; her sanctity, which I recognized as a

great power, which my father, otherwise yielding to nothing or no one,

dared only resist with faltering mockery; the sphere of suffering and

tears in which she lived - all this drew my chivalrous heart to her. I

considered my father a great man, a giant who dared anything and could

get whatever he pleased - but for this very reason would I defend my

mother against him. I went to church with her faithfully, and strictly

followed her admonitions to piety, and the frivolous jokes which my

father sometimes made on that score I proudly and heroically met with

profound gravity.

But this chivalrous conflict was speedily ended. The tension became

aggravated so that the banquets ceased and my mother did not appear for

days, and only summoned me to her side for a few moments when she would

weep passionately and pray with me. Strange gentlemen came for long and

secret conferences; and one bleak winter morning, very early, a large

coach appeared in which my father and I departed.

Then there began for us two a restless life of wandering that continued

for years. We travelled through northern Africa, Asia Minor, through

all Europe, through America, and never did we remain in one place so

long a time that I could grow fond of it, or feel myself at home there.

As if by intentional design or driven by a constant unrest, my father

would always break up whenever an abode began to feel homelike to me

and I had found some friends in the vicinity, and it was wonderful with

what strength of mind he persevered in this irksome, arduous and

ofttimes even dangerous life.

We sometimes travelled through half barbarous countries with very

primitive means of conveyance. My father had no permanent servant and

would not suffer any woman to take charge of me. We were together

constantly, night and day, and he did for me all that a mother could

have done. He helped me to wash and dress, and even mended my clothes.

He gave me lessons, taught me drawing, music, various languages,

fencing, swimming and riding; but although I very much desired to, he

never permitted me to attend school anywhere. His attention was never

for a moment diverted from me, his care for me knew no weakening, and

yet we never became really intimate. I felt that the old conflict was

being carried on under conditions that were much harder for me. He had

parted me from my mother and now that I stood alone, would vanquish me.

He surely did not suspect that I would understand it thus and would

consciously carry on the strife. But though I did not reason it out, my

intuition clearly apprehended his tactics, and I held out more

obstinately than ever with all the stubbornness of a child and the

strength of mind which I had from himself inherited.

On three types of humanity my father was not to be approached. Firstly,

the priests, the black ones, as he called them, whom he hated with all

the fierce vehemence of his race; and, in spite of me, he so

successfully inculcated into me his own aversion, that I cannot yet

unexpectedly behold a priestly robe without a sensation of shuddering

as at the sight of a snake. Secondly, the bourgeois, whom he called

philistines, - the humbly living, contented, narrow-minded, timid, -

whom he did not hate as much as he despised them with fervid scorn. And

finally women, whom he neither hated nor despised, but whom he feared

with a scoffing dread.

And now, looking back upon my youth from so great a distance, now I

understand that it was not only healthy, natural tenderness that drove

him to such exaggerated care for me, but bitter, impassioned feelings

of opposition and revenge born of mortifying and painful experience.

Priests, women and philistines had been too mighty or too cunning for

him; now he would at least keep me, his successor in the world, out of

their hands. That was the one great satisfaction he still sought in

life, more from grudge against his enemies than for love of me.

Besides there were inconsistencies in his character that I am now quite

able to explain, but which as a child, seemed very queer and shocking

to me. He posed as a free-thinker and took pleasure in ridiculing my

ingenuous piety. He called God a great joker, who made sport of men and

amused himself at their expense. "But he won't fool me," he would say,

"and I promise you that I'll tell him so straight to his face if I get

the chance of speaking to him hereafter." Only of natural science and

nature did he speak with respect. Nature, according to him, was always

beautiful and good where man did not spoil her. He called natural

science our only security in life, weapon and shield against priestly

lies and religious hypocrisy.

And yet my father frequently went to church, also taking me with him.

Wherever he went he never failed to visit the temples regardless of the

faith they confessed. He was very musical and he would pretend to go

chiefly for the sacred music. But in the Catholic churches I also saw

him crossing himself with the holy water and even kneeling for hours in

prayer before an image of the Blessed Virgin wreathed with flowers and

illumined by candles.

This was incomprehensible to me, having as yet no knowledge of the

illogical workings of an artistically poetic and musical temperament.

But I drew my own conclusions, and it was not surprising that I

considered the devout father the true one, and the unbeliever perverted

through evil influence. Thus, despite her absence, mother's influence

prevailed. My memory had stripped her image of all that was trivial,

commonplace and unlovely, and, little by little, with her suffering,

her tears, her beauty, her tenderness, she began to shine for me in

pure angelic holiness, the subject of my faithful and ardent devotion.

I shall not dwell on my long and arduous wanderings with my father.

Indeed, I do not remember much about them. I must have seen many

strange and beautiful sights, but they meant little to me. When the

soul is young it does not take root in surroundings too vast and does

not absorb the beautiful. I have a clearer recollection of certain

picture books, of little cosy corners in the rooms we inhabited, of a

small pewter can which I had found on the road and from which I would

never be parted - not even when I went to bed than of the countries or

cities we traversed.

True, I must have absorbed some of the wonderful things about me, for

they undoubtedly furnished me with the material of which my dreams,

about which I shall tell you further on, were woven. But as a boy I

took no pleasure whatever in travelling. I longed for my mother, and

for our country house, where I could play with my little sister under

the airy open galleries in the rose garden or build dams in the brook.

Only the journeying by rail, a novelty at that time, interested me the

first few times, and above all the trip across the ocean to America,

when Philadelphia and Chicago were only small places, and crossing the

ocean by steamboat was still considered a perilous and risky

undertaking.

Only of certain moments with lasting significance have I retained a

sharper recollection. Thus I remember a miserable day somewhere in Asia

Minor. We had both been ill from tainted food, my father and I, and had

lain helpless in a most wretched tavern. Meanwhile thieves had stolen

all our belongings, and when we wanted to journey on we could get no

horses, for the inhabitants feared the thieves and their vengeance

should we accuse them. Amidst a troop of dirty, eagerly debating

Syrians in a scorching hot street I stood at my father's side peering

into his wan face, sallow and drawn from the illness, with glistening

streaks of perspiration and an expression of deadly fatigue and

stubborn will.

He had a pistol in each hand and repeated a few words of command over

and over again, while from the brown, gleaming heads about us came, in

sometimes angry, sometimes mournful, sometimes mocking tones, loud, but

to me unintelligible, replies. I saw the fierce, self-interested,

indifferent faces, with the wild eyes, and I realized how narrow was

the boundary separating our life from death.

Still the scorching wild beast odor of the place comes back to me and I

hear the sound of a monotonous tune, with fiddling and beating of drums

in the distance, and the papery rustling of the palm leaves above our

heads. This disagreeable condition must have continued a long while. At

that time all mankind, the whole world, seemed hostile and desolate to

me.

I knew, indeed, that my father would conquer. He did not want to die,

and I had a childlike faith in his tremendous will-power. And so it

actually turned out, and I was neither surprised nor glad. The irksome

life of wandering continued, and I had a bitter feeling that it was my

father who shut me out from the world and made it hostile to me.

We did after all finally procure a guide that day and made a long march

on foot along scorching sandy roads, weak and tired as we were, guided

only by a half-witted boy, humming and chewing wisps of straw. Then I

began to realize what suffering means. My father did not speak, nor

would he endure any complaints from me. I bore up against it bravely,

as bravely as I could, but I began to ponder much at that time. "How

long would I be able to endure this?" I thought. "And why does he do

it? If all this folly and hardship served no purpose, we did not have

to bear it then. What could he purpose thereby? Will something very

pleasant follow? Or will these hardships continue until we die? Is all

this God plaguing us, as he says? Why does God do it, and should we let

ourselves be tormented so?"

Then, after hours of silent wandering, I put a question:

"Is there justice, father?"

By this I meant, whether for all this footsoreness, this thirst and

this exertion, I would be rewarded by proportional pleasure. My father

did not reply. He evidently had need of all his energies to walk on.

But when we had finally reached the seaport and had washed ourselves

with seawater, he said abruptly: "There is only power!"

That answer did not please me. It was pleasure I wanted. Power could

not avail me.