XI

It was three weeks before the body of my father was found. A stormy

nor-wester had thrown it high up on shore 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 assumes.

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 coarse 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 institutions, 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 passions 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 nobler, 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 nobleman 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-class 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,

coarse, 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

ignoble 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 assurance 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 God'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 godly, 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 God'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 masses; 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 compassion 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 institution and to free myself from the

meshes of his arguments, he said in leaving:

"You come at an opportune moment, dear Count Muralto! The rôle of

ingénue has long been vacant in our company. But you need not assume 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 ingénue!" said Michael; "but on the verge of

foolishness. To look down upon merchants and business is no longer

naïve, 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 God."

After this conversation, about which I said nothing to my mother, I

changed and my attitude 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 passions 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 mænads, 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, assumed 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 circumstance 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 ingénue!" 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 constitute 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."

"It does not befit us, dear Muralto, to loathe one whom God has created

after his own image. We have every one of us been saddled with a

portion of filth and it does not seem enviable to me to work that off

alone, as you. I can go to confession and belong to a large friendly

circle, where they one and all are bitten by the same fleas and must

chop with the same hatchet. We understand one another, and trust one

another and forgive one another and help one another. There are weak

brothers and strong brothers, we all of us know that, and we do not

despise one another for that reason. This seems to me a much more

desirable way of carrying your burden than as you do, who shoulder it

alone. We at least do not dissemble toward one another, but you play

the part of ingénue, not only toward the entire commonalty, but even

toward us who know quite well what to think of your pretension to moral

superiority."

I felt that I should succumb to this struggle. I gave it up. With a

cool bow I parted from him and from that moment avoided all association

with younger or older members of the clergy. Though I was willing to

assume that I had not met the best soldiers of the camp, still the

honor of fighting in their ranks did not entice me. I preferred, after

all, to fight it out alone.

From this moment on my seclusion begins: I felt that Michael was right

- my pretensions were ridiculous, I had nothing by which I could claim

superiority, I was a hypocrite, I played an underhand game as well as

they whom I seemed to look down upon.

And yet - and yet - I felt that I was not understood, that my erring

was different from theirs, and that my piety had a quality lacking in

theirs. And this undestroyable consciousness of a superiority, which I

could not make prevail, of an inner life which I could not find in

anyone and could reveal to none, drove me back into total, absolute

solitude and inner separation from the human world in which I had to

move.

This is an old story that constantly repeats itself. You know it all

too well, do you not, reader? And we are not the only ones to undergo

this process. In thousands and thousands of every generation the new

life attempts to break the old group-ideas. In most of them it is

overcome and subjected to the old. In a very few it breaks loose,

prevails for a moment, and then is annihilated in the tragic

destruction of body and soul by a death of torture, suicide, or

insanity, as an inspiring example for a few, as a disheartening warning

to many. In still others, as in you and me, dear reader, it finds a way

of maintaining itself in the hostile world, protected by a tough hide

of pretext and disguise, as the tiny seed swallowed by the birds

withstands assimilation and, thrown out, finds a way of growth.

Thus for twenty years I have wandered about like a stranger in the

world, apparently wholly subjected and belonging to it, but inwardly

totally estranged, leading an independent life of my own: all this time

inwardly struggling without rest, without peace in a battle apparently

hopeless; until, strengthened and taught by a brief period of bright,

true living, of blithe, vigorous action and nameless, deep sorrow, I

have now entered with wholly different feelings, with trust and

resignation, this last voluntary hermitage, to build with glad delight

and joyous insight upon the mansion of the future.

I told my mother that nothing would probably come of my priesthood. She

listened to it with the passive calmness which had grown customary to

her through continuous practice in forced resignation, but which did

not hide from the subtle observer the undercurrents of very ordinary

human passions and desires. I had gradually come to observe these so

plainly that the lack of self-perception in her grew constantly more

difficult for me to bear without irritation.

This time I saw that she readily abandoned the proud hope of seeing her

son a priest, for the possibility of now achieving the realization of

her favorite marriage scheme. But she intended to show only sorrow and

compassion, and shaking her head, she said:

"So your pride is not overcome, the viper's head not crushed, poor

Vico?"

"I am obedient to that which is most divine in me, mother."

"Your human sense, you mean? Or your human pride?"

"Mother, what other means have we for distinguishing the truth save the

sense that tells us: 'this is true!' exactly as our eye tells us: 'this

is light!' and our skin: 'this is warm!' Would you have me say: 'this

is darkness,' where I see light, or 'this is right,' where I see wrong,

only because you call it right?"

"I cannot argue with you, Vico. Do what seems right to you. I have

learned to be resigned."

"But you desire my happiness, don't you, mother?"

"Ah, dear son, I wish that people would stop seeking for their

happiness. It is all deception and vanity, a bright soap bubble. I have

never known happiness, but have learned to sacrifice all pleasure and

all joy for love of the Saviour."

"Listen a second, mother!" said I, now no longer wholly suppressing my

anger; "if you tell me that there are phantom joys and false happiness

and that we must be careful not to fling ourselves away on these, I'll

admit you are perfectly right. But if you want to make me believe that

the desire for joy and happiness, which was given to all of us, is a

devilish invention that we must not obey - then I call your world a

chaos and your life an offence. The very deepest, all-controlling basis

of our passions is that for happiness and joy, for the true, lasting,

peace-giving happiness, that we sometimes mistakenly seek in idle

pleasures. If God has created us with the intention that we should not

follow the most profound, all-controlling passion he has planted in us,

then God is a foot who has given life to cripples. Profoundly as I have

searched myself, I always find the impulse toward light, toward beauty,

toward happiness - to wish to turn me from it is to wish to destroy me.

Never will I be able to follow another guiding star, for I have none,

nor do I see one in any other person. And to none, to none on earth or

in the heavens, shall I subject myself so slavishly as to deny for him

my true, profoundest nature."

My mother carried her handkerchief to her eyes and shook her head with

a sad shrug of the shoulders, but she did not reply.

Then as a lure I dropped a word, to see whether I understood her

rightly - better than she understood herself.

"Isn't Lucia coming? We were to drive to the Pincio?"

The handkerchief dropped and her eyes sparkled a moment. "Lucia? Of

course she is coming. I did not know that you intended to go with us."

Then I knew that I had guessed right, and it was this that estranged me

from my mother, while I gave in nevertheless to her unconscious desire.