I
Crammon found the forties to be a critical period in a man’s life. It
is then that in his mind he sits in judgment upon himself; he seeks the
sum of his existence, and finds blunder after blunder in the reckoning.
But these moral difficulties did not very much influence either his
attitude or the character of his activities. He found his appetite for
life growing, but he found loneliness a heavier burden than before.
When he was alone he was overcome by a feeling which he called the
melancholy of the half-way house.
In Paris he was overtaken by this distemper of the soul. Felix Imhof
and Franz Lothar von Westernach had agreed to meet him, and both had
left him in the lurch. Imhof had been kept in Frankfort by his business
on the exchange and his real estate interests, and had telegraphed a
later date of arrival. Franz Lothar had remained in Switzerland with
his brother and Count Prosper Madruzzi.
In his vexation Crammon spent his days largely in bed. He either read
foolish novels or murmured his annoyances over to himself. Out of
sheer boredom he ordered fourteen pairs of boots of those three or
four masters of the craft who work only for the elect and accept a new
customer only when recommended by a distinguished client.
He was to have spent the month of September with the Wahnschaffe family
on their estate in the Odenwald. He had made the acquaintance of young
Wolfgang Wahnschaffe the summer before at a tennis tournament in
Hamburg, and had accepted his invitation. In his exasperation over his
truant friends he now wrote and excused himself.
One evening in Montmartre he met the painter Weikhardt, whom he had
known in Munich. They walked together for a while, and Weikhardt
encouraged Crammon to visit a neighbouring music hall. A very young
dancer had been appearing there for the past week, the painter told
him, and many French colleagues had advised seeing her.
Crammon agreed.
Weikhardt led him through a maze of suspicious looking alleys to a no
less suspicious looking house. This was the Théâtre Sapajou. A boy
in fantastic costume opened the door that led to a moderately large,
half-darkened hall with scarlet walls and a wooden gallery. About fifty
people, mostly painters and writers with their wives, sat facing a tiny
stage. The performance had begun.
Two fiddles and a clarionet furnished the music.
And Crammon saw Eva Sorel dance.