Christian had given his valet orders to prepare for his journey. Then
he had gone to the green-houses to interview the gardeners. In the
meantime twilight had set in. It had rained all day, and the trees
were still dripping. But now the fresh greenery gleamed against the
afterglow, and the windows of the beautiful house were dipped in gold.
“Herr Voss is in the library,” an old footman announced.
Christian had begged Amadeus Voss to use the library quite freely,
whether he himself was at home or not. The servants had been
instructed. Voss had offered to catalogue the library, but as yet he
had made no beginning. He merely passed from book to book, and if one
interested him he read it and forgot the passage of time.
The afterglow fell into the library too. Voss had taken fifty or sixty
volumes from the shelves, and he was now arranging them in stacks on a
large oak table.
“Why do you do that, Amadeus?” Christian asked carelessly.
“If you give me your permission, I’d like to burn these,” Amadeus Voss
answered.
Christian was surprised. “Why?” he asked.
“Because I lust after an _auto-da-fé_. It is worthless and corrupt
stuff, the product of idle and slothful minds. Don’t you scent the
poison of it in the atmosphere?”
“No, I scent nothing,” said Christian, more absent-mindedly than ever.
“But burn them if it amuses you,” he answered.
Amadeus had been in the library since three o’clock that afternoon,
and he had had a remarkable experience there. In looking about among
the shelves he had come upon a bundle of letters. By some accident it
had probably fallen behind the books and been lost sight of. He had
read a few lines of the topmost letter, and from the first words there
breathed upon him the glow of an impassioned soul. Then he had yielded
to the temptation of untying the package. He had taken the letters into
a corner, and read them swiftly and with fevered eyes.
A few bore dates. The whole series had been written about two years
before. They were signed merely by the initial F. But in every word, in
every image, in every turn of speech there was such a fullness of love
and devotion and adoration and self-abnegation, and so wild and at the
same time so spiritual a stream of tenderness and pain, of happiness
and yearning, that Amadeus Voss seemed to glide from a world of shadows
and appearances into a far more real one. Yet in that, too, all was but
feigned and represented to lure and madden him.
And F.--this unknown, eloquent, radiant, profoundly moved and nameless
woman--where was she now? What had she done with her love? Pressed
flowers lay between certain pages. Was the hand that plucked them
withered as they? And what had he done with her love, he whom she had
wooed so humbly and who was so riotous a spendthrift of great gifts?
He had been only twenty. He had probably taken as a pastime all that
was the fate of this full heart, and had used it and trampled it in a
consciousness of wealth that neither counts nor reckons.
Deeper and deeper, as he read, a spear penetrated into the breast
of Amadeus. The Telchines gained power over him. He turned pale and
crimson. His fingers trembled, and his mouth shrivelled in dryness, and
his head seemed to be full of needles. Had Christian entered then, he
would have flung himself upon him in foaming hatred, to throttle or to
stab him. Here was the unattainable, the eternally closed door. And a
demon had hurled him down before it.
He sat long in dull brooding. Then he looked about furtively, and
dropped the letters into his pocket. And then there arose in him
the desire to destroy, to annihilate something. He chose books as
sacrifices, and awaited Christian’s coming with repressed excitement.
“It’s practically all contemporary trash,” he said drily, and pointed
to the books. “Stories like tangled thread, utterly confused, without
beginning or end. If you’ve read one page, you know a thousand. There
are descriptions of manners with a delight in what is common and mean.
The emotions riot like weeds, and the style is so noisy that you lose
all perception. Love, love, love! That’s one theme. And the other is
wretchedness! There are histories and memoirs, too. Sheer gossip! The
poems are empty rhymings by people with inflated egos. There’s popular
philosophy--self-righteous twaddle. A sincere parson’s talk were more
palatable. What is it for? Reading is a good thing, if a real spirit
absorbs me, and I forget and lose myself in it. But the unspiritual has
neither honesty nor imagination; he is a thief and a swindler.”
“Burn it, burn it!” Christian repeated, and sat down at the other side
of the room.
Amadeus went to the marble fire-place, which was so large that a man
could easily have lain down in it, and opened the gates of brass. Then
he carried the books there--one pile after another, and heaped them on
the flat stones. When he had thrown them all in, he set fire to the
pages of one book, and lowered his head and watched the flames spread.
“You know that I am going to leave Christian’s Rest,” Christian said,
turning to him. It had grown quite dark now.
Voss nodded.
“I don’t know for how long,” Christian continued. “It may be very long
before I return.”
Amadeus Voss said nothing.
“What are you going to do, Amadeus?” Christian asked him.
Voss shrugged his shoulders. Involuntarily he pressed his hand against
the inner pocket in which lay the letters of the unknown woman.
“It is dark and oppressive in the forester’s house,” said Christian.
“Won’t you come and live here? I’ll give the necessary orders at once.”
“Don’t make me a beggar with your alms, Christian Wahnschaffe,” Voss
answered. “If you were to give me the house, with all its forests and
gardens, you would but rob me, and leave me poorer by so much.”
“I don’t understand that,” said Christian.
Voss walked up and down. The carpet muffled his sturdy tread.
“You are far too passionate, Amadeus,” Christian said.
Amadeus stopped in front of a lectern that had been placed in a niche.
Upon it lay the great Bible that Christian had bought. It was open. The
flames of the burning books flared so brightly that he could read the
words. For a space he read in silence. Then he took the book, and going
nearer to the fire, sat down opposite Christian, and read aloud:
“Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth, and let thy heart cheer thee in
the days of thy youth, and walk in the ways of thine heart and in the
sight of thine eyes: but know thou that for all these things God will
bring thee into judgment.”
At the word, God, the almost unemphatic voice sounded like a bell.
“Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth, while the evil
days come not, nor the years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, I have
no pleasure in them; while the sun, or the light, or the moon, or the
stars be not darkened, nor the clouds return after the rain: In the day
when the keepers of the house shall tremble, and the strong men shall
bow themselves, and the grinders cease because they are few, and those
that look out of the windows be darkened, and the doors shall be shut
in the streets; when the sound of the grinding is low, and he shall
rise up at the voice of the bird, and all the daughters of music shall
be brought low; also when they shall be afraid of that which is high,
and fears shall be in the way, and the almond tree shall flourish, and
the grasshopper shall be a burden and desire shall fail: because man
goeth to his long home, and the mourners go about the street: or ever
the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken, or the pitcher
be broken at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the cistern.”...
He stopped. Christian, who had seemed scarcely to listen, had arisen
and come nearer to the fire. Now he sat down on the floor, with his
legs crossed under him, and gazed with a serene wonder into the flames.
“How beautiful is fire!” he said softly.
Speechlessly Amadeus Voss regarded him. Then he spoke quite suddenly.
“Let me go with you, Christian Wahnschaffe.”
Christian did not take his eyes from the fire.
“Let me go with you,” Voss said more insistently. “It is possible that
you may need me: it is certain that without you I am lost. Darkness is
in me and a demon. You alone break the spell. I do not know why it is
thus, but it is. Let me go with you.”
Christian replied: “Very well, Amadeus, you shall stay with me. I want
some one to stay with me.”
Amadeus grew pale, and his lips quivered.
Christian said: “How beautiful is fire!”
And Amadeus murmured: “It devours uncleanness and remains clean.”