AUGUST STRINDBERG (continued 2)

In the Dane's studio (the dog guards it no more) we stand and contemplate a picture of Popoffsky painted two years ago. It represents only his head, with a cloud below it. Underneath are a pair of cross-bones like one sees on tombstones. The decapitated head makes us shudder, and the dream of May 14th steals into my memory like a ghost. "How did you come to think," I asked, "of representing him with a head only?"

"That is hard to say; but there seemed to be a fate brooding over this fine mind, with marks of genius, which dreamed of fame without being willing to pay the price for it. Life lets us choose one of two things—the laurel or luxury."

"You have at last discovered that!"

June 23rd,—During these last days since the news of the Russian's arrest, a fresh disquiet seizes me. It appears to me as though someone somewhere were meddling with my destiny, and I tell the Danish painter my suspicion that the hate of the imprisoned Russian makes me suffer like the electric fluid from a dynamo.

There are moments in which I foresee that my stay in Paris will soon be at an end, and that a revolution in my circumstances is at hand.

The weathercock on the cross of Notre-Dame des Champs seems to me to flap its wings as though it wished to fly northwards. Anticipating my speedy departure, I hastily conclude my studies in the Jardin des Plantes. A zinc bath in which I make experiments in alchemy shows on its inner sides a landscape formed by the evaporation of iron salts. I understand it is a presage, but I cannot guess where this landscape is. Hills covered with forests of firs; lying between them, plains covered with fruit trees and cornfields; everything indicates the neighbourhood of a river. One of the hills with precipices of stratified formation is crowned with the ruins of a stately castle. I cannot make out more, but I shall not remain long in uncertainty.

June 20th.—We receive an invitation from the head of the scientific occultists, the editor of the Initiation. As the doctor and I arrived at Marolles en Brie we received three pieces of bad news: A weasel had killed the ducks; a servant girl was ill; the third I forget.

On the evening of our return to Paris, I read in a paper the famous history of the haunted house in Valence en Brie. Brie? I begin to fear that the occupants of my hotel will become suspicious, hear of my excursion to Brie, and in consequence of my experiments in alchemy suppose that I have set on foot that humbug or witchcraft.

I have bought myself a rosary. Why? It is pretty, and the evil spirits fear the Cross; besides, I don't worry any more about the motives of my actions. I act, as the humour takes me, and life is much more interesting. There is a sudden change as regards the Popoffsky case. His friend the Dane begins to doubt his having committed the crime, and says the accusation against him was refuted at the inquest. The publishing of my article is put off, and I feel as cold towards him as before. At the same time the monstrous dog reappears—a hint for me to be on my guard.

As I am writing in the afternoon at the table near my window, a thunderstorm bursts. The first drops of rain fall on my manuscript and blot it in such a way that from the obliterated letters the word "Alp"[3] is formed, and also a blot in the shape of an enormous face. I preserve this; it resembles the Japanese god of thunder as portrayed in the Atmosphère of Camille Flammarion.

June 28th.—I have seen my wife in a dream; her front teeth were missing. She gave me a guitar, which looked like a Danube boat. This dream threatened me with imprisonment.

In the afternoon I rub together on a piece of paper quicksilver, tin, sulphur, and chlorate of ammonia. When I took off the mixture, the paper retained the impression of a face, which had an extraordinary resemblance to that of my wife in the dream of the past night.

July 1st.—I expect an eruption, an earthquake, a thunderbolt somewhere or other. Nervous as a horse when wolves are near, I scent danger, and pack my box ready for Hight without being able to decide on it. The Russian has been liberated from prison for want of proofs; his friend the Dane has become my enemy. The customers in the restaurant persecute me. We had our last meal in the courtyard on account of the heat. The table was placed between the dustbin and the lavatory. Over the dustbin hung the picture of the crucified woman by my former American friend. They had revenged themselves so severely upon him that he had disappeared without paying his debts. Near the table the Russians have placed a statuette, a warrior with the conventional scythe, possibly to frighten me! A young fellow belonging to the house goes behind my back to the lavatory with the thinly concealed purpose of annoying me. The court is as narrow as a mineshaft, and admits no sunlight over the high walls. The women who live in the different storeys make obscene remarks over our heads. Domestic servants come with their baskets full of rubbish in order to empty them into the dustbin. It is hell itself! Moreover, my two neighbours, notoriously immoral characters, try, with their disgusting talk, to entangle me in a quarrel.

Why am I here? Because loneliness compels me to seek human society and to hear human voices. Just as my mental suffering reaches its highest pitch, I discover some pansies blooming in the tiny flower-bed. They shake their heads as though they wished to warn me of a danger, and one of them with a child's face and large eyes signals to me, "Go away!" I rise and pay; as I go out the young fellow mentioned above greets me with concealed contempt, which irritates me. But I remain quiet.

I feel pity for myself and shame for the others. I forgive the offenders as though they were demons, who must now fulfil their duty. Meanwhile, the disfavour of the powers is all too obvious, and I begin in my room to total up the debit and credit side. Hitherto, and that was my comfort, I have never been able to bow myself before others, but now, crushed by the hand of the invisible, I am anxious to own myself wrong, and fear lays hold upon me when I carefully think over my behaviour during the last weeks. My conscience exacts my confession ruthlessly and pitilessly. I had sinned through conceit, through ὕβρις, the one sin which the gods do not forgive. Encouraged by the friendship of Dr. Popus, who had praised my experiments, I imagined that I had solved the riddle of the Sphinx. An imitator of Orpheus, I assumed it as my rôle to reanimate nature, which had been done to death by the scientists. Confident of the favour of the powers, I flattered myself that I was invincible as regards my foes, and forgot the most ordinary rules of modesty.

This is the right point at which to insert the history of my secret friend who has played a decisive rôle in my life as mentor, counsellor, comforter, judge, and, not least, as a reliable helper in various times of need. As early as 1890 he wrote to me about a book which I then published. He had found points of contact between my ideas and those of the theosophists, and wished to hear my opinion of the Occult Doctrine and the priestess of Isis, Madame Blavatsky. The aggressive tone of his letter annoyed me, and I did not conceal this annoyance in my answer. Four years later I published my Antibarbarus, and received at the most critical juncture of my life a second letter from this unknown friend, in which, in an elevated and almost prophetic style, he foretold for me a future fraught with suffering and glory. At the same time he explained to me that he had resumed this correspondence, because he guessed that I was just now in the throes of a spiritual crisis in which a word of comfort might be opportune. Finally, he offered me material aid, which I, jealous of my miserable independence, declined.

In the autumn of 1895 I resumed the correspondence by offering him my natural history studies for publication. From that time we kept up the most intimate and friendly correspondence, with the exception of a small disagreement which occurred, when he once took upon himself to instruct me in an insulting way about matters which I knew very well, and preached to me proudly about my want of modesty. After we had made it up again, I imparted to him all my observations, and gave him more of my confidence than was perhaps wise. I confessed to this man, whom I had never seen, everything, and let him admonish me seriously, for I regarded him more as an idea than a person; he was for me a messenger of Providence, my good angel.

Then there occurred between us a strong difference of opinion which led to very lively discussions, without, however, leading to any bitterness. As a theosophist, he preached "Karma," i.e., an abstract total of human destinies which balance each other so as to result in a kind of Nemesis. He was accordingly a champion of the mechanical view of the universe, a representative of the so-called materialistic school. To me, on the other hand, the powers had revealed themselves as concrete, living, individual personalities, who guide the course of the world and the destinies of men, as self-conscious entities or, as the theologians say, as "hypostases." The second difference of opinion was regarding the denying and putting to death of one's own self, which always seemed to me perfectly foolish, and seems so still.

Everything, i.e., the little which I know, goes back to the Ego as its central point. Not the cultus, indeed, but the culture of this Ego seems, therefore, the highest and ultimate aim of existence. My final and constant answer to his objections, therefore, was: "The killing of the Ego is self-murder."

Moreover, before whom should I bow myself? Before the theosophists? Never! But before the Eternal, the Powers, Providence, I seek to subdue my evil propensities daily as much as possible. To combat for the preservation of my ego, against all influence which a sect or party, from love of ruling, may bring to bear upon me, that is my duty enjoined on me by conscience; the guide which the grace of my divine protector has given me.

Nevertheless, because of the qualities of this unseen friend, whom I felt drawn to love and admire, I put up with his admonitions when he often addressed me in a presumptuous way as his inferior. I always answered him, but did not conceal from him my dislike for theosophy.

Finally, however—it was during the Popoffsky episode,—he assumed such a domineering tone, and became so intolerable in his tyranny, that I feared he took me for a fool. He called me "Simon Magus, the necromancer," and recommended me to take Madame Blavatsky as my teacher. I wrote back to him that I had no need of the lady, and that no one had anything to teach me. Thereupon what did he threaten me with? That he would bring me back to the right path with the aid of stronger powers than mine. Then I asked him not to meddle with my destiny, which the hand of Providence had always so well protected and guided. And in order to further impress upon him my conviction by means of an example, I related to him the following incident out of my life, which has been so rich in providential occurrences, premising at the same time that by relating this very incident I feared lest I should be challenging Nemesis.

It was ten years before this time, during the most stormy period of my literary life, when I was raging against the feminist movement, which, with the exception of myself, everyone in Scandinavia supported. The heat of the conflict hurried me on, so that I so far overstepped the bounds of propriety that my countrymen considered me mad.

I was just then staying with my wife and the children of my first marriage in Bavaria, when I received a letter from a friend of my youth inviting me and my children to stop with him for a year, he made no mention of my wife. This letter, with its affected style, its corrections and omissions, seemed to betray some hesitation on the part of the writer in the choice of the reasons which he alleged for his invitation. As I suspected some trap, I declined the offer in a few non-committal polite phrases.

Two years later, after my first divorce, I went to him of my own accord and found him living on a little island off the coast of the Baltic Sea as an inspector of customs. His reception of me was friendly, but his whole manner embarrassed and equivocal, and our conversation was more like a police examination. After giving a wakeful night's consideration to the matter, I understood it. This man, whose self-love I had wounded in one of my novels, in spite of his display of sympathy, was not really my well-wisher. An absolute tyrant, he wanted to interfere with my destiny, to tame and subdue me, in order to show me his superiority.

Quite unscrupulous in his choice of means, he tormented me for a week long, poisoned my mind with slanders and stories invented to suit every occasion, but did it so clumsily that I was more and more convinced that he wished to have me incarcerated as a person of unsound mind.

I offered no special resistance, and left it to my good fortune to liberate me at the right time.

My apparent submission won my executioner's favour, and there alone, in the midst of the sea, hated by his neighbours and subordinates, he yielded to his need to confide in someone. He told me, with incredible frankness for a man of fifty, that his sister during the past winter had gone out of her mind, and in a fit of frenzy had destroyed all her savings. The next morning he told me, further, that his brother was in a lunatic asylum on the mainland.

I asked myself, "Is that why he wants to see me confined in one, in order to avenge himself on fate?" After he had thus related to me his misfortunes, I won his complete confidence, so that I was able to leave the island, and hire a house on a neighbouring one, where my children joined me. Four weeks later a letter summoned me to my "friend," whom I found quite broken down because his brother in a fit of mania had shattered his skull. I comforted my executioner, and his wife whispered to me with tears that she had long feared lest the same fate should overtake her husband. A year later the newspapers announced that my friend's eldest brother had taken his life under circumstances which seemed to indicate that he was out of his mind. Thus three distinct blows descended on the head of this man who had wished to play with lightning.

"What a strange chance!" people will say. And stranger, and more ominous still, every time that I relate this history, I am punished for doing so.

The fierce July heat broods over the city; life is intolerable, and everything is malodorous. I expect a catastrophe. In the street I find a scrap of paper with the word "marten" written on it; in another street a similar scrap with the word "vulture" written by the same hand. Popoffsky certainly has a resemblance to a marten as his wife has to a vulture. Have they come to Paris to kill me? He, the murderer, is capable of everything after he has murdered wife and children.

The perusal of the delightful book La joie de mourir arouses in me the wish to quit the world. In order to learn to know the boundary between life and death, I lie on the bed, uncork the flask containing cyanide of potassium, and let its poisonous perfume stream out. The man with the scythe approaches softly and voluptuously, but at the last moment someone enters or something else happens; either an attendant enters under some pretext, or a wasp flies in through the window.

The powers deny me the only joy left, and I bow to their will.

At the beginning of July the house is empty; the students have gone for their holidays. All the more is my curiosity aroused by a stranger who has taken the room on that side of mine where my writing-table is placed. The Unknown never speaks; he appears to be occupied in writing on the other side of the wall which divides us. Curiously enough, whenever I move my chair, he moves his also, and, in general, imitates all my movements as though he wished to annoy me. Thus it goes on for three days. On the fourth day I make the following observations: If I prepare to go to sleep, he also prepares to go to sleep in the next room; when I lie down in bed, I hear him lie down on the bed by my wall. I hear him stretch himself out parallel with me; he turns over the pages of a book, then puts out the lamp, breathes loud, turns himself on his side, and goes to sleep. He apparently occupies the rooms on both sides of me, and it is unpleasant to be beset on two sides at once. Absolutely alone, I take my mid-day meal in my room, and I eat so little that the waiter pities me. For eight days I have not heard the sound of my own voice, which begins to grow feeble for want of exercise. I have n't a sou left, and my tobacco and postage stamps run out. Then I rally my will power for a last attempt: I will make gold, by the dry process. I manage to borrow some money and procure the necessary apparatus: an oven, smelting-saucepans, wood-coals, bellows, and tongs. The heat is terrific and, like a workman in a smithy, I sweat before the open fire, stripped to the waist. But sparrows have built their nests in the chimney, and smoke pours out of it into the room. I feel like going mad over this first attempt, my head-aches, and the frustration of my efforts; for everything goes wrong. I have smelted the mass of metal in the fire and look inside the saucepan. The borax has formed within it a death's-head with two glowing eyes which seem to pierce my soul with uncanny irony. Not a grain of gold is there, and I give up all further effort. I resume my seat, and read the Bible just where I happen to open it: "None calleth to mind, neither is there knowledge nor understanding to say, I have burned part of it in the fire; yea, also, I have baked bread upon the coals thereof, I have roasted flesh and eaten it; and shall I make the residue thereof an abomination? Shall I fall down to the stock of a tree? He feedeth on ashes; a deceived heart hath turned him aside, that he cannot deliver his soul nor say, Is there not a lie in my right hand. Thus saith the Lord, thy Redeemer, and he that formed thee from the womb, I am the Lord that maketh all things, that stretcheth forth the heavens alone, that spreadeth forth the earth; who is with me? that frustrateth the tokens of the liars and maketh diviners mad; that turneth wise men backward, and maketh their knowledge foolish."

For the first time I despair of my scientific experiments. If they are all folly, then I have sacrificed my happiness and that of my wife and children to a phantom. Alas for my delusion! There is a gaping abyss between my parting from my family and this moment. A year and a half has elapsed, and so many painful days and nights have been spent for nothing. But no! it cannot be, it is not so.

Have I lost myself in a dark wood? The good spirit has guided me on the right way to the island of the blessed, but Satan tempts me. I am punished again. I sink relaxed on my scat, an unwonted depression weighs upon my spirits. A magnetic fluid streams from the wall, and sleep nearly overcomes me. I pull myself together, and stand up, in order to go out. As I pass through the passage, I hear two voices whispering in the room adjoining mine. Why are they whispering? In order that I may not overhear them. I go through the Rue d'Assas to the Jardin du Luxembourg. I drag myself wearily along, feeling lame from my loins to my feet, and sink on a seat behind the group of Adam and his family.

I am poisoned! That is my first thought. And Popoffsky, who has murdered his wife and children with poisonous gases, is here. He has copied the famous experiment of Pettenkofer, and discharged a stream of gas through the wall. What shall I do? Go to the police? No! for if I can adduce no proofs they will shut me up as a lunatic.

Væ soli! Woe to the solitary, the sparrow upon the housetop! Never was my misery greater, and I weep like a forsaken child that fears the dark.

In the evening I dare not remain sitting at my table for fear of a new attack, and lie on the bed without venturing to go to sleep. The night comes and my lamp is lit. Then I see outside, on the wall opposite to my window, the shadow of a human shape, whether a man or a woman, I cannot say, but it seems to be a woman. When I stand up, to ascertain which it is, the blind is noisily pulled down; then I hear the Unknown enter the room, which is near my bed, and all is silent. For three hours I lie awake with open eyes to which sleep refuses to come; then a feeling of uneasiness takes possession of me; I am exposed to an electric current which passes to and fro between the two adjoining rooms. The nervous tension increases, and, in spite of my resistance, I cannot remain in bed, so strong is my conviction: "They are murdering me; I will not let myself be murdered." I go out in order to seek the attendant in his box at the end of the corridor, but alas! he is not there. They have got him to go away; he is a silent accomplice, and I am betrayed!

I go down the stairs, and hasten through the corridors in order to rouse the director of the pension. With a presence of mind, of which I would not have thought myself capable, I tell him that I have a sudden attack of indisposition, caused by the evaporations from my chemicals, and ask for another room for the night. Thanks to a wrathful Providence, the only vacant room is directly under that of my enemy. I open the window and inhale full draughts of the fresh air of a starry night. Above the roofs of the Rue d'Assas, and the Rue de Madame, the Great Bear and Pole-star are visible. To the North, then! I take the omen!

As I draw back the curtain of the alcove where my bed is, I hear my enemy overhead get out of bed and place some heavy object in a box which he locks. He is concealing something then! Perhaps the electric machine.

The next morning, which is a Sunday, I pack up and give out that I am going to the seacoast. I tell the coachman to drive to the St. Lazare Station, but when we get opposite the Odeon, I alter the route and bid him drive to the Rue de la Clef, near the Jardin des Plantes. I wish to remain here incognito, in order to complete my studies before my departure for Sweden.

VI

HELL

At length a pause ensues in my sufferings. For hours at a time I sit in the open space before the summer-house, watch the flowers, and think over the recent events. The peace of mind, which I find after my flight, convinces me that I have not been suffering from the delusions of disease, but have been persecuted by real enemies. I work during the day and sleep quietly at night. Delivered from the squalor of my former residence, I feel myself rejuvenated among the roses of this garden—the favourite flower of my youth. The Jardin des Plantes, this wonder of Paris unknown to the Parisians themselves, has become my park. This epitome of creation confined within a narrow circuit, this Noah's Ark, this Paradise Regained in which I wander without danger among wild beasts—it is too much happiness. Beginning with stones, I proceed to the vegetable and animal kingdoms, till I come to man, and behind man I discover the Creator—the great Artist who develops as he creates, sets on fool designs which He rejects later on, resumes plans which have failed, and completes and multiplies primitive forms endlessly. All is the work of His hand. Often in the discovery of methods He makes enormous leaps, and then Science comes and ascertains the extent of the gaps and the missing links, and imagines that it has found the intermediary forms which have disappeared.

As I now consider myself safe from my persecutors, I send my address to the Pension Orfila in order to resume my correspondence with the outer world, but no sooner have I lifted the mask of my incognito than my peace is interrupted. All kinds of things disquiet me, and my former discomfort returns.

To begin with, articles whose use I cannot understand are being stored away in the room which adjoins mine on the ground-floor, and which hitherto was vacant of furniture. An old gentleman, with grey, malicious eyes, carries empty boxes, strips of metal, and other mysterious objects into it. At the same time the noises over my head recommence. They file and hammer as though they were constructing some infernal machine.

Moreover, the landlady, who at first appeared pleased at my taking up my abode here, alters her demeanour; she tries to ferret out my affairs, and vexes me by her manner of greeting me. Besides this, the lodger who occupies the first floor above me, leaves the house. He was a quiet old gentleman, whose heavy footfall was familiar to me. In his place comes a reserved-looking tenant who has lived in the house for years. He has not changed his lodgings but only his room. Why?

The servant-maid who looks after my room, and brings my meals, has a serious air and casts sympathetic glances at me.

All at once a wheel begins to turn over my head, and continues to do so the whole day long. I am condemned to death! That is my firm conviction. By whom? By the Russians, the Pietists, Catholics, Jesuits, Theosophists? As what?—A wizard or practiser of black arts? Or perhaps it is by the police as an anarchist? That is a very plausible pretext for removing personal enemies.

At the moment that I write this, I do not know what was the real nature of the events of that July night when death threatened me, but I will not forget that lesson as long as I live.

If the initiated believe that I was then exposed to a plot woven by human hands, let me tell them that I feel anger against no one, for I know now that another stronger Hand, unknown to them, guided those hands against their will.

On the other hand, if there was no plot, I must suppose that my own imagination conjured up these chastising spirits for my own punishment. We shall see in the sequel how far this supposition is probable.

On the morning of my last day (as I suppose) I rise in a resigned frame of mind, which might be called religious; I have no more ties binding me to life. I have put my papers in order, written necessary letters, and burnt what had to be burnt. Then I go to bid farewell to the world in the Jardin des Plantes.

The Swedish block of lodestone before the mineralogical museum gives me a greeting from my native land. I greet the acacias, the cedars of Lebanon, and the monuments of great epochs when botany was still a living science. I buy bread and cherries for my old friends. The old bear knows me well, for I am the only one who brings him cherries morning and evening. I give bread to the young elephant, who spits in my face after he has eaten it—the young, faithless ingrate!

Farewell, ye vultures who had to exchange the sky for a dirty cage! Farewell, bison and behemoth, thou chained demon! Farewell, ye loving pair of sea-birds whom wedded love consoles for the loss of ocean and its wide horizon! Farewell, stones, plants, flowers, trees, butterflies, birds, snakes, all creatures of a good God! And you great men, Bernadin de Saint-Pierre, Linnæus, Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, Haüy, whose names shine in gold on the front of the temple—farewell! but we meet again. So I part from this earthly Paradise, and Séraphita's noble words come to my mind, "Adieu, pauvre terre! adieu!"

When I re-enter the hotel garden, I become aware of the presence of a man, who must have come in my absence. I do not see him, but feel him. What increases my confusion is the visible alteration which the adjoining room has undergone. A cloth hung over a rope obviously conceals something. On the mantelpiece are metal projections isolated by wooden panels, and on each there lies a photograph album or some other book, in order to give these diabolical machines, which I am inclined to think are accumulators, an innocuous appearance. Moreover, on a roof in the Rue Censier, exactly opposite my summer-house, I see two workmen. I cannot make out what they are doing, but they seem to have an eye on my glass-door and are busy with objects which I cannot distinguish.

Why do I not escape? Because I am too proud, and must bear the inevitable. I therefore prepare myself for the night. I take a bath, and am especially careful to wash my feet, for my mother has told me when a child, that there is something disgraceful in dirty feet. I shave and perfume myself, and put on the underclothes which I bought three years ago in Vienna for my wedding—the toilet of a man condemned to die. I read the psalms in the Bible in which David invokes the wrath of the Eternal upon his enemies. I do not read the penitential psalms. I have no right to remorse, for it is not I who have guided my destiny. I have never requited evil with evil, except when I had to defend myself. To be remorseful is to criticise Providence, which imposes sin on us as a suffering, in order to purify us through the disgust with which each evil deed inspires us.

The summing up of my reckoning with life is as follows: If I have sinned, on my word of honour, I have been sufficiently punished. That is certain. As to the fear of hell, I have wandered through a thousand hells, without trembling, and have experienced enough of them to feel an intense desire to depart from the vanities and false joys of this world, which I always despised. Born with a heavenly homesickness, I wept as a child over the filthiness of life, and felt strange and homeless among relations and friends. From childhood onwards I have sought for God and found the Devil. I have borne the cross of Christ in my youth, and have denied a God who delights to reign over slaves who love their tormentor.

As I let down the curtains of my glass-door, I see a number of ladies and gentlemen sitting at their champagne in the private drawing-room. They seem to be strangers just arrived this evening. But they are not a merry company; their faces are all serious, they discuss, seem to form plans, and speak in an undertone with each other, as though it were a conspiracy. To intensify my mental torture, they turn round on their chairs, and point with their fingers in the direction of my room. About ten o'clock I extinguish my lamp, and go to sleep quietly, resigned as a dying man.

I wake up. A clock strikes two; a door is fastened, and—I am out of bed, as though someone had applied an air-pump to my heart and drawn me out so. At the same time an electric stream strikes my neck, and presses me to the ground. I rise again, seize my clothes and rush, my heart beating violently, into the garden. When I have dressed myself, my first clear thought is to go to the police and have the house searched. But the front door is shut, and so is the porter's box. I grope my way on, open a door on the right, and step into the kitchen, in which a lamp is burning. I upset it, and stand in pitch darkness.

Fear restores me to my senses, and I return to my room with the thought: "If I make a mistake, I am lost." I drag a chair out into the garden, and, sitting under the starry sky, I reflect on what is happening. Am I ill? Impossible: for until I disclosed my incognito, I was quite well. Is it an attack? Yes, because I saw the preparations for it going on. For the rest, I feel better here outside in the garden beyond the power of my enemies, and my heart beats quite regularly. While reflecting thus, I hear someone cough in the room adjoining mine. It is at once answered by a low cough from the room on the other side. Doubtless it is a signal, just like the one I heard my last night in the Pension Orfila. I try to open forcibly the glass-door of the ground-floor room, but the bolt holds.

Wearied by the useless fight against invisible powers, I sink on a garden seat. Sleep has pity on me, so that under the stars of a beautiful summer night I fall asleep among the roses whispering in the warm airs of July.

The sun awakes me, and I thank Providence which has saved me from death. I pack my things, and mean to go to Dieppe to find shelter with some friends, whom I have neglected as I have all others, but who are considerate and generous towards the fallen and shipwrecked. When I ask to speak to the directress of the house, she is not visible, and sends a message to say she is unwell. I might have expected that she would be involved in the plot against me. I leave the house with a curse on the head of my knavish enemies, and call on heaven to send down fire on this den of robbers—whether rightly or wrongly, who knows? My Dieppe friends were alarmed, when they saw me mounting the hill of their town with my bag heavy with manuscripts.

"Where have you come from, poor fellow?"

"I come from death."

"I doubt it, for you look as if you had not been dug out yet."

The kind, good-hearted lady of the house takes me by the hand and leads me before a looking-glass, that I may see myself. I certainly look a pitiable object; my face blackened by smoke from the engine, my cheeks fallen in, my hair grown grey, my eyes staring wildly, and my linen dirty.

But when I was left alone in the dressing-room by my kind hostess, who treated me like a sick, deserted child, I examined my face more closely. There was an expression in my features which alarmed me. It was not fear of death or wickedness, but something else, and had I at that time known Swedenborg, he would have explained to me the impression made by the evil spirit on my soul, and the occurrences of the last weeks. Now I felt ashamed and angry with myself, and my conscience pained me on account of my ingratitude towards this family, which had proved a harbour of refuge for me, as for so many other shipwrecked voyagers. As a punishment, I shall be driven hence also by the furies. Here is a beautiful artistic home, ordered domestic economy, married happiness, with charming children, cleanness and comfort, boundless hospitality, charitable judgment, an atmosphere of beauty and goodness which dazzles me—a paradise, in short, and I in the midst of it, all like a lost soul. I see spread out before my eyes all the happiness which life can offer, and all that I have lost.

I occupy an attic room looking out on a hill where there is an asylum for old people. In the evening I observe two men looking over the wall of the institution towards our villa, and pointing at my window. The idea that I am being persecuted by means of electricity again takes possession of me.

The night between the 25th and 26th of July, 1896, comes on. We have searched together all the attic rooms near mine, and the loft itself, so as to satisfy me that no one with evil intentions could be lurking there. Only in a lumber-room an object of no significance in itself has a depressing effect upon me. It is only the skin of a polar bear used as a rug; but the gaping jaws, the threatening teeth, the sparkling eyes irritate me. Why should this creature lie just now, just there? Without taking off my clothes, I lie down on the bed, determined to wait for the fateful hour—two o'clock.

While I am reading, midnight approaches. One o'clock strikes, and the whole house is wrapped in slumber. At last two o'clock strikes! Nothing happens. Then in a dare-devil spirit, or perhaps only with the intention of making a physical experiment, I rise, open both windows, and light two candles. Then I sit at the table behind them, expose myself with bared breast as a mark, and challenge the unknown: "Attack, if you dare!"

Then I feel, at first only faintly, something like an inrush of electric fluid. I look at my compass, but it shows no sign of wavering. It is not electricity then. But the tension increases; my heart beats violently; I offer resistance, but as if by a flash of lightning my body is charged with a fluid which chokes me and depletes my blood. I rush down the stairs to the room on the ground-floor, where they have made up for me a provisional bed in case of necessity. There I lie for five minutes and collect my thoughts. Is it radiating electricity? No; for the compass has not been affected. Is it a diseased state of mind induced by fear of the fatal hour of two o'clock? No; for I have still the courage to defy attacks, but why must I light the candles and attract the mysterious fluid? In this labyrinth of questioning I find no answer, and try at last to go to sleep, but a new discharge of electricity strikes me like a cyclone, forces me to rise from bed, and the chase begins afresh. I hide myself behind the walls, lie down close to the doors, or in front of the stove. Everywhere, everywhere the furies find me. Overmastered by terror, I fly in panic from everything and nothing, from room to room, and finish by crouching down on the balcony. The grey-yellow light of dawn begins to break, the sepia-coloured clouds assume fantastic and monstrous shapes, which increase my despair. I repair to my friend's studio, lie down on the carpet, and close my eyes. After barely five minutes' quiet, a rustle awakes me. A mouse looks at me and seems to wish to come nearer. I drive it away; it comes back with another one. Good Heavens! Have I got delirium tremens, though I have been quite temperate the last three years? (In the daytime I find that there are really mice in the studio. It was a coincidence, then, but who caused it, and what is his object?) I change my place, and lie down on the hall carpet. Merciful sleep descends upon my tortured spirit, and for about half an hour I lose consciousness of my sufferings. Then a distinct cry "Alp!" makes me suddenly start up. "Alp!" That is the German for nightmare. "Alp" is the word which the rainstorm caused to be formed on my paper in the Hôtel Orfila. Who uttered that cry? No one, for the whole house is asleep. Is it a devil's game? That is a poetical expression which perhaps contains the whole truth.

I mount the steps to my attic. The candles have burnt to their sockets; deep silence reigns. The Angelus rings out. It is the day of the Lord. I open my breviary and read "De Profundis clamavi ad Te, Domine!" That comforts me, and I sink down on the bed like a corpse.

July 26th, Sunday.—A cyclone devastates the Jardin des Plantes. The papers contain items which I find especially interesting. To-day, Andrée's balloon is to ascend for its voyage to the North Pole, but the occasion is not propitious. The storm has hurled down several balloons, which have ascended at various points, and killed many aeronauts.

The next morning I leave Dieppe, uttering a benediction on the house, over whose well-deserved happiness my sadness had cast a shadow.

Since I do not wish to believe in the interference of supernatural powers, I imagine that I am the victim of a nervous illness. Accordingly, I make up my mind to go to Sweden and see a physician who is a friend of mine.

As a memorial of Dieppe, I take a piece of iron-ore which has a trefoil shape like a Gothic window, and is marked with the sign of a Maltese cross. A child has found it on the shore, and tells me that these stones fall from the sky and are cast by the waves on the land. I believe him willingly, and keep the gift as a talisman, the significance of which is hidden from me. (On the coast of Brittany the coast-dwellers are accustomed after storms to collect stones shaped like crosses, with a gold-like shimmer. These stones are called "staurolites.")

The little town to which I now betook myself lies in the extreme south of Sweden, on the seacoast. It is an old pirates' and smugglers' haunt, in which exotic traces of all parts of the world have been left by various voyagers. My doctor's house looks like a Buddhist cloister. The four wings of the one-storeyed house form a quadrangle, in the centre of which the dome-shaped wood-shed resembles the tomb of Tamerlane at Samarcand. The style of which the roof is built and faced with Chinese bricks recalls the Farther East. An apathetic tortoise crawls over the pavement and disappears in a Nirvana of innumerable weeds. In the garden is a pagoda-shaped summer-house completely overgrown by clematis.

In the whole of this cloister, with its countless rooms, there lives only one person, the director of the district hospital. He is a widower, solitary and independent, and from the hard discipline of life has derived that strong and noble contempt of men which leads to a deep knowledge of the vanity of all things, oneself included.

The entrance of this man into my life occurred in such an unexpected manner, that I am inclined to assign it to the dramatic skill of a Deus ex machina.

At our first greeting, on my arrival from Dieppe, he looks at me inquiringly, and suddenly asks, "You have a nervous illness! Good! But that is not all. You look so strange that I do not recognise you. What have you been after? Dissipation, crime, lost illusions, religion? Tell me, old fellow!"

But I tell him nothing special, for my first thought is one of suspicion. He is prejudiced against me, has made inquiries about me in some quarter, and wants to have me confined. I tell him about my sleeplessness, nervousness, and bad dreams, and then we talk of other things.

In my room my attention is arrested by the American bed, with its four legs topped by four brass balls, which look like the conductors of an electric machine. Add to this an elastic mattress with copper springs, resembling Ruhmkorff induction coils, and one can easily imagine my rage at this diabolical coincidence. Besides, it is impossible to ask for another bed, as I might be suspected of being mad. In order to assure myself that nothing is concealed above me, I mount into the loft overhead. There is only one object there, but it drives me almost to desperation. An enormous wire-net rolled together stands immediately over my bed. One could not wish for a better accumulator. If there is a thunderstorm, such as is frequent here, the wire network will attract the lightning, and I shall be lying on the conductor. But I do not venture to say a word.

The first thing that disturbs me is the noise of a machine. Since I have quitted the Hôtel Orfila I have a roaring in my ears like the sound of a water-wheel. Doubting the objective existence of this noise, I ask the cause of it, and learn that it is the printing-press close by. The explanation is plausible, and, though little satisfied, I do not wish to excite myself.

The dreaded night comes on. The sky is covered with clouds; the air is close; we expect a thunderstorm. I do not venture to lie down to sleep, and write letters for two hours. At last, overcome with weariness, I undress myself and creep into bed. The lamp is extinguished; a terrible stillness reigns in the house. I feel that someone is watching me in the darkness, touches me and feels for my heart in order to suck my blood. Without waiting any longer, I spring out of bed, fling open the window and jump into the courtyard—but I have forgotten the rose-bushes, whose sharp thorns pierce me through my night-shirt. Scratched and streaming with blood, I grope about the courtyard. Gravel-stones, thistles, and nettles lacerate my feet; unknown objects trip me up. At last I reach the kitchen, which adjoins the doctor's sitting-room. I knock. No answer. Suddenly I discover that it is raining all the time. O misery of miseries! What have I done to deserve these tortures? It is hell. Miserere! Miserere!

I knock repeatedly. It is strange that no one is at hand when I am attacked. Always this solitude! Does it not point to a plot against me in which all are implicated?

At last I hear the doctor's voice, "Who is there?"

"It is I: I am ill. Open, or I die!"

He opens the door. "What is the matter?"

I begin my report by giving an account of the attack in the Rue de la Clef, which I ascribe to enemies, who persecute me by means of electricity.

"Stop, unhappy man! Your mind is affected!"

"The devil it is! Test my intelligence; read what I write daily and what is printed——"

"Stop! not a word to anyone! These stories of electricity are frequent in asylum reports."

"All the better! I care so little for your asylum reports that in order to clear the matter up, I am willing to be examined to-morrow in the asylum at Lund."

"Then you are lost! Not a word more now! Lie down and sleep."

I refuse to do so, and insist on his hearing me; he refuses to listen.

When I am alone, I ask myself, "Is it possible that my friend, an honourable man, who has always kept aloof from dirty transactions, at the close of a blameless career should succumb to temptation? But who has tempted him?" I have no answer to this question, but many surmises. "Every man has his price," says the proverb, but a large sum must have been necessary to bribe this strong character. But one does not pay very highly for an ordinary piece of revenge. Therefore he must have a strong interest in the matter himself. Stop! I have it! I have made gold; the doctor has half-accomplished it also, although, when asked, he denies having repeated the experiments regarding which I had corresponded with him. He denies it, and yet as I stepped across the pavement of the courtyard last evening I found proofs that he had been experimenting. Therefore he is lying. Moreover, in conversation the same evening, he enlarged on the sad consequences which the possible manufacture of gold would entail upon mankind. Universal bankruptcy, universal confusion, anarchy, ruin. "One would have to kill the discoverer of the process," he concluded.

Moreover, I know the fairly modest private means of my friend. I am astonished to hear him speak of his intended purchase of the ground on which his dwelling stands. He is in debt, must even economise, and yet means to be a landowner. Everything combines to render me suspicious of my good friend.

Grant that I am suffering from persecution-mania, but what smith forges the links of these hellish syllogisms?

"The discoverer would have to be killed." This is the thought with which my mental torment subsides into sleep about the time of sunrise.

We have commenced a cold-water cure. I have changed my room, and have fairly quiet nights now, although not without relapses.

One evening the doctor sees the breviary lying on my table, and becomes angry and excited. "Always this religion! That is also a symptom, don't you know?"

"Or a necessity like other necessities!"

"Enough! I am no atheist, but I think the Almighty does not wish to be addressed in such intimate terms as formerly. These flatteries of the Deity belong to the past, and personally I agree with the Mohammedans, who only ask for the gift of resignation in order to support the burden Destiny imposes upon them with dignity."

Significant words, from which I extract some grains of gold for myself. He carries away my breviary and Bible, and says: "Read indifferent matters of secondary interest, world histories, or mythologies, and leave idle dreaming. Above all things, beware of occultism, that caricature of science. It is forbidden to us to spy out the Creator's secrets, and woe to them who seek to do so!"

On my objecting that the occultists in Paris form a whole body by themselves, he only says, "All the worse for them." In the evening he brings me, without any ulterior purpose, I am sure, Victor Rydberg's German Mythology.

"Here is something to send you to sleep, standing. It is better than sulphonal."

If my good friend had known what a spark he was throwing into a keg of powder, he would rather——

The Mythology which he put into my hands is in two volumes, has altogether a thousand pages, and opens, so to speak, of itself. My eyes are arrested by the following lines which are imprinted in letters of fire on my memory:—"As the legend relates, Bhrign, having out-grown his father's teaching, became so conceited, that he believed he could surpass his teacher. The latter sent him into the underworld where, in order to humble him, he had to witness countless terrible things, of which he had never had a conception."

That means: "My conceit, my pride, my ὕβρις, has been punished by my father and teacher. And I am in hell, driven thither by the powers. And who is my teacher? Swedenborg."

I turn over more leaves of this wonderful book: "One may compare with this the German myth of the fields of thorns which tear the feet of the unrighteous."

Enough! Enough! Thorns, too! That is too much! No doubt of it—I am in hell! And in fact, real occurrences support this idea so powerfully, that I must at last believe it.

The doctor seems to me to be struggling with conflicting emotions. At one time he seems prejudiced against me, looks at me contemptiously, and treats me with humiliating rudeness; at another he seems himself unhappy, and soothes and comforts me as though I were a sick child. But then, again, it seems to give him pleasure to be able to trample under his feet a man of worth for whom he has formerly had a high regard. Then he lectures me like a pitiless tormentor. I am to work, but not to give way to exaggerated ambition; I am to fulfil my duties to my fatherland and family: "Leave chemical speculations alone," he says; "they are a chimera. There are so many specialists, authorities, and professional scientists well versed in their own branches."

One day he proposes to me to write for the newest Stockholm society paper. A fine idea, indeed! I answer him that I do not require to write for the newest Stockholm paper, since the leading paper of Paris and of the whole world has accepted my manuscripts. Then he plays the incredulous, and treats me as a braggart, although he has read my articles in the Figaro, and has himself translated my first one in Gil Blas.

I am not angry with him; he only plays the rôle assigned to him by Providence. I forcibly suppress the growing hatred which I feel towards this unexpected tormentor, and curse the fate which changes what might have been thankfulness towards a generous friend into unnatural ingratitude.

Trifling occurrences ceaselessly arouse my suspicions regarding the doctor's evil intentions. To-day he has deposited in the garden verandah an entirely new set of axes, saws, and hammers. What does he want with them? In his sleeping-room are two guns and a revolver, and in a corridor a collection of axes which are much too heavy for merely domestic purposes. What a Satanic coincidence that I should have these implements of execution and torture before my eyes! For I cannot explain to myself what they mean, and why they are there. My nights now pass fairly quietly, while the doctor has taken to roaming about at night. Once at midnight I am startled by the sudden report of a gun. Out of politeness I pretend not to have heard it. The next morning he explains that a covey of woodpeckers had flown into the garden and disturbed his sleep. Another time, at two o'clock at night, I hear the hoarse voice of the house-keeper, and on another occasion I hear the doctor sigh and groan and invoke "the Lord." Is this house haunted? Who has brought me here?

I cannot suppress a smile when I see how the nightmare with which I have been oppressed now takes possession of my gaoler. But my malicious joy is promptly punished. I have a terrible nervous attack. My heart seems to stop beating, and I hear two words, which I have noted in my diary. An unknown voice calls out, "Luthardt: Druggist." Druggist! Are they slowly poisoning me with alkaloids such as hyoscyamin, hashish, digitalis, and stramonin, which cause delirium?

I don't know, but from that time my suspicion is doubled. They do not dare to murder me, but they are trying to drive me mad by artificial means, in order to make me disappear in an asylum. Appearances are stronger and stronger against the doctor. I find out that he has discovered my process of making gold, and that perhaps he knew it before I did. Everything which he says contradicts itself the next moment, and when confronted by a liar my imagination takes the bit between its teeth and rushes beyond all reasonable bounds.

On the morning of the 8th of August I go for a walk before the town. On the high road a telegraph post is humming: I step up to it, lay my ear on it, and listen as if bewitched. At the foot of the post there lies by chance a horse-shoe. I pick it up and carry it away as an omen of good luck.

August 10th.—The behaviour of the doctor during the last few days has disquieted me more than ever. By his strange aspect I see that he has struggled with himself; his face is pale; his eyes seem dead. During the whole day he sings or whistles; a letter which he has received has excited him much.

In the afternoon he comes home with bloody hands from an operation, and brings a two months' old fœtus with him. He looks like a butcher, and talks in a hateful way: "Let them kill the weak, and protect the strong! Down with pity, for it degrades men." I hear him with alarm, and secretly watch him, after we have wished each other good-night on the threshold which divides our rooms. First of all, he goes in the garden, but I cannot hear what he does. Then he steps into the verandah adjoining my sleeping-room and stops there. He busies himself with some fairly heavy object, and winds up a piece of clock-work which, however, belongs to no clock. Half-undressed, I await, standing motionless, the result of these mysterious preparations.

Then once more the well-known electric fluid streams through the wall on my bed, seeks my breast, and under it, my heart. The tension increases: I seize my clothes, slip through the window, and do not dress till I am outside the house. There I am again in the street, on the pavement, my last refuge and only friend behind me! I wander onward without a definite aim; but when I come to myself I go direct to the chief physician of the town. I have to ring and wait, and prepare what to say so as not to injure my friend.

At last the doctor appears. I excuse myself for paying such an untimely visit on the plea of sleeplessness, palpitations, and want of confidence in my own doctor, who, I said, treated me as a hypochondriac and would not listen to me. The doctor invites me inside, as though he had been expecting me, asks me to take a seat, and offers me a cigar and a glass of wine. I breathe freely at finding myself once more treated as a respectable man, and not a wretched idiot. We chat for two hours, and the doctor turns out to be a theosophist to whom I can tell everything, without compromising myself. At last about midnight I rise in order to find an hotel; the doctor, however, advises me to return home.

"Never! he is capable of murdering me!"

"But if I accompany you?"

"Then, indeed, we should meet the enemy's fire together. But he would never forgive me!"

"All the same, let us venture."

So I return to the house. The door is shut, and I knock. When my friend enters after a minute, it is I who am seized with compassion, he, the surgeon, who is accustomed to witness suffering without emotion, he, the advocate of deliberate murder, is an object of pity indeed. He is pale as death, trembles, stammers, and at the sight of the doctor standing behind me seems on the point of collapse, so that I feel more panic-struck than ever. Is it conceivable that this man intended a murder and now feared detection? No, it is not; I reject the thought; it is wicked. After insignificant and on my part really ridiculous remarks, we go to our bedrooms.

There occur in life such terrible incidents that the mind refuses to retain the memory of them for a moment, but the impression remains and becomes irresistibly alive again. Thus there comes to my mind something which took place in the doctor's waiting-room during my night visit. He went to fetch wine; left alone I contemplated a cupboard with carved panels of walnut or alderwood, I forget which. As usual, the veins in the wood formed figures in my imagination. Among them I saw in lively presentment a head with a goat's beard, and immediately turned my back upon it. It was Pan in person, as depicted by the ancients and as metamorphosed later into the Devil of the Middle Ages. I content myself by noting the fact; the owner of the cupboard, the doctor, would be doing occult sciences a great service if he would allow the panel to be photographed. In the Initiation for November, 1896, Dr. Marc Haven has treated of this phenomenon, which is common in all the kingdoms of nature, and I recommend the reader to regard attentively the face on the shell of the tortoise.

After this adventure, open hostility breaks out between my friend and me. He gives me to understand that I am an idler, and that my presence is superfluous. To this I rejoin that I must wait for the arrival of important letters, but that I am ready at any time to go to an hotel. He now plays the rôle of the injured party. As a matter of fact, I cannot leave for want of money. For the rest, I anticipate that a turning-point in my destiny is at hand. My health is now restored again; I sleep quietly and work diligently. The wrath of Providence seems to have spent itself, for my exertions are crowned with success in all quarters. If I take a book at haphazard out of the doctor's library, it always gives the explanation I was looking for. Thus I find in an old chemical treatise the secret of my process for making gold, and I can now prove by metallurgic calculations and analogies that I have made gold, and that gold has always been obtained when one has gone to work in the same way. An essay on matter which I have written and sent to a French review is immediately published. I show the article to the doctor, who betrays his annoyance, since he cannot deny the fact. Then I say to myself, "How can that man be my friend, who is vexed at my success?"

August 12th.—I buy an album at the book-shop. It is a kind of note-book with a gilt leather cover. The design on it attracts my attention, and constitutes, strange as it may sound, a kind of prophecy, the interpretation of which will appear in the sequel. It is as follows: On the left is the waxing moon in the first quarter, surrounded by a branch in blossom; three horses' heads (trijugum) project from the moon; above is a branch of laurel; beneath three pillars; on the right hand, a bell out of which flowers appear; a wheel like a sun, etc.

August 13th.—The day announced by the clock on the Boulevard St. Michel has arrived. I wait for something to happen, but in vain; none the less. I am certain that somewhere something is happening, the result of which I shall hear in a short time.

August 14th.—On the street I pick up a leaf out of an old office calendar; in large type there is printed on it "August 13th" (the same date which was on the clock). Underneath in smaller type is a sentence, "Do nothing secretly which thou canst not do also openly."

August 15th.—A letter from my wife. She bewails my lot; she still loves me, and with our child is waiting for a change in the melancholy situation. Her parents, who formerly hated me, are full of sympathy for my sufferings, and what is more, they invite me to visit my little angel of a daughter, who lives with her grandparents in the country. That calls me back to life. My child, my daughter is more than my wife. Only to think of embracing the harmless, innocent creature, whom I wished to injure,[1] to ask her forgiveness, to brighten her life by little paternal attentions, after having longed for years to show the love which has been repressed! I live again, wake up as if out of a long bad dream, and revere the stern will of the Lord, whose hard but wise hand has smitten me. "Blessed is he whom God chastens." Blessed, for he does not trouble about others.

While it is still uncertain whether I shall meet my wife on the Danube, a matter to which, because of an undefined grudge against her, I am quite indifferent, I prepare for my pilgrimage, perfectly aware that it is a penance, and that new mortifications await me.

After thirty days of misery, at last the doors of my torture-chamber open. I part from my friend—my executioner—without bitterness. He has only been the scourge in the hand of Providence. Behold, blessed is the man whom the Lord chasteneth.

VII

BEATRICE

In Berlin, I drive from the Stettin to the Anhalt Station. The half-hour's drive becomes a real way of thorns for me, so many are the memories which painfully revive in me. At first we pass through the street in which my friend Popoffsky, as an unknown, but yet misunderstood, man fought his first battles with poverty and passion. Now his wife and child are both dead; they died in this house on the left; and our friendship has turned into bitter hatred.

Here, on the right, are the restaurants frequented by artists and authors, the scenes of so many intellectual and erotic orgies. Here is the Cantina Italiana, where I used to meet with my fiancée three years ago, and where the first honorarium I received from Italy was spent in Chianti. There is the Schiffbauerdamm with the Pension Fulda, which we lived in when a young married pair. Here is my theatre, my book-seller, my tailor, my chemist.

What unhappy instinct leads the cabman to drive me through this via dolorosa full of buried memories, which at this late hour of the night rise again like ghosts? Why does he choose just the street in which is the restaurant, the "Black Pig," well known as a favourite resort of Heine and E.T.A. Hoffmann? The restaurant keeper himself stands on the steps under the grotesque sign-board. He looks at me without recognition. For a second the candelabrum within darts coloured rays through the numerous bottles in the window, and makes me live again a year of my life which abounded in grief and joy, friendship and love. At the same time, I feel keenly that it is all over, and must be buried to make place for something new.

I spent the night in Berlin. The next morning a deep rose-red flush in the East greeted me over the roofs. I remember having seen this rosy colour in Malmö on the evening of my departure. I leave Berlin, my second home, where I have spent my "second spring," that is, my last. At the Anhalt Station, full of these memories, I give up all hope of the renewal of a spring and a love which can never return.

After a night in Tabor, whither the rosy glow followed me, I travel through the Bohemian mountains to the Danube. There the railway ends, and I traverse the Danube plain, which extends to Grein, in a carriage. We pass between orchards of apple and pear trees, cornfields and green meadows. At last, on a hill on the other side of the river, I discover the little church in which I never was, but which I know well as the central point of the landscape which extends before the house where my child was born. It is now two years since that unforgettable month of May. I pass through villages and convents; along the road there rise innumerable penitential chapels, hills crowned with crucifixes, votive pictures, monuments, reminding one of accidents and sudden deaths by lightning, and in other ways. At the end of my pilgrimage there certainly await me the twelve stations of the Cross. Every hundred paces the Crucified meets me with His crown of thorns, and instils into me courage to bear scourging and crucifixion. I painfully convince myself beforehand, that she, as I might have known, will not be there. Now, since my wife can no more divert the domestic storm, I must expect tit-for-tat from the old parents, whom I left under unpleasant circumstances, though against my will. I come accordingly for the sake of peace to be punished, and when I have passed the last village and the last crucifix, my feelings are something like those of a condemned man awaiting execution.

I had left an infant six weeks old, and I found a little girl of two and a half. She turned on me a searching look, but not one of dislike, as though she wished to find out whether I had come for her own or her mother's sake. After she had assured herself of the former, she let herself be embraced, and put her little arms round my neck. I am in a mood like Faust's when he exclaims, "the earth has me again," but more tender and purer. I am delighted in taking the little one on my arm, and feeling her heart beat against mine. Love for a child turns a man into a woman; it is sexless and heavenly, as Swedenborg says. This is the beginning of my education for heaven. But I have not yet done penance enough.

Briefly put, the situation is as follows: My wife is staying with her married sister, for her grandmother, who is in possession of the family property, has vowed that our marriage shall be dissolved, so intensely does she hate me, on account of my ingratitude and other matters. So I with my child remain as a welcome guest of my mother-in-law, and contentedly accept the hospitality offered me, under present circumstances, for an indefinite time. My mother-in-law, with the placable and submissive mind of a deeply religious woman, has forgiven me all.

September 1st.—I occupy the room in which my wife has spent her two years of separation. Here she has suffered, while I suffered in Paris. Poor, poor woman! Are we so severely punished, because we have trifled with love?

During the evening meal the following incident happens. In order to help my little daughter, who cannot yet help herself, I touch her hand quite gently and kindly. The child utters a cry, draws her hand back, and casts at me a glance full of alarm. When her grandmother asks what is the matter, she answers, "He hurts me." In my confusion I am unable to utter a word. How many persons have I deliberately hurt, and hurt still, though without intending it. At night I dream of an eagle which tears at my hand for some unknown crime.

In the morning my daughter visits me; her manner is gentle and coaxing. She drinks coffee with me, and remains standing by my writing-table while I show her pictures. We are already good friends, and my mother-in-law is glad that she has someone to help her in educating the little one. In the evening I accompany her going to bed, and hear her prayers. She is a Catholic, and when she bids me pray and make the sign of the cross, I remain silent, for I am a Protestant.

September 2nd.—Everything is in confusion. My mother-in-law's mother, who lives not far from here on the bank of the stream, intends to have an expulsion order made out against me. She wants me to go at once, and threatens if I disobey to disinherit her daughter. My mother-in-law's sister, a good woman, who is separated from her husband, invites me to stay with her in the neighbouring village till the storm has blown over. She comes herself to fetch me. From the top of a hill about a mile off, one looks into a circular valley, like the crater of a volcano, out of which rise many smaller hills covered with pines. In the middle of this crater lies the village with its church, and above, on a precipitous height, a castle built in the mediæval style; between, lie fields and meadows watered by a stream which rushes into a ravine below the castle.

This peculiar and unique landscape makes a strange impression on me, and the thought arises: "I must have seen it somewhere before, but where, where?"

In the zinc bath in the Hôtel Orfila, traced out in oxide of iron! Without question, it is the same landscape!

My aunt goes down with me into the village, where she owns a three-storeyed house. The capacious edifice also contains a baker's and butcher's shop, and a restaurant. It has a lightning-conductor, because the store was a year ago struck by lightning. When my good aunt, who is as rigidly religious as her sister, conducts me to the room assigned for my use, I remain fixed on the threshold as if arrested by a vision. The walls are painted a rose-colour, which reminds me of the flush of the dawns which accompanied me on my journey. The curtains are also rose-coloured, and the windows so full of flowers that the daylight is subdued by them. Everything is spotlessly clean, and the bed with its canopy supported by four pillars is like that of a maiden. The whole room with its appurtenances is a poem, and speaks of a soul which only half lives upon earth. The Crucified is not there, but the Blessed Virgin is, and a vessel of holy water guards the entrance against evil spirits.

A feeling of shame seizes me, and I fear to sully the ideal of a pure heart which has erected this temple to the Virgin over the grave of her only love, who has been dead ten years, and in confusion I attempt to decline the kindly offer. But the good lady insists: "It will do you good, if you sacrifice your earthly love to the love of God, and of your child. Believe me, this thornless love will preserve your peace of mind and cheerfulness of spirit, and under the protection of the Virgin you will sleep quietly."

I kiss her hand as a sign of gratitude for her sacrifice, and consent with a feeling of humility of which I had not thought myself capable. The powers seem to be gracious to me, and to have arranged the sufferings they have ordained for my improvement. Still, for some reason or other, I wish to sleep another night in Saxen, and put off my change of residence till the next day. So I return with my aunt to my child. Looking at the house from the street, I discover that the lightning-conductor is fastened exactly above my bed.

What an infernal coincidence! It makes me think again that I am the subject of a personal persecution. I also notice that my window commands a pleasant prospect, looking out as it does on a poorhouse occupied by released criminals and sick people, among whom several are dying. A sorry spectacle truly, to have continually before one's eyes!

In Saxen I pack my things and prepare for departure. I part with sorrow from my child, who has become so dear to me. The cruelty of the old woman, who has succeeded in separating me from wife and child, enrages me. Angrily I shake my fist against a painting of her which hangs over my bed, and utter an imprecation against her. Two hours later a terrible storm breaks over the village. One lightning flash succeeds another, the rain pours in torrents, the sky is pitch dark.

The next day I am in Klam, where the rose-coloured room awaits me. Over my aunt's house there hangs a cloud in the shape of a dragon. They tell me that a house quite close by has been struck by lightning, and that the torrents of rain have injured haystacks and carried away bridges.

On the 10th of September a cyclone has devastated Paris, and that under most extraordinary circumstances. Without any warning, it suddenly rises behind St. Sulpice in the Jardin de Luxembourg, grazes the Théâtre du Châlet and the police station, and disappears behind the St. Louis hospital, after it has torn up iron gratings for fifty yards round. Regarding this cyclone and the one in the Jardin des Plantes, my theosophical friend asks me, "What is a cyclone? Is it an ebullition of hatred, the eruption of some passion, the effluence of some spirit?"

It must be a coincidence, or rather, more than a coincidence, that in a letter which crosses his, I have asked him as one initiated in the occult doctrines of the Hindus, "Can the philosophers of Hindustan cause cyclones?"

I began to suspect the adepts in magic of persecuting me on account of my gold-making or my obstinacy, and of wishing to bring me in complete subjection to their society. In the German Mythology of Rydberg and in Wärend och Widarne of Hilten-Cavallius, I had read that witches were in the habit of appearing in a storm or in short and violent gusts of wind. I mention this to show my mental condition before I fell in with Swedenborg's teaching.

The sanctuary shines in white and rose, and the saint will soon join his disciple, who summons him from their common fatherland in order to revive the memory of the man who was more highly equipped with spiritual gifts than any born of woman in these modern times. France sent Anskar[1] in the early middle ages to baptise Sweden; a thousand years later Sweden sent Swedenborg to re-baptise France by means of his disciple Saint-Martin. The Martinist orders, who know the rôle they have to play in the founding of a new France, will not undervalue the purport of these words, and still less the significance of the above-mentioned millennium.

VIII

SWEDENBORG

My mother-in-law and my aunt completely resemble each other in character, tastes, and inclinations, and each sees in the other her counterpart. On the first evening of my stay I narrate to them my mysterious adventures, doubts, and sufferings. They both exclaim, with a certain look of satisfaction in their faces, "You are where we have already been." Both starting from a neutral point of view as regards religion had begun to study occultism. From that moment onwards they suffered from sleepless nights, mysterious accidents accompanied by terrible fears, and at last, attacks of madness. The invisible furies pursue their prey up to the very gates of the city of refuge—religion. But before they have got so far the protecting angel reveals himself—and that is Swedenborg. The good ladies wrongly suppose that I have a thorough acquaintance with the writings of my fellow-countrymen. Astonished at my ignorance, they give me, with a certain air of reserve, however, an old volume in German, saying, "Take it, read, and don't be afraid."

"Afraid? Why should I be?" I answer.

Returning to the rose-coloured room, I open the book at haphazard and read. The reader may conceive my astonishment when my eyes fall on the description of one of Swedenborg's hells which exactly reproduces the landscape of Klam, as I saw it in the zinc bath. The crater-shaped valley, the pine-crowned hill, the ravine with the stream, the heaps of dung, the pig-sty—they are all there.

Hell? But I have been brought up in the profoundest contempt of the doctrine of hell, as one consigned to the rubbish-heap of out-worn ideas. And yet I cannot deny the fact—and that is the novelty in this exposition of the doctrine of so-called eternal punishment—we are already in hell. Earth, earth is hell? the dungeon appointed by a superior power, in which I cannot move a step without injuring the happiness of others, and in which others cannot remain happy without hurting me. Thus Swedenborg depicts hell, and perhaps without knowing it, earthly life, at the same time.

The fire of hell is the wish to rise in the world; the powers awaken this wish and allow the damned souls to get all they want. But as soon as the goal is reached, and the wish is fulfilled, everything is seen to be worthless and the victory is null and void. Oh, vanity of vanities! Then, after the first disappointment, the powers rekindle the flame of ambition and desire; and satisfied greed and satiety are still a worse torment than unquenched appetite. Thus the Devil suffers everlasting punishment, for he gets all he wants at once, so that he cannot enjoy it.

When I compare the Swedenborgian hells with the punishments described in the German Mythology, I find an obvious likeness, but for me the bare fact that both these books have fallen into my hand exactly at the right moment is the essential point. I am in hell, and damnation weighs upon me like a heavy burden. When I go over my past, my childhood already appears to me like a prison house or torture chamber. In order to explain the sufferings inflicted upon innocent children, one has only to suppose an earlier existence, out of which we have been cast down in order to bear the consequences of forgotten sins. With a docile mind, which is my chief weakness, I receive a deep and sombre impression from my reading of Swedenborg. And the powers let me rest no more. Walking along the little brook in the neighbourhood of the village, I reach the so-called ravine path between the two mountains. The entrance between fallen and precipitous rocks has a wonderful attraction for me. The almost perpendicular hill, crowned by the deserted castle, forms the gate of the ravine, in which the stream drives a water-mill. A freak of nature has given the rock the form of a Turk's head, a fact well known in the neighbourhood. Underneath, the miller's shed leans against the wall of rock. Upon the latch of the door hangs a goat's horn smeared over with fat, and by it stands a broom. This is certainly quite natural and ordinary, yet I cannot help asking myself what devil has put these two symbols of witchcraft, the goat's horn and the broom, just this morning in my way? I press farther on up the damp, dark, and uneven path, and come to a wooden building, the strange aspect of which makes me stop. It is a long, low erection, with six openings like oven doors. Oven doors! Ye gods, where am I then?

The image of Dante's hell, the red-glowing tombs of the heresiarchs, rises before me—and the six oven doors! Is it a bad dream? No, commonplace fact, for a frightful stench, a stream of dirt, and a chorus of grunting reveals to me immediately that I have a pig-sty in front of me.

Between the miller's house and the hill, just under the Turk's head, the path contracts to a narrow passage. As I go farther along it, I find myself confronted by a large, wolf-coloured Danish dog, a counterpart of the monster which guarded the studio in the Rue de la Santé in Paris. I retreat two steps, but immediately remember Jacques Cœur's motto, "To a brave heart nothing is impossible," and press onward into the ravine. Cerberus appears not to notice me, and so I pursue the path which now winds between low and gloomy houses. On one side, a black, tailless fowl with a red comb is running about, on the other a woman wearing a red crescent-shaped ornament on her forehead comes out of a house. She looks beautiful at first, but as she comes nearer, I see that she is toothless and ugly.

The waterfall and the mill combined make a noise like that roaring in the ears which I had during my first period of disquiet in Paris. The white-powdered miller's men, who control the machinery, look like angels or executioners, and the never-ceasing stream of water rushes from under the great never-resting wheel. Then I reach the smithy with its bare-armed, blackened workmen armed with tongs, choppers, screw-vices, and hammers; amid the flames and sparks of the furnace there lie red-glowing iron and molten lead. There is a frightful din, which makes my brain vibrate and my heart leap. Farther on groans the great saw of the saw-mill, and tortures with gnashing teeth the giant tree-trunks which lie on the block, while the sawdust trickles down on the damp ground.

The ravine-path, terribly devastated by cyclones and storms, continues along the stream; the subsiding overflow has left a greyish-green layer of mud behind, covering the sharp pebbles on which my feet continually slip. I wish to cross the water, but since the little bridge has been swept away, I halt under a precipice whose overhanging rock threatens to fall on an image of the Virgin, who seems to support the sinking hill on her tender shoulders.

Meditating on this combination of coincidences, which, taken together, without being supernatural, form a remarkable whole, I return home.

Eight days and eight quiet nights I spend in the rose-coloured room. My peace of mind returns with the daily visits of my little daughter, who loves me, and whom I love. By my relations I am treated like a sick, spoilt child. The reading of Swedenborg occupies me during the day and depresses me by the realism of its descriptions. All my observations, feelings, and thoughts are so vividly reflected there, that his visions seem to me like experiences and real "human documents." It is no question of blind faith; it is enough for me to read his experiences and to compare with them my own. The book I have is only an extract; the chief riddle of the spiritual life will be solved for me later on when his Arcana Cœlestia falls into my hands. In the midst of my reflections, which lead to the newly-won conviction that there is a God who punishes, some lines of Swedenborg comfort me, and immediately I begin to excuse myself and yield to my old pride. In the evening I take my mother-in-law into my confidence, and ask her, "Do you think I am a damned soul?"

"No; although I have never seen any human destiny like yours; but you have not yet found the right way to lead you to the Lord."

"Do you remember Swedenborg and his Principia Cœli, how he describes the stages of spiritual progress? First, an elevated ambition. Now, my ambition has never led me to strive after honour, nor to try to impress people with a sense of my ability. Secondly, love of happiness and money, in order to profit people. You know that I seek no gain and despise money. As regards my gold-making, I have sworn in the presence of the powers that any profits I made should be used for humanitarian, scientific, and religious objects. Finally, wedded love. Need I say that from my youth I have concentrated my love of woman on the idea of marriage, of the family, and the wife. What in actual experience befell me that I should marry the widow of a man who was still alive, is an irony of fate which I cannot explain, but which cannot be regarded as a serious misdemeanour when contrasted with the irregularities of ordinary bachelor life."

After some moments of reflection, my mother-in-law replied: "I cannot dispute your assertion; for I have found in your writings a spirit of aspiration and endeavour, whose efforts have been involuntarily frustrated. Certainly, you must be doing penance, for sins which you committed before your birth. You must in your former existence have been a blood-stained conqueror, and therefore you suffer repeatedly the terrors of death without being able to die. Now be religious inwardly and outwardly."

"You mean that I should become a Catholic?"

"Yes."

"Swedenborg says it is forbidden to quit the religion of one's fathers, for everyone belongs to the spiritual territory on which he is born."

"The Catholic religion receives graciously everyone who seeks it."

"I will be content with a lower position. In case of need I can find a place among the Jews and Mohammedans, who are also admitted to heaven. I am modest."

"Grace is offered you, but you prefer the mess of pottage to the right of the first-born."

"The right of the first-born for the Son of a Servant![1] Too much! Too much!"

Restored to self-respect by Swedenborg, I regard myself once more as Job, the righteous and sinless man, whom the Eternal tries in order to show the wicked the example of a righteous man enduring unjust sufferings.

My pious vanity is tickled by the idea. I am proud of the distinction of being persecuted by misfortune, and am never weary of repeating, "See! how I have suffered." Before my relatives I accuse myself of living in too much luxury, and my rose-coloured room seems to me to be a satire upon me. They notice my sincere repentance, and overwhelm me with kindnesses and little indulgences. In brief, I am one of the elect; Swedenborg has said it, and confident of the protection of the Eternal, I challenge the demons to combat.

On the eighth day which I spend in my rose-coloured room the news arrives that my mother-in-law's mother, who lives on the bank of the Danube, is ill. She has a pain in the liver accompanied with vomiting, sleeplessness, and attacks of palpitation at night. My aunt whose hospitality I enjoy is summoned thither, and I am to return to my mother-in-law in Saxen. To my objection that the old lady has forbidden it, they reply that she has withdrawn her order of expulsion, so that I am free to arrange my residence where I like. This sudden change of mind astonishes me, and I hardly dare to attribute it to her illness. The next day she gets worse. My mother-in-law gives me in the name of her mother a bouquet as a sign of reconciliation, and tells me in confidence that, besides other wild fancies, the old lady thinks she has a snake in her body. The next news is that she has been robbed of 1000 gulden, and suspects her landlady of stealing them. The latter is enraged at the unjust suspicion and wishes to bring an action for libel. The old lady, who had retired hither to die quietly, finds her domestic peace completely destroyed. She is continually sending us something—flowers, fruit, game, pheasants, poultry, fish.

Is the old lady's conscience troubled at the prospect of judgment? Does she remember that she once had me put out on the street, and so obliged me to go to hospital? Or is she superstitious? Does she think she is bewitched by me? Perhaps the presents she sends are meant as offerings to the wizard, to still his thirst for vengeance.

Unfortunately, just at this juncture, there comes a work on magic from Paris containing information regarding so-called witchcraft. The author tells the reader that he must not regard himself as innocent, if he merely avoids using magic arts; one must rather keep watch over one's own evil will, which by itself alone is capable of exercising an influence over others in their absence.

The results of this teaching on my mind are twofold. In the first place, it arouses my scruples at the present juncture, for I had raised my fist in anger against the old lady's picture and cursed her. Secondly, it reawakens my old suspicions that I myself am the victim of mal-practices on the part of occultists or theosophists. Pangs of conscience on one side, fear on the other! And the two millstones begin to grind me to powder.

Swedenborg describes Hell as follows: The damned soul inhabits a splendid palace, leads a luxurious life there, and regards himself as one of the elect. Gradually the splendours disappear, and the wretched soul finds that it is confined in a wretched hovel and surrounded by filth. This is parallelled in my own experience.

The rose-coloured room has disappeared, and as I remove into a large chamber near that of my mother-in-law, I feel that my stay here will not be of long duration. As a matter of fact, all possible trifles combine to poison my life and to deprive me of the necessary quiet for work. The planks of the floor sway under my feet, the table wobbles, the chair is unsteady, the articles on the washing-stand clash together, the bed creaks, and the rest of the furniture moves whenever I cross the floor. The lamp smokes, the ink-pot is too narrow so that the pen-holder gets inky. The farmhouse smells of dung and manure, ammonia, sulphuretted hydrogen, and sulphuric acid. The whole day there is a noise of cows, swine, calves, cocks, turkeys, and doves. Flies and wasps worry me by day, and gnats by night. At the village shop there is nothing to be had. Because there is no other sort, I must use rose-coloured ink. Strange, too! In a packet of cigarette papers which I buy there is a single rose-coloured one among a hundred white. It is a miniature hell, and I, who am accustomed to bear great sufferings, suffer inexpressibly from these needle-pricks, all the more that my mother-in-law believes that I am not satisfied by her kind attentions.

September 17th.—I awake at night and hear the church clock of the village strike thirteen. Immediately I feel the electric band encircle me, and think I hear a noise in the attic above me.

September 19th.—I search the attic and discover a dozen distaffs, the wheels of which remind me of electric machines. I open a large box; it is empty; only five staves painted black, the use of which is unknown to me, lie in the form of a pentagram at the bottom of the box. Who has played me this trick, and what does it mean? I do not venture to ask anything about it, and the riddle remains unsolved.

Between midnight and two o'clock a terrible storm breaks out. As a rule a storm exhausts itself and soon subsides; this one, however, remains raging for two hours over the village. Every lightning flash is a personal attack on me, but none of them strike me.

In the evening my mother-in-law relates to me the history of the district. What a monstrous collection of domestic and other tragedies, consisting of adulteries, divorces, lawsuits between relatives, murders, thefts, violations, incests, slanders. The castles, the villas, the huts are occupied by unhappy people of all kinds, and I cannot take my walks without thinking of Swedenborg's hells. Beggars, imbeciles of both sexes, sick persons and cripples line the high roads or kneel at the foot of a crucifix, a Madonna, or a martyr. At night the wretched creatures try to escape their sleeplessness and their bad dreams by wandering about in the meadows and woods in order to fatigue themselves, and to be able to sleep. Members of good society, well-educated ladies, even a pastor, are among them.