I.
Albert found time passing pleasantly and swiftly. Two more years had passed and he was still living the life of a literary journalist—visiting cafés, art galleries, places of amusement; dining at the homes of the elite, visiting notables, frequenting fashionable circles. He was trying to persuade himself that his was a happy existence—fame in Germany and even greater renown in Paris, his health fairly good save for an occasional headache, and his earnings considerable—but he could not shut his ears to the small voice calling from the very depth of his heart. It was a rebuking, reproachful voice, which he could silence neither with a witty epigram nor with convincing preachment. It was the voice of mocking Satan, with whom the more one expostulates the more it mocks. He was already in his thirty-sixth year and none of his great literary plans had come to fruition. He had been bartering his talents for ducats. Had his fire gone out? He trembled. He had hardly written a poem worthy of the name in the past two years. True, he had not been idle and had fought for the liberation of his compatriots, and studied and worked very industriously on criticism of literature, religion, philosophy; but that, he said to himself, was not his life work. Yes, even love was dead in his heart. Was he growing old? Fear seized him. Goethe at thirty-six had only begun to love, and only begun to live. His heart was beating with the rapidity of fear. When one ceases to feel the lure of love one is nearing his grave, he mused. And one morning he awakened to find two fingers of his left hand benumbed. Alarmed he ran to a physician, a friend of his. The diagnosis was terrifying. The two fingers were paralyzed. But he only emitted a bitter laugh. “What a beneficent deity we have! God is reducing the strength of my left hand that I may strike the harder with my right.”
He jested about his deformity but it struck terror at his heart. It was not the fear of death but the fear of dying. He had seen death in all its grimness, when the cholera raged in Paris the year before. No, it was not death he feared but the approach of death. Indeed, he was getting old and dying. Perspiration burst over him. He recalled that the Weltschmerz which had gripped him so mercilessly in his youth had relaxed its hold on him since his arrival in Paris. And the Weltschmerz is the elixir of youth. Want of restlessness is want of life-force.
He wanted no sympathy. He had promised Princess Pampini to call on her that morning but he could not force himself to go to her. It was not vanity because his fingers were crippled but he would not listen to condolence.
As he thought of the princess a smile passed over his face. People were gossiping about his being in love with her. He could no more be in love with her than he could have been in love with Rahel. No, he could not be in love with anybody any more . . . He sighed disconsolately. No wonder the heights of Parnassus had been denied him in the past two years. Love and song were no longer for him. . .
In despair he wandered through the streets, frequently touching and fondling the numb fingers of his left hand with those of his right. He sought to dissipate his sorrow in motion. Pretty women walked past him but he glanced at them with trepidation. He saw their beauty but could feel no inner thrill. Yes, the glow of life was fast ebbing away from him. Youth and love and song were all dead in his heart.
He had reached the Porte St. Martin and turned into a side street. He wished to be alone, in a street less frequented by the young and gay. The sight of the young and gay around him was too tantalizing. He was brooding. Such was the irony of life. No sooner had he begun to enjoy life than life began to flee. Was not that the allegory of Moses on Mount Nebo?
Like another Faust—nay, like another Koheleth, the Preacher—Albert mused on the vanities and uselessness of life. It is only he whose eyes penetrate behind the scenes of life that can scoff and cry Havel havolim, vanity of vanities; and one’s eyes scarcely ever penetrate the mystery of life until one is about ready to relinquish it. In the heart of a forest one does not see the forest. “I have seen all the works that are done under the sun; and, behold, all is vanity and vexation of spirit.”
Ah, indeed, every man must write his own Faust as he must brood over his own Ecclesiastes! Albert had often said this to himself and friends, and he now understood the full import of his saying. Like all true humorists, he passed quickly from mirth to sadness. There was nothing in life for him any longer, and it did not matter if he could only go to his lodging, fall asleep, and never wake again.
He was making his way blindly through the quiet street, oblivious to everything about him, when his ears caught the humming of a street song, the snatch of a song which was then popular in Paris and played by every hurdy-gurdy. He raised his eyes and beheld a young girl, perhaps seventeen or eighteen years old, standing in the doorway of a little shop, her hands stuck in the pockets of a white apron over her black skirt. There was the gleam of a cheerful smile on her comely countenance, and as he raised his eyes she stopped humming the song and looked at him with the candor and shyness of a child.
He was about to continue his walk when he remembered that he needed a pair of shoes, which were less costly on the side streets than on the Boulevards. He halted, hesitated, took a step back, and entered the shoe shop; the girl turned on her heel and followed him in.
Suddenly all his sadness fled, all his brooding thoughts vanished. He was conscious of a thrill in his heart and of the sweetness of living. The face before him was one mirroring youth and the ignorance of youth, eyes that sparkled, seeing only the surface of life. And in every line of her figure, in every movement of hers, was immaturity.
While he was examining a pair of shoes a heavy-set woman, with purple cheeks, stuck her head through a door in the rear, and said something about showing the gentleman the new style of footwear they had received the day before. What was there in the girl’s voice that made something within him vibrate?
He began to take off his left shoe.
“Not the left but the right, monsieur;” and she emitted a little laugh with the unrestraint of a child.
He did as he was bidden, and felt a peculiar intimacy as the girl bent down to help him slip on the new shoe. As she bent forward his eyes rested on her lustrous black hair—wavy without being curly—combed back from her low forehead.
He was thinking of Miriam, the girl of Gnesen. There was a striking resemblance between the two, except that the girl before him had somnolent black eyes while the iris in Miriam’s eyes were of a deep dark-blue. There was the same lack of artifice in her speech, the same touch of tenderness in her voice. Likewise was her face a book with blank pages.
He lingered in the little shop even after he had made his purchase. Was the woman who had spoken through the doorway her mother? No, she was an aunt, for whom she was working. Her mother lived in the country, in a little village near Nantes, and her mother had sent her to Paris to earn her living. Was her mother poor? Yes, very, very poor.
“Where do you come from?” she presently questioned him with equal candor, and looked up into his face without the least embarrassment.
“Where do you think?”
The deep corners of his large mouth drooped and there was a faint smile on his oval face.
She straightened up, her hands now behind her, her eyes resting on his light-brown hair, on his thoughtful face.
“From—from Normandy—all the men in Normandy are blond and have bluish eyes——”
He laughed with frank amusement, the amusement a child’s talk provokes, and told her his eyes only seemed blue but they were greenish.
“But a thing is only what it seems,” she said, with naive protest.
“I grant you it is good philosophy but not all philosophy is truth.”
There was a comical expression on his face as he uttered the last, and she looked puzzled. A bit of shyness came over her.
“So you can’t guess where I come from,” he said, looking tenderly at her. Then he added, as if speaking to himself, “I come from a country where they wish I had come from another country, and if I had come from another country they would have wished the same.”
He threw his head back and laughed but not without a touch of bitterness in his tone.
She did not understand him. There was perplexity in the girl’s face. No one had ever looked at her in this manner. There was something beseeching in his half-closed eyes, something eloquently covetous, and he gazed at her as if she were an inanimate thing, a picture or statue of the masters in the Louvre.
His next question sounded still more puzzling. Was she always in the shop? What a question! She was either in the shop or in the rear helping with the housework. Her employer was not boarding her and paying her mother ten francs a month for nothing!
As he was leaving he suddenly turned around and asked her name. “Marguerite,” she told him. He said he would like to be her Faust.
She looked at him incomprehensively and said, “Vous êtes drôle.”
“You are not the only one who thinks me funny,” he replied.
She laughed.
He walked away with drooping head and lagging step.