XVI
He did not love the memory of unpleasant events.
He did not like to speak of the past, whether it was pleasant or not. Nor did it please him to turn back upon a path. If ever it became necessary he soon grew weary.
He did not care for people whose faces showed the strain of intellectual labour, nor such as discoursed of books or of the sciences. Nor did he love the pale or the hectic or the over-eager or those who argued or insisted on the rightness of their opinions. If any one defended an opinion opposed to his own he smiled as courteously as though no difference existed. And it was painful to him to be asked concerning his opinion directly, and rather than bear the burden of a speech of explanation he did not hesitate to feign ignorance.
If in large cities he was forced to walk or ride through the quarters inhabited by the proletarian poor, he hastened as much as possible, compressed his lips, breathed sparingly, and his vexation would give his eyes a greenish glitter.
Once on the street a crippled beggar had caught hold of his great coat. He returned home and presented the coat to his valet. Even in his childhood he had refused to pass places where ragged people were to be seen, and if any one told of misery or need among men he had left the room, full of aversion for the speaker.
He hated to speak or to hear others speak of the functions or needs of the body—of sleep or hunger or thirst. The sight of a human being asleep was repulsive to him. He did not like emphatic leavetakings or the ceremonious greetings of those who had been absent long. He disliked church bells and people who prayed and all things that have to do with the exercise of piety. He was quite without understanding for even the very moderate Protestantism of his father.
He made no demand in words, but instinctively he chose to bear no company but that of well-clad, care-free, and clear-seeing people. Wherever he suspected secrets, hidden sorrows, a darkened soul, a brooding tendency, inner or outer conflicts, he became frosty and unapproachable and elusive. Therefore his mother said: “Christian is a child of the sun and can thrive only in the sunlight.” She had made an early cult of keeping far from him all that is turbid, distorted, or touched with pain.
On her desk lay the marble copy of a plaster-cast of Christian’s hand—a hand that was not small, but sinewy and delicately formed, capable of a strong grasp, but unused and quiet.