One of our poets has recently been summoned before a court because of a collection of poems, some of which were considered injurious to morality. He has been acquitted by the jury, but can find no rest. In one of his poems he has challenged the Eternal to a wrestle, even though (he said) it should have to be decided in hell. It seems as though the challenge had been accepted, and the young man were compelled, like a broken reed, to sue for mercy. One evening, while he sits in a merry circle of friends, some power, unknown to the exact sciences, snatches the cigar from his mouth so that it falls to the ground. A little surprised, he picks up the cigar again, as though nothing had happened. But the same thing happens three times. Then the sceptic becomes as pale as death, and quits the place in silence, while his friends sit mute with astonishment.
But when he reached home the rash man found a new surprise awaiting him. Without any visible cause, both his hands like those of a masseur began to chafe or rather to knead his whole body, which too much drinking had made unnecessarily obese. This involuntary massage continued without interruption for fourteen days, yet at the end of this time the wrestler feels himself sufficiently strengthened to enter the arena again. He hires an hotel and invites his friends to a Belshazzar's feast, which is to last three days. He means to show the world how Nietzsche's superman can control the evil spirits of wine. They drink through the whole of the first day till night falls, and with it falls the champion. But before he gives up the battle for lost the demons of wine take possession of the soul of this superman and fill him with such uncontrollable madness that he flings his guests out of the doors and windows, and so the feast ends. Whereupon the host is taken to an asylum.
Thus the adventure was related to me, and I am sorry to have repeated it without the tears which one owes to misfortune. But the accused has gained a defender for his case, a young doctor, who offers to assist him in his conflict with the Eternal. Is it rash to connect these two facts? The doctor pleads the blasphemer's cause, and the doctor breaks his leg. Was it a mere chance that frightened his horse so that he shied and upset the carriage? I only ask the question. And how did it happen that the doctor, after he had been confined to his bed for several months, got up with a "sprung thigh sinew," that his formerly clear and firm look had a strange and wild expression, like that of a man who is no longer master of himself?
Is it necessary for me to answer? In case one should say "Yes," I continue the narrative to the end. This doctor, a good fellow, intelligent and honest, came to me one day towards the end of summer, and confided to me that he was plagued with sleeplessness, and that a strange irritation woke him at night, and allowed him no rest till he got up. If he obstinately remained lying in bed he began to have palpitations.
"Well?" he concluded, awaiting my answer with manifest impatience.
"It was just the same with me," I replied.
"And how did you get cured?"
Was it cowardice, or did I obey an inner voice when I answered, "I took sulphonal."
His face assumed an expression of disappointment, but I could do nothing for him.