The next book which accidentally falls into my hands allows me to catch a glimpse of the purposes of my Guide. It is Haubert's Temptation of St. Anthony. "All those who are tormented by longing for God I have devoured," says the Sphinx. This book makes me ill, and I am alarmed when I recognise in it the thoughts which I have expressed in my mystery-play mentioned above—regarding the admission of evil into the kingdom of the good God. After reading it, I threw it away like a temptation of the Devil, who is the author of it. "Anthony makes the sign of the cross, and resumes his prayers." So the book ends, and I follow his example.
After that, and at the propitious moment, I come across Huysmans' En route. Why did not this confession of an occultist fall into my hands before? Because it was necessary that two analogous destinies should be developed on parallel lines, so that one might be strengthened by the other. It is the history of an over-curious man, who challenges the Sphinx and is devoured by her, that his soul may be delivered at the foot of the Cross. Well, as far as I am concerned, a Catholic may go to the Trappists and confess to the priest; for my part, however, it is enough that my sin be publicly acknowledged in writing. Besides, the eight weeks which I have spent in Paris writing the present book may well be the equivalent and more of entering a convent, because I have lived a thorough hermit's life. A little room, not larger than a monk's cell, with a barred window high up under the ceiling, has been my dwelling. Through the bars of the window, which looks into a deep courtyard, I can see a fragment of the sky and a grey wall overgrown with ivy which climbs upward to the light. My loneliness, which I find terrible in itself, is still more oppressive in the restaurant among a noisy crowd of people twice a-day. Add to this the cold—a perpetual draught through the room which has given me violent neuralgia,—pecuniary anxieties with no means of relieving them, the daily increasing bill, and it may be imagined what the total effect is!
And then the pangs of conscience! Formerly when I regarded myself as responsible, it was only the remembrance of committed follies that pained me. Now it is the evil itself, my sinful acts, which constitute my scourge. To crown all, my past life appears to me merely as a network of crime, a skein composed of godlessness, wickednesses, blunders, brutalities in word and act Whole scenes out of my past unrolled before my gaze. I see myself in this and that situation, and always a preposterous one. I am astonished that anyone has ever been able to love me. I accuse myself of every possible crime; there is not a meanness, not a disagreeable act, which is not marked in black chalk on a white slate. I am filled with terror at myself, and would like to die.
There are moments when shame sends the blood to my cheeks and to my ear-tips. Selfishness, ingratitude, malice, envy, pride—all the deadly sins weave their ghostly dance before my awakened conscience.
While my mind thus tortures itself, my health deteriorates, my strength decreases, and, together with the emaciation of the body, the soul begins to have a presentiment of her deliverance, from the mire.
At present I read Töpffer's Le Presbytere and Dickens's Christmas Tales, and they impart to me an indescribable inward calm and joy. I return to the ideals of the best period of my youth, and recover the treasures which I had squandered in the game of life. Faith returns, and with it, trust in the natural goodness of men; faith in innocence, unselfishness, virtue.
Virtue! This word has disappeared from modern use; it has been declared null and void and thoroughly false.
Just now I see in the papers that my drama, Herr Bengt's Wife, has been acted in Copenhagen. In this play love and virtue triumph just as in the Secret of Gilde. The drama has not pleased the public any more than when it was first acted in 1882. Why? Because this fuss about virtue is considered idle talk.
I have again read Maupassant's Horla. That is the finale out of Don Juan over again. Some one steals unseen into the bedroom in the middle of the night. He drinks water and milk, and finishes by sucking the blood of the wretched Don Juan, who, hunted to death, is forced to lay hands on himself.
That is a real experience. I recognise myself in it, and 1 confess that my senses are disturbed; but some one has a hand in it.