“It is good that you do not speak this evening,” remarked Fräulein Albertine, joining in the conversation. “I must tell you frankly that your voice seems to me somewhat hoarse ... perhaps you have a cold; it seems to me, too, that your nose is swollen ... you ought to rub on a little candle tallow.”
Helmer smiled. “I am afraid I should not be able to find a tallow candle in the whole Rose-Palace. But now I will bid you good-evening ... a new lecture is beginning.”
The young Russian author now stepped forward to the reader’s desk with a manuscript in his hand. At the same time ushers went through the hall, distributing printed pamphlets containing German, French, and English translations of what the author was to deliver in his native tongue. That portion of the public which did not understand Russian—and that was by far the larger—could now also follow the speaker and enjoy his euphonious utterance, now trembling with melancholy, now glowing with inspiration. What he offered, were brief sketches in prose: scenes from the time of war and of revolution, personal experiences or episodes, made vivid by poetic intuition; stories of the wolf’s pits, stories of barbed-wire fences, stories of shells filled with poison, by the fumes of which people were asphyxiated slowly and agonizingly; stories of women beaten by Cossack-nagaïkas; of tortures practiced in dungeons; of pogroms, of executions, of massacring and of incendiary bands; of the woe in the hearts of young Russians of all classes, from the humblest of the people to the highest in court circles, who had suffered awfully under this terrorism, because their hearts and souls are open to the most progressive ideas of freedom and mildness; of the sorrows of the poets and the scientists, of the enlightened politicians and the simple man of the people, whose natural benevolence is opposed to all these cruelties, perpetrated by the demon Violence, because the minds of the masses are subject to the illusion that violence is the only means of resisting evil.
The poet added an epilogue to his little histories:—
“What I have related is sad, profoundly sad. Should I have refrained from doing this in this cénacle? Our host has provided this festival week under the protection and shelter of Beauty—Beauty is the sister of Joy, not of Woe ... and I have brought before you so much woe.... I have unveiled so much that is unspeakably hateful! But it has not been a mistake; indeed, I know the goal that beckons to the founder of this Rose-Congress. Lofty thoughts are to fly forth into the world; lofty feelings must be aroused. And this object subserves a still most distant object: namely, that it should be a bit better, a bit brighter in this world of ours. To this end one must see clearly, must look straight at the reality. One must know all that is going on, everywhere. All the cries of complaint and all the shrieks of anguish must be heard as they are torn from tormented human beings by human unreason. Then flames up that lofty feeling—one of the noblest of all:—Pity! And thereby is the will strengthened—lofty will it may be called—to substitute for the infamous system of reciprocal persecution the sublime rule of reciprocal helpfulness.”
A gloomy mood had taken possession of the audience, yet with it was mingled also something of that reverential emotion by which Toker wanted to see his public stirred. Then followed a short interlude of music, and that in its turn was followed by a small ballet of quite unique kind. Arc-lamps were the instruments and variegated flames were the dancers. It seemed like a divertissement from fairyland, and yet it was only an experiment from the realm of chemistry.
This brought to a conclusion the exercises of the first evening, and social intercourse again assumed control.
CHAPTER XVIII
FRANKA’S LECTURE
When Franka woke the following morning, she was possessed by the consciousness that all sorts of unpleasantnesses were weighing upon her.... What could it mean? Oh, yes, that evening, she had to give her address. Never, except the first time, had she felt such a panic at the prospect of a public appearance as she felt now. Always, before, she had realized that she was making her addresses as the exponent of a cause, as a guide for those of her own sex who were searching their way—a way of escape; her own person was, so to speak, eliminated. But this time it seemed to her as if she, Franka Garlett, were going to make her début before the assembled world, which would pass judgment as to whether she were capable of coöperating with all the celebrities of Europe and America in Toker’s great work of civilization. There would be in the hall no band of enthusiastic young girls, but the majority of the audience would be men who would either take no interest in the tasks of the new woman, or would even be opposed to them.
The second unpleasant thing that weighed on her spirit was the presence of her aunts and their two escorts, Coriolan and Malhof. To speak before them was really painful, and it would seem to her as if these four were her real audience. And then there was Prince Victor Adolph, who would hear her.... Why had she any timidity before him? Why that wish to please him, that terror of displeasing him?... Is a person worthy of addressing the whole world as the interpreter of “lofty thoughts,” when the question arises, What wall that young man think?