“The joy of such self-constituted flight must be supermundane in the true sense of the word.”
“The world grows richer, more beautiful, more wonderful every day.”
“We will rather say: more unpleasant, more weird.”
“Where are the days when people were satisfied to travel on two feet or at most with four or eight horses’ feet? Now we must have roller-skates, skis, bicycles, motors, balloons, aeroplanes, and here at last duplex-elliptic back-action folding wings.”
“Women will no longer turn into hyenas, but rather into wild geese.”
“Do you long for constancy still, my dear madam? now, when we are all become fly-away?”
Franka had retired early to her own rooms. She felt quite unstrung and hungry for solitude. Prince Victor Adolph had not put in an appearance either on the water or in the hall. Was he avoiding her? This was the first time that he had missed any of the exercises. His absence troubled Franka, and she drew disagreeable conclusions from it. Her conclusions, however, were baseless. The absence of the prince was not in any way connected with Franka. That afternoon, a near relative had arrived at Lucerne, to stay only a few hours, and the prince had been obliged to spend the time with him. The two had watched the wonderful flights from the balcony of their hotel.
Franka was glad that Frau Eleonore had not joined her in coming upstairs but had remained below in the hall. Her companion, who had been with her now for some years, was dear and sympathetic to her, but she had never admitted her to a real heart intimacy. Spiritually, also, the woman had never been to her what is called a “resource”; she lacked the “uplift.” A cheerful, harmless, honest mind, a lady to her finger-tips, not given to narrow judgments, but also lacking in a bold outlook, she had every quality of a model companion; but she was far from being the ideal of an intimate friend such as Franka really needed. And, therefore, in hours when she was in any way depressed, when an indefinite yearning came over her, when she meditated on God and the world and herself, she always preferred to be alone rather than have Frau Eleonore with her.
She stepped out on the balcony and leaned against the railing. It was a warm night; the air was heavy as if a storm were threatening. Along the horizon frequent sheet-lightning flashed against a background of intensely black clouds; above, the sky was clear and the stars were shining brilliantly. The fir grove which bordered the garden stood dark with the white sand-strewn paths meandering through the trees. A gentle rustling could be heard in the branches. A screech-owl lamented somewhere in the distance, and from the near-by pool came the subdued call of a toad at long intervals; it was assuredly a lonely creature which, sighing again and again, queried: “Is there no other toad near me?” Everywhere—loneliness! That was the mood that drifted down upon Franka from this nature—perhaps because she invested nature with this very mood. Yonder, each flash of lightning zigzagged down for itself alone, unconcerned about its forerunners and successors; in obtuse egoism sparkles every star without caring that, many millions of miles away, other stars are pursuing their own courses; the tree-tops must rock as the wind bends them without other trees coming to their aid—yes, the most perfect indifference reigns wherever she might turn; were she to die that moment, the lightning would continue to flash this way and that; the toad would not call in the least degree more mournfully and the stars in all eternity would not have the slightest notion of it. Alone ... alone ... that was the keynote of the whole concert of dread and melancholy which whispered around her.
She stretched her arms out toward the vacant night and drew such a deep breath that its expiration was a groan. Then she sat wearily down in a soft, upholstered wicker chair, leaned her head back, and in her lassitude and depression of spirits the consciousness that she was resting did her good physically. But psychically her indefinite longing developed into a hot sense of woe. Her eyes filled with tears. Oh, how good it would be to have some fond heart on which she might pour out her sorrows ... yet if she had, perhaps she would not have the impulse to weep! For in that case the pain, the dull pain, called “loneliness,” would be cured!