While talking, he was groping in the air after flies and at last caught one. He held it in the hollow of his hand listening to its buzzing for a while, then asked me to take it in my own hand, never hurt it, open the window and let it fly out.
“I learned that from Tolstoy,” he said. “Tolstoy, you know, used to catch lots of mice in his house, but never killed them or gave them to the cat. He carried them out to the forest and there set them free. Why should a human being kill little animals? Because a tiger may want to eat me—that’s no reason why I should turn tiger, is it?”
He returned to the subject of the Margravine Wilhelmina.
“They thought I went to Bayreuth to hear Wagner,” he said. “Nothing of the kind. I like his Wedding March hugely and very little else he has done. But, while Livy and the kids went to pieces over Tristan und Isolde and The Nibelungen, I visited the grave of the Margravine and looked at the temples and grottoes and houses she built, the statues and fountains she set up, the beauty she lavished on the landscape! Ah, Wilhelmina would have been the woman for me—for a week or two, I mean, even as I would like to have been the Great Frederick’s dinner companion for a little while.”
MARK’S GLIMPSE OF SCHOPENHAUER
As Mark’s German was getting worse instead of better, and as his French was nowhere, he asked me to accompany him on his contemplated exploration of the Berlin Royal Library. I told the librarian about our great friend, about the interest he took in German affairs, and, in particular, I recalled that he had met the Kaiser at dinner. Of course the librarian turned himself inside out to be agreeable to both of us.
After showing us around a good deal, he gave us an alcove to work in, saying: “In this set of drawers you will find some most private papers of the royal family that are perhaps of public interest, but the public, please remember, must learn nothing of them. They are only to be seen by people of discretion, who value historical knowledge for history’s sake.”
Most of the books, pamphlets and manuscripts we found dated from the times of Frederick the Great and of course they were in French, since Frederick neither read nor wrote German intelligently. There was in particular a volume of verse by Voltaire addressed to Frederick, with original illustrations by some French artist, but the poetry was too grossly indecent to have interest for persons outside of a psychopathic ward.
I translated some of the verses to Mark, who said: “Too much is enough. I would blush to remember any of these stanzas except to tell Krafft-Ebing about them when I get to Vienna.”
I copied one verse for him, and as he put it in his pocket he said: