But her saying that she had borne one son for him and one for herself embittered him a little against his wife, whom he commonly regarded as an inviolable being of finer stuff. Why did I build all this? he asked himself, as he slowly passed through the magnificent halls.
It was more difficult for him to approach Christian than a member of the ministry or a distinguished foreigner. He vacillated between issuing a request and a command. He was not sure of his authority, and even less of any friendly understanding. But while he was spending a few days of rest and recreation in the family’s ancestral house at Würzburg, he sent a message to Christian, and begged him for an interview.
XIII
Crammon wrote to Christian. It was his humour to affect an archaic manner of speech:
“Most Honoured and Worthy Friend: With deep satisfaction I learn that your Worship has ruefully returned to the god Dionysos, and as a sign thereof laid down upon his altar a jewel, whose price has caused the teeth of the Philistines in the land to rattle, and their lame digestions to work with unwelcome swiftness. Your servant, the undersigned, did, on the contrary, when the news of happy augury came to him, perform a dance in his lonely closet, which so shocked the ladies of his palace that they at once called up psychiatrists on the telephone. Thus the world, barren of understanding, is incapable of great reflections.
“Unlovely are my days. I am ensnared in amorous adventures which do not content me, and, in addition, disappoint those who are involved. At times I sit by the charming glow of my chimney fire, and, closing my eyes, peruse the book of memory. A bottle of golden-hued cognac is my sole companion, and while I nourish my heart upon its artificial warmth, the higher regions are wont to sink into the cold mystery of mere idiocy. My mental powers are moving, like the crab, backward; my virile powers decline. Years ago in Paris I knew a chess player, a purblind old German, who lost every game he played, and exclaimed each time: ‘Where are the days in which I vanquished the great Zuckertort?’ The latter, I must explain, was a great master of the royal game. The necessary application to myself embarrasses me. There was once a Roman emperor famous above all others for his power over women; Maxentius was, I believe, the man’s name. But were I to exclaim: ‘Where are the days in which I rivalled the great Maxentius?’ it were but damnable boasting!
“It is a pity that you cannot be a beholder when I arise from my couch in the morning. Were this spectacle to be tested by connoisseurs and to be enjoyed by the laity, throngs would attend it, as whilom they did the rising of the kings of France. The gentry of the land would come to do me reverence, and lovely ladies would tickle me to elicit a beam of cheer upon my face. O blessed youth, friend and playmate of my dreams, I would have you know that the moments in which one leaves the linen well warmed by one’s own body, and goes forth to twelve hours of the world’s mischief, are to me moments of incomparable pitifulness. I sit on the bed’s edge, and regard my underwear with a loud though inward rage. Sadly I gather the remnants of my ego, and reknot the thread of consciousness where Morpheus cut it yestereve. My soul is strewn about, and rolls in little globules, like mercury spilt from a broken thermometer. Only the sacrificial fumes of the tea kettle, the fragrance of ham and of an omelet like cowslips, and, above all, gentle words uttered by the soft lips of my considerate housekeepers, reconcile me to my fate.
“Dear old Regamey is dead. The Count Sinsheim has had a paralytic stroke. My friend, Lady Constance Cuningham, a member of the highest aristocracy, has married a wealthy American bounder. The best are going, and the tree of life is growing bare. On my trip here I stopped over in Munich for three days as the guest of the young Imhofs. Your sister Judith is cutting a great figure. The painters paint her, the sculptors hew her in marble, the poets celebrate her. Yet her ambition is still vaulting. She desires passionately a little nine-pointed coronet upon her linen, her liveries, and her four motors, and flirts with everything that comes from the court or goes to it. Felix, on the contrary, being a democrat, surrounds himself with business men, speculators, explorers, and clever people of both sexes. Hence their house is a mixture of Guildhall, a grain exchange, a meeting of pettifoggers, and a jockey club. After watching the goings on for an evening, I retired to a corner with a pretty girl, and asked her to feel my pulse. She obeyed, and my suffering soul was soothed.
“Our sweet Ariel, I am told, intoxicates the Poles in Warsaw and the Muscovites in Moscow. In the latter city the students are said to have expressed their homage by a torchlight procession, and the officers to have covered the snowy streets from her dwelling to the theatre with roses. I am also told that the Grand Duke Cyril, commonly known as the human butcher, is half-mad with love of her, and is turning the world topsy-turvy to get her. It fills me with a piercing, depthless melancholy to think, O Ariel, that once I, too, felt thy breath. No more than that; but it suffices. Le moulin n’y est plus, mais le vent y est encore.
“With this final remark, dear brother of my heart and sorely missed friend, I commend you to God, and beseech you to give some sign to your affectionately longing Bernard Gervasius C. v. W.”