“If you mean by that that you intend to forget our wonderful Queen Mab, all I have to say is—the Lord help you in your purpose,” Crammon answered.
“One holds fast and clings because one fears the step into the unknown,” Christian said.
Crammon was silent for a few minutes and wrinkled his forehead. Then he cleared his throat and asked: “Did you ever hear about homœopathy? I’ll explain to you what is meant by it. It means curing like with like. If for instance some food has disagreed with you violently, and I give you a drug that would, in a state of health, have sickened you even more violently than your food—that would be a homœopathic treatment.”
“So you want to cure me?” Christian asked, and smiled. “From what and with what?”
Crammon moved his chair nearer to Christian’s, laid a hand on his knees, and whispered astutely: “I’ve got something for you, dear boy. I’ve made an exquisite find. There’s a woman in your horoscope, as the sooth-sayers put it. Some one is yearning for you, is immensely taken with you, and dying of impatience to know you. And it’s something quite different, a new type, something prickling and comical, indeterminate, sensitive, a little graceless and small and not beautiful, but enormously charming. She comes from the bourgeoisie at its most obese, but she struggles with both hands and feet against the fate of being a pearl in a trough. There’s your chance for employment, distraction, and refreshment. It won’t be a long affair,—an interlude of her holidays, but instructive, and, in the homœopathic sense, sure to work a cure. For look you: Ariel, she is a miracle, a star, the food of the gods. You can’t live on such nourishment; you need bread. Descend, my son, from the high tower where you still grasp after the miraculum cœli that once flamed on your bosom. Put it out of your mind; descend, and be contented with mortality. To-night at seven in the dining-room of the Hotel de la Plage. Is it a bargain?”
Christian laughed, and got up. On the table stood a vase filled with white pinks. He took out one of the flowers, and fastened it into Crammon’s button-hole.
“Is it a bargain or not?” Crammon asked severely.
“No, dear friend, there’s nothing in that for me,” Christian answered, laughing more heartily. “Keep your find to yourself.”
The veins on Crammon’s forehead swelled. “But I’ve promised to bring you, and you mustn’t leave me in the lurch.” He was in a rage. “I don’t deserve such treatment, after all the slights which you have put on me for months. You give rights to an obscure vagabond that astonish the whole world, and you cast aside heartlessly an old and proved friend. That does hurt and embitter and enrage one. I’m through.”
“Calm yourself, Bernard,” said Christian, and stooped to pick up some blossoms that had fallen on the floor. And as he put back the flowers into the vase, there came to him the vision of Amadeus Voss’ white face, showing his bleeding soul and paralyzed by desire and renunciation, even as it was turned toward the fat, morose Walloon woman. “I don’t comprehend your stubbornness,” he continued. “Why won’t you let me be? Don’t you know that I bring misfortune to all who love me?”