“Yes, in so far as those views express one’s central aim in life. The answer depends also on the degree of affection that exists among people. I’ve tried to win them over, but my strength failed me. They simply don’t understand. Now I no longer feel the urge to shake men and awaken them, unless some one flings his folly at me in the form of a polemic, or unless I feel so close to one that any dissonance between us robs me of peace or weighs upon my heart.”
Christian paid less attention to the meaning of the words than to Becker’s enchanting intonation, the gentleness of his voice, the wandering yet penetrating glance, the morbid, martyred face. And he thought: “All that they say of him is false.” A great trust filled him.
XVI
One night, as they were walking together, Becker spoke of Eva Sorel. “She has attained an extraordinary position,” he said. “I’ve heard people say that she is the real ruler of Russia and is having a decisive influence on European diplomacy. She lives in incomparable luxury. The Grand Duke presented to her the famous palace of Duke Biron of unblessed memory. She receives ministers of state and foreign ambassadors like a crowned sovereign. Paris and London reckon with her, bargain with her, consult her. She will be heard of more and more. Her ambition is inconceivable.”
“It was to be foreseen that she would rise high,” Christian remarked softly. He wanted more and more to talk to Becker about his own affairs and explain the errand on which he had come. But he did not find the right word.
Becker continued: “Her soul was bound to lose the harmony that rules her body so severely. It is a natural process of compensation. She desires power, insight, knowledge of the obscure and intricate. She plays with the fate of men and nations. Once she said to me, ‘The whole world is but a single heart.’ Well, one can destroy that single heart, which is all humanity, in one’s own bosom. Ambition is but another form of despair; it will carry her to the outermost boundary of life. There she will meet me and many others who have come to the same spot from another direction, and we shall clasp hands once more.”
They had reached the shores of the lake. Becker buttoned his coat and turned up the collar. His voice sank almost to a whisper. “I saw her in Paris once crossing the floor in an old house. In either hand she bore a candelabrum, and in each candelabrum burned two candles. A brownish smoke came from the flames, a white veil flowed from her shoulders; an undreamed-of lightness took possession of me. Once when she was still appearing at the Sapajou, I saw her lying on the floor behind the stage, watching with the intensest scrutiny a spider that was spinning its web in a crack between two boards. She raised her arm and bade me stand still, and lay there and observed the spider. I saw her learning of the spider, and I knew then the power of utter absorption that she had. I scarcely knew it, but she drew me into the burning circle of her being. Her unquenchable thirst for form and creation and unveiling and new vision taught me whom she called her master. Yes, the whole world is but a single heart, and we all serve but a single God. He and I together are my doom.”
Christian thought restlessly: “How can I speak to him?” But the right word did not come.
“The other day,” Becker said, “I stood in a chapel, lost in the contemplation of a miracle-working image of the Mother of God, and thinking about the simple faith of the people. A few sick men and women and old men were kneeling there and crossing themselves and bowing to the earth. I lost myself in the features of the image, and gradually the secret of its power became clear to me. It was not just a painted piece of wood. For centuries the image had absorbed the streams of passionate prayer and adoration that had come to it from the hearts of the weary and the heavy-laden, and it became filled with a power that seemed to proceed from it to the faithful and that was mirrored in itself again. It became a living organism, a meeting place between man and God. Filled with this thought, I looked again upon the old men and the women and the children there, and I saw the features of the image stirred by compassion, and I also kneeled down in the dust and prayed.”
Christian made no comment. It was not given him to share such feelings. But Becker’s speech and ecstatic expression and the great glow of his eyes cast a spell upon him; and in the exaltation which he now felt, his purpose seemed more possible to realize.