Friedrich Nietzsche was the next milestone in Paul’s mental journeyings. The attack on Wagner, the attack on the morals that made our state stable, the savage irony, sparkling wit, and brilliant onslaught on all the idols, filled the mind of the young man with joy. He dearly loved a row, and though he recognized Nordau’s borrowed polemical plumage, he liked him because of his cockiness.
So he devoured Nietzsche, reckless of his logical inferences, reckless of the feelings of his poor mother, a most devoted Episcopalian of the High Church variety. Paul always pained her with his sudden somersaults, his amazing change of attitude, and, above all, his heartless contempt for her idols, the Church and good society. Society sufficed her soul hunger, and Paul’s renunciation of Mozart and Donizetti—she simply loved Lucia—his sarcastic flouting of churchgoers and his refusal to range himself, were additional weeds of woe in her mourning life.
There was Edith Vicker; but Paul was such a hopeless case and wouldn’t see that a nice, pretty, rich, moderately intelligent, well-reared young woman was slipping through his fingers. Mrs. Godard often sighed that winter in her sumptuous uptown apartment.
Nietzsche revealed new intellectual vistas for Paul and he actually became serious. The notion of regarding one’s own personality as a possible work of art to be labored upon and polished to perfection’s point, set him thinking hard. What had he done with his life? What wasted opportunities! He deserted his club and began piano-playing again, and when reproached by his friends for his fickleness he excused himself by quoting Nietzsche; a thinker, as well as a snake, must shed his skin once a year, else death. He also was ready with Emerson’s phrase about fools being consistent, and felt altogether very fine, and superior to his fellow-beings. Nietzsche feeds the flame of one’s vanity, and Paul was sure that he belonged to the quintessential band of elect souls that is making for the Uebermensch—the Superman!
He really was a nice, boyish lad, and he could never pass a pretty girl—whether a countess or a chambermaid—without making soft eyes at her. Paul was popular; and so the Roumanian ladies laughed at him admiringly. Paul had left his mother in Paris, the heat was too trying for travel, and he was close to Baireuth on this torrid summer day, one Sunday afternoon in July.
Yet another hour before him, he turned his critical attention to the laughing trio. One was a princess. She told Paul so, and spoke of the sultry diversions of Bucharest. The second was a fat singer, who startled the Englishman by inquiring if there wasn’t a good coloratura part in Parsifal. If there were, she intended asking Frau Cosima Wagner to let her sing it; but if there wasn’t, she supposed she would have to be content with the Forest Bird; even Melba had been a Waldvogel, why couldn’t she be one also?
Her sparkling eyes and mountain of flesh amused Paul exceedingly. He knew Heinrich Conried very well, and he told the singer that when Parsifal was sung next season at the Metropolitan Opera House he would speak to the impresario and get her the part of Kundry. It was for a lark-like voice, such as the lady said she possessed, and full of Bellinian fioritura.
As he gravely related these fables he was conscious of the penetrating gaze of the third woman. She was tall, frail-looking, with a dark skin, hair black and glossy, and she had the most melancholy eyes in the world. Paul returned her glance with discretion. His eyes were Irish blue-gray and full of the devil at times, and they could be very sympathetic and melting when he willed. The two young people examined each other with that calm regard which, as Schopenhauer declares, mars or makes the destiny of a new generation. But metaphysics and the biology of the sexes bothered not at all the youth and maiden. Paul admired the classic regularity of her nose and forehead, and wondered why her face seemed familiar. Her mouth was large, irregular, perverse. It suggested Marie Bashkirtseff’s, and it was just as yearning and dissatisfied. Despite their sadness, fun lurked in the corners of her eyes, and he knew that she enjoyed his harmless hoax.
Then they both burst out laughing, and the princess said in a surprised voice:
“Helena, why do you laugh with the young American gentleman?”