"It was a tolerably large room, but dimly lighted. Men and women were assembled, their devoutness appeared more fervent than usual, yet a spirit of secresy pervaded the gathering, which had shut itself off from the outside world. Lengthy and solemn was the preacher's discourse, urging his hearers, by the power of a higher consciousness, to shake off all sin, successfully to resist all temptations, to despise all earthly charms.
"And the spiritual instruction was followed by spiritual exercises.
"I can here only relate what I felt and what a flash of lightning was launched into my soul on that evening. Mephistopheles might feel himself at home in the classical Walpurgis night, he had been educated to it on the Blocksberg; but a man who has only seen female beauty in a statuary of antiques is internally stirred by it at first as by something strange, divine; yet the sacred fire transforms itself into a brand that it casts into his soul.
"Thus it befell me also! Another perhaps would have turned away from the incredible, as if from some hypocritical doings, and have condemned the leader of this divina comedia. Again another would have condemned the excesses of extravagant piety which played a serious game with sin.
"The veil of Sais which hung before my life was torn; for the first time I saw in all its glory the disguised wonder of my dreams, woman.
"But the Millennium also sank into ruins with one blow!
"I was sufficiently used to intoxicated rapture not to condemn with the mind of the sober man that which was unusual, over which the uninitiated must break a lance. That which was done, was not done in the service of sin, it was a holy sacrifice, and how could the exalted lights of the community be thus extinguished in the fog and mist of what was common? If the limitless audacity of these believers made me shudder--it was only the curse of sin, the temptation of the devil, it was the unatonable crime of beauty, against which the power of blessed resistance might strive in vain.
"And this marvel of creation should be a work of the devil, this paradise of beauty only conceal the serpent within itself!
"Fools who drew to light the secret dispositions of the primeval powers, because ruin and sin creep about in darkness, but in light beauty triumphs. No uneasiness, no thought of mockery and desecration arose within me; I felt so strange amongst these men and women, for only in the service of higher powers could they overcome that which without in unsanctified circles was esteemed citizen-like custom. Their sanctification consisted in crossing themselves before beauty, and drawing near to it in blindness that could see, and with a loathing that struggled to suppress delight.
"Thus had the preacher taught; in such sanctity I, too, made my essay, but much too great was the power of beauty over me who had hitherto seen so little. I felt that its contemplation sanctified me otherwise than the secret doctrine desired. Like an electric flash of enlightenment, it poured over all recollections of my school days; the dreary lecture-room was transformed into Mount Ida with its goddesses, and Venus appeared before my eyes as she arises in immortal beauty out of the ocean's billows.