I little knew to whom I was talking. “What, sir, symbolic?” he said. “And I suppose you think that is deeper! Ah, oh!”
“Well, what now?”
“You see, my dear sir, to search in a symbolical sense, to think that all of life is but a searching, that is not what I complain of, that is not what you should sigh about. The ethical goes without saying. An honest fellow will search and yearn and never complain, but be happy in the midst of this misery of an ever-rising and never-terminating line. That is our upper storey. But what we have to take along with it, the vexation and bother we must put up with in the lower storey of life, that is what I am talking of. There, for instance, is the necessity of searching, which makes you mad, nervous, insane. And, what is more, it strands you in Atheism. The dear God sitting on high and counting the hairs on our head, who sees me searching for my spectacles for hours at a time, he sees the spectacles too, knows just where they are,—can you bear it, the thought of how he must laugh? A kind, omnipotent Being! Do you think such a one would permit the curse of colds in your head? Alas, we are born to search, to undo knots, to sneeze and cough and spit! Man, with a proud world within his arched brows, with his beaming eyes, his spirit dipping into the depth and breadth of infinitude, with his soul rising on silver wings into the heavens, with his imagination pouring streams of golden fire over hill and vale and transforming the image of mortality to God, with his will, the flashing sword within his hand to adjust, to judge, to conquer, with pious patience to plant, to cherish, and watch over the tree of life that it may grow and flourish and bear heavenly fruit of noble culture, Man with the angelic image of the divine and beautiful within his longing, yearning bosom,—yes, this same Man, changed to a mollusc, his throat a grating-iron, a nest of devils, tickling the larynx with finest needles for nights and nights, his eyes dim, his brain heavy, dull, perturbed, his nerves poisoned, and, with all that, not considered ill; and you say that God——!”
Here our denier of the existence of God was seized with so deplorable a fit of sneezing and coughing that I repressed a remark I had upon my tongue.
Upon entering I noticed that he cast an uneasy glance all about the floor of the dining-hall; he seemed much relieved when in one corner he noticed a small object which may be of service to coughing persons. In a tone of supreme content he remarked, “This room is really very well furnished;” and from that time he seemed to be in tolerably good humour. As is common at the Swiss hotels, breakfast had been placed upon the table awaiting whoever should come to partake of it, and A. E., having pushed the butter and honey aside with some violence, helped himself freely. We were alone in the room, but soon another tourist entered. He was a middle-aged man, attired in a duster of unbleached linen, with a short cape hanging over his shoulders, and carrying a knapsack of some weight on his back. There were drops of perspiration visible upon his brow; it appeared evident that he had walked for some hours that morning. He laid down his burden, put his bulky umbrella in a corner, sat down at the other end of the table, pulled his chair up, took out his glasses, carefully looked at everything that had been set upon the table, seemed to quite approve of the completeness of things that go to make up an English breakfast, and then, with all the appearance of a soul conscious that the body belonging thereto had severely earned its breakfast, began the enjoyable task of cutting and spreading some slices of bread. It was easy to see that the man belonged to the class of scholars, and his pale complexion led me to judge that he was one of those tourists who strive to make up by pedestrian exertions for the harm they have done their bodies throughout the year by sedentary habits.
A. E., who had meanwhile appeased his appetite, seemed to be in no special haste to depart. He lit a cigar, and said to me, “You admit, then, that physics is at bottom synonymous with metaphysics, the science of the spiritual. That is, I take for granted that you admit it, although I have not yet proved it to you philosophically, for you have surely recognised the universal insidiousness, ay, animosity of matter, what physical science has heretofore insipidly named the law of gravity, statics, etc., while it is in truth to be explained merely as demoniacal possession.”
Meanwhile the stranger had split a long roll lengthwise with dexterity and precision, and was occupied in spreading on the butter with great regard to perfect smoothness and evenness; he made a moment’s pause at the last words, casting a peculiar glance from under his bushy eye-brows over to our end of the table, and then thoughtfully continued his plastic occupation, wagging his head now and then with an expression of ironical surprise. The thought came to me that A. E. had designs upon the stranger. But I concluded that it was not the case. He had given him but a cursory glance as he entered, though it was a glance which might be supposed to grasp the personality before him, for his eye was wont to seize what it looked upon as if there were a strong hand within it; at the same time there was no sign of his paying any attention to the unknown.
“Friend,” he continued, “have you noticed how a piece of falling paper will mock us? Are they not graceful, the sneering motions with which it flutters back and forth? Does not every turn tell you with elegant, voluptuous nonchalance that you are beaten? Oh, matter lies ever in waiting. I sit down cheerfully after breakfast to begin my work, never suspecting the enemy. I dip in my pen, there’s a hair in it; that is the way it begins. The fiend will not come out; I get ink on my fingers, the paper gets stained. I look for another sheet, then for a book, and so on; in short, my blessed morning is gone. From early dawn until late at night, so long as there is a human being about, matter is on the alert to play him a trick. The only way to do is to treat it as the lion-tamer does the beast whose cage he has ventured to enter—he meets its gaze and the beast meets his. To talk about the moral power of a human being is all nonsense, a mere fairy-tale; no, the steady gaze only tells the brute that the man is on his guard, and gaze against gaze the monster lurks to see if for one single moment he will forget himself. So lurks all matter, lead-pencils, pens, inkstand, paper, cigar, glass, lamp—all, all for the moment when you are not watching. But, ye saints! who can ever do it? Who has time? And like the tiger that leaps upon its unfortunate victim the moment he knows himself to be unnoticed, so does matter, drat it! sometimes clumsily, sometimes subtly, as the case may be. Diabolically subtle, for instance, was the bit of iron filing that landed in my eye the morning I was about to start out on my tour. Oh, believe me, when a respectable person is going a-travelling all the devils hold an œcumenical council to defeat him. But one of the favourite tricks dear to the heart of all objects is to creep stealthily to the edge, and drop down from a height to slip out of your hand—you forget yourself but a single moment and there goes——”
At this moment we heard a slight sound at the end where the other man was sitting; we saw him dodge hastily under the table, and then emerge with an object in his hand, which he looked upon in evident distress, and then with deep dejection. It was his roll, spread first with butter and then with honey in the most accurate and approved manner, and, “of course,” as A. E. would say, it had fallen upon the buttered side.