Collected Shorter Fiction, Volume 1

LUCERNE

8th July, 1857.

LAST night I arrived at Lucerne, and put up at the Schweizerhof, the best hotel.

Lucerne, an ancient town and the capital of the canton, situated on the shore of the Lake of Lucerne, says Murray, is one of the most romantic places in Switzerland: here three important high roads meet, and it is only one hour by steamboat to Mount Rigi, from which one of the most magnificent views in the world can be seen.

Whether this be right or not, other guide-books say the same, and so tourists of all nationalities, especially the English, flock there.

The magnificent five-storeyed Schweizerhof Hotel has been recently erected on the quay, close to the lake at the very place where of old there was a roofed and crooked bridge¹ with chapels at its corners and carvings on its beams. Now, thanks to the enormous influx of English people, their needs, their tastes, and their money, the old bridge has been torn down and a granite quay, as straight as a stick, erected, on which straight, rectangular, five-storeyed houses have been built, in front of which two rows of little lindens with stakes to them have been planted, between which the usual small green benches have been placed. This is a promenade, and here Englishwomen wearing Swiss straw hats, and Englishmen in stout and comfortable clothes, walk about enjoying the work they have inspired. Perhaps such quays and houses and lime trees and Englishmen are all very well in some places, but not here amid this strangely majestic and yet inexpressibly genial and harmonious Nature.

When I went up to my room and opened the window facing the lake I was at first literally blinded and shaken by the beauty of that water, those mountains, and the sky. I felt an inward restlessness and a need to find expression for the emotion that filled my soul to overflowing. At that moment I felt a wish to embrace someone, to hug him closely, to tickle and pinch him – in a word to do something extraordinary to myself and to him.

It was past six and had rained all day, but was now beginning to clear up. The lake, light-blue like burning sulphur, and dotted with little boats which left vanishing tracks behind them, spread out before my windows motionless, smooth, and apparently convex between its variegated green shores, then passed into the distance where it narrowed between two enormous promontories, and, darkening, leaned against and disappeared among the pile of mountains, clouds, and glaciers, that towered one above the other. In the foreground were the moist, fresh-green, far-stretching shores with their reeds, meadows, gardens, and chalets; further off were dark-green wooded promontories crowned by ruined castles; in the background was the rugged, purple-white distance with its fantastic, rocky, dull-white, snow-covered mountain crests, the whole bathed in the delicate, transparent azure of the air and lit up by warm sunset rays that pierced the torn clouds. Neither on the lake nor on the mountains, nor in the sky, was there a single precise line, or one precise colour, or one unchanging moment: everywhere was motion, irregularity, fantastic shapes, an endless intermingling and variety of shades and lines, and over it all lay tranquillity, softness, unity, and inevitable beauty. And here, before my very window, amid this undefined, confused, unfettered beauty, the straight white line of the quay stretched stupidly and artificially, with its lime trees, their supports, and the green benches – miserable, vulgar human productions which did not blend with the general harmony and beauty as did the distant chalets and ruins, but on the contrary clashed coarsely with it. My eyes continually encountered that dreadfully straight quay, and I felt a desire to push it away or demolish it, as one would wipe off a black smudge that disfigured the nose just under one’s eye. But the embankment with the English people walking about on it remained where it was, and I instinctively tried to find a point of view from which it would not be visible. I found a way to do this, and sat till dinner-time all alone, enjoying the incomplete, but all the more tormentingly sweet feeling one experiences when one gazes in solitude on the beauty of Nature.

At half-past seven I was called to dinner. In the large, splendidly decorated room on the ground floor two tables were laid for at least a hundred persons. For about three minutes the silent movement of assembling visitors continued – the rustle of women’s dresses, light footsteps, whispered discussions with the very polite and elegant waiters – but at last all the seats were occupied by men and women very well and even richly and generally most immaculately dressed. As usual in Switzerland the majority of the visitors were English, and therefore the chief characteristic of the common table was the strict decorum they regard as an obligation – a reserve not based on pride, but on the absence of any necessity for social intercourse, and on content with the comfortable and agreeable satisfaction of their requirements. On all sides gleamed the whitest of laces, the whitest of collars, the whitest of teeth – natural or artificial – and the whitest of complexions and hands. But the faces, many of them very handsome, expressed only a consciousness of their own well-being and a complete lack of interest in all that surrounded them unless it directly concerned themselves; and the whitest of hands in rings and mittens moved only to adjust a collar, to cut up beef, or to lift a wine glass: no mental emotion was reflected in their movements. Occasionally families would exchange a few words among themselves in subdued voices about the pleasant flavour of this or that dish or wine, or the lovely view from Mount Rigi. Individual tourists, men and women, sat beside one another not even exchanging a look. If occasionally some two among these hundred people spoke to one another it was sure to be about the weather and the ascent of Mount Rigi. Knives and forks moved on the plates with scarcely any sound, food was taken a little at a time, peas and other vegetables were invariably eaten with a fork. The waiters, involuntarily subdued by the general silence, asked in a whisper what wine you would take. At such dinners I always feel depressed, uncomfortable, and at last melancholy. I always feel as if I were guilty of something and am being punished, as I used to be when, as a child, I was put in a chair when I had been naughty, and ironically told: ‘Rest yourself, my dear!’ while my youthful blood surged in my veins and I heard the merry shouts of my brothers in the next room. Formerly I tried to rebel against the feeling of oppression I experienced during such dinners, but in vain: all those inanimate countenances have an insuperable effect on me and I become similarly inanimate myself. I wish nothing, think nothing, and cease even to observe what is going on. At first I used to try to talk to my neighbours; but except for phrases apparently repeated a hundred thousand times in the same place and by the same people I got no response. And yet not all these frozen people are stupid and unfeeling, on the contrary many of them, no doubt, have an inner life just such as my own, and in many of them it may be much more complex and interesting. Then why do they deprive themselves of one of life’s greatest pleasures – the enjoyment that comes from the intercourse of man with man?

How different it was in our Paris pension, where some twenty of us, of various nationalities, professions, and dispositions, under the influence of French sociability used to meet at the common table as at a game! There, from one end of the table to the other, conversation, interspersed with jests and puns, even if in broken language, at once became general. There everyone, not troubling how it would sound, said anything that came into his head. There we had our philosopher, our debater, our bel esprit, and our butt, all in common. There immediately after dinner we pushed away the table and, in time and out, danced the polka on the dusty carpet till late in the evening. There, even if we were inclined to flirt and were not very clever or respectable, we were human beings. The Spanish countess with her romantic adventures, the Italian abbé who declaimed the Divine Comedy after dinner, the American doctor who had the entrée to the Tuileries, the young playwright with long hair, and the pianist who, according to her account, had composed the best polka in the world, the unhappy widow who was a beauty and had three rings on every finger – we all treated one another like human beings, in a friendly if superficial manner, and carried away, some of us light, and others sincere and cordial, memories. But of these English at the table d’hôte, I often think as I look at all these silk dresses, laces, ribbons, rings, and pommaded locks, how many live women would be happy and make others happy with these adornments. It is strange to think how many potential friends and lovers – very happy friends and lovers – may be sitting there side by side without knowing it, and, God knows why, will never know it and never give one another the happiness they desire so much and which they might so easily give.

I began to feel depressed, as always after such a dinner, and without finishing my dessert went in very low spirits to stroll about the town. The narrow, dirty, unlighted streets, the shops closing, the encounters I had with tipsy workmen and with women going bareheaded to fetch water, or others wearing hats who flitted along the walls of the side-streets and continually glanced round, not only did not dispel my ill-humour but even increased it. It had already grown quite dark in the streets when, without looking around me and without any thought in my head, I turned back to the hotel hoping by sleep to rid myself of my dismal frame of mind. I was feeling terribly chilled at heart, lonely and depressed, as sometimes happens without cause to those who have just arrived at a new place.

Looking at nothing but the ground at my feet I walked along the quay towards the Schweizerhof, when I was suddenly struck by the sound of some strange but exceedingly sweet and agreeable music. These sounds had an immediately vivifying effect on me, as if a bright cheerful light had penetrated my soul. I felt myself happy and cheerful. My dormant attention was again alive to all the objects surrounding me. The beauty of the night and of the lake, to which I had been feeling indifferent, suddenly struck me joyfully like a novelty. In an instant I involuntarily noticed both the heavy grey patches of cloud on the dark blue of the sky lit up by the rising moon, the smooth dark-green lake with the little lights reflected on it, and the mist-covered mountains in the distance; I heard the croaking of the frogs from Freschenburg, and the fresh limpid whistle of quails on the opposite shore. But directly in front of me, on the spot whence the sounds to which my attention was chiefly directed came, I saw amid the semi-darkness a throng of people collected in a half-circle in the middle of the road, and at some short distance from them a tiny man in black clothes. Behind the people and the man the black poplars in the garden were gracefully silhouetted on the dark grey and blue ragged sky, and the severe spires on each side of the ancient cathedral towered majestically.

I drew nearer, the sounds became more distinct, and at some distance I could clearly distinguish the full chords of a guitar which vibrated sweetly in the evening air and several voices, which intercepting one another did not actually sing the melody but indicated it by chiming in at the chief passages. The tune was something in the nature of a charming and graceful mazurka. The voices sometimes seemed nearer and sometimes farther away; now you could hear a tenor, now a bass, and now a guttural falsetto with a warbling Tyrolese yodel. It was not a song, but the light, masterly sketch of a song. I could not make out what it was, but it was beautiful. The passionate soft chords of the guitar, that sweet gentle melody, and the lonely little figure of the man in black against the fantastic background of the dark lake, the gleaming moon, the two tall spires silently stretching upwards, and the black poplars in the garden, were all strangely but inexpressibly beautiful, or so it seemed to me.

All the confused and arbitrary impressions of life suddenly received meaning and charm. It was as if a fresh and fragrant flower had bloomed within me. Instead of the weariness, dullness, and indifference towards everything in the world that I had felt a moment before, I suddenly experienced a need of love, a fullness of hope, and a spontaneous joy in life. ‘What can I possibly want, what desire?’ I involuntarily thought. ‘Here it is all around me – beauty, poetry. Inhale full deep draughts of it with all the strength that is in you, enjoying it. What more do you need? It is all yours, and all good …’

I went nearer. The little man seemed to be an itinerant singer from the Tyrol. He stood before the windows of the hotel with one foot advanced, his head thrown back, and while thrumming his guitar was singing his graceful song in those different voices. I immediately felt an affection for him, and gratitude for the change he had brought about in me. As far as I could see, he was dressed in an old black coat, had short black hair, and wore a very ordinary old cap on his head. There was nothing artistic about his attire, but his jaunty, childishly merry pose and movements, with his diminutive stature, produced a touching yet amusing effect. On the steps, at the windows, and on the balconies of the brilliantly lighted hotel, stood ladies resplendent in full-skirted dresses, gentlemen with the whitest of collars, a porter and footmen in gold-embroidered liveries; in the street, in the semicircle of the crowd, and farther along the boulevard among the lime-trees, elegantly dressed waiters, cooks in the whitest of caps and blouses, girls with their arms around one another, and passers-by, had gathered and stopped. They all seemed to experience the same sensation that I did, and stood in silence round the singer, listening attentively. All were quiet, only at intervals in the singing, from far away across the water came the rhythmic sound of a hammer, and from the Freschenburg shore the staccato trills of the frogs intermingling with the fresh, monotonous whistle of the quails.

In the darkness of the street the little man warbled like a nightingale, couplet after couplet and song after song. Though I had drawn close to him, his singing continued to give me great pleasure. His small voice was extremely pleasing, and the delicacy, the taste, and the sense of proportion with which he managed that voice were extraordinary, and showed immense natural gifts. He sang the refrain differently after each couplet and it was evident that all these graceful variations came to him freely and instantaneously.

Among the throng, above in the Schweizerhof and below on the boulevard, appreciative whispers could often be heard, and a respectful silence reigned. The balconies and windows kept filling, and by the hotel lights more and more elegantly dressed men and women could be seen leaning out picturesquely. The passers-by stopped and everywhere in the shadows on the embankment groups of men and women stood under the lime-trees. Near me, separated from the rest of the crowd and smoking cigars, stood an aristocratic waiter and the chef. The chef seemed to feel the charm of the music strongly and at every high falsetto note rapturously winked, nodded, and nudged the waiter in ecstatic perplexity, with a look that said: ‘How he sings, eh?’ The waiter, by whose broad smile I detected the pleasure the singing gave him, replied to the chef’s nudgings by shrugging his shoulders to show that it was hard to surprise him, and that he had heard much better things than this.

In an interval of the singing, while the singer was clearing his throat, I asked the waiter who the man was and whether he came there often.

‘Well, he comes about twice a summer,’ replied the waiter. ‘He is from Aargau – just a beggar.’

‘And are there many like him about?’ I asked.

‘Oh, yes,’ replied the man not having at first understood what I was asking, but having afterwards made it out, he added: ‘Oh no, he is the only one I know of. There are no others.’

Just then the little man, having finished his first song, briskly turned his guitar over and said something in his German patois, which I could not understand but which caused the crowd to laugh.

‘What did he say?’ I asked.

‘He says his throat is dry and he would like some wine,’ replied the waiter near me.

‘Well, I suppose he is fond of drink.’

‘Yes, such people are all like that,’ answered the waiter with a depreciatory gesture of his hand.

The singer raised his cap and with a flourish of the guitar went up to the hotel. Throwing back his head he addressed the gentlefolk at the windows and on the balconies: ‘Messieurs et Mesdames,’ he said with a half-Italian and half-German accent and the intonation conjurors employ when addressing their audience: ‘Si vous croyez que je gagne quelque chose, vous vous trompez; je ne suis qu’un pauvre tiable.’² He paused and waited a moment in silence, but as no one gave him anything, he again jerked his guitar and said: ‘A présent, messieurs et mesdames, je vous chanterais l’air du Righi.’³

The audience up above kept silent, but continued to stand in expectation of the next song; below, among the throng, there was laughter, probably because he expressed himself so queerly and because no one had given him anything. I gave him a few centimes, which he threw nimbly from one hand to the other, and put into his waistcoat pocket. Then putting on his cap again he began to sing a sweet and graceful Tyrolese song which he called ‘l’air du Right’. This song, which he had left to the last, was even better than the others, and on all sides among the now increased crowd one heard sounds of appreciation. He finished the song. Again he flourished his guitar, took off his cap, held it out, made two steps towards the windows, and again repeated his incomprehensible phrase: ‘Messieurs et Mesdames, si vous croyez que je gagne quelque chose —’ which he evidently considered very smart and witty, but in his voice and movements I now detected a certain hesitation and childlike timidity which were the more noticeable on account of his small figure. The elegant audience still stood just as picturesquely grouped in the windows and on the balconies, the lights shining on their rich attire. A few of them talked in decorously subdued voices, apparently about the singer who was standing before them with outstretched hand, others looked with attentive curiosity down at the little black figure; on one balcony could be heard a young girl’s merry laughter.

In the crowd below the talking and laughter grew louder and louder. The singer repeated his phrase a third time, in a still feebler voice, and this time he did not even finish it, but again held out his cap, and then drew it back immediately. And for the second time not one of those hundreds of brilliantly dressed people who had come to hear him threw him a single penny. The crowd laughed unmercifully. The little singer seemed to me to shrink still more into himself. He took the guitar in his other hand, lifted his cap above his head, and said: ‘Messieurs et Mesdames, je vous remercie, et je vous souhaite une bonne nuit.’⁴ Then he replaced his cap. The crowd roared with merry laughter. The handsome men and women, quietly conversing, gradually disappeared from the balconies. The strolls on the boulevard were resumed. The street that had been quiet during the singing again became animated, only a few persons looked at the singer from a distance and laughed. I heard the little man mutter something to himself. He turned and, seeming to grow still smaller, went quickly towards the town. The merry strollers, still watching him, followed him at a certain distance, and laughed.

My mind was in a whirl. I was at a loss to understand what it all meant, and without moving from the spot where I had been, I senselessly gazed into the darkness after the tiny retreating figure of the man as he went striding rapidly towards the town and at the laughing strollers who followed him. I felt pained, grieved, and above all ashamed for the little man, for the crowd, and for myself, as if it were I who had been asking for money and had received nothing, and had been laughed at. I, too, without looking back and with an aching heart, moved off with rapid steps and went to the entrance of the Schweizerhof. I could not yet account for my emotions, but only knew that something heavy and unsolved filled my heart and oppressed me.

At the brilliantly lit entrance I met the hall porter who politely stepped aside, and an English family. A tall, portly, handsome man with black side-whiskers worn in the English fashion, a black hat on his head, a plaid over his arm, and an expensive cane in his hand, was walking with lazy self-confidence arm in arm with a lady in a grey silk gown, and a cap trimmed with bright ribbons and exquisite lace. Beside them walked a pretty, fresh-complexioned girl wearing a graceful Swiss hat trimmed with a feather à la Mousquetaire, and with charming long soft flaxen curls that fell over her fair face. In front of them skipped a ten-year-old girl with rosy cheeks, and plump white knees showing from under the finest embroideries.

‘A lovely night!’ said the lady in a tender, happy voice, just as I passed them.

‘Ohe!’ lazily muttered the Englishman, for whom life was so comfortable that he did not even feel like talking. To all of them life in this world was so comfortable, convenient, clean, and easy; their movements and faces expressed such indifference to any other kind of life than their own, such assurance that the porter would step aside for them and bow, and that on returning they would find comfortable rooms and beds, that it all must be so and that they had a right to it all, that I involuntarily contrasted them with the vagrant singer who, tired and perhaps hungry, was escaping ashamed from the laughing crowd, and I realized what it was that weighed on my heart like a stone, and I felt indescribable anger against these people. Twice I walked to and fro past the Englishman, and each time with inexpressible pleasure avoided making way for him and pushed him with my elbow; then darting down the steps I hastened through the darkness in the direction of the town, where the little man had disappeared.

Having overtaken three men who were walking together, I asked them where the singer was. They laughed and pointed straight ahead. He was walking quickly, by himself. No one went near him, and he seemed to me to be angrily muttering something to himself. I caught him up and proposed to him to go somewhere and drink a bottle of wine. He went on walking just as fast and looked disconsolately at me, but when he had made out what I wanted, he stopped.

‘Well, I won’t refuse it, if you are so kind,’ he said. ‘There is a small café here, we could go in there. It’s a plain place,’ he added, pointing to a drink shop which was still open.

The word ‘plain’ involuntarily suggested to me the idea of not going to the plain café but to the Schweizerhof, where the people were who had listened to him. Though in timid agitation he several times declined to go to the Schweizerhof, saying that it was too fine there, I insisted on it and he walked back along the quay with me pretending not to be at all abashed, and gaily swinging his guitar. Several idle strollers drew near as soon as I went up to the singer and listened to what I was saying: and now, after arguing among themselves, they followed us to the hotel entrance, probably expecting some further performance from the Tyrolese.

I met a waiter in the vestibule and asked him for a bottle of wine, but he merely looked at us with a smile and ran past. The head waiter, to whom I addressed the same request, listened to me seriously, and having scanned the tiny figure of the timid singer from head to foot, sternly told the porter to take us to the room on the left. This room was a bar for common people, the whole furniture consisted of bare wooden tables and benches, and a hunchbacked woman was washing up dishes in a corner. The waiter who came to take our order looked at us with a mildly supercilious smile and, thrusting his hands in his pockets, exchanged remarks with the hunchbacked dish-washer. He evidently wished to let us know that, feeling himself immeasurably superior to the singer in social standing as well as on his own merits, he was not at all offended, but even quite amused, to be waiting on us.

‘Will you have vin ordinaire?’ he asked with a knowing look, winking towards my companion and shifting his napkin from one arm to the other.

‘Champagne, and your very best!’ said I, trying to assume a haughty and imposing air. But neither the champagne nor my endeavour to look haughty and imposing had any effect on the waiter: he grinned, stood awhile gazing at us, looked deliberately at his gold watch, and went leisurely and with soft steps out of the room as if he were out for a stroll. He soon returned with the wine and with two other waiters. The two waiters sat down near the dish-washer and gazed at us with the amused attention and bland smiles with which parents watch their dear children when they play nicely. Only the hunchbacked dish-washer seemed to look at us with sympathy rather than irony. Though I felt it very uncomfortable and awkward to talk with the singer and entertain him under the fire of those eyes, I tried to do my part with as little constraint as possible. In the lighted room I could see him better. He was a tiny, well-proportioned, wiry man, almost a midget, with bristly black hair, large tearful black eyes without lashes, and a thoroughly pleasant and attractively shaped little mouth. He had short side-whiskers, rather short hair, and his clothes were simple and poor. He was dingy, tattered, sunburnt, and had in general the look of a labourer. He was more like a poor pedlar than an artist. Only in his humid, shining eyes and puckering mouth was there something original and touching. Judging by his appearance he might have been anything from twenty-five to forty years old; he was really thirty-eight.

This is what he told me, with good-natured readiness and evident sincerity, about his life. He was from Aargau. While still a child he had lost his father and mother and had no other relations. He had never had any means of his own. He had been apprenticed to a joiner, but twenty-two years ago a bone of his finger had begun to decay, which made it impossible for him to work. He had been fond of music from his childhood, and began to go round singing. Foreigners occasionally gave him money. He made a profession of it, bought a guitar, and for eighteen years had wandered through Switzerland and Italy singing in front of hotels. His whole belongings were the guitar and a purse, in which he now had only a franc and a half, which he would have to spend that night on food and lodging. He had gone every year to all the best and most frequented places in Switzerland: Zurich, Lucerne, Interlaken, Chamonix, and so on; and was now going round for the eighteenth time. He passed over the St Bernard into Italy and returned by St Gotthard or through Savoy. It was getting hard for him to walk now, because a pain in his feet which he called Gliederzucht (rheumatism) got worse every year when he caught cold, and his eyes and his voice were growing weaker. In spite of this he was now on his way to Interlaken, Aix-les-Bains, and over the little St Bernard to Italy, of which country he was particularly fond; in general he seemed to be very well satisfied with his life. When I asked him why he was going home and whether he had any relations there, or a house and land, his mouth puckered into a merry smile and he replied: ‘Oui, le sucre est bon, il est doux pour les enfants!’⁵ and winked at the waiters.

I did not understand what he meant, but the group of waiters burst out laughing.

‘I’ve got nothing, or would I be going about like this?’ he explained. ‘I go home because, after all, something draws me back to my native land.’

And he again repeated, with a sly self-satisfied smile, the phrase: ‘Oui, le sucre est bon!’ and laughed good-naturedly. The waiters were very pleased and laughed heartily. Only the hunchbacked dish-washer looked at the little man seriously with her large kindly eyes and picked up the cap he had dropped from the bench during our conversation. I had noticed that wandering singers, acrobats, and even jugglers, like to call themselves artists, and so I hinted several times to my companion that he was an artist; but he did not at all acknowledge that quality in himself, and considered his occupation simply as a means of subsistence. When I asked him whether he did not himself compose the songs he sang, he was surprised at so strange a question, and answered: ‘How could I? They are all old Tyrolese songs.’

‘But what about the Rigi song – that is not old, is it?’ I said.

‘No, that was composed about fifteen years ago,’ he said. ‘There was a German in Basle, a very clever man. He composed it. It’s a splendid song! You see, he composed it for the tourists.’

And, translating them into French as he went along, he began repeating to me the words of the Rigi song, which he liked so much:

‘If you would go up the Rigi

You need no shoes as far as Weggis

(Because you go that far by steamer)

But in Weggis take a big stick,

And upon your arm a maiden.

Drink a glass of wine at starting,

Only do not drink too much.

For he who wants to have a drink

Should first have earned …

‘Oh, it’s a splendid song!’ he said, as he finished.

The waiters, too, probably considered the song very good, for they came nearer to us.

‘Yes, but who composed the music?’ I asked.

‘Oh, nobody! It comes of itself, you know – one must have something new to sing to the foreigners.’

When the ice was brought and I had poured out a glass of champagne for my companion, he seemed to feel ill at ease, and glancing round at the waiters shifted uneasily in his seat. We clinked glasses to the health of artists; he drank half a glass, and then found it necessary to raise his eyebrows in profound thought.

‘It’s a long time since I drank such wine, je ne vous dis que ça.⁶ In Italy the d’Asti wine is good, but this is better still. Ah, Italy! It’s splendid to be there!’ he added.

‘Yes, there they know how to appreciate music and artists,’ I said, wishing to lead him back to the subject of his failure that evening before the Schweizerhof.

‘No,’ he replied. ‘There, as far as music is concerned, I cannot give anyone pleasure. The Italians are themselves musicians like none others in the world: I sing only Tyrolese songs – that at any rate is a novelty for them.’

‘And are the gentlefolk more generous there?’ I went on, wishing to make him share my resentment against the guests at the Schweizerhof. ‘It couldn’t happen there, could it, as it did here, that in an immense hotel frequented by rich people, out of a hundred who listen to an artist not one gives him anything?’

My question had quite a different effect on him from what I had expected. It did not enter his head to be indignant with them: on the contrary he detected in my remark a reflection on his talent, which had failed to elicit any reward, and he tried to justify himself to me.

‘One does not get much every time,’ he replied. ‘Sometimes my voice fails or I am tired. To-day, you know, I have been walking for nine hours and singing almost all the time. That is hard. And the great people, the aristocrats, don’t always care to hear Tyrolese songs.’

‘But still, how could they give nothing at all?’ I insisted.

He did not understand my remark.

‘It’s not that,’ he said, ‘the chief thing here is, on est très serré pour la police,⁷ that’s where the trouble is. Here under their republican laws you are not allowed to sing, but in Italy you may go about as much as you please, and no one will say a word to you. Here they allow it only when they please, and if they don’t please, they may put you in prison.’

‘How is that? Is it possible?’

‘Yes, if they caution you once and you sing again they may imprison you. I was there for three months,’ he said smiling, as though this were one of his pleasantest recollections.

‘Oh, that’s dreadful!’ I said. ‘What for?’

‘That is so under the new republican laws,’ he continued, growing animated. ‘They don’t want to understand that a poor fellow must live somehow. If I were not a cripple, I would work. But does my singing hurt anyone? What does it mean? The rich can live as they please, but un pauvre tiable like myself mayn’t even live. Are these the laws a republic should have? If so, we don’t want a republic – isn’t that so, dear sir? We don’t want a republic, but we want – we simply want … we want’ – he hesitated awhile – ‘we want natural laws.’

I filled up his glass.

‘You are not drinking,’ I said to him.

He took the glass in his hand and bowed to me.

‘I know what you want,’ he said, screwing up his eyes and shaking his finger at me. ‘You want to make me drunk, so as to see what will happen to me; but no, you won’t succeed!’

‘Why should I want to make you drunk?’ I said. ‘I only want to give you pleasure.’

Probably he was sorry to have offended me by interpreting my intention wrongly, for he grew confused, got up, and pressed my elbow.

‘No, no, I was only joking!’ he said, looking at me with a beseeching expression in his moist eyes.

Then he uttered some fearfully intricate, complicated sentence intended to imply that I was a good fellow after all.

‘Je ne vous dis que ça!’ he concluded.

So we continued drinking and talking and the waiters continued to watch us unceremoniously and, as it seemed, to make fun of us. Despite my interest in our conversation I could not help noticing them and, I confess, I grew more and more angry. One of them got up, came over to the little man, looked down on the crown of his head, and began to smile. I had accumulated a store of anger for the guests at the Schweizerhof which I had not yet been able to vent on anyone, and I own that this audience of waiters irritated me beyond endurance. Then the porter came in and, leaning his elbows on the table without taking off his hat, sat down beside me. This last circumstance stung my self-esteem or vanity, and finally caused the oppressive rage that had been smouldering in me all the evening to explode. ‘Why when I was alone at the entrance did he humbly bow to me, and now that I am sitting with an itinerant singer, sprawls near me so rudely?’ I was filled with a boiling rage of indignation which I like in myself and even stimulate when it besets me, because it has a tranquillizing effect, and gives, at least for a short time, an unusual suppleness, energy, and power to all my physical and mental faculties.

I jumped up.

‘What are you laughing at?’ I shouted at the waiter, feeling that I was growing pale and that my lips were involuntarily twitching.

‘I am not laughing; it’s nothing!’ said the waiter stepping back.

‘No, you are laughing at this gentleman.… And what right have you to be here and to be sitting down, when there are visitors here? Don’t dare to sit here!’ I cried turning to the porter.

He got up with a growl and moved towards the door.

‘What right have you to laugh at this gentleman and to sit near him, when he is a visitor and you are a lackey? Why didn’t you laugh at me or sit beside me at dinner this evening? Is it because he is poorly dressed and sings in the street? Is it? While I wear good clothes? He is poor, but I am convinced that he is a thousand times better than you, for he insults no one, while you are insulting him!’

‘But I am not doing anything!’ replied my enemy the waiter, timidly. ‘Do I prevent his sitting here?’

The waiter did not understand me and my German speech was lost on him. The rude porter tried to take the waiter’s part, but I attacked him so vehemently that he pretended that he, too, did not understand me, and waved his arm. The hunchbacked dish-washer, either noticing my heated condition and afraid of a scandal, or because she really shared my views, took my part and, trying to interpose between me and the porter, began to persuade him to be quiet, saying that I was right and asking me to calm myself. ‘Der Herr hat recht; Sie haben recht!’⁸ she said firmly. The singer presented a most piteous, frightened appearance and, evidently without understanding why I was excited or what I was aiming at, begged me to go away quickly. But my angry loquacity burned stronger and stronger in me. I recalled everything: the crowd that had laughed at him, and the audience that had given him nothing – and I would not quiet down on any account. I think that if the waiters and the porter had not been so yielding I should have enjoyed a fight with them, or could have whacked the defenceless young English lady on the head with a stick. Had I been at Sevastopol at that moment I would gladly have rushed into an English trench to hack and slash at them.

‘And why did you show me and this gentleman into this room, and not the other, eh?’ I asked the porter, seizing his arm to prevent his going away. ‘What right had you to decide from his appearance that this gentleman must be in this and not in the other room? Are not all who pay on an equal footing in an hotel – not only in a republic, but all over the world? Yours is a scurvy republic! … This is your equality! You dare not show those English people into this room – the very Englishmen who listened to this gentleman without paying him – that is, who each stole from him the few centimes they ought to have given him. How dared you show us in here?’

‘The other room is closed,’ replied the porter.

‘No!’ I cried. ‘That’s not true – it’s not closed.’

‘You know better then.’

‘I know! I know that you are lying.’

The porter turned his shoulder towards me.

‘What is the use of talking?’ he muttered.

‘No, not “what is the use …” ’ I shouted. ‘Take us to the other room at once!’

Despite the hunchbacked woman’s and the singer’s entreaties that we should go away, I had the head waiter called and went into the other room with my companion. When the head waiter heard my angry voice and saw my excited face he did not argue with me, but told me with contemptuous civility that I might go where I liked. I could not convict the porter of his lie, as he had disappeared before I went into the other room.

The room was really open and lighted up, and at one of the tables the Englishman with the lady was having supper. Though we were shown to another table, I sat down with the dirty singer close to the Englishman, and ordered the unfinished bottle to be brought me.

The Englishman and the lady looked first with surprise and then with anger at the little man who sat beside me more dead than alive. They exchanged some words, and the lady pushed away her plate, and rustled her silk dress as they went away. Through the panes in the door I could see the Englishman speaking angrily to the waiter, pointing in our direction all the time. The waiter thrust his head in at the door and looked towards us. I waited with pleasure for them to come to turn us out, and to be able at last to vent my whole indignation on them – but fortunately, though I then regretted it, they left us in peace.

The singer, who had before refused the wine, now hastened to empty the bottle in order to get away as soon as possible. However, he thanked me, feelingly I thought, for his entertainment. His moist eyes became still more tearful and shining, and he expressed his gratitude in a most curious and confused little speech. But that speech, in which he said that if everyone respected artists as I did he would be well off, and that he wished me all happiness, was very pleasant to me. We went out into the vestibule. The waiters were there and my enemy the porter who seemed to be complaining of me to them. They all looked on me, I think, as insane. I let the little man come up to them all, and then, with all the respect I could show, I took off my hat and pressed his hand with its ossified and withered finger. The waiters made a show of not taking any notice of me, but one of them burst into a sardonic laugh.

After bowing to me, the singer disappeared into the darkness, and I went up to my room, wishing to sleep off all these impressions and the foolish, childish anger which had so unexpectedly beset me. Feeling too agitated however for sleep, I went out again into the street to walk about till I should have calmed down, and also I must admit with a vague hope of finding an opportunity to come across the porter, the waiter, or the Englishman, to prove to them how cruel and above all how unjust they had been. But I met no one except the porter, who turned his back on seeing me, and I paced up and down the embankment all alone.

‘This is the strange fate of art!’ I reflected, having grown a little calmer. ‘All seek it and love it – it is the one thing everybody wants and tries to find in life, yet nobody acknowledges its power, nobody values this greatest blessing in the world, nor esteems or is grateful to those who give it to mankind. Ask anyone you like of all these guests at the Schweizerhof what is the greatest blessing in the world, and everyone, or ninety-nine out of a hundred, assuming a sardonic expression, will say that the best thing in the world is money! “Maybe this idea does not please you and does not conform to your lofty ideas,” he will tell you, “but what is to be done if human life is so constituted that money alone gives people happiness? I cannot help letting my reason see the world as it is,” he will add, “that is – see the truth.”

‘Pitiful is your reason, pitiful the happiness you desire, and you are a miserable being who does not know what you want.… Why have you all left your country, your relations, your occupations, and your financial affairs, and congregated here in this small Swiss town of Lucerne? Why did you all come out onto the balcony this evening and listen in respectful silence to the songs of that poor little mendicant? And had he chosen to go on singing you would still have remained silent and listened. What money, even millions of it, could have driven you all from your country and assembled you in this little corner, Lucerne? Could money have gathered you all on those balconies and made you stand for half an hour silent and motionless? No! One thing alone causes you to act, and will always influence you more strongly than any other motive power in life, and that is the need for art, which you do not acknowledge, but which you feel and will always feel as long as there is anything human left in you. The word “art” seems ridiculous to you. You use it as a scornful reproach; you perhaps allow love of the poetic in children and in silly girls, but even then you laugh at them; but for yourselves you require something positive. But children see life healthily, they love and know what men should love, and what gives happiness, but life has so enmeshed and depraved you that you laugh at the one thing you love, and seek only that which you hate and which causes you unhappiness. You are so enmeshed that you do not understand your obligation to this poor Tyrolese who has afforded you a pure enjoyment, yet you feel yourselves bound to humble yourselves gratuitously before a lord, without advantage or pleasure, and for some reason sacrifice for him your comfort and convenience. What nonsense! What incomprehensible senselessness! But it was not this that struck me most this evening. This ignorance of what gives happiness, this unconsciousness of poetic enjoyment, I almost understand, or have become used to, having often met it in my life; nor was the coarse, unconscious cruelty of the crowd new to me. Whatever the advocates of the popular spirit may say, a crowd is a combination possibly of good people, but of people who have come in touch merely on their base, animal sides, and it expresses only the weakness and cruelty of human nature. How could you, children of a free, humane nation, as Christians or simply as human beings, respond with coldness and ridicule to the pleasure afforded you by an unfortunate mendicant? But no, in your country there are institutions for the needy. There are no beggars and must be none, nor must there be any compassion, on which mendicancy is based. But this man had laboured, he gave you pleasure, he implored you to give him something from your superabundance for his pains, of which you availed yourselves. But you, from your lofty, brilliant palace, regarded him with a cold smile and there was not one among you hundred, happy, rich people who threw him anything. He went away humiliated, and the senseless crowd followed him laughing, and insulted not you but him, because you were cold, cruel, and dishonest; because you stole the pleasure he had afforded you, they insulted him.’

‘On the seventh of July 1857, in Lucerne, in front of the Hotel Schweizerhof in which the richest people stay, an itinerant beggar singer sang and played the guitar for half an hour. About a hundred people listened to him. The singer asked them all three times to give him something. Not one of them gave him anything, and many people laughed at him.’

This is not fiction, but a positive fact, which can be verified by anyone who likes from the permanent residents at the Hotel Schweizerhof, after ascertaining from the papers who the foreigners were who were staying at the Schweizerhof on the 7th of July.

Here is an occurrence the historians of our time ought to record in indelible letters of fire. This incident is more significant, more serious, and has a profounder meaning, than the facts usually printed in newspapers and histories. That the English have killed another thousand Chinamen because the Chinese buy nothing for money while their country absorbs metal coins, that the French have killed another thousand Arabs because corn grows easily in Africa and constant warfare is useful for training armies; that the Turkish Ambassador in Naples must not be a Jew, and that the Emperor Napoleon walks on foot at Plombières and assures the people in print that he reigns only by the will of the whole nation – all these are words that conceal or reveal what has long been known; but what happened at Lucerne on July the 7th appears to me to be something quite new and strange, and relates not to the eternally evil side of human nature, but to a certain epoch in social evolution. This is a fact not for the history of human actions, but for the history of progress and civilization.

Why is this inhuman occurrence, which would be impossible in any German, French, or Italian village, possible here where civilization, liberty, and equality have been brought to the highest point, and where the most civilized travellers from the most civilized nations congregate? Why have these developed, humane people, who collectively are capable of any honourable and humane action, no human, cordial inclination to perform a kindly personal action? Why do these people – who in their parliaments, meetings, and societies are warmly concerned about the condition of the celibate Chinese in India, about propagating Christianity and education in Africa, about the establishment of societies for the betterment of the whole human race – not find in their souls the simple elemental feeling of human sympathy? Is it possible that they do not possess that feeling, and that its place has been occupied by the vanity, ambition, and cupidity governing these men in their parliaments, meetings, and societies? Can it be that the spread of the sensible and selfish association of men called civilization, destroys and contradicts the need for instinctive, loving association? And is it possible that this is the equality for which so much innocent blood has been shed and so many crimes committed? Is it possible that nations, like children, can be made happy by the mere sound of the word equality?

‘Equality before the law?’ But does the whole life of man take place in the sphere of law? Only a thousandth part of it depends on law, the rest takes place outside, in the sphere of social customs and conceptions. In this society the waiter is better dressed than the singer and insults him with impunity. I am better dressed than the waiter and insult him with impunity. The porter regards me as superior, and the singer as inferior, to himself; when I joined the singer he considered himself our equal and became rude. I grew insolent to the porter and he felt himself inferior to me. The waiter was insolent to the singer and the latter felt himself inferior to him. Can this be a free country – ‘positively free’ as people say – in which there is a single citizen who, without having caused harm to anyone, is put in prison for doing the only thing he can do to save himself from starvation?

What an unfortunate, pitiful creature is man, with his desire for positive decisions, thrown into this ever moving, limitless ocean of good and evil, of facts, conceptions, and contradictions! For ages men have struggled and laboured to place good on one side and evil on the other. Centuries pass, and whenever an impartial mind places good and evil on the scales, the balance remains even, and the proportion of good and evil remains unaltered. If only man would learn not to judge, not to think sharply and positively, and not to answer questions presented to him only because they are for ever unanswerable! If only he understood that every thought is both false and true! False by one-sidedness resulting from man’s inability to embrace the whole of truth, and true as an expression of one fact of human endeavour.

Men have made subdivisions for themselves in this eternally moving, unending, intermingled chaos of good and evil; they have traced imaginary lines on that ocean, and expect the ocean to divide itself accordingly, as if there were not millions of other subdivisions made from quite other points of view on another plane. It is true that fresh subdivisions are worked out from century to century, but millions of centuries have passed and millions more will pass. ‘Civilization is good, barbarianism is bad. Freedom is good, subjection is bad.’ This imaginary knowledge destroys the instinctive, beatific, primitive demand for kindliness in human nature. And who will define for me what is freedom, what is despotism, what is civilization, and what barbarianism? Where does the boundary lie between the one and the other? Whose soul possesses so absolute a standard of good and evil that he can measure all the confused and fleeting facts? Whose mind is so great that it can comprehend and measure even the facts of the stationary past? And who has seen a condition in which good and evil did not exist together? And how do I know that it is not my point of view which decides whether I see more of the one than of the other? Who is capable, even for a moment, of severing himself so completely from life as to look down on it with complete detachment? We have one unerring guide, and only one – the universal Spirit which inspiring each and all of us, implants in every individual a craving for what ought to be; that same Spirit which causes the tree to grow towards the sun, the flower to shed its seeds in the autumn, and bids us instinctively draw closer together.

And it is that one blissful and impeccable voice that the noisy, hasty development of civilization stifles. Who is more a man and less a barbarian: that lord who, seeing the threadbare clothes of the singer, angrily left the table, and for his efforts did not give him a millionth part of his wealth, and who now sits, well fed, in a bright comfortable room, calmly discussing the affairs in China and finding the massacres committed there quite justified – or the little singer, who risking imprisonment and with a franc in his pocket has for twenty years been going over mountains and valleys doing no one any harm, but bringing consolation to them by his singing, and who was to-day insulted and almost driven out and, tired, hungry, and humiliated, has gone to sleep somewhere on rotting straw?

At that moment, in the dead stillness of the night, I heard somewhere in the far distance the little man’s guitar and voice.

‘No,’ I said to myself involuntarily, ‘you have no right to pity him and to be indignant at the lord’s well-being. Who has weighed the inner happiness to be found in the soul of each of them? He is now sitting somewhere on a dirty door-step, gazing at the gleaming moonlit sky and gaily singing in the calm of the fragrant night; in his heart there is no reproach, or malice, or regret. And who knows what is now going on in the souls of all the people within these palatial walls? Who can tell whether among them all there is as much carefree benign joy in life and harmony with the world as lives in the soul of that little man? Endless is the mercy and wisdom of Him who has allowed and ordained that all these contradictions should exist. Only to you, insignificant worm, who rashly and wrongly try to penetrate His laws and His intentions – only to you do they seem contradictions. He looks down benignly from His bright immeasurable height and rejoices in the infinite harmony into which all your endless contradictory movements resolve themselves.

‘In your pride you thought you could separate yourself from the universal law. But you, too, with your mean and petty indignation at the waiters, have been playing your necessary part in the eternal and infinite harmony.’

¹ The Hofbrücke, removed in 1852.

² ‘If you think I earn anything you are mistaken. I am only a poor devil.’

³ ‘Now, gentlemen and ladies, I will sing you the Rigi song.’

⁴ ‘Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. I wish you good-night.’

⁵ ‘Yes, sugar is good: it is sweet for children.’

⁶ ‘I only say that to you.’

⁷ ‘One is much cramped by the police.’

⁸ ‘The gentleman is right; you are right.’