No More Learning

Did you put out twelve sheets of paper for the secretary? And six pencils, Raclielle, six, not just three, for him? " was what Diotima said on this occasion. At each of these questions, Rachel inwardly ticked off on her fingers all she had done, with a frightened thrill ofambition, as though her life were at stake. Her mistress had thrown on a dressing gown and went into the conference room. Her way of training "Rachelle" involved re- minding her that it was not enough to regard everything done or un- done as one's personal concern, but to consider its general import. If Rachel broke a glass, "Rachelle" was told that the damage in itself signified nothing but that the transparent glass was a symbol of the daily little duties the eye barely perceived because it gladly dwelled on higher things, which was all the more reason that one had to pay the most particular attention to these duties. To fmd herself treated with such ministerial courtesy could bring remorse and happiness to Rachel's eyes as she swept up the fragments. Her cooks, from whom Diotima expected right thinking and recognition of errors they had committed, had come and gone often enough since Rachel had en- tered her service, but Rachel loved Diotima's sublime phrases with all her heart, just as she loved the Emperor, the state funerals, and the flaming candles in the darkness of the Catholic churches. She might fib a little to get out of a scrape, but she was thoroughly ashamed ofherselfafteiWard. Perhaps she'even took a perverse plea- sure in her little lies because they made her feel how really bad she was, compared with Diotima; but she usually indulged herself in this only when she hoped to be able to tum the falsehood, secretly and quickly, into a truth.
When one human being looks up to another so much in every way, it happens that his body is, so to speak, taken away from him and plunges like a little meteorite into the sun of the other body. Diotima had no fault to fmd with Rachel's performance and kindly patted her
little maid on the shoulder. Then they both went into the bathroom to dress Diotima for the great day. When Rachel tempered the bath- water, lathered the soap, and was permitted to rub Diotima's body down with the bath towel as boldly as though it were her own, it gave her much more pleasure than ifit really were merely her own, which seemed of no account, inspired no confidence; she was far from thinking of it even for comparison,. but felt, in touching Diotima's statuesque abundance, rather like an oafofa recruit who belongedto a dazzling regiment.
So was Diotima girded for the great day.
THE GREA T SESSION
On the minute of the appointed hour, Count Leinsdorf appeared, accompanied by Ulrich. Rachel, already aglow from admitting an uninterrupted stream of guests for whom she had to open the door and help with their coats, recognized Ulrich at once and noted with satisfaction that he, too, had been no casual visitor but a man brought to her mistress's house by a significant' chain of events, as was now demonstrated by his arrival in the company of His Grace. She flut- tered to the door, which she opened ceremmiiously, and then crouched down at the keyhole to see what would now happen inside. It was a large keyhole, and she saw the banker's clean-shaven chin and the prelate Niedomansky's violet neckband, as well as the golden sword knot of General Stumm von Bordwehr, who had been sent by the War Ministry although it really had not been invited; the Minis- try had declared, in a letter to Count Leinsdorf, that it did not wish to be absent on "so highly patriotic" an occasion, . though not directly involved in bringing it about or in the foreseeable course it would take. Diotima had forgotten to mention this to Rachel, who was quite excited by the presence of a general at this gathering but could-make out nothing more, for the present, about what was going on.
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Diotima, meanwhile, had welcomed His Grace, not paying much attention to Ulrich, as she was introducing other guests to the Count, beginning with. Dr. Paul Arnheim. She explained to His Grace that a lucky chance had brought this distinguished friend ofher house, and even though as a non-Austrian he could not expect to take a fonrial part in their conference, she hoped he would be permitted to stay as her personal adviser, because-here she appended a gentle threat- his great experience and connections in the field ofinternational cul- ture and its relations with economic questions were an invaluable support to her, considering that she had so far been obliged to take sole responsibility for covering these areas and could not soon be re- placed even in the future, although she was only too aware of her inadequacy.
Count Leinsdorf found himself ambushed; it was the first time since he had known her that his middle-class friend had surprised him by committing an indiscretion. Arnheim, too, felt taken aback, likea sovereign whose entrance has not been staged with the proper fanfare; he had of course been certain that Count Leinsdorf had known and approved of his being invited. But Diotima, with an obsti- nate look on her flushed face, din not give an inch; like all women with too clear a conscience in the matter of marital fidelity, she could develop an insufferable feminine persistence in a good cause.
She was at that time already in love with Arnheim, who had by this time called on her more than once, but in her inexperience she had no inkling of the nature of her feeling. They talked about what it is that moves the soul, that ennobles the flesh between the sole of the foot and the crown of the head and transforms the confused impres- sions of civilized life into harmonious spiritual vibrations. But even this was a great deal, and because Diotima was inclined to caution and always on guard against compromising herself, this intimacy struck her as too sudden, and she had to mobilize truly great emo- tions, the very greatest, in fact, and where were they most likely to be found? Where everyone has shifted them, to the drama of history. For Diotima and Arnheim, the Parallel Campaign was, so to speak, a safety island in the swelling traffic of their souls. They regarded it as clearly fated that they should have been brought together at such an important moment, arid they could not agree more that the great pa- triotic enterprise was an immense opportunity and responsibility for
intellectual people. Arnheim said so too, though he never forgot to add that it depended primarily upon people with strong personalities who had experience in economics as well as the world ofideas, and only secondarily on the scope of the organization. So in Diotima the Parallel Campaign had become inextricably bound up with Arnheim; the void it had presented to her imagination at the beginning had given way to a copious abundance. Her hope that the great treasures of feeling embodied in the Austrian heritage could be strengthened by Prussian intellectual discipline was now most happily justified, and these impressions were so strong that this normally very correct woman had not realized what a breach of protocol she had commit- ted in undertaking to invite Arnheim to the inaugural conference. Now there was no retreat; anyway, Arnheim, who sensed how it had happened, found it essentially disarming, however annoyed he was at finding himself in a false position; and His Grace was basically too fond ofhis friend Diotima to show his surprise beyond his first, invol- untary, recoil. He met Diotima's explanation with silence and after an awkward little pause amiably held out his hand to Arnheim, assur- ing him in the most civil and complimentary terms that he was wel- come, as in fact he was. Most of the others present had probably noticed the Uttle scene and wondered about Arnheim's presence in- sofar as they knew who he was; but among well-bred people it is gen- erally assumed that there is a sufficient reason for everything, and it is considered poor taste to ask too many prying questions.
Diotima had meanwhile recovered her statuesque impassivity. After a few moments she called the meeting to order and asked His Grace to honor her house by taking a chair.
His Grace made a speech. He had been preparing it for days, and his cast of mind was much too fixed to let him change anything at the last minute; he could only just manage to tone down the most out- spoken allusions to the Prussian needle gun, which (an underhanded trick) had got the better of the Austrian muzzle-loaders in '66.
"What has brought us together," Count Leinsdorf said, "is the shared conviction that a great testimonial arising from the midst of the people themselves must not be left to chance but needs guidance by an influence that sees far into the future from a place with a broad perspective-in other words, from the top. His Majesty, our beloved Emperor and Sovereign, will in the year 1918 celebrate the almost
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unique jubilee of the seventieth year since his richly blessed ascent to the throne with 'all the strength and vigor, please God, we have always been accustomed to admire in him. We are certain that this occasion will be celebrated by the grateful people of Austria in a manner to show the world not only our deep love for him, but also that the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy stands together, grouped firm as a rock around its Sovereign. " . .
At this point Count Leinsdorf wavered, wondering whether to mention anything about the signs ofdecay to which this rock, even at a unified celebration of its Emperor and King, was exposed; resist- ance by Hungary, which recognized only a King, had to be reckoned with. This was why His Grace had originally meant to speak of two firm rocks. But somehow this also failed to do justice to his sense of the Austro-Hungarian state.
This sense of the Austro-Hungarian state was so oddly put to- gether ~at it must seem almost hopeless to explain it to anyone who has not experienced it himself. It did not consist of im Austrian part and a Hungarian part that, as one might expect, complemented each other, but of a whole and a part; that is, of a Hungarian and an Aus- tro-Hungarian sense of statehood, the latter to be found in Austria, which in a sense left the Austrian sense of statehood with no country of its own. The Austrian existed only in Hungary, and there as an object of dislike; at home he called himself a national of the king- doms and lands of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy as represented in the Imperial Counc\1, meaning that he was an Austrian plus a Hungarian minus that Hungarian; and he did this not with enthusi-
asm but only for the sake of a concept that was repugnant to him, because he could bear the Hungarians as little as they could bear him, which added still another complication to the whole combina- tion. This led many people to simply call themselves Czechs, Poles, Slovenes, or Germans, and this was the beginning of that further decay and those well-known "unpleasant phenomena of an internal political kind," as Count Leinsdorf called them, which according to him were "the work of irresponsible, callow, sensation-seeking ele- ments" not kept sufficiently in check by the politically unenlightened mass ofinhabitants. As the subject here touched upon has since been. dealt with in many well-informed and clever books, the reader will be glad to be reassured that neither at this point" nor later will any
serious attempt be made to paint a historical canvas and enter into competition with reality. It is fully sufficient to note that the myster- ies ofthis Dualism (the technical term for it) were at the very least as recondite as those of the Trinity, for the historical process nearly ev- erywhere resembles a juridical one, with hundreds of clauses, appen- dices, compromises, and protests, and it is only to this that attention should be drawn. The common man lives and dies among these com- plications all unsuspecting, which is just as well for him, because if he were to realize in what sort of a trial, with what lawyers, costs, and conflicting motives, he was entangled, he might be seized by para- noia no matter what country he lived in. Understanding reality is ex- clusively a matter for the philosopher of political history. For him the present period follows upon the Battle of Mohacs or Lietzen as the roast the soup; he knows all the proceedings and has at every mo- ment the sense of necessity arising out of lawful process. If he is, moreover, like Count Leinsdorf an aristocratic philosopher trained in political history, whose forebears, wielding sword or spindle, had personally played their parts in the preliminaries, he can survey the result as a smoothly ascending line.
And so His Grace Count Leinsdorfhad said to himselfbefore the conference: 'W e must not forget that His Majesty's noble and gener- ous resolve to let the people take part in the conduct of their own affairs, up to a point, has not been in effect long enough to have pro- duced everywhere the kind ofpolitical maturity in every respect wor- thy of the confidence so magnanimously placed in the people by His Majesty. So we will not discern, as does the grudging world beyond our frontiers, signs of senile decay in such execrable demonstrations as we are now unfortunately experiencing, but rather signs of a still immature, hence inexhaustible, youthful strength of the Austrian people. "
He had meant to bring all this up at the meeting, but because Arn- heim was present he did not say everything he had thought out beforehand but contented himself with hinting at the ignorance abroad of true conditions in Austria, leading to exaggeration where certain unpleasant phenomena were concerned. "·For," His Grace concluded, "if we wish to give unmistakable proof of our strength and unity, we do so entirely in the interests of the wider world, since a happy relationship among the European family of nations is based
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upon mutual esteem and respect for one another's power. " He then repeated only once more that such a forceful, . Jllunt display of strength must truly come from the midst of the people and hence be directed from above, the purpose of this meeting being to find ways and means of so doing. Considering that only a short time ago Count Leinsdorfhad thought ofnothing more than a list ofnames, to which only the suggestion of a "Year of Austria" had been added from out- side, this could be characterized as great progress, even though His Grace had not even expressed everything in his mind.
After this speech, Diotima took the floor to clarify the chairman's objectives. The great patriotic campaign, she explained, must find a great aim that would emerge, as His Grace had said, from the midst of the people. 'W e who are gathered here today for the first time do not feel called upon to define this aim as of now, but we are assem- bled to create first of all an organization to prepare the way for the framing of suggestions leading toward this aim. " With these words she opened the discussion.
At first there was silence. Shut birds of different species and song patterns, none of whom have any idea what is going to happen to them, together in a cage, and they will initially be silent exactly the same way.
Finally, a professor asked for permission to speak. Ulrich did not know him. His Grace had presumably got his secretary to invite this gentleman at the last moment. He spoke of the path of history. When we look ahead, he said, we see an impenetrable wall. If we look left and right, we see an overwhelming mass of important events without recognizable direction. To cite just a few instances: the present con- flict with Montenegro, the Spanish ordeals in battle in Morocco, the obstructionism of the Ukrainians in the Austrian Imperial Council. But looking back, everything, as if by a miracle, has become order and purpose. . . . Therefore, if he might say so, we experience at every moment the mystery of a miraculous guidance. So he wanted to welcome as a great idea·opening the eyes of a nation, as it were, to this, to let it look consciously into the ways of Providence by calling upon it on a definite occasion of rare sublimity. . . . This was all he had wanted to say. It was much like modem methods of teaching, letting the pupil work out the answers together with the teacher, rather than imposing on him ready-made results.
The assembled company stared stonily, but with a pleasant expres- sion, at the green tablecloth; even the prelate representing the Arch- bishop reacted to this clerical performance by a layman with the same polite reserve as the gentlemen from the ministries, without allowing his face 'to betray a hint of cordial agreement. It was like the way people feel when someone on the street suddenly begins to ad- dress all and sundry at the top of his voice; everyone, even those who had been thinking of nothing at all, feels suddenly that he is out on serious business, or that someone is making improper use of the street. As he spoke, the professor had been struggling with a sense of embarrassment, squeezing out his words with jerky constraint, as if a strong wind were snatching away his breath; he waited for an answer- ing echo, then slowly withdrew the expectant look from his face, not without dignity.
It w~ a relief to all when the representative of the Imperial Privy Purse came to the rescue by quickly giving them a list of foundations and endowments to be expected, in that jubilee year, from His Maj- esty's private funds. ' It began with the donation of a sum for the building of a pilgrims' church, a foundation for the support of dtta- cons without private means, gifts to the Archduke Karl and Field Marshal Radetzky Veterans' Clubs, to the soldiers' widows and or- phans from the campaigns of '66 and '78, followed by funds for pen- sioned noncommissioned officers, for the Academy of Sciences, and so it went, on and on. There was nothing exciting about these lists; they simply had their place and took their course as a public expres- sion of Imperial benevolence. The moment they had all been read off a Frau Weghuber, a manufacturer's wife with an impressive rec- ord of charitable works, rose promptly to her feet, quite impervious to any idea that there might be something more pressing than the objects of her concern. She advanced a proposal for a Greater Aus- trian Franz Josef Soup Kitchen, which was received sympathetically. However, the delegate from the Ministry of Public Worship and Ed- ucation pointed out that his own department had received a some- what similar suggestion, namely, the publication ofa monumental work, Emperor Franz Josef I and His Time. But after this happy start silence again prevailed, and most of those present felt trapped in an awkward situation.
Had they been asked on their way to this meeting whether they
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knew what historical events or great events or things of that sort were, they would certainly have replied in the affirmative; but con- fronted with the weighty imperative of making up such an event on the spot, they slowly began to feel faint, and something like rum- blings of a very natural kind stirred inside them.
At this dangerous moment the ever-tactful Diotima, who had pre- pared refreshments, interrupted the meeting.
43
ULRICH MEETS THE GREA T MAN FOR THE FIRST TIME. NOTHING IRRA TIONAL HAPPENS IN WORLD HISTORY, BUT DIOTIMA CLAIMS THAT THE TRUE AUSTRIA IS THE WHOLE WORLD
During the pause for refreshments, Amheim observed that the more all-inclusive the organization, the further the various proposals would diverge from one another. This was a characteristic symptom of its present state of development, based, as it was, only on reason. Yet it was just this that made it a tremendous undertaking, to force a whole people into awareness of the will, inspiration, and all that was basic, which lay far deeper than reason.
Ulrich replied by asking him whether he really believed that any- thing would come of this campaign.
"No doubt about it," Amheim said, "great events are always the expression of a general situation. " The mere fact that a meeting such as this had been possible anywhere was proof of its. profound necessity.
And yet discrimination in such matters seems difficult, Ulrich said. Suppose, for instance, that the composer of the latest worldwide mu- sical hit happened t,o be a political schemer and managed to become
president of the world-which was certainly conceivable, given his enormous popularity-would this be a leap forward in history or an expression of the cultural situation? .
"That's quite impossible! " Amheim said seriously. "Such a com- poser couldn't possibly be either a schemer or a politician-other- wise, his genius for musical comedy would be inexplicable, and nothing absurd happens in world history. "
"But so much that's absurd happens in the world, surely? "
"In world history, never! "
Arnheim was visibly on edge. Diotima and Count Leinsdorf stood
nearby in lively, low-voiced conversation. His Grace had, after all, expressed to his friend his amazement at meeting a Prussian on this markedly Austrian occasion. For reasons of discretion, if nothing else, he regarded it as wholly out of the question to let an alien play a leading part in the Parallel Campaign, although Diotima pointed out the splendid and confidence-inspiring impression such freedom from political. egotism would inevitably make abroad. She then changed her tactics, giving her plan a surprising new dimension. She spoke of a woman's tact, an intuitive certainty deeply immune to so- ciety's·prejudices. If His Grace would only listen, just this once, to that voice. Arnheim was a European, an intellectual force known throughout Europe; precisely because he was not an Austrian, his participation would prove that the intellect as such was at home in Austria. Suddenly she came out with the pronouncement that the True Austria was the whole world. The world, she explained, would find no peace until its nations learned to live together on a higher plane, like the Austrian peoples in their Fatherland. A Greater Austria, a Global Austria-that was the idea His Grace had inspired in her at this happy moment-the crowning idea the Parallel Cam- paign had been missing all along!
Irresistible, commanding her pacifist zeal, the beautiful Diotima stood before her noble friend. Count Lei. risdorf could not yet make up his mind to surrender his objections, but he again admired this woman's fiery idealism and breadth of vision, and pondered whether it might not be more advantageous to sound out Amheim first rather than deal on the spot with suggestions of such weighty consequence.
Arnheim was restless, sensing the nature of this conversation yet
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unable to influence it. He and Ulrich were surrounded by the curi- ous, drawn by the presence of this Croesus, and Ulrich was just saying: r
"There are several thousand occupations in which people lose themselves, where they invest all their wits. But ifyou are looking for the universal human element, for what they all have in common, there are really only three possibilities left: stupidity, money, or, at most, some leftover memory of religion. "
"Quite right, religion! " Arnheim broke in emphatically, and asked Ulrich whether he really believed that it had all died out, down to the roots. He had stressed the word "religion" so loudly that Count Leinsdorfwas bound to hear.
His Grace seemed to· have come to terms, meanwhile, with Di- otima, for led by her he now approached the group, which tactfully made way, and addressed Arnheim.
Ulrich suddenly found himself alone, and bit his lip.
He began, for some reason-perhaps to kill time or not to stand there so awkwardly-to think of the drive to this meeting. As a man who moved with the times, Count Leinsdorf, who had brought him along, owned several cars, but inasmuch as he also dung to tradition, he occasionally used a pair of superb chestnut horses that he kept, together with a coachman and a light carriage; so when his major- domo had come for his instructions, His Grace had decided that it would be fitting to drive these two beautiful, almost historical crea- tures to the inaugural meeting of the Parallel Campaign.
"This one is Pepi, and that one is Hans," Count Leinsdorfhad ex- plained on the way, as they watcheo the dancing brown hillocks of the horses' cruppers and now and then one of the nodding heads moving rhythmically sideways so thatthe foam fleW from its mouth. It was hard-to comprehend what was going on inside the animals; it was a beautiful morning and they moved at a fast trot. Perhaps fod- der and speed were the only passions left to horses, since Pepi and Hans were geldings and knew nothing of love as a tangible desire, but only as a breath and a haze that sometimes· veiled their vision of the world with thin, lucent clouds. The passion for fodder was pre- served in a marble manger full of delicious oats, a hayrack full of fresh hay, the sound ofthe stable halter rubbing on its ring, and, con- centrated in the warm, steamy stable smell, a, spicy, steady aroma
needled with the ammonia-charged strong sense of self: Here are horses! Speed was something else again. In this, the poor soul is still bound to the herd, where motion suddenly takes possession of the lead st8llion, or all of them together, and the lot of them goes gallop- ing off into the wind and the sun; for when the animal is alone and free to charge offto all four points ofthe compass, often a mad shud- der will run through its skull and it will go storming off aimlessly, plunging into a terrible freedom as empty in one <lirection as an- other, until it comes to a bewildered halt and can be lured back with a bucket of oats. Pepi and Hans were well-trained· horses, used to running in harness; they movwd forward eagerly, their hooves beat- ing the sunny street fenced in by houses. People were gray swarms for them, causing them neither joy nor fear; the bright window dis- plays, the women parading in their colorful finery-patches of meadow no good for grazing; hats, neckties, books, diamonds along the street: a desert. Only the two dream-islands of stable and trotting rose up, and sometimes, as though in a dream or in play, Hans and Pepi shied at a shadow, pressed against the shafts, were revived by a flick of the whip, and leaned gratefully into the reins.
Suddenly Count Leinsdorfhad sat up straight in the cushions and asked Ulrich: "Stallburg tells me, Herr Doktor, that you are taking an interest in someone? " Ulrich was so taken by surprise that he did not immediately grasp the connection, and Leinsdorf went on: "Very good of you. I know all about it. I'm afraid there's not much to be done-such a terrible fellow. But that intangible personal something in need of grace, which every Christian has in him, often shows itself in just such an individual. And when a man sets out to do something great, he should think most humbly of the helpless. Perhaps this fel- low can be given another physical examination. "
After Count Leinsdorf had delivered himself of this long speech, sitting upright in the jolting carriage, ·he let himself drop back into the upholstery and added: "But we cannot forget that at this moment we owe all our energies to the realization of a historic event! "
Ulrich really felt a liking for this nai've old aristocrat, who was standing there still talking with Diotima and Arnheim, and felt al- most a twinge ofjealousy. For the conversation seemed to be quite lively; Diotima was smiling; Count Leinsdorf's eyes were popping with alarm as he tried to follow Amheim, who was holding forth with
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noble composure. Ulrich caught the phrase "bringing ideas into the spheres of power. " He could not stand Arnheim, simply as a model of existence, on principle. This combination of intellect, business; good living, and learning was absolutely insufferable. He was con- vinced that Arnheim had organized everything the previous evening so that he would be neither the first nor the last to arrive at the ses- sion this morning; and yet he had certainly not looked at his watch before he left home but had probably done so for the last time before sitting down to breakfast and receiving the report of his secretlli)', who had handed him the mail; then he had transformed the time at his disposal into the precise amount of mental activity he intended to do before he had to leave, and when he dispassionately gave himself up to that activity, he was certain·it would fill up the time exactly; for the right thing and . the time it takes are mysteriously connected, like a sculpture and the space it inhabits; or a javelin thrower and the target he hits without looking at it. Ulrich had already heard a great deal about Amheim and had read some of his works. In one of them, Arnheim had written that a man who inspects his suit in the mirror is incapable of fearless conduct, because the mirror, originally created to give pleasure-as Arnheim explained it-had become an instru- ment of anxiety, like the clock, which is a substitute for the fact that our activities no longer follow a natural sequence.
Ulrich had to force himself to look away in order not to be seen staring rudely at the nearby group, and his eyes came to rest on the little maid who was moving about among the chatting groups, offer_. ing refreshments with respectful glances. But little Rachel did not notice him; she had forgotten him and even neglected to bring her tray over to him. She was approaching Arnheim and presenting her refreshments to him as to a god; she longed to kiss the shorj:, ·master- ful hand that reached out for the lemonade and held the glass ab- senttnindedly, without the nabob's taking a sip. Once this high point was passed she continued on her rounds like a dazed ~ttle robot and made her way as quickly as she could out of this world-historical room, where everything was filled with legs and talk, back into the hall again.
44
CONTINUA TION AND CONCLUSION OF THE GREAT SESSION. ULRICH TAKES A LIKING TO RACHEL, AND RACHEL TO SOLIMAN. THE PARALLEL CAMPAIGN GETS ORGANIZED
Ulrich liked girls like this: ambitious, well-behaved, in their well- trained timidity like little fruit trees whose sweet ripe fruit is des- tined to fall one day into the mouth of some young knight of Cockaigne as soon as he deigns to open his lips. ''They have to be brave and tough," he thought, "like Stone Age women who shared their hunter's bed by night and carried his weapons and household gear on marches by day," although he himself had never gone on such an expedition except in the distant prehistoric age of his awak- ening manhood. With a sigh he sat down again, for the session had resumed. In remembering, he was struck that the black-and-white vestments one put on these maids were the same colors as nuns' h_ab- its; this had never occurred to him before, and he wondered at it. But the divine Diotima was speaking again, saying that the Parallel Cam- paign must culminate in a great symbol. That meant that it would not do to have just any sort of goal, no matter how widely visible, no mat- ter how patriotic. This goal would have to seize the heart of the' world. It could not be just practical, it also had to be a poem. It had to be a landmark. It had to be a mirror in which the world would see itself and blush. And not just blush but, as in a fairy tale, see its own true countenance and never again be able to forget it. His Grace had suggested for this symhoi "Emperor of Peace. "
This being the premise, there could be no mistaking that the suggestions considered thus far had been wide of the mark, Diotima went on. When she spoke of symbols earlier in the meeting, she had naturally meant not soup kitchens but that nothing less was at stake than the need to recover that unity of mankind that had been lost because the disparity of interests in society had grown so great. The
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question arises whether at the present time the peoples of today are still at all capable of such great, unifying ide. as? All the suggestions made so far were splendid, of course, but they diverged so widely, which already showed that none of them had unifying power.
As she spoke, Ulrich was watching Arnheim.
His dislike did not attach its~lfto any particular details of that physiognomy but quite simply to the totality. Not that the individual features-the industrial baron's hard Phoenician skull, the sharp face that seemed to be formed of too little material, so that it had a certain flatness, the lordly, English-tailor repbse of the figure, and, at the second place where a man peeks out of his suit, the rather too-short-fingered hands-were not in themselves sufficiently noteworthy. What ir" ritated Ulrich was the harmony in which all of this coexisted. Arn- heim's books also had the same kind ofself-assurance; the world was in order, as soon as Arnheim had given it his due consideration. As he sat watching Arnheim being so dramatically attentive to the foolish- ness they were having to sit through, Ulrich suddenly felt a slum kid's impulse to throw rocks or mud at this man who had grown up in all that wealth and perfection. Arnheim was drinking it all in like a con- noisseur whose face says: Without going overboard, I must say this is a noble vintage!
Diotima had now come to the end of her speech. Right after the intermission, when they had all sat down again, everyone had looked confident that something conclusive was about to occur. Nobody had given it any real thought, but they all had that look of waiting for something important to happen. And now Diotima concluded: So when the question imposed itselfwhether the present time and the peoples of today's world were at all capable of such great, unifying ideas, . it was necessary and proper to add: The idea of the power to redeem. For it was a question of redemption, of a redeeming up- surge. In short: even if we could not yet imagine it in any detail. It must come out of the total community, or it would not come at all. And so she would take it upon herself, after having consulted with His Grace, to conclude today's meeting with the following proposal: As His Grace had rightly observed, the august ministerial depart- ments already represented a division of the world in accordance with its main aspects, such as religion and education, commerce, industry, law, and so on. Ifthose present would therefore agree to set up com-
mittees, each headed by a delegate from a government department, with representatives of the respective institutions and sectors of the population at his side, the resulting organization would already em- body the major moral forces of the world in their proper order and would serve as an instrument through which these forces could flow in and be filtered. The final determination would be made by an ex- ecutive committee, and the entire structure would then need only several special committees and subcommittees, such as a publicity committee, a fund-raising committee, and the like, while she would like to reserve to herself personally the forming of a special commit- tee for the further elaboration of the campaign's fundamental ideas, of course in constant cooperati~nwith all the other committees.
Again there was a general silence, but this time of palpable relief. Count Leinsdorf nodded his head several times. Someone asked as a point of further clarification how the specifically Austrian note would come into the campaign as thus conceived.
In response to this question, General Stumm von Bordwehr rose to speak, even though all the preceding speakers had remained seated. He was well aware, he said, that the. soldier's role in the coun- cil chamber was a modest one. Ifhe spoke nevertheless, it was not to inject his own opinion into the unsurpassable critical remarks and suggestions already made, all of them excellent, but only to offer one more idea at the end, for everyone's indulgent consideration. The planned demonstration was intended to impress the outside world. But what impressed the outside world was the power of a people. And in view of the present situation in the European family of na- tions, as His Grace had said, a demonstration of this kind would cer- tainly not be pointless. The idea of the state was, after all, the idea of power; as Treitschke said, the state is the power of self-preservation in the struggle for national survival. The general was only touching on a well-known sore spot in mentioning the condition of our artil- lery and our navy, both in unsatisfactory condition owing to the apa- thy of Parliament. Which is why he hoped they would consider, in case no other goal should be found, which was still an open question, that a broadly based popular concern with the problems of the army and its equipment would be a decidedly worthy aim. Si vis pacem, para bellum/ Strength in peace wards off war, or at least shortens its span. He could therefore confidently maintain that
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steps taken in that direction would have a conciliatory effect on other nations and would make for an impressive demonstration of peace- able intentions.
At this moment there was a curious feeling in the room. Most of those present had at first felt that this speech was not in keeping with the meeting's real purpose, but as the General became more domi- nant acoustically, the effect on his listeners was like the reassuring tramp ofwell-ordered battalions. The original impulse of the Parallel Campaign, "Better than Prussia," shyly raised its head, as though some distant regimental band were trumpeting the march about Prince Eugene riding against the Turks, or the anthem "God Save the Emperor," . . . though ofcourse ifHis Grace had now stood up to propose-as he was far from intending to do-that they should put their Prussian brother Amheim at the head of the regimental band, they might have believed, in the state of vague exaltation in whic~ they found themselves, that they were hearing the Prussian anthem instead, and would hardly have been able to object.
At the keyhole, "Rachelle" reported: "Now they're talking about war. "
Her quick return to the hall at the end of the intermission owed a little to the fact that this time Amheim had actually brought Soliman in his wake. As bad weather was threatening, the little African boy had followed his master, carrying an overcoat. When Rachel opened the door he had made an impudent face, since he was a spoiled young Berliner who was used to women fussing over him in a way he had not yet learned to take advantage of. But Rachel had assumed that he must be spoken tq in his native African language; it simply never occurred to her to try German. Since she absolutely had to make herself understood, she had put her arm around the sixteen- year-old's shoulder and pointed the way to the kitchen, where she gave him a chair and pushed in front of him whatever cakes and drinks were within reach. She had never done this sort ofthing in her life, and when she straightened up from the table her heart was pounding like sugar being pulverized in a mortar.
'What's your name? " Soliman asked; so he spoke Germani "Rachelle, Rachel," she said, and ran off.
In the kitchen, Soliman made the most of the cake, wine, and hors
d'oeuvres, lit a cigarette, and started a conversation with the cook.
Seeing this when she came back from waiting on the guests gave Ra- chel a stab.
"In there," she said, "they'll be talking about something very im- portant again any minute now. "
But Soliman was not impressed, and the cook, an older woman, laughed.
"It might even mean war! " Rachel added excitedly-and was able to cap this a little later with her news from the keyhole that it had almost reached that point.
Soliman pricked up his ears. "Are there any Austrian generals in there? " pe asked.
"See for yourself," Rachel said. "There's one, at least. " And they went together to the keyhole.
Their glance fell now on some white paper, then on a nose; a big shadow passed by, a ring flashed. Life broke up into bright details. Green baize stretching away like a lawn; a white hand at rest some- where, without a context, pale as in a waxworks; peering in slantwise, one could see the golden tassel of the General's sword gleaming in a comer. Even the pampered Soliman showed some excitement. Seen through the crack of a door and an imagination, life swelled to weird and fairy-tale dimensions. The stooping position made the blood buzz in one's ears, and the voices behind the door now rumbled like falling rocks, now glided as on greased planks. Rachel slowly straight- ened up. The floor seemed to heave under her feet; she was en- veloped by the spirit of the occasion as though she had put her head under one of those black cloths used by conjurors and photogra- phers. Soliman stood up too, and the blood drained fluttering from their heads. The little black boy smiled, and behind his bluish lips his scarlet gums shimmered.
While this instant in the hall, among the hanging overcoats of in- fluential personages, faded slowly like a bugle call, a resolution was being passed in the conference room after Count Leinsdorf had thanked the General for his important and valuable suggestions, though the time had not yet come for examining proposals on their merits, as the organizational groundwork must be laid first. To this end, all that was needed now-apart from suiting the plan to the realities as represented by the ministries-was a final resolution to the effect that those present had unanimously agreed to submit the
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wishes of the people, as soon as these could be determined by the Parallel Campaign, to His Majesty, with the most humble petition to be allowed to dispose freely of the means for their material fulfill- ment (which would have to be raised by then) if such were His Maj- esty's most gracious pleasure.
This had the advantage that the people would be placed in the po- sition of setting the worthiest possible aim for themselves, but through the agency of the Sovereign's most gracious will. The resolu- tion was passed at His Grace's special request; for although it was only a matter of form, he considered it important that the people not take action on their own and without the consent of constitutional authority-not even to honor it.
The other participants would not have made such a point of this, but by the same token they had no objection to it. And it was in order, too, that the meeting should end. with the passing of a resolu- tion. For whether one set~ a final period to a brawl with a knife, or ends a musical piece by crashing all ten fingers simultaneously down on the keyboard a few times, or whether the dancer bows to his lady, or whether one passes a resolution, it would be an uncanny world if events simply slunk off, if there were not a final ceremony to assure that they had indeed taken place. And that is why it is done.
45
SILENT ENCOUNTER OF TWO MOUNTAIN PEAKS
When the session was over, Arnheim had quietly maneuvered, at a hint from Diotima, to be left behind, alone. Section ChiefTuzzi was observing a respectful margin of time to be sure of not retUrning home before the end of the session.
In these minutes between the departure of the guests and the set- tling down ofthe house, as her passage from room to room was inter-
rupted by brief, sometimes conflicting, orders, considerations, and the general unrest that a fading great event leaves behind, Arnheim smiled as his eyes followed Diotima's movements. She felt that her domicile was in a state of tremulous movement; all the things that had had to abandon their customary places because of the great event returned piece by piece, like a big wave ebbing from the sand in countless little hollowS and runnels. While Arnheim waited in ur- bane silence until she and the commotion around her settled down again, it struck Diotima that no matter how many people had gone in and out ofher house, no man-other than Section ChiefTuzzi-had ever been so domestically ·alone with her that one palpably felt the mute life of the empty apartment. And suddenly her chaste mind was troubled by a bizarre notion: her empty apartment, in the absence of even her husband, seemed like a pair of trousers Arnheim had just slipped into. There are such moments, when chastity itself may be visited by such abortive flashes from the pit of darkness, and so the wonderful dream of a love in which body and soul are entirely one bloomed in Diotima.
Arnheim had no inkling of this. His trousers made an impeccably perpendicular line to the gleaming parquet; his momingcoat, his cra- vat, his serenely smilirig patrician head, said nothing, so perfect were they. Actually, he had intended to complain to Diotima ·about the incident on his arrival, to make sure that no such thing happened in future. But there was at this moment something that made this man, who hobnobbed with American money magnates as an equal, who had been received by emperors and k;ings, this nabob who could offer any woman her weight in platinum, something that made him, instead ofcomplaining, stare entranced at Diotima, whose name was really Ermelinda, or actually only Hermine Tuzzi, the mere wife of a ranking official. For this something it is here once again necessary to resort to the word "soul. "
The word has already turned up more than once, though not in the clearest contexts; as, for instance, something lost in our time, or in- compatible with civilization; as something at odds with physical urges and connubial habits; something that is moved, and not only to re- pugnance, by a murderer; something that was to be liberated by the Parallel Campaign; as a subject for religious meditations and contem- platio in caligtne divina by Count Leinsdorf; as, with many people, a
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love ofmetaphor; and so'on. The most peculiarofall the peculiarities of the word "soul," however, is that young people cannot pronounce it without laughing. Even Diotima and Amheim were shy of using it without a modifier, for it is still possible to speak of having a great, noble, craven, daring, or debased soul, but to come right out with "my soul" is something one simply cannot bring eneself to do. It is distinctly an older person's word, and this can only be understood by assuming that in the course of life people become more and more aware of something for which they urgently need a name they cannot find until they finally resort, reluctantly, to the name they had origi- nally despised.
How to describe it, then? Whether one is ~trest or in motion, what matters is not what lies ahead, what one sees, hears, wants, takes, masters. It forms a horizon, a semicircle before one, but the ends of this semicircle are joined by a string, and the plane of this string goes right through·the middle of the world. In front, the face and hands look out of it; sensations and strivings run ahead of it, and no one doubts that whatever one does·is always reasonable, or at least pas- sionate. In other words, outer circumstances call for us to act in a way everyone can understand; and if, in the toils of passion, we do some- thing incomprehensible, that too is, in its oWii way, understandable. Yet however understandable and self~contained everything seems, this is accompanied by an obscure feeling that it is only half the story. Something is not quite in balance, and a person presses forward, lik-e a tightrope walker, in order not to sway and fall. And as he presses on through life and leaves lived life behind, the life ahead and the life already lived form a wall, and his path in the end resembles the path
of a woodworm: no matter how it corkscrews forward or even back- ward, it always leaves an empty space behind it. And this horrible feeling of a blind, cutoff space . behind the fullness of everything, this half that is . always missing even when everything is a whole, this is what eventually makes one perceive what one calls the soul.
We always include it, of course, in our thoughts, intuitions, feel- ings, in all sorts of surrogate ways and according to our individual temperament. In youth it manifests itself as a distinct feeling of in- security about whether everything one does is really the right thing, after all; in old age as a sense ofwonder at how little one has done of
all one had really meant to do. In between, one takes comfort in the thought that one is a hell ofa good, capable fellow, even ifevery little thing can't be justified; or that the world is not the way it ought to'be either, so that one's failures come to represent a fair enough compro- mise. Then there are always sorrie people who think beyond all this of a God who has their missing piece in His pocket. Only love has a special position in this; in this exceptional case the missing halfgrows back: the beloved seems to stand where ordinarily something was al- ways missing. The souls unite "dos-a-dos," as it were, making them- selves superfluous in the process. This is why most people, after the one great love in their youth is over, no longer feel the absence of their soul, so that this so-called foolishness fulfills a useful social function.
Neither Diotima nor Amheim had ever loved. We already know this about Diotima, but the great financier also had, in a wider sense, a chaste soul. He had always been afraid that the feelings he aroused in women might not be for himself but for his money, and so he lived only with women to whom he also gave, not love, but money. He had never had a friend for fear of being used; he had only business friends, even if the business happened to be an intel- lectual exchange. This shrewd man, although imbued with experi- ence of life, was still untouched and in danger of being permanently alone when he met Diotima, whom destiny· had in- tended for him. The mysterious forces within them converged. It could be compared only with the movement of the trade winds, the Gulf Stream, the volcanic tremors of the earth's crust; forces vastly superior to those of man, akin to the stars, were set in motion from one to the other, overriding such barriers as hours and days, meas- ureless currents. At such moments the actual words spoken are su- premely unimportant. Rising from the vertical creases of his trousers, Amheim's body seemed to stand there in the godlike soli- tude of a towering mountain. United with him through the valley between them, Diotima rose on its other side, luminous with soli- tude, in her fashionable dress of the period with its puffed sleeves on the upper arms, the artful pleats over the bosom widening
above the stomach, the skirt narrowing agairi below the knees to cling to her calves. The·glass-bead curtains at the doors cast mov-
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ing reflections like ponds, the javelins and arrows on the walls trembled with their feathered and deadly passions, and the yellow volumes of Caiman-Levy on the tables were as silent as lemon groves. We will reverently pass over the first words spoken.
IDEALS AND MORALITY ARE THE BEST MEANS FOR FILLING THAT BIG HOLE CALLED SOUL
Amheim was the frrst to shake off the spell. To linger in such a state was, to his way of thinking, impossible, without either sinking into a dull, vacuous, lethargic brooding or else foisting on one's devotion a solid framework ofideas and convictions that could not but distort its nature.
This method, which admittedly kills the soul but then, so to speak, preserves it for general consumption by canning it in small quanti- ties, has always been its bridge to rational thought, convictions, and practical action, in their successful conduct ofall moralities, philoso- phies, and religions. God knows, as we have already said, what a soul is anyway. There can be no doubt whatsoever that the burning desire to obey only the call of one's soul leaves infinite scope for action, a true state of anarchy, and there are cases of chemically pure souls actually committing crimes. But the minute a soul has morals, reli- gion, philosophy, a well-grounded middle-class education, ideals in the spheres of duty and beauty, it has been equipped With a system of rules, conditions, and directives that it must obey before it can think ofbeing a respectable soul, and its heat, like that ofa blast furnace, is directed into orderly rectangles ofsand. All that remains are only log- ical problems ofinterpretation, such as whether an action falls under this or that commandment, and the soul presents the tranquil pano- rama of a battlefield after the fact, where the dead lie still and one can see at once where a scrap oflife still moves or groans. Which is
why we cross that bridge as quickly as we can. Ifa person is plagued by religious doubts, as many are in their youth, he takes to persecut- ing unbelievers; if troubled by love, he turns it intq marriage; and when overcome by some other enthusiasm, he takes refuge from the impossibility of living constantly in its frre by beginning to live for that fire. That is, he fills the many moments ofhis day, each ofwhich needs a content and an impetus, not with his ideal state but with the many ways of achieving it by overcoming obsblcles and incidents- which guarantees that he will never need to attain it. For only fools, fanatics, and mental cases can stand living at the highest pitch of soul; a sane person must be content with declaring that life would not be worth living without a spark of that mysterious fire.
Amheim's life was filled to the brim with activity. He was a realist and had listened with an indulgent smile and not without apprecia- tion for the good form shown by these representatives ofthe old Aus- trian tradition in the session . he witnessed as they spoke of an Imperial Franz-Josef Soup Kitchen and the link between duty and military marches. He was far from making fun of it, as Ulrich had done, for he was convinced that it took far less courage and superior- ity to pursue great ideas than to recognize the touching kernel of ide- alism in such average, slightly absurd people of good appearance.
But when in the midst of all this, Diotima, this classical beauty with a Viennese plus, uttered her term "Global Austria," a phraSe as hot and almost as incomprehensible to the human mind as a flame, something had seized his heart.
There was a story told about him that he had in his Berlin house a splendid room full of Baroque and Gothic sculptures. As it happens, the Catholic Church (for which Arnheim had a great love) depicts its saints and standard-bearers ofGoodness mostly in poses ofjoy, ev~n ecstasy. Here were saints dying in all kinds of postures, with the soul wringing out the body as if it were squeezing water out of a piece of laundry. All those gestures of arms crossed like sabers, of twisted necks, taken from their original surroundings and brought together in an alien space, gave the impression of a catatonics' ward in a luna- tic asylum.
This collection was highly esteemed and brought many art histori- ans to Amheim, with whom he conversed knowledgeably; but often he sat alone and lonely in his gallery, with a quite different feeling, a
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kind of horrified amazement, as though he were looking at a half- demented world. He felt how morality had once glowed with an inef- fable fire, but now even a mind like his own could do no more than stare into the burned-out clinkers. This dark vision of what all reli- gions and myths express in the tale of commandments given origi- nally to men by the gods, this intuition of a pristine state of the soul, somewhat uncanny and yet presumably pleasing to the gods, formed a strange fringe of uneasiness around the otherwise complacent ex- panse of his thoughts. Amheim also had an assistant gardener, a sim- ple but deep man, as Amheim put it, with whom he often talked about the life of the flowers because one can learn more from such a man than from the experts. Until one day Amheim discovered that· this gardener's helper was stealing from him. It seems that he made off with everything he could lay his hands on, in a kind of despera- tion, saving the proceeds to set up on his own; this was the one idea that obsessed him day and night. But one day a small sculpture disap- peared, and the police who were called in exposed the whole opera- tion. The evening Arnheim was infoimed ofthis, he sent for the man and reproached him all night long for having allowed his passionate acquisitiveness to lead him astray. · It was said that he was extremely upset himself and at times carne close to weeping in a dark adjoining room. For he envied this man, for reasons he could not explain to himself. The next morning, he had the police take him away.
This story was confirmed by close friends of Amheim's. Now, standing alone with Diotima in this room, he felt rather as he had felt then, sensing something like the soundless flames of the world leap- ing all around them along its four walls.
47
WHAT ALL OTHERS ARE SEPARATELY, ARNHEIM IS ROLLED INTO ONE
In the following weeks Diotima's salon experienced a tremendous upsurge. People came to hear the latest news of the Parallel Cam- paign and to see the new man Diotima Was reported to have pre- scribed for herself: variously, a German nabob, a rich Jew, and an eccentric who wrote poetry, dictated the price of coal, and was the German Kaiser's personal friend. It was not only the highborn ladies and gentlemen from Count Leinsdorf's world and diplomatic circles who came; the upper-middle-class figures who controlled the econ- omy and led the world of culture seemed also increasingly attracted. And so specialists in the Ewe language and composers who had never heard a note of one another's music ran into one another here, shooting box met confessional box, and people to whom the word "course" meant the race course, the course of the stock exchange, or a university course.
And now something unheard of came to pass: there was a man who could speak with everyone in their own language, and that man wasAmheim.
Mter the embarrassment he had suffered at the beginning of the first meeting he held himself aloof from the official sessions, nor did he attend all the social gatherings, as he was often out oftown. There was, of course, no further mention of the secretarial post; he had himself explained to Diotima that this idea could not be acceptable to the other side, and she yielded to Amheim's judgment, although she could never look at Ulrich without regarding him as a usurper. Amheim came and went. Three or five days would pass in a flash, he would be back from Paris, Rome, Berlin; what was going on at Di- otima's was only a small slice of his life. But he favored it, and took part in it with all his energy.
That he could discuss industry with industrial giants and the econ- omy with bankers was to be expected, but he could also chat just as
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freely about molecular physics, mysticism, and pigeon shooting. He was an extraordinary talker; once he was off, he never stopped, like a book one cannot close until everything in it demanding utterance has been said. But he had a quietly dignified, fluent manner of speaking, with a touch of sadness about it like a stream overhung by dark bushes, and this gave the flow of his words an air of necessity. His reading and his memory were of truly extraordinary compass; he could give experts the subtlest cues in their own fields, but he also knew every person of note in the English, French, and Japanese no- bility, and was at home at racetracks and golf links not only in Europe but in Australia and America as well. So even the chamois hunters, champion horsemen, and holders of boxes at the Imperial Theater, who had come to see a crazy rich Jew (something a little different, as they put it), left Diotima's house shaking their heads with respect.
His Grace once took Ulrich aside and said to him:
"You know, our ducal houses have had bad luck with their tutors these last hundred years. They used to get the kind of people many of whom would later get into the encyclopedia, and these tutors would bring along music masters and drawing masters who showed their appreciation by creating things we now refer to as our old culture. But ever since we have had the new, universal education, and people from my own circles-forgive me-go in for academic degrees, our tutors have somehow fallen off. Our sons are quite right, of course, to shoot pheasant and boar, ride, and chase pretty girls-there's little to be said against that if one is young. But in the old days, it was the tutors who channeled part of that youthful energy into the necessity of cultivating the mind and the arts as well as the pheasants, and this no longer happens. "
It was only an idea that just crossed His Grace's mind, as such things did from time to time; suddenly. he turned to face Ulrich and concluded: "You see, it was that fateful year 1848 that drove a wedge between the middle class and the aristocracy, to the loss of both sides. " He looked at the assembled company with concern. He was irked every time the opposition speakers in Parliament boasted of culture as middle class; he would have liked true middle-class culture to be found in the aristocracy, but the poor aristocracy could see nothing in it; it was a weapon invisible to them with which they were being trounced, and since they had been increasingly losing power
all along, there was finally nothing left for them to do but come to Diotima's and see the thing for themselves. Count Leinsdorf some- times felt this way with a heavy heart as he observed the hubbub, wishing that the high office this house had been given the opportu- nity to serve were taken more seriously.
"Excellency, the middle class is having exactly the same experi- ence with the intellectuals now as the high nobility had with its tutors then," Ulrich tried to comfort him. "They don't know what to make of them. Just look at all these people gaping at Dr. Amheim. "
But all along Count Leinsdorf had only been looking at Arnheim anyway.
"That's no longer intellect," Ulrich said, explaining the general amazement, "it is a phenomenon like a rainbow with a foot you can take hold of and actually feel. He talks about love and economics, chemistry and trips in kayaks; he is a scholar, a landowner, and a stockbroker; in short, what the rest of us are separately, he is rolled into one; of course we're amazed. You shake your head, Excellency? But I'm convinced the cloud of so-called temporal progress, into which no one of us can see, has set him down on the parquet in our midst. ':
"I was not shaking my head over you," His Grace elucidated. "I was thinking of Dr. Arnheim. All in all, one has to admit he's an inter- esting figure. "
THE THREE CAUSES OF ARNHEIM'S FAME AND THE MYSTERY OF THE WHOLE
But that was simply the way Arnheim usually affected people.
He was a man of stature.
His activity spread over terrestrial continents and continents of
knowledge. He knew everything: philosophers, economics, music,
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the world, sports. He expressed himself fluently in five languages. The world's most famous artists were his friends, and he bought the art of tomorrow when it was still green on the vine, at prices that were not yet inflated.