The Bride of Dreams

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Subsequently he committed me to the care of one of his younger
disciples, a pale, seemingly timid, but, as was soon manifest, very
strong-willed, ambitious young priest, who scrutinized me with
well-nigh impertinent searchingness, like a doctor his patient.

I did not let my mother notice the tremendous shock that I experienced
at this first visit, as she betrayed her hopeful expectation by a
painful agitation. For her sake, too, I went on and moved in the
circles which I could not really believe quite so bad as my father had
pictured them. But I could not carry it through very long. Even on the
street I would shudder with repulsion when I saw the insignificant,
coarse, often positively unpleasant and villainous faces peering out
from under the rough, black felt hats. It was as though they bore upon
their foreheads the mark of guilt for the misery in which my poor
people were toiling. And no sooner had I gained sufficient knowledge of
the sentiments, the desires, the ideas that peopled the spiritual world
of the young man appointed as my shepherd, then I knew once for all
that his labor would be vain.

He was not an insignificant man, the young priest, nor was he an
ignoble character. At the time I learned, in one moment, to conceive
for him a deadly hatred and contempt. But these are some of our Italian
extravagances. I expected and longed for a hero to help me - and when
anyone came to me with this pretension, but fell considerably below the
mark of a hero, I wished him to the devil and would have liked to kick
him out of my door. Here in my house of meditation by the sea, I have
learned to consider that the young priest possessed many talents, great
learning, a keen knowledge of human nature, a clear, practical mind, an
ambition careful enough not to seek base means for attaining the firmly
desired goal, and a religious conviction which, whether inborn,
acquired, or adopted, needed no further confirmation, and gave him
sufficient tranquillity of mind to set himself with all his might to
acquire the things which, among those his religion allowed, seemed to
him the most desirable.

But oh! the deadly and sterile assurance of these people. Their
confession of faith was not a living, blooming thing that under
continuous distress and delight, daily revealed itself as richer and
more beautiful; not a constantly changing, flowing stream, with its
substance watering and making fruitful the entire world; it was a
heavy, unchanging, tightly shut, square strongbox that stood in a comer
of their lives, safe and well stocked, from which, at stated times
only, and in proportion to their moral needs, they went to cut off the
coupons of tranquillity of mind and spiritual consolation.

He was so astonishingly calm, so tremendously sure of himself, so well
versed in his patriarchs, so practised in all logical disputes, so
thoroughly at home in all the eaves and the alleys, the case-mates and
the bastions of the citadel of his faith, that it seemed as though he
might dare take it up with all the doubters on earth. And yet how poor
he seemed to me, how naked and miserable, locked up in his formulated
system, like a bug in the hollow of a dead piece of wood, helplessly
adrift upon the wild waters of reality. He was not a narrow-minded
fanatic either, and knew the issues of science as well or better than I
- but he had his words, his formulas, his logical snares and ropes, in
which he caught all these troublesome and unmanageable truths and
hitched them to his car of faith: the true word, the correct argument,
the convincing phraseology that is the fine and artfully painted
panorama which the devil employs to separate us from the free true
world.

I was exacting in those days and was not contented with the people, who
were no better than they could be. I did not understand that they felt
it as a duty to submit to the ideas of the group, just as I felt it my
duty to break loose from it. I did not recognize the relative value of
their virtues, because they seemed to me like cyphers, in front of
which the unit of highest virtue, the naught-fearing love of reality,
was missing. And I was still too timid and too modest to give every man
his due cold-bloodedly, to break the bond of absolute sincerity with
him, and to mount the steep path of pride which each truly pious man, -
as you and I, dear reader, - alas! is obliged to take against his will
and pleasure, under penalty of losing time, life and strength, and the
subtle discernment of God's loving signal light, in idle strife and
struggle.

I shall not name the man here at present: he is already a cardinal, and
when you read this he may be pope. Through negative influence he has
exerted a tremendous effect upon my life. My mother admired and honored
him highly, and it was as though with her own hand she thereby took the
shining halo from her head and smashed it upon the pavement. I could
not be mistaken in this priest: the very highest humanity, the fine
tentacles constantly reaching out toward the divine, the continuous
growing and seeking, the true life were wanting in him. When I wanted
to ascend this path, he became blind and lame and refused to follow,
escaping and evading me by all kinds of winding rhetorical paths, with
a perfectly innocent expression of ignorance upon his pale, calm and
self-satisfied countenance. It was as though his eyes congealed - of my
burning desires they knew nothing. He could say every thing that he
believed, felt and desired, and the unutterable that made him feel and
desire thus and so was to him a word, not a vehemently and helplessly
loved and longed-for reality, as it was to me. This I saw, I felt, I
apprehended; there was no possibility of doubt. And thus I learned two
most important truths: first that all talk about the chiefest part of
our being is mere talk, that is to say, prattle and chatter, worth no
more, no less, and just as misleading and inadequate for mutual
communication and conviction, as all speech; secondly, that even the
best men in their most profound and sacred feelings let themselves be
ruled by other men, or groups of men, not necessarily better than they,
and that they do not realize this constraint, but go on thinking that
they themselves conceive and feel and accept with independent judgment
what is thrust on them by other human beings or human groups.

For this priest considered himself more godly, wiser and better than my
mother and I, and all his masterly eloquence only proved the contrary
to me; and yet I saw that my mother was servile to him and adopted from
him what he again had adopted from the large group of his equals and
kindred spirits, and that all this took place without their realizing
it, through personal influence, and never, as they contended, through
the clear sense of the absolute, with the free judgment directed only
by God's subtle guidance. What became now of all the beautiful light of
Grace and Revelation? persuasion! nothing else! impress of personality
on personality! as the teacher impels the child, the market crier his
peasants, the general his loyal soldiers, the judge the timid witness,
and as the ruling idea - public opinion - impels every individual,
wholly beyond all reason or judgment, or absolute sense, no matter how
strongly, we all may imagine the contrary.

These are subtle, cruel truths that deeply and grievously penetrate a
youthful spirit if it be open to them. You, dear reader, as an
all-renouncing lover of truth, know them as well as I. You know how
terribly corrosive, like a sharp acid, is their discovery, leaving
scarcely any of our ideals uncontaminated and sound. And consider
besides that my spirit was broken by the terrible memory of the
struggle which for years I had carried on with my father, and of his
awful death caused by my clinging to ideals that now indeed all seemed
nerveless illusions.

In my artlessness I had thought that the church in which my mother
found peace and consolation would elect none but chosen heroes among
men as her servants and priests. The very best would scarcely be good
enough for such a dignity.

Instead of this I saw how the first youngster that came along, with a
little hard pegging and servility could work his way up to the
priesthood; how the average stood no higher than the common masses; and
how, among my people, they were more looked down upon and derided than
venerated. And even the very best among them, the highest dignitaries,
were not the heroes, the poets and the sages, who by virtue of their
great human gifts were fitted to be the elect and leaders; but merely
the clever and ambitious, who possessed a little more of that
particular proficiency which helps one on in politics, too - but has
nothing to do with the divine.

If ever I stood close to ruin, it was then. I had lost all hold. My
beloved was far away in the arms of one whom I deemed unworthy; my
saint had lost her crown; my father's voice now seemed to ask me with
mocking emphasis whether it had not been better either to continue
living with him or to go with him into death.

Do you know who saved me, dear reader? Not the beautiful Lucia, whom I
pitied with tender compassion because she was, after all, nothing but a
slight feather upon my mother's breath, - but none less than Satan
himself. Satan saved me, Satan, dear reader; hold this well in mind!
Here is the profound explanation of his nature: he saved me because he
manifested himself so clearly and unmistakably that I simply had to
continue believing in him. And whoever believes in evil as evil cannot
be lost. Just as I, even as later the young scapegrace Nietzsche,
wanted to make a bolt over good and evil, I faced Satan, and the evil
one was so kind that he did me a better turn than any kind human being
ever did me.

As if to manifest himself very plainly, Satan, following the custom of
all mighty principles, became incarnate. I came into contact with a
young seminary student, who bore the name of an archangel and with it a
face that resembled that of the prince of fallen angels more closely
than any known to me. He even, as if to emphasize this, twisted his
black locks above his low forehead in such a way that two horns
appeared to be hidden under them. His eyelids hung rather low over his
brown eyes, that peeped out furtively, and narrowing, twinkled kindly,
while the straight thin-lipped mouth, above the long chin, uttered the
most cruel sarcasms in a high, almost feminine voice.

And yet it was just this man who attracted me more than anyone I had
met in clerical circles. In the first place, by reason of his wit; for
he was an Irishman and full of those sharp and delicious jokes to which
I was very susceptible; but also, because he was the only one who
seemed to understand something of my great, dumb, impotent wrath at the
universal unwillingness of mankind - which at the time I had not yet
learned to look upon as impotence - to recognize the contradiction
between their teachings and their life. Once when he had attended a
conversation between my young teacher and myself, in which, as was my
wont, I had made fruitless efforts to make him sensible of what was
lacking in the entire priestly institution and to free myself from the
meshes of his arguments, he said in leaving:

"You come at an opportune moment, dear Count Muralto! The rôle of
ingénue has long been vacant in our company. But you need not assume it
any more toward the directors. They are already aware of it now, and
there is such a thing as laying it on too thick."

This remark aroused in me great astonishment and interest. I
immediately began to question Michael. Above all, I wished to know how
he found it possible, with such thoughts in his head, to wish to become
a priest.

"That's not so difficult," said Michael, "if only you learn to keep
order in your thoughts. It all depends on order and exactness, on a
careful double bookkeeping. Every good business man has a private
bank-account which has nothing to do with the business. In the same way
we must learn to keep our private thoughts out of the business. That is
all."

"I am afraid that I shall never learn to look upon the most sacred
office as a merchant's trade."

"Well played, dear ingénue!" said Michael; "but on the verge of
foolishness. To look down upon merchants and business is no longer
naïve, but foolish. Without merchants the Holy Father himself would
starve in prison. The whole world is a trading concern and there's no
harm in that. Our business we rightly call the sacred business because,
at all events, it is still the most trustworthy firm in existence. I
consider it a great honor that I may be its youngest servant and am
thankful that at the same time it can, if I keep my wits about me, also
become a pleasure. The demand that I keep the private account of my
ideas carefully separate from the ledger of the firm, so as not to
cause confusion, I consider very just and moderate. It is so in all
large and practical affairs. There's nothing like order, said the
farmer as he screwed the lid on the coffin of his grandmother, who lay
in a trance and wanted to get out again. Can you make a uniform that
will fit every soldier? Can you fashion a net in which each little fish
will find a mesh exactly fitting its own dimensions? No doctrine is
true for everyone, and no law is just for all. Each must have a care
that he get through the meshes."

"I must admit, brother Michael, that I think your cynicism more
tolerable and more upright than the obstinate hypocrisy of our
prelates. And what you say about the law that cannot be just for all
seems to me worthy of consideration."

"Cynicism! hypocrisy!" brother Michael cried out with a silencing
gesture. "My dear young man, how wildly you throw your rotten apples. A
dog is a good-natured and clever animal, but for that reason it is not
doggish to discriminate correctly. And as long as you artless
blockheads do not understand that proper and successful hypocrisy is
the primal Christian virtue, the practising of which belongs to the
highest religious duties already taught by the Trinity, so long nothing
will come of the Kingdom of God."

After this conversation, about which I said nothing to my mother, I
changed and my attitude became more reserved, cautious and suspicious.
More and more I began with profound amazement to understand the curious
and appalling condition of our social system. But meanwhile the
turbulent passions in me were not calmed and my difficulties remained
the same. As long as I lived in the hopeful suspense of the shipwrecked
who believes that the haven of safety is in sight, the dogs were still.
But when this again ended in disappointment, they grew restive, bold
and troublesome. With every weakening of the spirit and joy in life our
wild beasts get a looser rein, as a ship when its course is blocked
pays less attention to the rudder.

The more I was disappointed in humanity, the more I began to give ear
to the women who in Rome, more vociferous than in London, rioting and
ranting often like unto a band of mænads, go out at night, upon the
hunt for men. And it was not many weeks before just that peculiar
temptation which does not put itself forth with wanton or charming
thoughtlessness, but with good-natured and cold shamelessness debases
itself, had discovered me in my defencelessness and made of me an easy
prey.

The complex feeling of self-contempt, shame, assumed light-heartedness,
fear of undesired encounters, and yet more despicable fear of thieves
and cut-throats, that in the shadow of the dark doorways of Rome's
disreputable houses, luxuriantly flourishes in the soil of a bad
conscience, is not deserving of envy; especially when, as in my case,
there is the aggravating circumstance that, in face of an entire
haughty priesthood, one has dared to consider oneself a better man, and
has shown this more or less.

Thus it was a monstrous shock for me and a most miserable cold douche
of temerity over my proud aristocrat's heart when at such a moment, my
temptress having struck a match on the wall, the brightly flickering
flame suddenly lit up the satanic visage of brother Michael, who, after
first having leered at me cautiously and a bit perplexed, broke out
into a truly devilish burst of laughter.

"Well met! Well met!" he cried out in his mother tongue, and then the
witches' words from Macbeth: "When shall we three meet again?"

I confess, dear reader, that I stood there most miserably confused and
ashamed, absolutely and utterly without self-control. But I stuttered
out something resembling a reproach and a justification:

"I, at least, wear no clerical garb."

"Neither do I," said Michael; "I am incognito on private business."

"Oh!" said I scornfully; "concerning the double book-keeping!"

"Exactly, dear ingénue!" said Michael, with his most sweetish smile.
"Concerning the double book-keeping, you have remembered it well. But
go on, don't let me disturb you! Perhaps I'll be back later."

But in my fright I had already turned about, and ran swiftly up the
street, followed by some not very flattering remarks from the woman who
had been disappointed in her pursuit. Michael overtook me.

"Two negatives constitute one positive," said he. "Two sinners together
arouse virtue. It seems to me we might as well have converted the fair
sinner also."

Like an instinct for self-preservation in the most desperate danger, so
man follows an instinct of self-justification in the most hopeless
disgrace.

"Brutes we both of us are, Michael, but I at least acknowledge it. I
loathe myself. You, tomorrow, must don your saintly garb and hide under
it your rottenness and foulness. I do not envy you."

"It does not befit us, dear Muralto, to loathe one whom God has created
after his own image. We have every one of us been saddled with a
portion of filth and it does not seem enviable to me to work that off
alone, as you. I can go to confession and belong to a large friendly
circle, where they one and all are bitten by the same fleas and must
chop with the same hatchet. We understand one another, and trust one
another and forgive one another and help one another. There are weak
brothers and strong brothers, we all of us know that, and we do not
despise one another for that reason. This seems to me a much more
desirable way of carrying your burden than as you do, who shoulder it
alone. We at least do not dissemble toward one another, but you play
the part of ingénue, not only toward the entire commonalty, but even
toward us who know quite well what to think of your pretension to moral
superiority."

I felt that I should succumb to this struggle. I gave it up. With a
cool bow I parted from him and from that moment avoided all association
with younger or older members of the clergy. Though I was willing to
assume that I had not met the best soldiers of the camp, still the
honor of fighting in their ranks did not entice me. I preferred, after
all, to fight it out alone.

From this moment on my seclusion begins: I felt that Michael was right
- my pretensions were ridiculous, I had nothing by which I could claim
superiority, I was a hypocrite, I played an underhand game as well as
they whom I seemed to look down upon.

And yet - and yet - I felt that I was not understood, that my erring
was different from theirs, and that my piety had a quality lacking in
theirs. And this undestroyable consciousness of a superiority, which I
could not make prevail, of an inner life which I could not find in
anyone and could reveal to none, drove me back into total, absolute
solitude and inner separation from the human world in which I had to
move.

This is an old story that constantly repeats itself. You know it all
too well, do you not, reader? And we are not the only ones to undergo
this process. In thousands and thousands of every generation the new
life attempts to break the old group-ideas. In most of them it is
overcome and subjected to the old. In a very few it breaks loose,
prevails for a moment, and then is annihilated in the tragic
destruction of body and soul by a death of torture, suicide, or
insanity, as an inspiring example for a few, as a disheartening warning
to many. In still others, as in you and me, dear reader, it finds a way
of maintaining itself in the hostile world, protected by a tough hide
of pretext and disguise, as the tiny seed swallowed by the birds
withstands assimilation and, thrown out, finds a way of growth.

Thus for twenty years I have wandered about like a stranger in the
world, apparently wholly subjected and belonging to it, but inwardly
totally estranged, leading an independent life of my own: all this time
inwardly struggling without rest, without peace in a battle apparently
hopeless; until, strengthened and taught by a brief period of bright,
true living, of blithe, vigorous action and nameless, deep sorrow, I
have now entered with wholly different feelings, with trust and
resignation, this last voluntary hermitage, to build with glad delight
and joyous insight upon the mansion of the future.

I told my mother that nothing would probably come of my priesthood. She
listened to it with the passive calmness which had grown customary to
her through continuous practice in forced resignation, but which did
not hide from the subtle observer the undercurrents of very ordinary
human passions and desires. I had gradually come to observe these so
plainly that the lack of self-perception in her grew constantly more
difficult for me to bear without irritation.

This time I saw that she readily abandoned the proud hope of seeing her
son a priest, for the possibility of now achieving the realization of
her favorite marriage scheme. But she intended to show only sorrow and
compassion, and shaking her head, she said:

"So your pride is not overcome, the viper's head not crushed, poor
Vico?"

"I am obedient to that which is most divine in me, mother."

"Your human sense, you mean? Or your human pride?"

"Mother, what other means have we for distinguishing the truth save the
sense that tells us: 'this is true!' exactly as our eye tells us: 'this
is light!' and our skin: 'this is warm!' Would you have me say: 'this
is darkness,' where I see light, or 'this is right,' where I see wrong,
only because you call it right?"

"I cannot argue with you, Vico. Do what seems right to you. I have
learned to be resigned."

"But you desire my happiness, don't you, mother?"

"Ah, dear son, I wish that people would stop seeking for their
happiness. It is all deception and vanity, a bright soap bubble. I have
never known happiness, but have learned to sacrifice all pleasure and
all joy for love of the Saviour."

"Listen a second, mother!" said I, now no longer wholly suppressing my
anger; "if you tell me that there are phantom joys and false happiness
and that we must be careful not to fling ourselves away on these, I'll
admit you are perfectly right. But if you want to make me believe that
the desire for joy and happiness, which was given to all of us, is a
devilish invention that we must not obey - then I call your world a
chaos and your life an offence. The very deepest, all-controlling basis
of our passions is that for happiness and joy, for the true, lasting,
peace-giving happiness, that we sometimes mistakenly seek in idle
pleasures. If God has created us with the intention that we should not
follow the most profound, all-controlling passion he has planted in us,
then God is a foot who has given life to cripples. Profoundly as I have
searched myself, I always find the impulse toward light, toward beauty,
toward happiness - to wish to turn me from it is to wish to destroy me.
Never will I be able to follow another guiding star, for I have none,
nor do I see one in any other person. And to none, to none on earth or
in the heavens, shall I subject myself so slavishly as to deny for him
my true, profoundest nature."

My mother carried her handkerchief to her eyes and shook her head with
a sad shrug of the shoulders, but she did not reply.

Then as a lure I dropped a word, to see whether I understood her
rightly - better than she understood herself.

"Isn't Lucia coming? We were to drive to the Pincio?"

The handkerchief dropped and her eyes sparkled a moment. "Lucia? Of
course she is coming. I did not know that you intended to go with us."

Then I knew that I had guessed right, and it was this that estranged me
from my mother, while I gave in nevertheless to her unconscious desire.

XII

Call Holland a dreamy country because its beauty is as that of a dream.
Sometimes it is black, wildly inhospitable and dispiriting - and
suddenly, in calm, mild weather, the entire country with its trees,
canals, cities and inhabitants sparkles in an indescribable tender
radiance, enhancing everything with a deep mysterious meaning
impossible to explain or describe more fully, and resembling the
peculiar beauty of dreams. One must have seen my little city from the
sea on a still, clear September eve, when the sun goes to bide behind
the bell-tower, flooding the cloudless, luminous blue-green heavens
with orange and gold, when pastures and the shadows of trees merged in
a fairy tinted blue haze unite in wondrous harmony - when the milkers
come home with heavy tread, balancing at their sides the pails of
cobalt blue - when all that sounds is harmonious from the striking of
the clock on the tower to the rattling of a homeward driving cart, and
all that breathes from the coarse Hollanders to the dull cows seems
wrapped in this selfsame peaceful, poetic evening bliss - one must have
seen it thus to understand how much all this resembles the wondrous
illusion of our dreams, when in some inexplicable manner the simplest
object gleams with a glow of heavenly splendor and unspeakable beauty
and for days can fill our memory with the bliss of it.

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