It had flung itself down to save, it was shielding,
its offspring ... but the whole of its tiny body was
throbbing with fear, its voice was wild and hoarse,
it was swooning, it was sacrificing itself!
What a huge monster the dog must have appeared to
it! And yet it could not have remained perched
on its lofty, secure bough.... A force greater
than its own will had hurled it thence.
My Tresor stopped short, retreated.... Evidently
he recognised that force.
I hastened to call off the discomfited hound, and
withdrew with reverence.
Yes; do not laugh. I felt reverential before
that tiny, heroic bird, before its loving impulse.
Love, I thought, is stronger than death.—Only
by it, only by love, does life support itself and
move.
April, 1878.
A sumptuous, luxuriously illuminated ball-room; a
multitude of cavaliers and ladies.
All faces are animated, all speeches are brisk....
A rattling conversation is in progress about a well-known
songstress. The people are lauding her as divine,
immortal.... Oh, how finely she had executed
her last trill that evening!
And suddenly—as though at the wave of a
magic wand—from all the heads, from all
the faces, a thin shell of skin flew off, and instantly
there was revealed the whiteness of skulls, the naked
gums and cheek-bones dimpled like bluish lead.
With horror did I watch those gums and cheek-bones
moving and stirring,—those knobby, bony
spheres turning this way and that, as they gleamed
in the light of the lamps and candles, and smaller
spheres—the spheres of the eyes bereft
of sense—rolling in them.
I dared not touch my own face, I dared not look at
myself in a mirror. But the skulls continued
to turn this way and that, as before.... And
with the same clatter as before, the brisk tongues,
flashing like red rags from behind the grinning teeth,
murmured on, how wonderfully, how incomparably the
immortal ... yes, the immortal songstress had executed
her last trill!
April, 1878.
A CONVERSATION
Why dost thou bother us? What dost thou want?
Thou art not one of us.... Go away!
THE LAZY MAN[71]
I am one of you, brethren!
Nothing of the sort; thou art not one of us!
What an invention! Just look at my hands.
Dost thou see how dirty they are? And they stink
of dung, and tar,—while thy hands are white.
And of what do they smell?
THE LAZY MAN—offering his hands
Smell.
THE TOILER—smelling the hands
What’s this? They seem to give off an odour
of iron.
