My choice was made. I no longer wavered, but I pondered on the awful power that forces us to choose where we can yet distinguish so poorly, that relentlessly pushes us on into the dense fog with its dimly gleaming lights.

Lucia however interpreted my silence as irresolution, and with the exertion of all her powers she attempted a desperate attack upon my heart. She threw herself down on her knees before me, sobbing and crying and kissing my hands. She begged and implored me to have pity, if not with her then at least with the children and with myself.

Then I said:

"Dear Lucia, no more than you have the power to change day into night for me or night into day, no more can you make me call the light that I see darkness or deter me from following it. I can only leave you this choice: do you wish me to deceive you, or would you have me be upright? In the latter case you must control yourself, for the more I see you suffer, the stronger grows the temptation not to be upright toward you."

It was even more the tone in which I uttered them than perhaps my words that made her realize that she had nothing more to hope for.

She got up and dried her tears. Then recovering herself, she said:

"I see, Vico, that a Satanic charm has been cast upon you. Of course I desire your uprightness. I shall endeavor to bear everything and to make the best of it and I shall pray for you."

"Thank you, Lucia," said I, rising.

But she came and stood in front of me.

"Yes, but . . . what now?"

"What do you mean?" I asked, not entering sufficiently into her thought-life.

"You now put me into a position which I have known only from hearsay and never thought myself to experience. Thousands of women live in this position, that I know. But you will surely have so much consideration for me, that you will spare me as much as possible. That after all I may duly claim from you."

"Of course, Lucia, I shall spare you as much as possible."

"I do not ask it for myself, but for our children. You will respect my good name, won't you? You won't bring public disgrace upon us? You won't drag the honor of our family, the name of our children into the streets?"

The intuitive tactics of a woman are like those of a shrewd and careful general, who saves his best troops until the battle seems almost lost. I felt that now she had declared herself ready to yield in the main point, I could refuse her no concession.

"What do you demand of me, Lucia?"

"That all this remains a secret between us. That you avoid all public scandal. That before the world our household remains as it was."

I could not suppress a slightly disdainful smile.

"So you would withhold my uprightness, which for yourself you so greatly desire, from the world?"

"Oh, Vico, you will promise me that. You do care for us, don't you?"

"Of course I do."

"And you are sensible of your obligations toward your family. Even the most corrupt man is sensible of those."

"I too am sensible of them, Lucia."

"And you do recognize that you have wronged me."

"That I have, Lucia - not now, but before this."

"But then you surely want to make some amends, to somewhat mitigate the blow - when it's so easy to do it. See I shall leave you absolutely free. I shall not question you, not pry, not even make an allusion. But do you then spare our family too. That is all I ask. Spare our children this disgrace."

I was not prepared, and it is not easy when taking a critical step in life to go just far enough and with neither half-heartedness nor exaggeration. Therefore my answer was weak.

"Very well, dear friend," said I. "I shall as far as possible take account of your desires."

Then we wished each other a good night, well knowing that we had pronounced an idle wish.

XXIV

It was not a strict and definite promise I had given. But still it was a yielding from tender-heartedness that I deplore, though without self-reproach. He who chooses the high, unbeaten tracks should have overcome all tender-heartedness that leads to half measures. What is counted as virtue in the faithful member of the herd, is vice in the seceder. But I knew, how immediately beyond the safe confederacy of the group, skulked the wolf of fanaticism. I knew how difficult it is to keep one's balance upon the steep, lonely paths of originality, how easily the pathfinder, overwhelmed by the giddy sense of unbounded freedom, falls down into gulfs of fanaticism, hysteria, bigotry and madness.

Who shall always know how to find the exact medium between bold consistency and reckless extravagance?

The tendency toward self-sacrifice is an instinct, like all others, beautiful and useful when it remains in harmony with all our other instincts, and helps along in the common battle for Christ, who has given them to us. But this instinct can be perverted and run wild into asceticism and a passion for self-mortification, as hunger into gluttony and thirst into drunkenness.

I knew that heroic consistency must lead me to unite myself openly with the being who had re-awakened in me the highest, holiest and most blessed emotions - and this meant declaring an open feud against society. For without doubt I should have the whole world against me, my own children included. I should lose my position, be expelled from my circle. I should have to brave poverty too. My mother was still living and I myself had nothing save the high salary which I would lose. And to live on Lucia or my mother remained absolutely beyond consideration.

I did not fear all this so much for itself, as for the danger of fanatic self-torture I saw in it. For above all, in the arbitrary breaking of the bonds between myself and my children there lay a refined torture, and I also knew that Lucia's suffering would not let me rest a day, no matter how firm my conviction might be that I had done right. I should feel remorse just as well then as I should if I did not do what I deemed right. Two consciences would always be at war in me, whether I turned to the right or to the left.

And then - what would my conflict with the world signify, powerless as I was? Should I convince anyone by my action that it is right to break a mock union, to clear an untrue life, to assert our true sentiments and feelings, to pursue the things eternal and the pure blessedness, and to remain true to Christ in the face of the world?

It would merely be said: "There's another fallen into the bog," and I should disappear like a stone in the mire.

I do not want to excuse; I only want to explain. To make it clear how it was possible that I, after this first vigorous wrench at my fetters, nevertheless for many years still led an irresolute double life, apparently the same happy pater-familias and prosperous man of the world, hiding my real, true life in the little seaport town and restricting it to the hours that I spent together with her, who had awakened it and who kept it alive.

When I went to get my boat and was starting the night before for E———, my son Guido, a sport-loving youngster of fourteen, asked whether he might accompany me. In my sense of guiltlessness I would perhaps have raised no objection, but his mother immediately interposed, with quick intuition guessing at the object of my journey and by a clever pretence thwarted his plan.

Elsje was awaiting me at the station and we had a long conversation, in which I for the first time experienced what a blessing it is to be able to give oneself freely, to show oneself as one likes best to be, to hold back nothing for fear of being misunderstood, even though one expresses oneself as always, with but the same limited means, toward a human being having the same limited comprehensive faculty as all men. For here was the infinite love with its magic interpretive power, that completes the defective, and from a few faltering phrases is able to erect a lofty structure of sympathy and understanding, because the beautiful plan in both speaker and listener has from the very beginning been designed by a higher wisdom, and no intellectual material is made use of and applied but must be in harmony with this fixed plan.

"I have spoken about us at home, Elsje."

"With whom?"

"With her whom the world calls my wife, the mother of my children."

"What is her name?"

"Lucia."

After I had spoken this, I have nevertheless quite frequently forgotten myself and spoken of "my wife." But Elsje never, not a single time.

"What did you say about me?"

"May I tell you quite frankly, Elsje? And will you tell me just as frankly whether what I said was right?"

"Yes," said Elsje, shyly and softly.

"I said that I had met a woman of whom, at first sight and after two brief encounters, I could say that she would give me the great love which was still wanting in my life. Was that rightly said, Elsje?"

"Yes," I heard a whisper beside me. Arm in arm we wandered through the dark lonely streets of the little town which was going to rest. The confidential pressure of her arm in mine was a never experienced joy.

"It was not quite understood, Elsje. It was taken for self-delusion and the entire case treated as a common gallant adventure. That's not surprising and it will appear that way to everyone. We must resign ourselves to that."

"Of course!" said Elsje.

"But I had a difficult half hour, for Lucia begged me not to see you again."

"Poor Lucia - does she care for you very much?"

"Certainly - and I told her that nothing was taken away from my affection for her. But she wouldn't hear of that -"

"Of course!" said Elsje again. "I shouldn't accept that either. Why should she?"

"Look, look," thought I smilingly; "even the rivals among women yet ever conspire together."

"I thought it might be a consolation. But I seem to be mistaken in that. I remained firm, though I told her that nothing would hold me back from Elsje."

"Oh, if I am only worthy of it! If only I am worthy of it!"

"That is fear of responsibility, Elsje. That we both have. But it is a weakness."

"And did Lucia yield?"

"She first asked whether it could remain a spirit friendship. I refused to promise that." Elsie remained silent.

"Do you think that was right, Elsie?"

She nodded.

"Then she yielded, but on one condition."

"What?"

"That before the world I would remain her husband. That everything would be secret."

"Oh!" cried Elsie vehemently with anger and surprise. "Then she never really cared for you either. Never!" And then indignantly: "You didn't promise that though, did you?"

There I stood, poor sinner, and hadn't a word to say. And I felt while seeking to defend myself that by nature a man always remains a sophist.

"Dear Elsie! remember that this consideration for a proud woman like Lucia is of much greater import than the sacrifice for us. Consider how much I have grieved her. Consider how few women would so nobly forgive this to their husbands. Consider that after all the past makes it my duty to care for her and my children. Disgrace is a very dreadful thing for them, something much more dreadful than you can probably comprehend."

"I consider just that a disgrace," said Elsie, illogically, but to the point, "to want to keep up a lie before the world."

"Consider then, Elsie, what it would mean for me. I should not see my children again. They would not want to recognize me. I should bring a terrible sorrow upon them, and I am very fond of them."

"Would none of them try to understand it, to forgive it?" asked Elsie.

"Not one of them, I fear. Even were it only on account of their mother, whom they adore. And remember that, beside my children, I should also lose my position. My wife ? I mean Lucia is wealthy, but I am not ?"

"Would your health suffer if you were poorer?" asked Elsie, with naive directness and perfect sobriety, though the question almost sounded ironical to me. In a very impolitic fashion I had again reserved my weakest argument for the last.

"Not that! Not that! ? but perhaps I am too much spoilt ? I should have the whole world against me ? and I don't know if all that ?"

I felt that I was going wrong, thus I would end by myself casting a doubt upon the self-sacrificing power of my love. Elsie helped me out of it.

"May I now speak quite frankly with you too? Yes? Then listen! I am so dazed, so overwhelmed by the greatness of that which I receive from you, so suddenly and so bewilderingly, that you must not expect me at once to judge rightly. It seems ridiculous to me that I should not be satisfied with the least that you would offer me, now that I am getting so infinitely much more than I ever could have hoped for or expected. Though I never saw you again after this night, yet I should be eternally grateful to you. But forgive me if in your difficulty I judge too much according to my own feelings. Your grief for your children - that I can comprehend. But all the rest I don't understand; it is strange to me, contrary to my nature. Of the world and of the money I should not think - I don't know these things and have not experienced their power. I only know that I should like to be with you always and should like to confess it openly before all the world. And if I were in Lucia's place, and really cared for you, I wouldn't want for one moment to bind you, cost what it would to me. I shouldn't be able to bear it, that you lived beside me and were looked upon as my husband and secretly cared for another, I should think that much more terrible than all the sorrows of a divorce."

"Lucia would never agree to a divorce. That is a matter of religion with her. A Catholic marriage is indissoluble."

"And are you, yourself, also a Catholic, devoutly Catholic?"

"Lucia says that I have no religion whatever."

Elsje looked at me anxiously.

"Is that so? And I had just hoped to learn so much from you concerning that. It occupies me all day long. Even now I have a hundred questions ready, for you. I had put all my trust in you."

"In what faith were you brought up, Elsie?

"Brought up? I wasn't brought up. I must make another confession to you?"

I saw that she hesitated and was troubled. I began to fear some unpleasant secret or other.

"Speak without fear, Elsie. It is safe with me. Trust me."

"That I would like to, but see, I know you are a distinguished man of noble birth."

"That signifies nothing, Elsje - I am not so proud of that."

I was joking, but she understood me.

"No, you are not proud, but still you have assurance. That I have not. Do you know how I got my name?"

"Well?"

"They called me Van Vianen, became I was found near Vianen. I have no parents."

She said this deeply humiliated and ashamed. And in my heart I laughed, because now after all she too showed herself apprehensive of the voice of the herd, and because she felt as a disgrace, the very thing that, as an aureole of romance, had delighted me.

"Oh, is it only that!" I cried; "that I already knew. All week I have thought of the poor, dear little one as crying, it was laid down upon the grass by a desperate mother. Likely it was a royal child, Elsje!"

Elsie laughed, reassured and happy.

"They let me become a Mennonite. Not Jan Baars, but his sister who took me into her home as a child."

"Ah! Mennonite!" said I. I hadn't the slightest idea what theological, ethical and ritual peculiarities were attached to this creed. I only knew that it must be one of the innumerable variations or sects of Protestantism.

"To be sure it's a good custom of the Mennonites that they don't baptize you as a child, when you don't yet know whether you would rather be a Roman Catholic or an Israelite, but later, when you are confirmed and can yourself choose. But look! when I was eighteen I knew just as little what to choose. And now I don't know yet."

"And still you let yourself be baptized?"

"Why yes, there was surely no wrong in that. But if they would have you choose well they would first have to let you serve an apprenticeship with the Romans, then another with the Protestants, then another with the Jews and then with the Mohammedans?"

"Not to mention the Hindus, the Buddhists and the Shintoists," said I.

"So that you would need seven lives before you could let yourself be baptized, isn't it so? And yet it is so necessary, so very, very necessary that you choose the right thing, isn't it? I never can understand how all people just live on carelessly, and all believing something different, and never consider that they might perhaps be wrong, and how terrible that would be. They simply assume, and only feign assurance, and you never hear them talk of it, so they probably do not break their hearts about it. And if you were to believe them, then everyone who thinks differently than they is a miserable wretch. But they all think differently, and so one or the other must be wrong, and yet they are all equally certain and assured. How is that possible now? Why it's absurd!"

I thought it was already a great deal for Elsie, in her solitude, to have arrived at the realization of this absurdity. Then I threw out my sounding-line -

"What do you think of Christ, Elsie?"

"I love best to read of Jesus; I think it wonderful to read - especially toward Christmas time - how he came on earth as a little child, and about the star and the shepherds. When I think of Jesus, I always think of him as a little child with Mary his Mother. I should like to have a picture or an image of them, but that's considered Catholic. Do you know more of Jesus and can you tell me all about him?"

"I asked about Christ, Elsie."

"Isn't that the same?"

"They are all only names from which we can choose. I prefer to say Christ, because I don't believe that there lived a man called Jesus who was Christ. But I do positively know that there is something that all men call Christ, and that lives and knows and loves us. And this Christ they already knew long before Jesus is said to have lived. I have seen images of the Mother with the child exactly like the one you would like to have, and it was thousands of years older than Jesus and made by the Egyptians, and instead of Mary and the Christ Child they spoke of Isis and the Horus Child, and the Chinese too made such images."

"And what do they mean by it?"

"Ordinary people mean a holy mother with a holy child, a saviour. But the few wiser ones probably mean the earth mother and the child humanity. I at least presume it, and when men now speak of Christ, then I believe, Elsje, that the most and the best, those who really mean something by the word, something real that they have felt - that they mean something that is equivalent to humanity."

"Humanity? that means nothing to me. Jesus for me is a living, beloved and loving being, who helps and supports me, an exalted, holy being. Humanity - that is nothing to me, an empty word."

"Right, Elsje, I readily believe it. But empty words can be filled with knowledge. There are learned professors to whom the word Jesus or Christ is entirely hollow or empty. But the word humanity implies for them a real and well-known thing, the entire human race which in its development and growth, in its expression and forms of life they have studied minutely. These professors again would be able to fill the word Christ with the exalted and tender feelings which it arouses in Elsje, if they had learned to feel like Elsje. And now it is my personal opinion with which, so far as I know, I stand quite alone in the world, that Elsje and the professors, were they to compare one another's observations, would come to realize that it is precisely the same real being that fills the word Christ and the word Humanity: the religious word Christ and the biological, scientific word Humanity."

"But humanity - that is not a being, not a personality ? that is a lot of people. People that I don't know. How can I care about them and how can they care about me?"

"A tree, Elsje, is a lot of roots, branches and leaves. Yet we call it a tree. A swarm of bees are a lot of bees, and yet one swarm. You cannot discern humanity because you cannot see all people at the same time, and not how they are connected. But I don't believe either that one leaf can see the whole tree or one bee the whole swarm.

"But humanity is yet a great deal more than all men together, just as the tree is more than all the leaves. And humanity is after all perceived by Elsje in her own heart - all humanity. That is thus much more even than the professors can discern of it, and why should it not be a personal, thinking, loving being? It is that, I think, that Elsje means when she speaks of her exalted Jesus, and it is that I prefer to call Christ, because I like that name best."

"I am such a stupid, ignorant creature, and you are so learned. Forgive me if I still find it somewhat too difficult."

"Of course, dear Elsje, you find it difficult, because you do not know what the professors have observed concerning man and the human race. But really, the professors would find what I said equally difficult and incomprehensible, because they don't know - at least most of them do not - what Elsje has observed concerning Christ. Only they would not be as modest as you are; they would not recognize that it is their ignorance. And I am no professor and no Elsje, but I stand sort of between the two and know something of the observations of both, and I know quite positively and see quite plainly that they both mean the same thing and that they require each other's knowledge."

"So you do know my Jesus, my Christ too, thank God!"

"Yes, though perhaps not as well as Elsje, yet better than the professors. And I believe that it was this Christ who brought me to Elsje so that I should learn to know him better, - and perhaps should better testify of him. And through him too I gained courage and steadfastness to remain true to Elsje, and not to give up, though the whole world stand against me."

Here the woman found good opportunity for bringing the man from his world of speculation back to practical life.

"But does not Jesus, or Christ, want you to do it openly, before all the world?"

"I don't know ? I don't know, Elsje. His promptings and suggestions as they proceed clearly from out the original fount are by no means always equally positive and distinct. But I assure you - I would swear it to you, had I not vowed once for all never to swear again - that I shall stop at nothing and spare nothing as soon as his light shall shine clearly and unmistakably for me."

"We Mennonites may never swear either," said Elsje, with pretty pride in her creed, confessed with so little conviction.

"That is good, that is indeed one of the best things the Bible Jesus is said to have taught. Therefore it is surely followed least of all. I not only swear no more - I even dare not promise you anything, for I know myself too little to foretell my future actions."

"You do not promise to be true to me?" asked Elsje with mild disappointment.

"I do better, I assure you of profound love. So profound that I do surely believe it will be true. But what would my faithfulness be to you if love grew weaker? It would become a lie, a feint, wouldn't it?"

"I shall be thankful for all that I get," said Elsje, "and never ask for more than you wish to give me."

I had to laugh when I thought what my acquaintances from the diplomatic world - friends I do not call them, I never had a friend among them - what they would say of a gallant adventure with so much theology at the third meeting.

But you, dear reader, will probably long have comprehended that I draw from the same reservoir, what others keep separated in water and air-tight compartments, and that theology, science, poetry and love to me are not only brothers and sisters, but often merely names and masks for one and the same inward reality. So that you will no doubt allow me to tell yet a few more things that in my amorous theologizing with Elsje, I learned and taught.

You will also probably understand without my remarking it that I did not speak in quite as fluent and succinct Dutch as I have here written down. But I could make myself understood just as well as if it had been thus spoken, because Love served as our interpreter.

XXV

I will not yet decide whether it was prudent discreation or rather, fearful and narrow-minded timidity, that deterred me from the great resolve of abandoning my family and my sphere of activity, to alone remain true to Elsje. It was for many years a hard and fearful struggle. It was indeed the hardest period of my life, albeit not the darkest. The gloom and dejection this most feared evil, marked by the relaxing of the highest vital spirits, dread warning of the powers that guide and rule us - this evil had vanished. I struggled and suffered, but was no longer miserable and wretched. Only I did not see my way clearly and vainly sought for help and guidance.

The wicked charms and temptations also were dispelled. I desired one woman - without faltering, without shame. I knew what my desire signified, and all my soul pronounced it right. To be sure the demons still carried on their nocturnal sport, but I minded them no more than barking terriers, and the wild passions were now tamed because the hand of the master had grown firm and he knew what he wanted.

My dreams attained their former sublime splendor, and for the first time in my life I had some one to whom I could confide them. I still saw Emmy in my dreams occasionally, but not so often, and it will surprise no one to hear that it did not excite Elsje's jealousy, and that she begged me to tell her of her. Elsje also asked me whether I would call herself once more. And I did it and saw her, and Elsje hoped devoutly that she would be in some way sensible of it.

But greatly as I should have desired it, and much more impressive and more convincing as it would have been for her and for you, dear reader, the truth is that she never noticed anything of it, or rather, to be exact, that she never remembered anything about it.

I for my part did not require such evidence. I have obtained stronger evidence through strangers, who let me know without my ever having told them anything about my dreams, that my summons had been heard - but all this belongs to the science of the supernatural, which awaits more general investigation and for which, dear reader, I refer you to some of my other writings.

I now lived separated from Lucia, although before the world our relations remained the same. And a most remarkable and peculiar fact is that Lucia assured me that her dreams were much more tranquil, since I no longer shared her room. The wild horses that lately had troubled her in her dreams more than ever, now stayed away. I consider this remarkable, because it seems to show how corporal proximity also affects supernatural influences.

One thing I had fully resolved on, and this was - that I would never abandon Elsje for good. And as often befalls the man in doubting attitude, I expected relief from destiny. Should fate threaten to tear her from me, then I would offer resistance and stay with her, no matter what the price. Should that which everyone in the diplomatic service may expect, befall me - sudden transference to another country - I would then deem the moment arrived to free myself entirely and for good. I know this attitude too was a weakness, but who does not see clearly must remain weak, and it is of no avail that he feign strength and act as though he were quite capable of distinguishing. And with our human tendency to argue that our own conduct is right, I consoled myself with the consideration that my children were still too young and still too much in need of my guidance.

Often too I prayed in my dreams, imploring counsel and enlightenment. But my experience is that sign or counsel is never accorded us before we ourselves have decided or acted, or before the approaching event has already been determined without our help and knowledge. We are never helped in a choice, though we are comforted and encouraged after we have chosen to the best of our knowledge. Many times this seemed cruel and unreasonable to me, but I am inclined to believe in the beneficent and salutary significance of it.

The secrecy toward the world, so much desired by Lucia, soon however assumed an altogether different, unfavorable and undesirable aspect. My frequent trips to E———, though explained by my passion for sailing, could not fail to arouse comment, especially as I usually went alone and also declined the company of my son Guido, no matter how often he asked. And E——— is a favorite port for sailing yachts, ten or twelve of them sometimes landing there at the same time on fine summer days. Thus my acquaintances from The Hague, the men in the first place, very soon knew what attracted me to the little seaport. This by no means aroused any great agitation or indignation in Hague circles, as everyone acquainted with these and similar circles will readily understand.

I was looked upon as a very moral and honorable man, simply because I did not mix up in scandal and never spoke of things of that kind, whether they concerned myself or others. It now caused many a one satisfaction that the halo of chastity which, despite a total absence of display or moralizing toward others, yet by its mutely reproaching presence is ever in painful evidence, - that this unpleasantly spotless reputation was now fittingly and modestly obscured. I was almost congratulated upon it. No one thought of judging hardly of such a thing or of pitying Lucia on that account. She, herself, heard nothing of these rumors and lived in the illusion that everything retained its former aspect. I believe I was praised - behind my back, of course, not to my face - because I had had the decency to seek my diversion so far from the vicinity, and not, as more shameless ones, in The Hague or Amsterdam. As long as I did not arouse publicity or scandal, I could do what I wished; these were my private affairs. And Lucia and the gentlemen of my set seemed to agree in this - that it was worse to bring publicity upon a woman than to deceive her. The herd only resents any assault upon the unity of the group - for the rest it permits everything.

For me this was a twofold torture. Instead of one deceit I was now practising two. I was honoring a mock union and I was permitting a true union to be suspected and profaned. I felt myself locked in an intolerable fashion between two falsehoods. What as a tender secret I had wished to hide from the world to spare Lucia, the world had soon discovered. And yet it spared Lucia and myself, at the cost of this same tender secret, which it looked upon as an infamy: an infamy of the kind from which I had just felt with pride that I had freed myself. It was all equally unbearable to me, the friendly, sarcastic generosity of the world that spared me and acted as though forgiving me a sin, where I felt virtue beyond its comprehension; and the condemnation of Elsje, to which I was now most painfully sensitive, though it went out from this same unintelligent herd.

As often as I saw Elsje again, I read in her look of anxious suspense the question whether I had now at last taken the great resolve. But only her dear eyes asked, and her pale little face, her lips remained shut. She did not question me about my family either. She waited until I should speak. We spoke of our love and of everything that was nearest our hearts, of the difficulties of life, why we had to toil and struggle so and bear affliction, of the great world full of men and what would grow from it, of my dreams, of the best and most beautiful that we could experience and of the way we could conquer the difficulties and attain the purest blessedness. And we spoke a great deal of Christ, groping and seeking in the dawning truths, trying to help and to understand each other. And at every parting I felt again that something had remained unspoken, whereof she would yet have heard so gladly. And never did I leave her without a sense of the blessing that I had her, and without a heavy heart because I must let her wait and suffer.

For she suffered, she suffered as only pure, tender womanly natures made for love can suffer. And by degrees I could not hide from myself that she suffered more than she could bear. The power of endurance of a pure, delicate soul like hers is infinite as long as in the kernel of her being, in her love life, she is satisfied and contented. But the sorrow that touches the kernel consumes her both body and soul.

Remorse is a bad thing, a weakness, a morbid symptom. I permit no remorse in myself, for I know that it harms and weakens the best that is in us. But against the self-reproach which is the punishment for these years of wavering, I struggle in vain. It is always there, like a dark demon, silently awaiting its favorable opportunity in the third or fourth hour of the night, when sleep evades me - then it sits upon my breast and questions and awaits my answer: - why I let her mutely ask and ask so long and wait for an answer, till the bright eyes sank deeper into their darker growing hollows, and the red blood had gone from the fresh cheeks, and the delicate nose became so thin, and the soft lips so colorless?

And in my luxurious home everything continued as of old: the children healthy and happy: Lucia the housewife correct and diligent as ever, not unfriendly toward me, without sign of spiritual suffering, amiable and hearty.

Pardon an old man, dear reader, if he spares himself and does not expatiate on these anxious years. He is not a friend of tears and does not like to give in to melancholy.

One night the end of the struggle was at last proclaimed to me. I dreamt I was walking in the park at The Hague and saw an old man sitting with an opened letter in his hand. I comprehended that the letter was for me and saw my name and title on the envelope too. But the old man said, "This is not for you!" and I understood that he meant that I no longer had a title. Then I saw too that it was a large official document from Rome, and I knew that the long-expected transferal had come. Thereupon I dreamt that I was fleeing with Elsje and that I carried her across a great plain of ice. The ice cracked under my feet and every crack was a snapping spark of bluish fire like a flash of lightning. This betokened ill, but Elsje was not afraid.

The letter of which I had dreamed came a few weeks later. But it was the same. I recognized the envelope. I also knew positively what the contents would be, and I felt a glorious sense of relief, and a "Thank God" escaped my lips.

Lucia had also seen the letter and it now appeared that she had awaited it with equal longing. Her face was bright.

I had never wanted to ask the ambassador for transferal, detained by the thought that I should be deceiving him by doing so, but I had a suspicion that Lucia was secretly exerting herself in my behalf. She too expected relief from it, but in another sense.

"From Rome," she said. "That seems something good to me. Just look, quickly!"

"It seems something good to me too," I replied; my hand trembled and my heart beat.

"Where?" asked Lucia, the while I read.

"Stockholm," I replied, "with advancement."

"Thank Heaven!" said Lucia; "then the wretched story here is ended."

I looked at her a while severely and gravely, so that her bright look darkened and a shadow of anxiety fell upon her face.

"The story here is not ended, Lucia, but has reached a turning point. I am not going."

"That's impossible," she cried out; "you can't refuse."

"No! but I can hand in my resignation."

"Your resignation - and then??"

"Remain in Holland."

"In Holland? And without a salary? Live on my money? And continue this liaison? No, Vico, that you can't demand of me, that is too much."

"Lucia, there is something else I want to demand of you."

"And that is?

"That you release me. That you allow me to put an end to this falsehood. The world takes us for man and wife and we are not?"

"Release you? Don't I grant you as much freedom as I can? And are you not still the father of my children? The head of the house?"

"I have a wife, Lucia, who is really my wife and whom I want to make my wife before the world. I ask you whether you will give me the opportunity to do this by dissolving our marriage."

Then her Italian temperament revealed itself in all its intensity. She spoke with rage and animosity upon her face, and with vehement and dramatic gestures, as I had never seen her before.

"Give you opportunity? Opportunity to break what God cannot break? Are you crazy, Vico? How many women would do what I did - pardon and bear the deadly offence? Would you now cast me off still further and humble me yet more? Would you have me give up my rights for an ordinary bourgeois woman, whom another would long ago have poisoned? Should I yet abet her and you in the wrong you are doing me and the disgrace you are bringing upon me and upon my children? - Go, Vico, and don't provoke me, for I still love you and should be capable of murdering you. - I have borne this because I pitied you and hoped that you would soon have enough of it and come back to me. - But now that on top of it all you do this, now I shall yield nothing more, nothing. A marriage cannot be dissolved. - Off with you, man, - you are crazy or drunk. That can be your only excuse."

"I go, Lucia, - but understand me well, I am going for good. You will not see me again."

"Are you going to her? And what shall you live on?"

"I don't know. Surely not on your money."

"And the children?"

"I shall gladly see the children if they will see me. But they won't, you will surely see to that."

"I'll see to it. You shan't see them. Poor children!"

"Be good to them, Lucia, and advise them to get entangled in lies as little as possible. For some people it is distressing. Others are better able to cope with it. Good-bye! So we need not hope for a reconciliation or an agreement between us, need we?"

"Never! I swear it by God and by my innocent children."

"I do not swear, but you need not fear that I shall make any further attempts. I shall demand leave of absence this very day and hand in my resignation. We shall probably not see each other again. Forgive me if I have grieved you. I intended no ill."

A sarcastic laugh -

"Oh, come! intended no ill! Say that to Satan when you stand before the everlasting fire. If you want to go, then, go right off too. - And God have mercy on your soul."

Then I thought it time to end the torture. I packed up some clothes, regulated my affairs at the legation and was in E——— that same afternoon. I had wired: "I am coming for good." And, sobbing and laughing, Elsje embraced me at the station before the eyes of the officials. It was the first time in public.

"There is as much reason for crying as for laughing, Elsje!" said I. "I haven't brought along much money."

"Oh, we need so little and I can manage so well. And you are so good and so clever, you will surely be able to earn money again."

"And we cannot be lawfully married either. Lucia will never give in to that."

"That's nothing," said Elsje, "if only the world may know of it. The ceremony we can well dispense with. Now you shall see how well I shall grow, and how strong."

XXVI

My mother was still alive and was living in Italy. I wrote her a letter, earnest and upright, to inform her of what had happened. This was one of the things I did to establish my position, to make it final, without myself believing in the success of my action. The answer was such that I had to hide it from Elsje, and shall also refrain from repeating it here. There is something awful in seeing persons whom one has known and loved as tender-hearted human beings grow hard in age. And for me there was something still more awful in the chief reproach contained in my mother's letter - that I, her only son, for whom she would have sacrificed her life, and who should have been the support of her declining years, now poisoned her life and made her old age lonely and miserable. Of Elsje she spoke with scornful, malicious contempt, as of an immoral, shameless monster, a she-devil who had beguiled me with sensual charms and had wantonly destroyed my domestic happiness. And this I had to hear from my mother, who so long had been my saint! I realized that we were lost for one another.

I had taken lodgings in "de Toelast," from there to regulate my position as far as was practicable, and to effect the rupture with my superiors and the entire sphere of my activities as correctly as possible.

I had been an active, helpful worker, and what made me popular everywhere - harmless, impersonal, without any unpleasantly obtrusive originality in actions or opinions. In the diplomatic world above all, a vigorous originality is quite intolerable unless it manifest itself in a ruling personality. And even then this personality must not raise his aspirations too far above the average of the masses. That is to say, the aspirations which he manifests in his actions - his private thoughts may, if he be but a strong ruler, wander where they would, upward or downward. Just because I was more original in my private thoughts than any of my compatriots, there was absolutely no possibility of turning these into aspirations of practical account, and thus in practice I remained an efficient aid esteemed by all and feared by none. My sudden breaking away was looked upon as a lapse, and I was in fact more pitied than scorned. I was said to have fallen prey to an ambitious, selfish woman, as indeed sometimes happened to the best of men.

I received many kindly admonishing and gravely moralizing letters from my chiefs and from former compatriots. I saw that they did not like to lose so efficient a power. They even organized noble endeavors for the saving of the poor drowning man. But I remained obdurate and would not let myself be saved and even concealed myself from all callers, faithfully assisted therein by Jan Baars, whose good Dutch qualities beneath his apparent unpleasantness I learned to respect. Jan Baars was the touchstone so to speak, the training that taught me to tolerate a Dutch environment. Without the schooling of Jan Baars I could not have endured my present life. He was a boor, a dolt, a dirty lout, a narrow-minded churl, but he did all sorts of kind and generous things. Once convinced of the fact that my intentions toward Elsje were honorable, he stood by us through thick and thin, and did not trouble himself about conventions, nor about gossip, nor about the minister, nor about the burgomaster, nor about the baker and his customers. And I have later noticed that a Dutch provincial world is not as dangerous by far as it is sometimes pictured in novels or comedies. In the beginning there is a buzz and hum as in a disturbed beehive. But if one goes ahead quietly and, just as the experienced beekeeper, lays hold with a firm hand, if one is not afraid and shows that one intends no wrong, the excitement and asperities subside wondrously quickly and the petty world tolerates what it contended it could never endure.

But not knowing this, I had feared a wretched life for Elsje and had made greater plans.

"Elsje!" said I, a day after my arrival, "I have wavered so long, not only because of all we must brave, but also because I did know how this rupture with my world should increase my usefulness in life. For I have perhaps achieved something, but under the direction of others, and my own will I have restrained and suppressed. For I did not have the qualities and the capacities for making my originality prevail. And I asked myself, if I now seek my personal happiness with Elsje shall I thereby be also doing some good to the world? I know, of course, that Christ calls us through the light of joy, and that we must follow the highest happiness, the brightest light; but I also knew that we can never find this for ourselves alone, for the highest happiness is universal happiness. If personal joy does not in some manner radiate over the world, it is not the highest, though it be ever so alluring to us. And I did not see how our happiness would be anything to the world. On the contrary, I saw only a dark, foul misapprehension that would arise from it. Do you understand me, Elsje?"

"I believe I do. But it seems to me it must after all always have a salutary effect, when people see that some one dares to do what he considers good and honest, no matter what it costs him."

"Yes, Elsje, but then people must also see and feel that it is for something better that he abandons the less good and beautiful. And that they don't see at all in our case. What impelled me they do not know, and so they cannot consider it good and beautiful either. They say: Poor Muralto, he has wrecked his life, he has become the victim of a woman, he could not restrain his passion, now he throws away his prospects, his happiness - some will add: his eternal blessedness - for a love caprice, an amourette. That is nothing new for the world. It happens frequently. And also that the unhappy sinner moreover deceives himself, pretending that he acts from noble motives and for a fine and righteous cause. That too is very common, for no one really sins in his own eyes, every one takes his follies for wisdom, and man understands no art better than that of deceiving himself."

"Poor, dear man!" said Elsje, now for the first time alarmed by the true realization of the world's attitude toward my act.

"And the world is usually quite right. It must cast out whoever menaces the unity of the group. For in this unity is its security, it is sacred, holy, 'taboo,' as the Polynesians say. And it cannot possibly investigate each particular case, whether the seceder is perhaps a faithful follower of Christ, a truly original spirit or simply an eccentric fool or weakling. That the seceder must himself prove In the face of the world's condemnation. Do you understand me rightly?"

"No!" said Elsje, "not quite, I believe. I don't know whether you think it good to secede or not."

"That I shall explain to you. Humanity consists of two principal kinds - of herd-men and seceders. Both, Christ has need of. The herd-men form the mighty unity through which he lives; it in his great organic body, whereof the individuals are the cells. The better they cohere, the stronger, mightier, more beautiful becomes his unity, his judgment, far exalted above our comprehension. Therefor the union of the groups in holy and good and every disturbance is met with vigorous resistance. But Christ is growing. Humanity has not yet attained its perfect growth and the union is still incomplete, defective. The tree is constantly developing new branches, bursting through the old bark, sending forth new shoots. That is the function of the single cells that burst the old union, forming the kernel of a new, better organization. Our body too has two principal kinds of cells, the corporal cells that constitute our organs, and the germinal cells from which new organisms are developed. The germinal cells in the body of Christ are the seceders, the original spirits who will no longer tolerate the union of the group and are directly called and guided by the Genius of Humanity, by Christ's own voice. But they must then also be men, with great strength and patience, designed for stern endurance and constant struggle. The world must hate them and persecute them and if possible annihilate them. For only those who can withstand this process of persecution and annihilation are the real, true seceders, elected by Christ and able to create a new and better union. Therefore it is good to be a herd-man and to respect the existing union - the existing order as it is called - if one has the strength for that and nothing more. But it is good to break this order if one feels oneself very distinctly impelled to it by the inward light of Christ, by true knowledge, by the firm consciousness of truth, and moreover knows, knows with absolute certainty, that one has the power and the abilities for enduring and struggling, for resisting the inevitable enmity of the world, for surviving her hatred and persecution, for proving indeed one's good right to secede and to be original. It is not just to denounce the world and to glorify the martyrs. Christ does not want martyrs. He wants conquering triumphant originals. The patience of the martyrs is a virtue, which he bestows on the originals, his privileged servants, but a virtue with which to conquer, not to yield. And a virtue which must not be sought for its own sake, but for the sake of the victory. The world punishes according to his deserts him, who breaking from the union has overestimated his power to persevere and to triumph."

"Thus my dear husband will not be a martyr," said Elsje, as always practical, and keeping to the point.

"Not if he can help it. If I came before Christ with only a crown of thorns, might he not ask them: 'Where is your gospel? And what joy for my world have you bought with your anguish?' We are dealing with his goods, Elsje, with Christ's goods; our sorrow is his sorrow, our joy is his joy and we may not squander anything for nothing. Even the Jesus of the Bible-drama bought his gospel of joy too dearly. The just price for his crown of thorns has never yet been paid; the gospel is there, but the joy has yet to come. Though his kingdom is not of this world, the joy of that kingdom would also brighten this world, as soon as we could all believe in it. But no heavenly kingdom of joy shall be built of material as poor as mortal life to-day still is. I did not want to yield for nothing, nor do I want to sacrifice Elsje for nothing. Therefore I wavered so long, for I know how weak I am and how little I can achieve for Christ. Understand me well, Elsje, I do not want this just account for myself, but for Christ in whom I live. I am quite ready to pay with personal sorrow whatever is for the benefit of Christ. For his good is also my good. But naught for nothing."

"But you are so strong and you know so much, and there is so much you can do for the world," said Elsje, with her charming pride.

"I lack the very things that are most essential to make oneself prevail as an Original. I have not the qualities of an orator, nor of a poet, nor of an administrator, nor of an organizer, nor of a composer, nor of a dramatist. The only things I have are patience, insight and conviction."

"But then you can communicate this to others who help you."

"See, Elsje, before I tore myself away I doubted of this. But now I see better how Christ works in me. As soon as you take one step in his direction, though it be in the pitch dark, then he makes the two following steps clear for you. The great relief in my heart and my speaking much and freely with you, dear Elsje, has made so much clearer to me. I believe that I can do something in the world after all. And I feel that I must attempt it. And though it does not succeed, yet I am sure that I shall gain something by it that shall be worth fighting and bleeding for. Will you support me, will you join me, will you venture what I venture?"

Then Elsje threw both her arms around me joyfully crying:

"Oh, my Husband! what would I not venture where you are beside me. Whither leads our journey and when do we go? I am ready, though it were to-morrow."

"It is not to-morrow, but the day after. And our journey leads us across the great ocean, to the new country, where the new life is stirring, and foaming, and seething most intensely."

"To America?"

"Yes, Elsje; are you willing? We shall escape the evil tongues in Holland. Evade the painful proximity of my old sphere of life. We shall not bury ourselves in some remote corner of the earth, but shall stand in the very midst of the most fiercely burning life, in the most intensively growing human world. There I can best become aware of what is to be expected of mankind, best divine what Christ intends with us and what he expects of me. If I can achieve anything indeed - it is there. I know it, for I know the country and the people, though I am not yet quite sure how I shall go about it."

Elsje looked grave and thoughtful: not appalled or frightened by the prospect, but as though in a whirl of new overwhelming images. Then she asked shyly:

"And in this battle will there still be room and time for a small, peaceful home? And for a little, tender child?"

"Why not, Elsje? There too are peaceful dwellings and many tender little children also are born there. The fighting does not go on constantly."

"I shall see that I am ready," said Elsje. And she was, in good time.

XXVII

We stood upon the deck of the great trans-Atlantic steamer and our color-thirsty eyes drank in the rich scene of the cliffs and hills of Ireland, rising above a calm sea under a sky heavy with rain. Dark grayish-purple, light gray and white rain clouds to one side, above us a clear limpid blue, a short fragment of a rainbow rising out of the light emerald-green sea, and stretching straight across the faded brown and dull green land with the little white houses, on to the blackish-gray cloud which flowed out into mist and against which the bright colors shone dazzlingly. Thousands of white gulls round about the ship, like a whirling, living snow flurry, glittering in the bright sunlight and contrasting sharply with the dark background of clouds - screaming and screeching wildly and ceaselessly.

"The sign of the covenant," said I, pointing to the rainbow.

"Do you really believe, Vico, that God gives such signs to men?"

"What do you mean by 'God,' Elsje?"

Elsje looked at me with pensive wonder.

"Do you then only believe in Christ and not in God?"

"When I employ a word I want it to mean something. After many years of thought and observation I am beginning to mean something more or less distinct when I say Christ. Why? Because I have obtained so many signs of Christ, outward and inward, that I could form a fixed idea from them - not a picture, not an image, but an idea, what the professors call a hypothesis, and in which one may believe as every scholar may believe in his hypothesis, without absolute certainty, but with an ever-increasing degree of probability, so that one can make predictions and see them confirmed by experience. This is the faith that poets and scholars and originals and herd-men are all equally in need of."

"And does God not give such signs then?" asked Elsie.

"Patience, child! first come the signs and only then do the conclusions follow. I behold here a glorious, beneficent and comforting spectacle. That is a sign. But of what and of whom? Of a higher being than Christ? Surely. For earth and sun, that made this sign, are more than humanity. But our inward perceptibility experiences emotions which point to a supreme Being, the Almighty, who created the sun and the earth and all the stars, on whom all we know is dependent and to whom all is subject. No matter what we think we must always arrive at such a Being. It is impossible not to - whether we call it Nature or God or something else, or better still give it no name."

"Yes," said Elsie; "but for me again God, just like Christ, is a living, feeling, loving being. And Nature, sun, earth - all that is not living and feeling, is it -?"

"Dear Elsie, only in the beginning of this century, before the professors had yet thought out their impossible hypothesis of a dead matter and a soulless Nature, there was a poet who in a few words set forth the wisdom which the professors have forgotten and which they will have to remember again, before we have gone half a century further. This poet was named Shelley, and when he was not older than twenty, he wrote:

'Of all this varied and eternal world

Soul is the only element...

'The moveless pillar of a mountain's weight

Is active, living spirit. Every grain

Is sentient both in unity and part,

And the minutest atom comprehends

A world of loves and hatreds.'

"Remember these words well, Elsie, I will repeat them once more and translate them for you."

And I did so, for Elsie's knowledge of English consisted only in what she had learned from me. Then I continued: "These words issued from the strongest and most magnificent original spirit the world has brought forth since the poet of the Jesus-Drama, and every child ought to learn them, more necessarily than the multiplication table or the Lord's prayer. The world has called their maker an Atheist, just as did Spinoza. But all modern natural science can be brought back to God, that is to the truth, only by these words."

"Then is this glorious spectacle a living sign of the earth and the sun?" Elsje asked.

"Of course!" said I; "but it shall yet be long before we comprehend such an outward sign. All we understand of it is: splendor, beauty, sublimity. These are also the characteristics of all that is divine. But their nearer relations to our inner emotions of love and joy - these we do not comprehend."

"And God?" asked my wife.

"All the outward signs I have seen point to the operation of limited, imperfect beings or deities - as humanity, the plants and animals, the celestial bodies. But these all seem to work in a power that is fixed and unchangeable. The signs thereof are what the scholars call 'Laws of Nature,' as the force of gravitation and all chemical and physical laws. These alone can be signs of life of the Almighty. And still we are not sure that they issue from the supreme Power.

"Our inner consciousness tells us that the supreme Life cannot be finite, temporal. But the sensible signs of the supreme Life according to our faulty perception are temporal and point to an end. The Universe that we perceive is not a perpetuum mobile. The laws of motion that we know all come to a standstill. As the scholars put it: there is increasing entropy and there are irreversible processes. This does not satisfy our inward consciousness of the supreme Life. It must be a local, temporally restricted condition. We know irrefutably that the highest Life is more, and we shall also discover the perceptible signs of it."

Beside us stood the second-class passengers of a large emigrant steamer, gazing across the bulwark toward the last land of Europe, and vainly trying to catch something of our conversation carried on in low tones and in a language strange to them. Small, dark, Slavonic women, with gaily-colored scarfs around their heads and children in their arms; Poles in shabby coats and astrakhan caps; tall blond Scandinavians, square-jawed, cool-blooded and patient; short, sturdy Italians with felt hats and gay cravats; a handful of pale-brown Siamese jugglers or gymnasts with flat gold-embroidered caps on, and tired, listless faces, melancholy and pallid from cold and seasickness. And amid this dirty chattering human assemblage, devouring nuts and oranges, sometimes making music and gaming, all half dulled and frightened by the usual fierce and anxious battle of life they had gone through and with the vague expectation of future wealth and pleasure in their eyes - amid these I saw my sweet, delicate wife with her eyes, now dark-rimmed but shining with joyous fervor, and her pale, delicate features - and amid the singing, eating, chattering and gaming our subtle quiet conversation grew like a strange exotic plant amid rubbish.

But Elsje put to shame my false pride and gladly and helpfully busied herself with this little troop of humanity blown together from all the quarters of the globe, making herself understood and loved in all sorts of ways in the overflowing joy of her new life.

I myself was not very cheerful, but more often profoundly grave and sad, though with that rich and gentle melancholy that leads to sublime thought. Above all the memory of my children could make me deeply dejected and silent for hours. When I imagined that they would fall ill, or that they cried because of my absence, it was as though my inmost heart was torn, or strange hands were wringing the entrails of my soul. I had heard nothing of them before my departure with the exception of one brief, comforting word from my second daughter, the third in age of my children, a shrinking, gentle girl of sixteen. She wrote in Italian:

"My dear father, I don't know why you have gone away, and I dare not ask mother or the others about it, for they don't quite understand and take it amiss and won't speak of you. But I will think that it had to be and say that I am not angry. You had better not answer, for that would annoy mother.

Your loving little daughter,

Emilia."

This letter also made my grief vent itself in tears; they were not tears of remorse, however, but of an unavoidable mournfulness. At such moments Elsje respected my feelings with a sacred veneration for which I was unutterably grateful to her. She felt that in this she could not heal or comfort.

The first stormy days in the European waters were the wont. Then I was painfully sensible of my poverty because it compelled me to let Elsje live in the midst of these often unclean and unmannerly people, in the close steamer atmosphere surrounded by sick people, in the sleeping quarters separated only by curtains, with the primitive washing accommodations and the lack of everything that I would so gladly have given her - beauty, cleanliness, comfort. But Elsje did not complain and adapted herself to the circumstances with bright inventiveness and good humor.

At last came the warm, dark, transparent, deep violet-blue waters of the Gulf Stream and the sun began to shine refreshingly and the light-hearted folk made music and danced on the deck. Then for us too it became more endurable and we sat for hours hand in hand gazing at the glorious play of colors on the waves, blue-black, seething light-blue, and foaming snowy-white. From time to time we spoke of the great things that always occupied our thoughts. For we felt that in these great things alone could lie our justification and our peace of mind.

"Dear man, you have taught me much that is comforting and true," said Elsje; "but yet it sometimes seems as though you had made God very distant and inaccessible for me. This beautiful, wicked, awful sea - a thinking, feeling being is already terrifying in its profound incomprehensiveness. And then, moreover - the sun and the stars!"

"Still it is good, Elsje, not to wish to hide the truth, even though it is oppressing. Inwardly God remains just as near. There is no further or nearer there. And Christ I have really brought nearer to you, haven't I?"

"Yes, but also robbed him of his perfection."

"True, and therefore made him dearer, more intimate and real. When we are children we consider our father and mother perfect. Thereby we wrong them. Later we see that they do indeed stand above us, but that they have faults too. And then when we can love them, faults and all, then they are most truly our beloved and trusted confidants. It is a stupid, childish tendency always to expect and to demand perfection in all that is above us. The Bible-Jesus spoke truly when he said that there was but one perfect Goodness. I will add that there is but one I and one Memory. And only then will man be able to follow Christ to the pure blessedness, when he learns to feel that there may be incomprehensible sublimity, loftiness and superiority without perfection: that there may also be faults in the power that has created him and in which he lives: that there are yet an infinite number of higher beings, all above him, and powerful and wise and lofty far beyond his comprehension, and yet all of them humble and faulty and weak in the power of a Most-Sublime, who is equally near to all and penetrates all with equal profoundness."

XXVIII

I do not propose to give you dramatic surprises, dear reader, and you must not look for thrilling excitement in the story of my life. Elsje's parentage has always remained unknown to me and the pretty motive for a romance of the foundling is left unused. For that sort of thing you have your well-stocked public libraries and Mr. Conan Doyle and his colleagues.

So I will rather tell you directly that my trip to America resulted in what everyone, and I myself too at first, considered a complete failure.

But I wish to make you distinctly realize that man may fare as the soldier, who, ordered to maintain a position without knowing that the position is untenable, faithfully perseveres in his charge, though aware that the endeavor is a hopeless failure - later to learn that his perseverance and his failure were foreseen in the great plan of the general and have helped to bring about the victory and peace.

It is possible that, even though it seemed otherwise, my efforts were after all beneficial and fruitful, that I sowed seeds that are still in a state of germination and only long after I am gone will shoot up as plants. I do not know this and I need not trouble about it. I have carried out the order, as I understood it, to the best of my abilities. But I do know what I have gained in new knowledge and understanding. And this has made me so rich that I regret none of my sacrifices and repent none of my actions. And this alone also lets me find peace and contentment in this quiet lonely life, because here I can write down what has enchanted and stirred me go strongly, and the assurance never forsakes me that my words shall find their way and, like a mighty ferment, work on in the heads of those who as you, dear reader, have experienced the painful blessing of originality, and know what it is to live in immediate contact with Christ, the Genitive Spirit of humanity.

Through all the dark confusion of my vain efforts and painful experiences, through the continued terrible anguish of mankind, ever increasing and void of beauty and sublimity, one light shone out with an ever steadier and brighter glow the wonder of the true marriage.

This is so difficult to describe, because every one professes to know it and to respect it, and insincere eloquence and insincere enthusiasm have poured themselves out over it in riotous streams. So that one scruples to employ any word wherewith to indicate the true wonder, because all words have been polluted and defiled through a horrible misuse.

The true wonder is so great that the man of original spirit who has found it would, if he had the power, not hesitate for a moment to destroy all domestic happiness and domestic peace among the great human herd, as long as these rest only on a conventional imitation, a miserable substitute, of the true glory. I have lived in what to all the world seemed a happy union. I have endured the terrible anguish of a violent rupture of firmly-knit bonds of attachment and affection - but how insignificant is all this, how sorry this apparent happiness, how slight the anguish compared to the mighty and transcendent things that were gained - the perfect tenderness, the real intimacy of true conjugal love, the complete melting into one of two cells in the great body of humanity.

I have good reason to believe that most marriages - oh! by far the most - are of inferior quality and falser than my own false union. And also that in this matter with most men - oh! by far the most - the elemental susceptibility to true conjugal happiness is still inborn, that even the weakest conventionalist and herd-man would in this respect turn back to this deep elemental instinct, if he were left free to do so - that with the majority Christ herein still works directly and immediately, because it is the most deep seated, most absorbing passion with which he has equipped us.

And even with a clear vision of the ocean of grief, confusion and disaster that would arise were the herd to apply itself to follow the lead of the Originals and in fanatic zeal break all untrue bonds - even with this appalling knowledge I would not hesitate to lead them on to such a crusade against the matrimonial lie, since I know the glory and the riches of the promised land to be regained. Many would perish on the road and pine away, many would be trampled on and perhaps curse my name and denounce what they had began; but the prize is worth the sacrifice.

Marriage is without doubt one of the most sacred human institutions, but only sacred through inward truth, and no civic formula or churchly ritual can make it sacred if the inward truth is wanting in it. And better a thousand dissolved and broken false marriages than one true marriage prevented or one untrue one with the semblance of sincerity and sacredness upheld.

But Christ is yet in distress and anguish. He is yet in the throes of birth, in the pains of growth. Our world is as my brother Hebbel said: a wound of God. But as I add: a healing wound; therefore not less painful. And what distinguishes the true marriage from the untrue is this very quality of pain. Never did I suffer through Lucia what I suffered through Elsje. In the apparent happiness there is contentment and complacency, in the real an everlasting gnawing and torturing longing, a desire for more, more - the desire to express oneself more fully, the desire to be more closely united, to be bound together more firmly, more indissolubly, more everlastingly. Elsje and I were constantly tormented by our powerlessness to express to one another the depth of our emotion, by our anxiety for each other's welfare and happiness, by our uncertainty in regard to what life and death would bring us, by our wish never to be parted and to experience constantly the blessing of each other's company.

Even when, in the serenest, most peaceful moments, I sat by her side gazing at her with devout attention so that Moricke's words arose in me:

"Wenn ich von deinem Anschaun tief gestillt

Mich ganz mit deinem heil'gen Werth begnge?"

even then there was a mysterious, tender quality of pain in my love, independent of all the considerations and cares concerning present and future - like a gentle, never wholly dying echo of the great world sorrow. And through this I knew that our love-life was one with the great love-life of Christ. By the tang of pain in our cup of life I recognized the water from the world-stream.

I had worked out no definitely elaborated plan for my campaign in the new land, amongst the new people. I had a few thousand guilders that belonged to me and a few hundred from Elsje. We had selected the cheapest travelling accommodations and would live very simply. I hoped to have enough for us to live on until I should have found a means of subsistence and a field for my labors. I had plenty of acquaintances in the most distinguished circles, but I knew how little I could count on them. Yet I had to try to find among them the few that were susceptive to original thoughts and had the ability to turn them into deeds.

I argued thus: that all individuals live in an invincible group-union of morals, customs, traditions and institutions, which originated wholly beyond their reasonable will and which are mostly in conflict with their own deeper convictions. That they live thus is the result of their nature and character as group-creatures. They cannot do otherwise and may not do otherwise. No individual can live apart, he must have a group or grouplet, no matter how small, whose ideas, customs and morals he shares. It is absolutely vain and useless to wish to draw him from this union by logical, sensible arguments. Though logically he can find nothing to say against such arguments, though the system in which he lives conflicts wholly with his original disposition, he must continue in it, because otherwise he would run wild, and he will sooner twist and falsify his ideas and feelings completely than be disobedient to the voice of the herd in which be finds his conditions of life.

But these group-ideas and these group-formations are continually changing. Not through the influence of the mass, the herd, which may not judge independently, because otherwise no union would be possible. The strength of the group depends on the obedience of the members to the voice of the herd. Did the members think and act independently, they could not subsist as a group.

But the group-formation is changed through the influence of some few individuals, original enough to understand humanity's own voice, the voice of Christ, and powerful enough to make themselves followed by the herd. And the influence of these few shall be the stronger, the closer their original ideas stand to the ideas of the group. All the members of the group feel something of the Original element, of the Genius of humanity, they are all still bound to our Genitive Spirit, though not nearly as closely and as fervently as the few originals. If now the original individual is all too original, the herd does not follow, but hates and destroys him. That is the martyr the man who is "in advance of his age."

But if the originality of the single individual is felt by the herd, then it follows and respects and reveres him, and later it erects statues in his honor and eulogizes him. And all the more if the seceder possesses a personally suggestive power, and impresses people by the display of some one amazing talent - organizing, dramatic or musical. Meanwhile this leader and example has done nothing more than bring the outer organization more in unison with the inner life of humanity, Christ's own being.

This consideration led me to seek for a man sufficiently intelligent and independent to absorb my thoughts, and yet in his inclinations and feelings standing so much nearer than I to the herd, that he could exert an influence. Moreover, some one with the prestige lent by some extraordinary quality or other - as learnedness, or still better, organizing talent - and with the ability, the aplomb, the ruling power which the herd tolerates and demands. Thus a mediator between me, the all too original and practically unqualified, for whom an attempt to make himself prevail would signify a useless martyrdom, and the herd, that in its unoriginality is yet so greatly in need of the stirring ferment of my ideas.

Before we neared the American shores I had made my choice from the persons that had come to my mind as qualified for my purpose. I shall call the man Judge Elkinson, concealing his real name, as he is still in the public eye. He had been governor of his state and at my arrival was a member of the Supreme Court, the highest tribunal in the United States, sovereign in its judgments and only admitting to membership the most trusted and esteemed men of this mighty realm.

- - -

It was a clear, cold, bright day when we steamed up the Hudson and saw the white building masses of the giant city rising from the centre of the wide, grayish-yellow stream. A strong icy wind was blowing from the blue sky, and the valiant little tug-boats rocking on the turbulent waters and amid shrill whistles running quickly in and out among the great ships, like sea-monsters hunting for prey, were covered with a solid coating of ice from the splashing water.

Upon the elongated island protruding into the wide mouth of the river stretched the mighty city, a densely packed conglomeration of houses piled up toward the sea, block upon block, so that the tall masses of masonry at the point of the island appeared to be heaped up one upon the other like pack-ice. There where the blocks were the highest and stood facing each other like giant building-blocks set on end, there was Wall Street, the centre of activity, where the stony growth seemed as though spurred on by the restless stir, the yet unregulated and uncomprehended instinct of accumulation.

As we drew nearer we saw the delicate, fresh colors, the soft reds and creamy whites of the buildings in the clear, smokeless atmosphere, the white exhausts of the beating systems, standing out like little white flags against the light blue sky, and the myriad dark, twinkling eyes of the houses, row upon row, severe, square, strong, firm and light with a myriad grave, fixed questioning glances reviewing the new arrivals from across the sea, who streamed from all the quarters of the globe to this land of future promise and expectation.

Then followed the confusing and confounding impressions of the landing, where the great nation, compelled by experience, seems to guard itself against the instreaming invasion of undesired elements, and investigates and selects with humiliating, apparently heartless strictness, as though we were animals to be examined.

Elsje's smile and cheerful endurance alleviated for me the bitterness of standing in the long line for examination, ordered about by the gruff officials - I, the proud aristocrat, who had never come here otherwise than surrounded by luxury, and treated with distinction as an honored guest.

When we were finally released and found ourselves in the noise and tumult of that tremendous life, where the selfish seeking of the few is by a secret and uncomprehended power forced together into a mysterious and curious order, - as out of the seemingly aimless and orderless agitation of ants or bees one sees a well-planned structure arise, - amid the rattling of the trucks, the shuffling of thousands of feet upon the worn and ill-kept pavement, the ceaseless thunder of the elevated trains running between the graceless buildings and signs, designed solely for doing business or attracting attention, in this so preeminently incomplete, imperfect, half-barbarous and half-polished world, I saw my dear, delicate wife, overwhelmed and confounded, cling to me as though she sought everything that still attracted her to the world with me, powerless to find it in this tumult of life.

I did not remain in the city a day, knowing everything that here preys upon the inexperienced arrival, but went directly to one of those vaguely scattered villages in the immediate vicinity of the town, where spots of nature, still wild or again run wild, can be found in the midst of the remote, neglected precincts of a quickly and carelessly growing human colony. There in the woody, rocky territory little, dingy, wooden houses are to be found, built of unsightly boards, outwardly no better than sheds or barns, as though put up temporarily by people who would probably move on further soon - houses that one may occupy for comparatively little money.

It did not look inviting for a woman accustomed to the choice solidity of a Dutch house, and the well-sustained intimacy of a Dutch landscape, where man and nature through long-continued symbiosis have grown together in a harmonious union.

Everywhere all through the woods were tumbledown houses, heaps of rubbish, crockery, old iron and dirt, trees chopped down and left to rot, burnt underbrush, annoying signs of the proximity of a heedless, careless, prodigal human world. And close by, between long rows of signboards, monstrously drawn and painted in glaring colors, rushed the trains, besmirching everything with their smoke.

But after all it was a home, and with all the energy that the long years of suffering had left in her, Elsje joyously began to turn the dear illusion of these years of pining and waiting into reality.

And when the humble dwelling had been made somewhat habitable, when there was a pantry stocked with provisions, an extremely fresh and spotlessly-kept bedroom, a table with a cover upon which the kerosene lamp threw its circle of light at night, so that I could sit and read the paper while Elsje sewed and mended busily, her head full of tenderly solicitous domestic thoughts, and when to the great satisfaction of the housewife a young negro girl had been found who came daily to help a few hours, thereby giving to the household, according to Dutch ideas, a necessary air of completeness - then I saw upon Elsje's wan countenance and in her clear, dark-ringed eyes a light that shone out above all gloomy memories or sad forebodings.

Only then I saw her faithful, loving nature in its perfect radiant glory, but also, alas! with the distressing realization of its frailness.

XXIX

The so universally-recognized type of human excellence indicated by the term "gentleman," cannot go hand in hand with true originality that makes itself prevail. For one of the chief characteristics of the gentleman is the respect for group ideas, the obedience to the voice of the herd; while the characteristic quality of the Original is precisely his breaking away from the group union, his reversing of ideas, his making himself obeyed instead of obeying.

The seceder who is not able to change the ideas of the group and to make the herd follow, is annihilated and deserves annihilation. In the human economy he is only harmful and his existence is unwarranted.

The gentleman on the contrary has a pre-eminently useful and important function. He is that member of the group who without separating from the union retains most of the original element. He combines the highest possible originality with the strictest subordination to the group nature, which only very few exceptional natures can defy with impunity. He changes nothing, but he inclines toward the original, thus making the entire herd more adaptable to change, while be lacks the ever-dangerous tendency of the originals to break loose, and keeps alive in the herd the lofty, indispensable virtue of respecting and upholding the sacredness of the union.

The more the group ideas diverge from the elemental ideas of human nature, the rarer the type of "gentleman" becomes in the group. And so my little brother Shaw's lament that the true English gentleman has become extinct is comprehensible, as in the entire tremendous herd of the nations of West-European or Anglo-Saxon civilization, ideas are current which every original immediately recognizes as conflicting with the nature of humanity, as hostile to Christ.

The term "un-Christian" is with just consistency applied to them. Un-Christian means the enriching oneself at the cost of others, the enriching oneself by means of craft, the enriching oneself without bound or measure. In many groups of ancient times these things were not lawful. But the great herd of the nations calling themselves Christian, include these so unmistakably un-Christian actions among the lawful, even honorable and generally admitted. And this moreover in the very worst form. It is one of the group-ideas of the great herd, that without oneself doing any work, one may enrich oneself unrestrictedly, by means of craft, at the expense of the very poorest. Only the unprecedented magnitude of the herd and its unparalleled firm coherence made so great a deviation from Primal Reason conceivable and possible.