The Bride of Dreams | Page 5

faithfully, and strictly followed her
admonitions to piety, and the frivolous jokes which my father
sometimes made on that score I proudly and heroically met with
profound gravity.
But this chivalrous conflict was speedily ended. The tension became
aggravated so that the banquets ceased and my mother did not appear
for days, and only summoned me to her side for a few moments when
she would weep passionately and pray with me. Strange gentlemen
came for long and secret conferences; and one bleak winter morning,
very early, a large coach appeared in which my father and I departed.
Then there began for us two a restless life of wandering that continued
for years. We travelled through northern Africa, Asia Minor, through
all Europe, through America, and never did we remain in one place so
long a time that I could grow fond of it, or feel myself at home there.
As if by intentional design or driven by a constant unrest, my father
would always break up whenever an abode began to feel homelike to
me and I had found some friends in the vicinity, and it was wonderful
with what strength of mind he persevered in this irksome, arduous and
ofttimes even dangerous life.
We sometimes travelled through half barbarous countries with very
primitive means of conveyance. My father had no permanent servant
and would not suffer any woman to take charge of me. We were
together constantly, night and day, and he did for me all that a mother
could have done. He helped me to wash and dress, and even mended
my clothes. He gave me lessons, taught me drawing, music, various
languages, fencing, swimming and riding; but although I very much
desired to, he never permitted me to attend school anywhere. His
attention was never for a moment diverted from me, his care for me
knew no weakening, and yet we never became really intimate. I felt
that the old conflict was being carried on under conditions that were

much harder for me. He had parted me from my mother and now that I
stood alone, would vanquish me. He surely did not suspect that I would
understand it thus and would consciously carry on the strife. But
though I did not reason it out, my intuition clearly apprehended his
tactics, and I held out more obstinately than ever with all the
stubbornness of a child and the strength of mind which I had from
himself inherited.
On three types of humanity my father was not to be approached. Firstly,
the priests, the black ones, as he called them, whom he hated with all
the fierce vehemence of his race; and, in spite of me, he so successfully
inculcated into me his own aversion, that I cannot yet unexpectedly
behold a priestly robe without a sensation of shuddering as at the sight
of a snake. Secondly, the bourgeois, whom he called philistines, - the
humbly living, contented, narrow-minded, timid, - whom he did not
hate as much as he despised them with fervid scorn. And finally
women, whom he neither hated nor despised, but whom he feared with
a scoffing dread.
And now, looking back upon my youth from so great a distance, now I
understand that it was not only healthy, natural tenderness that drove
him to such exaggerated care for me, but bitter, impassioned feelings of
opposition and revenge born of mortifying and painful experience.
Priests, women and philistines had been too mighty or too cunning for
him; now he would at least keep me, his successor in the world, out of
their hands. That was the one great satisfaction he still sought in life,
more from grudge against his enemies than for love of me.
Besides there were inconsistencies in his character that I am now quite
able to explain, but which as a child, seemed very queer and shocking
to me. He posed as a free-thinker and took pleasure in ridiculing my
ingenuous piety. He called God a great joker, who made sport of men
and amused himself at their expense. "But he won't fool me," he would
say, "and I promise you that I'll tell him so straight to his face if I get
the chance of speaking to him hereafter." Only of natural science and
nature did he speak with respect. Nature, according to him, was always
beautiful and good where man did not spoil her. He called natural

science our only security in life, weapon and shield against priestly lies
and religious hypocrisy.
And yet my father frequently went to church, also taking me with him.
Wherever he went he never failed to visit the temples regardless of the
faith they confessed. He was very musical and he would pretend to go
chiefly for the sacred music. But in the Catholic