The Bride of Dreams | Page 8

paid with worthless assignments.
What my father let me gain for my trouble did not seem to me a fair
return, nor could he hold out to me any reasonable prospect of better
reward. The diversity of life, the beauty of the world which he obtruded
upon me so copiously would, as I approached maturity, have delighted
and comforted me. As a lad it vexed and wearied me.
I was a tall lad, a replica of my proud, dark father, as everyone said. I
remember the sally of an indignant Parisian street arab, who called after
me: "Hey, boy, why so high and mighty?" And in my own country,
where one turns more quickly to measures sharper than words, this
loftiness brought upon me even fiercer attacks. A country lad imitated
my proud bearing and pure Italian, getting for it a slap with a towel
which I carried on my way to bathe in the sea. On my return the answer
came - a stab in my back which for days forced me to assume a lowlier
bearing.
I had early grown accustomed to the attention we attracted wherever we
went. The father - always elegantly dressed, with his old-fashioned
pompousness and melancholy eyes - and the son - nearly as tall and
bearing a striking resemblance to him. Especially for women we were
subjects of interest. But my father never seemed to pay any attention to
this, nor did I ever see him come into closer contact with any woman.
But to me, long before I could appreciate the beauties of art and of
nature, a glance from the eyes of a woman was the most precious of all

life had to offer. That I primarily accounted as unalloyed gold
outweighing much anguish and trouble.
I will try to be exact and absolutely sincere. I may avail myself of that
privilege - old while I write, and dead when I shall be read. I am of a
very amorous nature and the thought of friend or sweetheart was
always an oasis in the desert of my thoughts. Even amidst the most
important cares and duties such thoughts were ever of unspeakably
greater interest and importance to me. They were never dull or tedious,
never bored me, and were my consolation in times of gloom and
discouragement. The pain they brought was also dear to me, and never
possessed the loathsome hatefulness of other barren vital pangs.
It is difficult for me to recall when the first beams of this great and
chiefest joy of life began to shine more brightly for me, but I cannot
have been much over five or six years old. I played the passive part at
the time, and it was the girl who chose me as her friend and invited the
attention which I right willingly bestowed. But when later I myself
went out to seek the joys of love, I thought only of boy friends. And it
was a boy, a tall pale Hollander and, as it now seems to me, certainly
not a very attractive lad, whom I approached one bright summers eve
wandering together in the starlight, with the proposition of eternal
friendship. The pale lad possessed what is called common sense and
replied that he had too vague a conception of eternity to dare accept this
proposal. Later, among women I have seldom met with such
conscientious scruples.
Our constant travelling made all these attachments very brief and
transitory and, as a child in search of love cares nothing for caste
prejudice, they were also very diverse, but therefore none the less
intense. I loved a nice brown-eyed and barefooted Livornian fisher lad,
because he was so strong and could row so well, and swim like a fish.
And later, when I was bigger, it was a young German travelling
salesman who taught me college songs and impressed me with his
show of greater worldly wisdom, that won my heart. In these relations I
was always the most ardent enthusiast, fervently pining, filled day and
night with the subject of my love. And it can still make the blood rise to

my wan cheeks when I think of the treasures of devotion that I
squandered on these unresponsive beings. But now I know too that I
may count myself lucky that they were so unresponsive. For through
this wandering life at my father's side I had remained green as grass,
and how easily one all too responsive might have turned the young
tender instinct, with which the Genius of Humanity has endowed us,
forever from its destined course to life-long torture. For we are all, man
and woman alike, born with a twofold nature, and the pliant young
shoot can so easily be contorted and its rightful growth permanently
warped.
The maiden