Hoofdstuk 10

I did not speak to him of the Lord — because he is Lutheran — but I worked upon his conscience and his sense of honor.

See here how I went about it, and note in passing how far one can get with a knowledge of human nature.

I had heard him say: auf Ehrenwort, and asked what he meant by it.

"Why," said he, "that I pledge my honor for the truth of what I say."

"That is a great deal," I returned.

"Are you so certain of always telling the truth?"

"Yes," he declared, "the truth is what I always tell."

When my breast glows ... The reader knows the rest.

"That is truly very fine," I said, and I played the perfect simpleton, as if I believed it. But in this lay precisely the subtlety of the snare I set for him — my aim being, without running the risk of seeing old Stern fall into the hands of Busselinck & Waterman, to put that young fellow firmly in his place after all, and to make him feel how great the distance is between a man just starting out — even if his father does do large business — and a broker who has frequented the exchange for twenty years.

For it was known to me that he had all manner of trashy verses by heart — he says: "by rote" — and since verses always contain lies, I was certain that I would very soon catch him out in an untruth.

Nor did this take long.

I was sitting in the side room, and he was in the parlor ... for we have a parlor. Marie was knitting, and he was going to tell her something.

I listened attentively, and when it was over I asked him whether he had the book in which the thing stood that he had just reeled off there.

He said yes, and brought it to me. It was a volume of the works of a certain Heine.

The next morning I handed him — to Stern, I mean — the following:

Reflections on the love of truth in someone who recites the following trash by Heine to a young girl sitting and knitting in the parlor.

On wings of song, sweetheart, I carry you away,

Herzliebchen?

Marie, your Herzliebchen?

Do your old folks know of this, and Louise Rosemeyer?

Is it proper to say such a thing to a child who, by something of the sort, might very easily grow disobedient to her mother — by getting it into her head that she is of age, because she is called: Herzliebchen?

What does it mean: to carry someone off on your wings? You have no wings, and no singing either.

Just try it once across the Lauriergracht, which isn't even very wide.

But even if you had wings, may you put such notions to a girl who has not yet made her confirmation? And even were the child confirmed, what does that offer to fly away together amount to?

For shame!

away to the meadows of the Ganges — there I know the loveliest place;

Go there alone, then, and rent yourself a lodging, but do not take a girl along who has to help her mother in the household!

But you don't even mean it! In the first place, you have never seen the Ganges, and so cannot know whether life is good there.

Shall I tell you how matters really stand?

They are all lies, which you tell for one reason only: because in all that versifying you make yourself a slave to meter and rhyme.

If the first line had ended on cake, wine, china, you would have asked Marie whether she'd come along to Broek, Berlin, China, and so forth.

You see, then, that your proposed travel route was not sincerely meant, and that the whole thing comes down to a feeble jingle-jangle of words without point or sense.

How would it be if Marie now actually took it into her head to make that absurd journey?

I won't even speak yet of the uncomfortable manner you propose!

But she is, Heaven be thanked, too sensible to long for a land of which you say:

There lies a red-blossoming garden in the quiet moonlight; the lotus flowers await their dear little sister; the violets giggle and nuzzle and gaze up at the stars; secretly the roses whisper fragrant fairy-tales in one another's ear.

What did you mean to get up to in that garden by moonlight with Marie, Stern?

Is that moral, is that proper, is that decent?

Do you want me to have to stand ashamed, just like Busselinck & Waterman, with whom no respectable trading house will have anything to do, because their daughter ran off, and because they are bunglers?

What should I have to answer if I were asked on the exchange why my daughter stayed so long in that red garden?

For you do understand this much, that no one would believe me if I said she had to be there to pay a visit to the lotus flowers which, as you say, have long been waiting for her.

Just so, every sensible person would laugh at me if I were foolish enough to say: Marie is there in that red garden — why red, and not yellow or purple? — to listen to the chattering and giggling of the violets, or to the fairy tales the roses whisper to one another secretly in the ear. Even if such a thing could be true, what good would it do Marie, if it all happens so secretly that she understands none of it?

But lies they are, feeble lies! And ugly besides, for take up a pencil and draw a rose with an ear, and see how that looks.

And what is the meaning of those Märchen being so düftend?

Shall I tell you that in plain, round Dutch?

It means that there's something fishy about those silly fairy tales ... that's what it is!

There the gentle, clever gazelles come bounding up and listen; and far off murmur the waves of the holy river...

There let us sink down beneath the palm tree, and drink in peace and love, and dream a blessed dream.

Can't you go to Artis — you've written to your father, haven't you, that I'm a member? — tell me, can't you make do with Artis, if you absolutely must see foreign animals?

Must it be precisely those gazelles by the Ganges, which after all can never be observed so well in the wild as in a tidy enclosure of tarred iron?

Why do you call those animals pious and wise?

The latter I'll let pass — at least they don't make such foolish verses — but: pious?

What does that mean!

Is it not a misuse of a holy expression that may be applied only to people of the true faith?

And then that holy stream?

May you tell Marie things that would turn her into a heathen? May you make her waver in the conviction that there is no other holy water than that of baptism, and no other holy river than the Jordan?

Is this not an undermining of morality, virtue, religion, Christianity, and decency?

Think all of this over once, Stern!

Your father is a respectable house, and I am sure he approves of my working so on your conscience, and that he gladly does business with someone who upholds virtue and religion. Yes, principles are sacred to me, and I have no qualms about saying outright what I mean.