Perhaps he was not mistaken in this comforting supposition. His appearance as a whole was still handsome and stately. Time had not marred the lines of his slender figure, no increase of flesh enlarged his girth, no weakness made his shoulders droop and rounded his back, and when dressed with exquisite taste, and carrying his head proudly erect, he walked with a light, elastic step through the streets or across the carpet of a drawing-room, he would have been taken at a distance, or if one was a little near-sighted, not only for a handsome man, but even for one still young.
He said this to himself when, after a few minutes of discouragement, he rose from the arm-chair, hastily completed his toilet, and again looked at the whole effect in the mirror, this time not close at hand, but from a distance of several paces.
Some one knocked at the door. "The doctor," said the servant’s voice.
"I’m coming," replied Baron Robert, hastening to open the door and enter the adjoining drawing-room, where Dr. Thiel was awaiting him. He came regularly one morning every week to see the baron before the latter went out; for Baron Robert was a little anxious about his health, and liked to be told by the physician, who was also his friend, that certain trifling symptoms—great thirst on a hot day, slight fatigue after a ball, a little heaviness in his limbs after a long walk, were of no importance.
"Well, how are you to-day?" cried Dr. Thiel, rising to meet him.
"Fairly well," replied Linden, clasping both his hands.
"Yet, surely you look rather downcast?" asked the physician.
"For good reasons," answered Linden sighing.
"What is the matter now? Have you no appetite after eating? Do you feel more tired at midnight than in the morning?"
"Don’t ridicule me. You don’t know what day this is."
Thiel looked at him inquiringly.
"My birthday," said Linden mournfully.
"Why, to be sure," cried Thiel, "let me see, what one is it?"
"No number," interrupted Linden quickly, covering his friend’s mouth with his hand.
"You’re worse than a coquette," remarked Thiel, pushing his hand away. He had had "an old coquette" on the tip of his tongue, but suppressed the adjective. "A man can speak of his age without regret, when he is only in the mid-forties."
"Not yet the middle, I beg of you," Linden eagerly protested, "I am forty-four years old to-day."
Thiel smiled. "Well, I wish you many happy----"
Linden did not let him finish. "Happiness! Happiness! Is there any happiness after youth is over?"
"Everything depends upon what is meant by happiness."
Linden did not seem to hear what Thiel was saying, but pursued his own train of thought. "How futile your science is! You find a bacillus here, a ptomain there. What use is that to me? None! Teach me how to keep young forever, then I shall have some respect for your staring into your beloved microscope. The ancients alone were right in that, as in everything else. To die young. In undiminished vigour. The gods can bestow no greater happiness. What is there to seek in life when youth has fled?"
"Nothing, of course, if, like a drone, we have but a single task in existence: to live. A drone must die, when it has performed its mission. I am not at all blind to the beauty of the butterfly, which lets its magnificent velvet wings glisten in the sunshine throughout a long summer day, and has no organs for receiving nourishment, but does nothing except hover around flowers and the females of his species, wooing and loving, and dies in the evening without ever waking from his ecstasy of delight. It is the same thing with the flower. It blooms, exhales its fragrance, displays beautiful forms and colours merely for the purpose of propagation, withering quickly when that purpose is attained. The butterfly and the flower are both beautiful. Yet, after all, they are inferior forms of life, and man is higher, though he does not exhale fragrance and usually possesses no velvet wings."
"Is it so absolutely certain that man is superior? For my part I envy the butterfly and the flower, which perish in the full glory of youth, beauty, and love. That is the way I have always imagined an existence worth living. A dazzling display of fireworks. A sudden flashing, flaming, crackling, and detonating amid the darkness. A triumphant ascent of glittering balls and serpents, before whose splendid hues the stars of heaven pale. At every rain of fire and explosion, a rapturous, ah! and a thunder of applause from the gaping Philistines, who are in a tumult of ecstasy at the sight, and thus, without cessation, have flash follow flash, and report report, in a continual increase of magnificence, until the closing piece on whose marvellous splendour darkness must fall with no transition. That is life. That is happiness. But the rockets must always be fully charged. Otherwise they will not fly upward amid universal admiration to the stars, but fizz a little, hop up with ridiculous effort, fall plump, and go out pitifully in a malodorous smoke. A dismal end."
Robert was silent a moment, evidently pursuing his picture in his mind. Then, as if it were the final result of his train of thought, he added:
"Yes, Doctor, if you could only put a fresh charge into a half-exploded rocket."
The doctor smiled.
"To remain always young, we need only do at every age what harmonises with it."
Linden looked disappointed. But Thiel, without allowing himself to be disturbed by it, continued:
"Are you not young at twenty? Well, play with a humming-top in the streets at that age, and every one who passes will exclaim: What an old clown! Aren’t you ashamed of yourself? At fifty you consider yourself old. If, at fifty, you are a commander-in-chief or a chancellor, everybody will say: So young a general; a minister so young!"
Linden rose and went to the window. Thiel followed, laid his hand on his shoulder, looked him directly in the eye, and said very earnestly:
"Believe me, dear Baron Linden, that is the secret of perpetual youth—there is no other. A man in the forties is not old—unless he cannot resolve to give up the conceits of a page."
"Always the same song!" Linden impatiently exclaimed. "Must I renounce love?"
"Yes," replied Thiel firmly.
"I must voluntarily renounce happiness?"
"In your case love is not always synonymous with happiness," said Thiel with a significant smile.
"You are particularly agreeable to-day," remarked Linden sullenly.
"I owe you the truth. It is a professional and, at the same time, a friendly duty," said Thiel, rising to go. Linden parted from him with a silent clasp of the hand.
"Renounce love! No. That he really could not do. Love was the sole purpose of his life which, without it, would seem as cold and gloomy as a grave."
He was a chosen vessel of pleasure, and apparently destined by nature to be borne through life in women’s arms, handsome, captivating, a flash of passion in his tender eyes, his lips yearning for kisses, regarded by the men with wrath and envy, by the women with glowing cheeks and bewildered hearts. When barely a youth, a page of the Grand Duchess, his attractive person and winning grace turned the heads of all the ladies of the court, and it was rumoured that a princess had been his first teacher in the arts of love and, even after decades had passed, still grieved over their memory. As the Hereditary Grand Duke’s adjutant, he had scarcely anything to do except to continue to compose his long love-poem, and add verse after verse. At thirty he resigned from active service, which had never been active for him, and became manager of the court stage. His brief love-conflicts and easy victories now had another scene for display. After the society of the court the dramatic arts: dancing, singing, acting without choice, or rather with the choice indued by the desire for beauty, and—change. The years elapsed like a series of pictures from the fairy-tale of Prince Charming. They formed a frieze of bewitching groups in all the attitudes which express wooing and granting, languishing and triumphing. Each year was a Decameron, each month a sensuous Florentine tale, with a woman’s name for title and contents. What a retrospect! His past life resembled a dream whose details blended indistinctly with one another, leaving only a confused recollection of sighs, kisses, and tears, melting eyes, half-parted lips, and loosened tresses, a memory as deliciously soft as a warm, perfumed bath, in whose caressing waters, in a chamber lit by a rose-hued lamp, one almost dissolves, and yields with thoughts half merging into slumber.