“Unfortunately, those poets whom I mentioned earlier were also active. Gradually the old, reliable generation died out. The privy councillors and distinguished lawyers who had declaimed regular ballads, epic poetry, and philosophical analyses went one after another beneath the weeping willows in Darmstadt cemetery. A new generation grew up who no longer respected the boundaries of art forms, and in due course forced an entry into the Germania halls. One callow youth stepped onto the dais and announced that he was going to read his synthetic-exotic novel, but this consisted of only a single word, and a tasteless, obscene word at that. Another similar wretch introduced his loose and disjointed neoclassic-metapsychic dialogues, the content of which the human mind could neither grasp nor anticipate. A futuristic prodigy extolled in his fanciful verse war, the twilight of the universe, the annihilation of the Earth, and its simultaneous reconstitution too. The president clutched his head nervously. At the ends of lines this bloodthirsty futurist either crowed or imitated the explosions of an assortment of weapons—bangbangbang, dagadagadaga and the like. At every crow the president was obliged to open his eyes as if dawn had suddenly broken. That was the first time I saw that coolheaded man aroused. He assessed those immature figures indignantly. He didn’t find fault with their literary tendency, nor yet with their views of the world. He approved them just like any other literary tendency and worldview. He merely dubbed them tactless and ill bred, and — let’s admit it — he was right.
“Such things were certainly a strain on his nerves. He often looked pale and worn out. But — as I’ve said — he wasn’t president only there. If he’d had three or four lecture sessions in a day, he was fresh again and went home as if he’d emerged from a tempering steel-bath to start work again next day with renewed vigor. Furthermore, he was never put out. He made good his deficiency anywhere. Should need arise, he could sleep anywhere at all, in the theater, during gala performances, during the noisiest revolutionary scenes, when the masses, freed from their chains, were howling and cheering freedom, equality, and fraternity, in the Opera, during the Twilight of the Gods, to the sound of kettledrums and trumpets, indeed, even when exhibitions were being opened, if for no more than a couple of minutes, in the standing position like the soldiers that were driven to death in the Russo-Japanese war. Once I saw him at a reception given by the duke of Hessen, where I’d sneaked in as the representative of a Hungarian paper. The duke came up and greeted him. He was an admirer of his. He immediately brought over his enchanting young wife, who with her bare neck and bare shoulders floated among the glittering flood of light from the chandeliers like a bittersweet swan. The Duchess took the president’s arm and got him to take her to a rococo divan embroidered with pink roses and with a gilded back. She sat him down and sat beside him. She began to chat to him. The president closed his eyes. The Duchess chattered on, laughing from time to time in her ringing contralto voice from behind her diamond-studded feather fan. Baron Wüstenfeld, who was an aristocrat and a recognized witty conversationalist, nodded. By then, however, he was asleep. The most beautiful and most décolleté young women had the same effect on that veteran philosopher as the strongest narcotic. He took every opportunity to recover from the exertions of public life, even the receptions which he likewise held as a matter of conscience at home. Many of the city’s poor also called on him because of his great influence. He received and listened to everyone. In this likewise he had his own system. The widow dressed in mourning, tear-soaked handkerchief at the ready, would plead for his support, implore him to help her, and ask his permission to state the facts of her situation. When the Baron, with a cold and gracious nod, had given his consent, the widow would excuse herself and emphasize that ‘I’ll be brief, very brief,’ and he, who knew that in all cases that meant ‘I’ll be long, very long,’ would close his eyes and then in his sleep, thanks to his tremendous experience, would nod frequently at the right places, sometimes even simulate attention, and sleep quietly for as long as was necessary, so that when he awoke, refreshed and rejuvenated, at almost the final word, he was able charmingly to reassure the grieving, prostrate widow that ‘he would do all that was possible on her behalf,’ knowing beforehand that he would do nothing. This, however, was not bad faith on his part, because the president also knew that those who were so foolish as to canvass the support of others were always doomed, under sentence of death, couldn’t be helped, weren’t even worth helping, because they were nothing but self-deceivers, so feeble that they weren’t even capable of self-deceit and went to others to deceive them instead of themselves, and that they only expected humbug, delusion, and opium, with which the president was not ungenerous. Nor were they ever disappointed. He was respected more and more, his reputation grew and grew, he was considered a charitable man, a gentleman from head to toe, and was loved everywhere.
“How much I loved him can’t be expressed in human words. I only emphasize that so that you can understand what comes next. Slowly the year went by. Summer came. Every theater, school, and cultural association closed its doors, including the Germania. No lectures were given anywhere. Lecturers rested on their laurels and read one another’s works in order to give out as their own the ideas that they found there, in brief, to gather strength. I put my knapsack on my back and went walking in the wild, romantic country around Darmstadt. One morning in July I had just set off for the Ludwigshöhe to see the view from the tower there, and was tramping briskly through the Luisenplatz with my genial fellow students, singing the Wacht am Rhein and other stirring patriotic songs, when suddenly a truly disturbing sight met my eyes. Two Red Cross nurses in uniform were leading a human wreck along the sidewalk, or rather dragging him, holding him up, like a cripple who could do nothing for himself, who lacked even the strength to walk. I won’t tell you to guess who it must have been. That’s what stupid narrators do who seem to think that their readers are equally stupid. You, quick-witted as you are, have probably guessed straightaway that it was Baron Wüstenfeld, of whom I’ve been speaking, the president, our president. I swear to you, however, that for a moment I didn’t recognize him. That otherwise robust, sprightly, resilient old man had become dreadfully emaciated, a shadow of his former self. His legs were giving way under him like the slender rods of a photographic tripod. He looked like a ghost. What more can I say? He was a pitiful sight.
“The president was suffering from insomnia. Those who are ignorant of this complaint make light of it. They think that if someone can’t sleep, let him stay awake and sooner or later he will go to sleep. The same goes for lack of appetite too. If anyone has no appetite, let him not eat and he’s sure to become hungry. The only thing is, both conditions can have a fatal outcome. Such was the president’s malady. For weeks he’d been fidgeting in fevered wakefulness, tossing and turning on his pillows without sleep ever coming to his eyes. And so German medicine was confronted with a serious, incomparably awkward case and for the time being could do nothing about it.
“As you can imagine, all the doctors in Darmstadt and Germany flocked to the patient’s bedside. Dr. Weyprecht, the celebrated general practitioner, attributed the president’s insomnia simply to nervous exhaustion brought on by years of unremitting intensive work. He prescribed that for the time being he should abstain strictly from all excitement, all forms of intellectual stimulus, even forbidding him to read the papers, and recommended that he should relax, listen to cheerful music, take a longish drive every day in his four-horse carriage, and for seven minutes daily — and no longer — take a little stroll in Luisenplatz, near his mansion, on the arms of those scientifically trained and absolutely reliable nurses in whose company I saw him that July day. Professor Dr. Finger, lecturer on gastroenterology at Heidelburg University, prescribed a diet of raw food — rye bread, fruit, and yogurt — with once a day (at seven in the morning) a gentle purgative and once a day (at seven in the evening) an infusion of camomile at 90 degrees, flavored with a couple of drops of lemon juice. Professor Dr. Gersfeld — the famous Gersfeld, who was summoned by telegram from Berlin University — spent several days examining the patient and only then reached a decision and made a statement. He ordered warm hip baths, which he prepared himself in the presence of the nurses. These had to be gradually cooled, then heated again, then cooled once more, but this time suddenly. Meanwhile a cold compress was applied to the head and changed every three minutes. The patient performed gentle exercises before retiring, and as soon as he was in bed a modern head-cooler of German manufacture was put on him, in which cool water ran through tubes, pleasantly chilling the bones of the skull and the agitated brain. After explaining these operations in great detail several times and causing the nurses to repeat them, the professor returned calmly to Berlin, but the patient still got no sleep. Dr. H. L. Schmidt, who was a neurologist, tried with narcotics — sodium bromide, veronal, chloral hydrate, and trianol, at first in small doses, later huge ones — but change the drugs and mix them though he might, he achieved no result. Dr. Zwiedineck, Dr. Reichensberg, and Dr. Wittingen, Jr., all three neurologists of high renown, made some use of psychoanalysis, likewise with no effect. The president became weaker and weaker. By now it was whispered in Darmstadt that the doctors had given up.