“The sum of money so unexpectedly bestowed upon me, issuing from such tender and indulgent fairy or ladies’ hands,” I said, “I would like to leave without more ado in your charge, where it will surely be best preserved, since you have at your disposal the necessary fireproof and thief-tight safes, to keep your treasures from destruction, or from any abolition whatsoever. Besides, you pay interest. May I ask for a receipt? I assume that I have the liberty to withdraw, at any time according to my need or desire, from the large sum small sums. I would like to remark that I am thrifty. I shall know how to manage the gift like a steady and methodical man; that is, most cautiously. And I shall have, in a considerate and polite letter, to express my gratitude to my kind donators, which I think I shall do as soon as tomorrow morning, so that it does not get forgotten through procrastination. The assumption, which you just now voiced so frankly, that I might be poor, could however rest upon a basis of acute and accurate observation. But it suffices entirely that I myself know what I know, and that it is I myself who am best informed about my own person. Appearances often deceive, good sir, and the delivery of a judgment upon a man is best left to the man in question. Nobody can know as well as I do this person who has seen and experienced all sorts of things. Often I wandered, of course, perplexed in a mist and in a thousand vacillations and dilemmas, and often I felt myself woefully forsaken. Yet I believe that it is a fine thing to struggle for life. It is not with pleasures and with joys that a man grows proud. Proud and gay in the roots of his soul he becomes only through trial bravely undergone, and through suffering patiently endured. Still, on this point, one does not like to waste words. What honest man was never in his life without sustenance? And what human being has ever seen as the years pass his hopes, plans, and dreams completely undestroyed? Where is the soul whose longings and daring aspirations, whose sweet and lofty imaginings of happiness have been fulfilled without that soul’s having had to deduct a discount?”
Receipt for one thousand francs was handed out, or in, to me, whereupon the steady creditor and accounted competitor, namely no other than myself, was entitled to bid good day and to withdraw. My heart glad that this capital sum should fall to me, magically, as from a blue sky, I ran out of the high and beautiful vestibule into the open air, to continue my walk.
Add I would, can, and I hope may (since nothing new and shrewd strikes me at the moment), that I carried in my pocket a polite, a delicious invitation from Frau Aebi. The invitation card humbly requested me, and encouraged me, to be so good as to appear punctually at half past twelve for a modest lunch. I firmly intended to obey the summons and to emerge promptly at the time stated in the presence of the estimable person in question.
Since, dear kind reader, you give yourself the trouble to march attentively along with the writer and inventor of these lines, out forthwith into the bright and friendly morning world, not hurrying, but rather quite at ease, with level head, smoothly, discreetly, and calmly, now we both arrive in front of the above-mentioned bakery with the gold inscription, where we feel inclined to stop, horrified, to stand mournfully aghast at the gross ostentation and at the sad disfigurement of sweet rusticity which is intimately connected with it.
Spontaneously I exclaimed: “Pretty indignant, by God, should any honorable man be, when brought face to face with such golden inscriptional barbarities, which impress upon the landscape where we stand the seal of self-seeking, money-grubbing, and a miserable, utterly blatant coarsening of the soul. Does a simple, sincere master baker really require to appear so huge, with his foolish gold and silver proclamations to beam forth and shine, bright as a prince or a dressy, dubious lady? Let him bake and knead his bread in all honor and in reasonable modesty. What sort of a world of swindle are we beginning, or have already begun, to live in, when the municipality, the neighbors, and public opinion not only tolerate but unhappily, it is clear, even applaud that which injures every good sense, every sense of reason and good office, every sense of beauty and probity, that which is morbidly puffed up, offers a ridiculous tawdry show of itself, that which screams out over a hundred yards’ distance and more into the good honest air: ‘I am such and such. I have so and so much money, and I dare make so bold as to make an unpleasant impression. Of course I am a bumpkin and a blockhead with my hideous ostentation, and a tasteless fellow; but there’s nobody can forbid me to be bumpkinish and blockheaded.’ Do golden, far-shining, loathsomely glittering letters stand in any acceptable, honorably justified relation, in any healthy affinitive proportion to … bread? Not in the least! But loathsome boasting and swaggering began in some corner, in some nook of the world, at some time or other, advanced step by step like a lamentable and disastrous flood, bearing garbage, filth, and foolishness along with them, spreading these throughout the world, and they have affected also my respectable baker, spoiled his earlier good taste, and undermined his inborn decency. I would give much, I would give my left arm, or left leg, if by such a sacrifice I could help recall the fine old sense of sincerity, the old sufficiency, and restore to country and to people the respectability and modesty which have been plentifully lost, to the sorrow of all men who seek honesty. To the devil with every miserable desire to seem more than one is. It is a veritable catastrophe, which spreads over the earth danger of war, death, misery, hate, and injury, and puts upon all that exists an abominable mask of malice and ugliness. I would not have a simple workman a lord, nor a simple woman her ladyship. But everything nowadays is out to dazzle and glitter, to be new and exquisite and beautiful, be lord and lady, and so becomes horrible. But in time perhaps things will change again. I would like to hope so.”
Now, as will soon be learned, I shall on account of this haughty bearing, this domineering attitude, take myself to task. In what manner will also soon be shown. It would not be good if I were to criticize others mercilessly, but set about myself only most tenderly and treat myself as indulgently as possible. A critic who goes about it in this way is no true critic, and writers should not practice any abuse of writing. I hope that this sentence pleases all and sundry, inspires satisfaction, and meets with warm applause.
Left of the country road here, a foundry full of workmen and industry causes a noticeable disturbance. In recognition of this I am honestly ashamed to be merely out for a walk while so many others drudge and labor. I drudge away perhaps of course at times, when all these workmen have knocked off and are taking a rest. A fitter on his bicycle, a friend of mine from 135/III Battalion of the militia, calls to me in passing: “It looks to me you’re out for a walk again, working hours too!” I wave to him and laugh and blithely admit that he is right, if he thinks I am out for a walk.
“They can all see that I am going for a walk,” I thought to myself, and I calmly walked on, without the least annoyance at having been found out, for that would have been silly.
In my bright yellow English suit, which I had received as a present, I really seemed to myself, I must frankly admit, a great lord and grand seigneur, a marquis strolling up and down his park, though it was only a semi-rural, semi-suburban, neat, modest, nice little poor-quarter and country road I walked on, and on no account a noble park, as I have been so arrogant as to suppose, a presumption I gently withdraw, because all that is parklike is pure invention and does not fit here at all. Factories both great and small and mechanical workshops lay scattered agreeably in green countryside. Fat cozy farms meanwhile kindly offered their arms to knocking and hammering industry, which always has something skinny and worn-out about it. Nut trees, cherry trees, and plum trees gave the soft rounded road an attractive, entertaining, and delicate character. A dog lay across the middle of the road which I found as a matter of fact quite beautiful and loved. I loved in fact almost everything I saw as I proceeded, and with a fiery love. Another pretty little dog scene and child scene was as follows. A large but thoroughly comical, humorous, not at all dangerous fellow of a dog was quietly watching a wee scrap of a boy who crouched on some porch steps and bawled on account of the attention which the good-natured yet still somewhat terrifying-looking animal chose to pay him, bawled miserably with fear, setting up a loud and childish wail. I found the scene enchanting; but another childish scene in this country-road theater I found almost more delightful and enchanting. Two very small children were lying on the rather dusty road, as in a garden. One child said to the other: “Now give me a nice little kiss.” The other child gave what was so pressingly demanded. Then said the first: “All right, now you may get up.” So without a sweet little kiss he would probably never have allowed the other what he now permitted it. “How well this naive little scene goes with the lovely blue sky, which laughs down so divinely upon the gay, nimble, and bright earth!” I said to myself. “Children are heavenly because they are always in a kind of heaven. When they grow older and grow up, their heaven vanishes and then they fall out of their childishness into the dry calculating manner and tedious perceptions of adults. For the children of poor folk the country road in summer is like a playroom. Where else can they go, seeing that the gardens are selfishly closed to them? Woe to the automobiles blustering by, as they ride coldly and maliciously into the children’s games, into the child’s heaven, so that small innocent human beings are in danger of being crushed to a pulp. The terrible thought that a child actually can be run over by such a clumsy triumphal car, I dare not think it, otherwise my wrath will seduce me to coarse expressions, with which it is well known nothing much ever gets done.”