As regards the tree, the greed, the countryman, the transportation to Siberia, and the thrashing which the countryman apparently deserves because he fells the tree, I have perhaps gone too far, and I must confess that I let my indignation carry me away. Friends of beautiful trees will nevertheless understand my displeasure, and agree with my so energetically expressed regret. For all I care, the thousand lashes can be returned to me forthwith. To the expression “cretin” I myself deny applause. The expression is coarse, and I dislike it, and I therefore beg the reader’s forgiveness. As I have already had to beg his forgiveness several times, I have become quite a dab hand at self-excuse. “Unfeeling and impious owner” also I had no real need to say. The mind gets overheated, and this ought to be avoided. That is obvious. My grief over the downfall of a beautiful, tall, ancient tree can still stand, and I certainly make the worst of it; nobody can hinder me from that. “Kicked out of the parish” is an improvident phrase, and as for the thirst for money, which I have called vile, I suppose that I have myself at some time or another offended, fallen short, and sinned in this respect, and that certain wretchednesses and vilenesses have not remained utterly alien and unknown to me. These words show that I practice a policy of softheartedness, which has a beauty that is not to be found anywhere else; but I consider this policy to be indispensable. Propriety enjoins us to be careful to deal as severely with ourselves as with others, and to judge others as mildly and gently as we judge ourselves, which latter we do, as is well known, at all times instinctively. It is delicious, is it not, the way I neatly correct my mistakes and smooth over the offenses? In making admissions I prove myself peace-loving, and in rounding off the angles and making soft what is rough I am a subtle, delicate attenuator, show a sense of good tone, and am diplomatic. Of course I have disgraced myself; but I hope that my good will is appreciated.
If anybody still says now that I am indiscreet, imperious, and a despot blundering about at will, then I maintain, that is to say, I dare to hope that I have the right to maintain, that the person who says such a thing is sorely mistaken. With such continual considerateness and gentility, perhaps no other author has ever thought of the reader.
Well, now I can obligingly attend to a château and aristocratic palace, and as follows: I politely play my trump card; for with a half-ruined stately home and patrician house, with an age-gray, park-surrounded, proud knight’s castle and lordly residence such as now enters my view, one can make a great song and dance, excite respect, arouse envy, inspire wonder, and pocket the proceeds. Many a poor but elegant man of letters would live with the greatest of pleasure, the highest satisfaction, in such a castle, or stronghold, with courtyard and drive for haughty carriages embossed with coats-of-arms. Many a poor but pleasure-loving painter dreams of residing temporarily on delicious old-fashioned country estates. Many a city girl, educated but perhaps poor as a church mouse, thinks with melancholy rapture and idealistic fervor of ponds, grottoes, high chambers and placidities, and of herself waited upon by hurrying footmen and noble-minded knights. On the lordly residence I saw here, that is, rather in it than on it, could be read the date 1709, which naturally quickened and intensified my interest. With a certain rapture I looked as a naturalist and antiquary into the dreaming, ancient, curious garden, where, in a pool with a pleasant splashing fountain, I discovered and proved with ease the presence of a most peculiar fish, which was one meter in length; namely, a solitary sheatfish. Likewise I saw and established with romantic bliss the presence of a garden pavilion in Moorish or Arabian style, beautifully and opulently painted in sky-blue, mysterious star-silver, gold, brown, and noble, serious black. I supposed and sensed at once with the most subtle intelligence that the pavilion must date from, and have been erected in, about the year 1858, a deduction, conjecture, and scenting-out which perhaps entitles me sometimes confidently to read with a rather complacent expression on my face, and in a rather self-confident manner, a pertinent paper on the subject in the Town Hall Chambers, before a large and enthusiastic public. Then very probably the press would mention my paper, which could only mean an extreme pleasure for me; since sometimes it mentions all sorts of things with not even one small dying word. As I was studying the Arabian or Persian garden pavilion, it occurred to me to think: “How beautiful it must be here at night, when everything is veiled in an almost impenetrable darkness, when all around it is quiet, black, and soundless, pines gently towering out of the darkness, midnight feelings arrest the solitary wanderer, and now a lamp, which spreads a sweet yellow light, is brought into the pavilion by a beautiful, richly jeweled noblewoman, who then, impelled by her peculiar whim and moved by a curious access of soul, begins, at the piano, with which in this case our summerhouse must naturally be equipped, to play music to which, if the dream be permitted, she sings in a delightfully beautiful, pure voice. How one would listen there, how one would dream, how happy one would be made by this night music!”
But it was not midnight and far and wide neither a courtly Middle Ages nor a year 1500 or 1700, but broad daylight and a working day, and a troupe of people, together with a most uncourtly and unknightly, most crude and most impertinent automobile, which came my way, rudely disturbed me at my wealth of learned and romantic observations, and threw me in a trice out of the domain of castle poetry and reverie on things past, so that I cried out instinctively: “It really is most vulgar the way people impede me here from making my elegant studies and from plunging into the most superb profundities. I could be indignant; but instead I would rather be meek, and suffer, and endure with a good grace. Sweet is thought about beauty and loveliness that are passed away, sweet is the noble, pale image of drowned and perished beauty; but on the world around and on one’s fellow men one has not therefore the right to turn one’s back, and one may not think that one is entitled to resent people and their contrivances because they disregard the state of mind of him who is absorbed in the realms of history and thought.”
“A thunderstorm,” I thought as I walked on, “would be beautiful here. I hope I shall have the opportunity to experience one.”
To a good honest jet-black dog who lay in the road I delivered the following facetious address: “Does it not enter your mind, you apparently quite unschooled and uncultivated fellow, to stand up and offer me your coal-black paw, though you must see from my gait and entire conduct that I am a person who has lived a full seven years at least in the capital of this country and of the world, and who during this time has not one minute, let alone one hour, or one month, or one week, been out of touch or out of pleasant intercourse with exclusively cultured people? Where, ragamuffin, were you brought up? And you do not answer me a word? You lie where you are, look at me calmly, move not a finger, and remain as motionless as a monument? You should be ashamed of yourself!”
Yet actually I liked the dog, who in the loyal-hearted watchfulness and humorous repose and composure he displayed looked magnificent, uncommonly good, and because his eyes twinkled at me so merrily, I spoke with him, and because he really did not understand a word, I could venture to scold him, which however, as will have been observed from the comic manner of my address, cannot anyway have been meant unkindly.