"He had arisen, but dared not touch her. They looked at one another however and each knew how it stood with the other. He had again the look which he had revealed once in the morning, a presuming look, confident of victory, such a look as if he would say, "I know well enough how such a maidenly scorn is to be interpreted." But her eyes said, "I am too proud to love you." She went slowly into the darkness of her room as if she would give him time yet to say something or to long after her. He was however too slow for that and laughed in confusion."
The night fell upon them, a wonderful still night. "I will take one more look at the moon," thought Joern Uhl and took his telescope. He went through the middle door with as little noise as possible, but the door of Lena"s room stood open and she appeared upon the threshold and leaned against the side post. "Are you still awake?" he asked anxiously. "It is not yet late."--"The sky is so clear. I want to look at the stars once more. If you wish you may come with me." At first she remained standing, then he heard her coming after him. When he had directed his telescope to a nebulous star he invited her to look in. She placed herself so awkwardly that he laid his hand on her shoulder and asked her, "What do you see?"--"Oh!" she said, "I see--I see--a large farmhouse, which is burning. It has a thatched roof. Oh!--Everything is burning; the roof is all in flames. Sparks are flying about. It is really an old Ditmarsh farmhouse."--"No, my girl, you have too much imagination, which is bad for science.--What else do you see?"--"I see--I see--at one side of the farmhouse a plank which is dark; for the burning house is behind it. But I can look deep into the burning hall. Three, four sheaves have fallen from the loft and lie burning on the blazing floor. Oh, how frightful that is! Show me another house which is not burning.--Show me a house, you know, show me a farmyard just where they are who hunt up the calves." He laughed merrily. "You huzzy," said he, "you might well see your three-legged stool in the sky, not? So, high overhead!"--"You should have had the three-legged stool. I do not forget you that day, you ... and how you looked at me. That you may believe."
He had never yet let anyone share in his observations. Now he marveled and was pleased at her astonishment and joy. And then he showed her the moon. He placed her and held her again by the arm as if she were an awkward child. She was astonished at the ma.s.ses on it: "What are those?
Boiling things, like in our copper kettles? Exactly. What if it hung brightly scoured over our fireplace and tomorrow morning the fire shone up upon it."--"The boiling things are mountains and valleys.--And now you have seen enough and spoken wisely enough. Go inside. You will be cold and then you will dream again and see in the dream I do not know what. Will you be able to sleep?"--"I will try." He wanted again to reach out his hand to her but his high respect for her held him back. He thought he should not grasp her thus, along the way as it were. "Make haste," he said, "to get away."
She went and he remained to pursue his studies. So the time pa.s.sed. He had grown eager and busied himself noiselessly with his telescope. "And he thrust aside once more that young life, which an hour ago had breathed so very near him and came again to the old beaten track of thought that the old Dreier was right. "Don"t do anything foolish, Joern."--And yet, "Fine she is and good. Happy the man about whose neck her arms lie.--What precious treasure must those eyes hold, when they can look with such frank confidence at a man.""
About him now were only the customary sounds of night. Suddenly it was as if near by over the house roof and then at the side at the wall of the house he heard the soft cry of a goose and the weak flapping of wings. And "as he looked, there stood under the house roof in the bright moonlight a white human form, with one hand over the eyes and with the other feeling along the wall, as if it would enter the house where there was however no door. It spoke in excited hurried words, "The calves are in the garden; you must be more on the watch. Get up Joern and help me."
Joern Uhl came in three long strides over the turf and softly called her name: "I am here.--Here I stand.--It is I.--So! so!--Now be still.--It is I.--No one else is here." She was speechless and began to rub her eyes with the back of her hand, as a child rubs the sleep out of its eyes, and she fretted also in childish fashion. Then he embraced her and told her again where she was, and led her to the stable door seeking to comfort her. "Look, here is the door of the stable. Here you have gone through, you dreamer; you have gone all through the stable in your sleep. Have you been seeking the moon calves? Ah you foolish child!--So, here you need not be anxious. You will straightway be back in your room." When she finally clearly recognized her situation, she was frightened, flung her hands against her face and uttered mournful cries.
"Oh, oh, how frightful this is!" But he caressed her, took her hands from her face and said to her feelingly, "Now stop that complaining. Let it be as it is." So they came to the open door, which led to her room.
It must have been a remarkable night, for not only had half the calves in the pasture broken out and in the morning were actually standing in the garden and the court, but the boy this night of all nights had not come home, but only returned in the early morning twilight."
The next morning Joern Uhl went to the parish clerk that the banns might be published for him and the nineteen year old Lena Tarn. He was almost embarra.s.sed when he came again before her, "I should merely like to know what you think of me." As she remained speechless, he came nearer. "You have always been a great heroine, especially to me. Hold your head high and make it known that I am right." She was still silent, merely pressed both hands to her temples and stared into the glowing hearth. Then he drew one of her hands down softly from her hair, seized it and went with her over the vestibule, through the door communicating with the front of the house. She followed him pa.s.sively, her eyes upon the ground and the other hand still on her hair. In the living room he led her to the large chair which stood by the window and forced her into it. "So," said he softly, "here we are all alone, Lena. Here in this chair has Mother sat many a Sunday afternoon. You now belong in it." Still she said nothing. "I have been to the parish clerk and arranged everything and the wedding will be in June. Have you nothing to say yet?" Then she seized his hands and said softly, "As you think, it is all good so." And she covered her face with her hands and wept. Then he began to stroke her and kiss her. "Child, only cease your weeping. You are my fair little bride. Only be happy again." And in his distress he said, "I will never do it again. Only laugh again." At last when he could think of no more cajoling names, he called her "Redhead." Then she had to laugh, for that was the name of the best cow, which stood first in the stalls. Now she lifted her head and gazed long at him without moving. Thus Joern Uhl came rightly to that tenderness and comfort which he thought he deserved.
I have only a little to add that is important for our theme. As a young wife also Lena Tarn was busy the whole day, working from early to late without rest. The work flew from her hand. And when her confinement was over, she got up the sixth day, against the earnest warning of the housekeeper, cared for her boy alone the whole day, went even to the kitchen and carried water for his bath. Joern Uhl allowed it. For he was proud to have such a strong wife, "not so affected as the others." It led however to her death. Somehow she must have become infected, for soon after a severe childbed fever broke out.
Even as a young wife she, the poor humble cottager"s daughter whose childhood was pinched by bitterest need, shed a wealth of love and joy upon all who dwelt about her. Yet now, "she, the friendly one, who had never caused suffering to any one, went in her fever delirium to every one in the house, even the smallest servant boy and to every neighbor and begged their forgiveness, "if I have done anything to hurt you in any way." Towards morning she became quieter but it was the exhaustion of death and she spoke with great difficulty. Her husband must "tell Father that she had loved him." Joern Uhl sobbed violently: "Who has never spoken a kind word to you, poor child." She tried to smile. "You have had nothing but toil and work," he said. Then she made him understand in labored speech that she had been very happy." The last fever phantasies finally put her back into her childhood. Her love went out to the old teacher Karstensen, then again to Joern Uhl, until she was finally led through angels to a further father-incarnation, to the dear G.o.d. "It came to her like peace and strength. Clasped by many hands and led forward, she came to an earnest, holy form who leaned forward and looked kindly upon her. Then she stretched her hand out and suddenly she had a great bunch of glowing red flowers in her hand. She gave them to him saying, "That is all that I have. I pray you let me remain with you. I am fearfully weary. Afterwards I will work as hard as I can. If you would like to hear it, I will gladly sing at my work.""
Scarcely in any other tale is the fierce strife between the clearly active s.e.xual longing, and the conscious s.e.xual denial present at the same time, as well as the final victory which the unconscious attains, so plainly shown as in Gustav Frenssen"s romance, where the moon walking, exhibitionistic woman completely overthrows the reasoning of the man. The poet expresses it clearly and decisively: They each knew the desire of the other. Joern Uhl saw through the meaning of a maiden"s scorn and Lena"s eyes said, I am too proud to love you, but I do love you. Yet opportunity must be given to the unconscious to break through victoriously so that the inhibiting reason shall be deprived of its power. Therefore the powerful increase of libido with the woman during the occurrence of menstruation and through the wooing of the boy, who lets the calves break out, in the man through the cold bath and furthermore in both through the seductive May air. Finally the moon acts directly with its light as a precipitating cause.
The night before she had spoken out loud in her sleep just as Joern Uhl went by to his room. He had spoken of it directly as the action of the moonlight, which she of course contradicted; she had been lying awake and heard the calves break out.[19] Then she takes the following night, when the housekeeper, with whom she slept, was sitting up nursing an old farmer and the boy had gone courting again, to approach Joern Uhl on her part as a moon walker, who knew nothing of what she did and could not be held responsible. More than this her unconscious had a fitting speech ready, the calves had broken out again.
[19] Has not the bringing in of these animals and of the word mooncalves a hidden closeness of meaning? The repet.i.tion twice of the same motive, the a.n.a.logy with the case at the beginning which I a.n.a.lyzed, and at last the fact that Lena, when she looked at the stars, wanted to see a farmhouse where some one was just driving out the calves, all this gives food for thought.
The breaking through of the motor impulse is also well grounded.
Everything with Lena Tarn is joy in muscular activity, the restless, almost unappeasable desire for work and pleasurable "getting things done," "exerting herself," the constant singing, the easy giving way to anger. Work is the only thing which she can carry on earnestly because in that she lives out in part her s.e.xuality, she meets every one else smilingly or angrily according to her mood. It is noteworthy too that her unquiet libido transforms itself toward Joern Uhl into anger and animosity and so much so that once in anger she addresses him as "thou"
and acts as if she were his beloved.
One thing is especially evident in this example of sleep walking and moon walking, the invariably infantile bearing of these phenomena. When Lena, walking in her sleep, was called by her lover, she rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand as a child rubs the sleep from its eyelids and fretted also in childish fashion. Then again there is her strange behavior when Joern announces that he has arranged for the publishing of the banns. The farmer had in a significant way put her literally into the mother"s place and then in the same manner shown tenderness toward her, stroking and caressing her, as he himself had once been treated by his mother. Still Lena, who already in the night responded to the sudden realization of her position with the cry, "Oh, oh, how frightful this is!" cannot yet quiet herself. It is hardly to be believed that a farm maiden would so lose control of herself at the thought of an illegitimate relationship, which furthermore was to be immediately legalized by marriage. Many things however point to this--I mention only her later fever phantasies--that she always felt inwardly guilty because she had been untrue to some one else, the first beloved of her childhood, her own father. Only when Joern Uhl on his part becomes a child and in his way solemnly declares, "I will never do it again," and in the end names her "Redhead," apparently a pet name of her parent, then she has to laugh and looks long at him without moving, wondering perhaps if he is the real father. After this everything falls into proper place. I can now somewhat extend the statement at the beginning of this section. Night wandering and moon walking have not only inner connections with the infantile but more exactly with the infantile erotic.
I will briefly mention still one circ.u.mstance in conclusion. The influence of the moonlight is but little touched upon in our tale. Joern Uhl speaks of it only once. There is on the contrary a connection with actual occurrences, a recent cause for Lena"s moon walking. She has looked at the moon through the lover"s telescope and received instruction in regard to it. That wakens the memory of the instruction of the old Karstensen, her teacher when she attended the folk school, from which we understand that he appears in the place of her father.
"MARIA," by Otto Ludwig.
Perhaps no poet has felt so deeply and expressed so clearly what const.i.tutes the fundamental problem of sleep walking and moon walking as Otto Ludwig in his youthful novel "Maria." This novel has, according to a letter from the poet, "sprung from the anecdote of the rich young linen draper, who was pa.s.sionately roused to commit an unnatural offence at sight of the landlord"s daughter laid out apparently dead in the room through which he was conducted to his own. As a result of this, when he put up there years after, he found her, whom he supposed to have been buried, a mother, who had no knowledge as to who was her child"s father."
This anecdote, which he learned from a friend, took such a hold upon him that he immediately wrote down not only what he had heard but the first plan, although upon the insistent protestation of that friend he did not work out the story as it had been first conceived nor so glaringly. "I saw," writes our poet, "at first only the psychological interest in this material. The problem was to present the story as well as possible and this was indeed a significant one for the narrator. A distinctly esthetic interest would not be possible in conjunction with that."
There is no doubt in the mind of the experienced psychoa.n.a.lyst that, when a poet is laid hold of in this manner by an anecdote, this only happens because his own significant infantile complexes are roused out of the unconscious. Also the transformations, not unworthy of consideration, which the poet makes with the story are highly indicative. The seemingly dead maiden becomes a moon walker, the landlord"s daughter is changed to the attractive daughter of a pastor.
"Out of the linen draper there is finally made a cultivated, artistically sensitive youth, who has in him much of Ludwig"s own personality" (Borcherdt). The finished romance the poet considered the best which he had so far created, it came nearest to his ideal of a story. Although his attempts always failed to find a publisher for the "Maria," the poet retained his love for this work all his life and it was one of the few productions of his youth which he occasionally still shared with his friends in his last years.
The theme of "Maria" is, as indeed the significant t.i.tle represents, the unconscious, not to say, the immaculate conception. It is unconscious because the heroine, drawn by the moon and walking in her sleep, comes to her beloved and becomes pregnant by him without a conscious memory of the experience. Furthermore the a.n.a.logy with the Mother of G.o.d becomes emphasized by the fact that in a picture "Mary and Magdalene" described at the beginning, the Queen of Heaven bears quite unmistakably the features of the heroine of the t.i.tle. The main event, with its results and discovery, is developed out of the character of both hero and heroine with extraordinary psychical keenness.
Eisener like Maria is the only child of rich parents. For both love manifests itself for the most part rather unfortunately. Apparently neither gets on well with the father and both have early lost their mothers. Only Eisener even yet clings with deepest veneration to the mother who taught him to revere all women and, judging from his words, her influence upon her husband and the son"s desire still appears.
"Whatever of good there is in me, I owe to women. The thought of my excellent mother restrained me from many an indiscretion, as also the teaching and the example of the wisest and best of men (the father).
This gentle power which is so sweet to obey and at the same time so full of reward! In loving surrender it obeys the man, while its divine power rules the man without his knowing it. The imperceptible but mighty influence of her gentle presence has determined his decision before he has comprehended it. It has fallen upon him in his anger like an angel before his own strength could arm itself, it has turned him to what is right and proper before he is conscious of the choice. Before her clear look confusion cannot exist, the coa.r.s.e word of insolence sinks back unspoken into the shame filled breast. The brightness of a lost paradise shines from her eyes upon the fallen bringing pain and warning, the consolation of eternal pity smiles upon the penitent. These are the suns about which the planets of greatness, honor and beauty revolve, lighted and warmed by them." Maria"s mother on the other hand is not praised by a single syllable. We do not discover when she died nor how old the little one was when she lost her natural protectress. Only indirectly can one make conjectures in regard to this peculiarly important point.
Maria was from an early age a marvelous child. "She spoke a language of her own, which only the initiated or a very poetic person could understand. All lifeless things lived for her; she transferred to flowers, trees, buildings, yes, even furniture and clothing the feelings of a human soul. She mixed sense impressions in her speech in the strangest fashion, so that she a.s.serted of tones that they looked red or blue, and inversely of the colors that they sounded cheerful or sad. A girl a few years older than she named her the blue song." Both phenomena, the attributing of life to inanimate things, to which one speaks as to beloved human beings, as well as the phenomenon of synesthesia, color audition and seeing of tone colors, are as we know positively today, to be referred back to erotic motives.[20]
[20] According to my psychoa.n.a.lytic experience children who cling so to inanimate things see in them either s.e.xual symbols or those things were once objects of their secret s.e.xual enjoyment. It may happen, for example, that such a child falls in love with the furniture, the walls of the room, yes, even a closet, stays there by the hour, kisses the walls, tells them its joys and sorrows and hangs them with all sorts of pictures. One very often sees children talking with inanimate things. They are embarra.s.sed and break off at once if surprised by their elders. If there were not something forbidden behind this, there would be no ground for denying what they are doing, the more so since in fairy tales beasts, plants and also inanimate things speak with mankind and with one another without the child taking offense at it.
The latter first becomes confused by the same action when he is pilfering from the tree of knowledge and has something s.e.xual to hide.
Hug-h.e.l.lmuth has convincingly demonstrated the erotic connection of the child"s enthusiasm for plants as well as the different synesthesias. (See her study, "uber Farbenh.o.r.en," Imago, Vol. I, pp. 218 ff. Abstracted in Psa. Rev., Vol. II, No. 1, January, 1915.)
"With Maria"s seventh year perhaps, the tendency to play and purposeless dreaming, which is always bound with such lively, mobile phantasy, gave place, to the astonishment of all, to an exactly opposite tendency. From this time she began to take root in life with all the intensity of her nature. Already in her twelfth or thirteenth year she looked after the father"s household, to the admiration of all who beheld her. A divine blessing seemed to accompany everything which she undertook; everything increased under her hands. She could in pa.s.sing enjoy herself well in the idealistic dreams of the poets and of her acquaintances, but her own peculiar element was reality."
What had produced this sudden turn about? I cannot escape the conjecture that here the death of her mother had a decisive influence and with it the necessity to take the place with her father of his wife. Her housewifely activity is noted first to be sure from her twelfth or thirteenth year. Yet I am of the opinion that she had already in her seventh year begun to play this role--in which year the death of her mother would be placed--only because she was too small it had been under the eye of a maid or housekeeper. My a.n.a.lyses of hysterics has taught me that so profound and sudden a transformation of the whole character always takes place upon definite erotic grounds and for a quite definite erotic purpose.
The earliest love of the tiny maiden belongs almost always to her own father, who is in truth her first beloved. One can often hear it from the child"s lips, "You know, Papa, when Mama dies then I will marry you." That is in the childish sense meant quite properly and literally.
The early, premature death of the mother gives reality to such infantile wishes, at least as far as concerns the care of the house. As soon then as Maria may begin to play this part, she fills it in a striking and inimitable fashion, although in years she is yet a mere child. She is altogether the mother in the care of a boy outside the family and this, as he quite rightly remarked, laughing boisterously and heartily, even where it is not necessary. Thus her first thought, when she spends her first night banished from home, is of "the poor father, who must go to bed without the little services to which he is so accustomed."
She possesses a maturity in the management of the household which few elders have. Everything goes on and is done without any one noticing that it is being done. "Is there anything more charming than this sixteen year old little house mother in her housekeeping activities?"
says one of her admirers. "Just look, let her do what she will, she accomplishes it in the best way and at the same time most beautifully."
She is quite contented in the position which she has made. Her eroticism seems completely satisfied. "She is psychically yet so little a woman that there is not the least s.e.xual inclination in the charm that infuses her and therefore her bodily development is overlooked. There is also no trace yet of that entrancing shyness which springs from the mere suspicion that there must be something else about the man." A friend of the family expresses it thus: "When one considers the repose, the self possession of her nature, the freedom from constraint and the spirituality of it, one might almost believe that _she was not originally of this earth but perhaps a native of the moon, which seems to exercise more influence upon her than the earth_." Every trace of dreamy maiden phantasies, which represent nothing but unconscious love desires, was wanting in her. What she formerly possessed of these was now completely bound with her care of the father.
Her erotic nature is for the time satisfied and needs nothing more to veil it and has nothing to wish for. Therefore she has on the one hand kept childhood"s clearness of vision, before which there can be no deceit, on the other hand unbroken contentment with herself and all the world as well as the capacity to forgive immediately every wrong suffered. According to the picture drawn by the poet of the pa.s.sionate nature of the father, which is capable of hurrying him, the pastor, into reviling G.o.d, it seems to me plain why Maria, if she suffered wrong, "is distressed merely over the remorse which the other one, she knows, must feel, when he has finally come to an insight and to reflection." This is nothing else than the father"s voice, who had once done wrong to his child and had in a later searching of heart repented of it. Maria, with such early satisfaction of her feelings of love begged "even as a child for nothing which the parents had to refuse her. If she had any need it was to be busy, to take care of the order and the nourishment of the house, the satisfaction and welfare of the inmates. Where she could love, she was happy and at home. Yet even the love for her father never proclaimed itself pa.s.sionately but always rather in unwearied attention and concern for his smallest need, which only she might suspect as well as for that which manifested itself actively." For herself she scarcely had any wants. A piece of bread and two apples satisfied her as her day"s nourishment, which is typical for the hysteric anorexia and perhaps merely signifies the unconscious wish to cost the father as little as possible. Just one single characteristic was wanting for her perfection, the soft, clinging, typically feminine characteristic. This also becomes understandable when one considers that all eroticism toward the father is inhibited in its s.e.xual goal, and may manifest itself only intellectually on account of the incest barrier, at least as far as it comes into consciousness.
The womanly within her shall nevertheless find release through the young Eisener. I have mentioned above how he hung upon his mother. As the early inclination of the small maiden is generally toward the father, so the first love of the boy is for the mother. It is she who teaches him to love and to seek the woman of his heart according to her own image.
Later, just before p.u.b.erty we might say, the boy becomes acquainted with the secrets of s.e.xual life, then, clinging to certain impulses of his childhood, he begins to desire the mother also in the newly acquired sense, while he begins to hate the father as a favored rival, who stands in the way of this wish, and develops a conscious antagonism toward him.
He falls, as we say, under the domination of the Oedipus complex. Yet the wishes toward the mother go as a rule no further, since meanwhile the incest barrier has already for a long time been erected. Through this the boy is compelled to submit the mother complex to a splitting.
For a moment the phantasy may come to him that the mother shall conduct him into the s.e.xual life--a feature not wanting in any youth--but it is now decidedly rejected or more typically displaced upon those women who make of love a profession and actually take care to initiate the youth into the s.e.xual life. For this reason the remainder of the mother complex is idealized and the mother transformed to a pure virgin woman, toward whom no man dares direct his desire. Similarly is it with the loved one, whom one chooses after the pattern of the mother.
So Eisener expresses himself warmly. "Maria is not made for love, only for reverence."
Yet without the child"s craving for the mother[21] he would not have become a compulsive neurotic,[22] with all the hypermorality of the latter, pride in his moral purity and extravagant self reproaches, even a l.u.s.tful self laceration after he had at one single time been overpowered by sensuality. Furthermore his lack of resoluteness, decisiveness and courage is not, as he mentions, the result of his myopia but of his neurosis. He has developed himself, out of an unconscious rivalry, in direct contrast to his intensely narrow-minded father. The latter was only a tradesman, who set his comfort above everything, for whom art had value only in so far as it increased his own enjoyment of life. So painting becomes the son"s chief delight in spite of his exaggerated myopia or perhaps just on account of it. He bore his father"s tyranny with difficulty[23] and with inner protest.
His tendency toward the free kingdom of art stood in contrast to him, and in the same way he sought on the other hand a subst.i.tute for the mother in every woman. He offered up for his sin the dreams of his youth when he first believed that his moral nature was stained and became as a result, as even the elder feels uneasily, an over obedient son.
[21] One thinks of Eisener"s panegyric: "Before her clear look confusion cannot exist, the coa.r.s.e word of insolence sinks back unspoken into the shame filled breast. The brightness of a lost paradise shines from her eyes upon the fallen bringing pain and warning, the consolation of eternal pity smiles upon the penitent."
[22] Like Otto Ludwig himself.
[23] The well-known psychic overcompensation in congenital organic inferiority.
How had this so easily befallen him with a mother so deeply honored!
Around her spun all the boy"s love desire and twined itself about her, and all that lava heated feeling belonging so peculiarly to the child alone. He had hung upon that idol the longing of his heart, the phantasies of a power of imagination l.u.s.tfully excited, which is not indeed wanting in the best of children, although commonly these are inhibited, and later even completely forgotten because of restraining moral impulses. Therefore the memory of the highly honored mother is awakened not only through Maria, the pure one, but also through Julie, who comes into contact with his sensual desire and the unclean childish phantasies slumbering in the last a.n.a.lysis behind this. It is interesting how strikingly the poet is able to point out that double emotion in Eisener"s soul.
There the moral restraining impulses were first crowded back by the wine plentifully pressed upon him, which he, accustomed from his early years to moderation, could tolerate in only the smallest amount. Now "the sly Julie seemed to him ever more charming. A play of glances began between the two, which appeared to make the young hunter jealous. On the other hand Eisener himself felt something similar when his neighbor on the left addressed to the earnest Maria words which did not conceal the liking she had inspired. He listened to her replies almost with fear and was delighted that there was not audible in them the least response to this inclination, and then he wondered at himself over this same division in his nature. In Julie"s dark eyes glowed a flame, of which he felt how it kindled him and that its fire must attract more and more to itself without his being able to defend himself from it, yes, without his wishing to be able to do it." To be sure when "the slender Maria stood like a holy picture behind Julie, the alluring child of the world with all her seductive graces sank low in value in contrast to the former. He felt the need to be open with himself." Transparency was a necessity to him from his youth, as an inheritance from his wise mother.
"Then Breitung thrust with his gla.s.s against Eisener"s refilled one.
Laughing and drinking he found the motley interchange of the liveliest ideas outwardly, which already had taken the place of quiet thought, soon becoming less and less menacing and finally even agreeable and desirable."
His s.e.xual excitement, heightened besides through the plentiful indulgence in alcohol and the general boisterousness, was brought to a high pitch by an episode with the pa.s.sionate Julie. Eisener had to leave the room with her during a social game. "A strange thing happened to him, for as he bent down in the adjoining room in the dark to the quick breathing Julie, instead of her ear her burning mouth met his mouth, and the soft pulsating form fell as if fainting into his arms. Wrestling with himself, striving to keep his senses, he seized her arm involuntarily and stood again with her in the a.s.sembly room before he was conscious what it was all about."
Is not this behavior of the youth burning with desire peculiarly strange? What if behind it there is fixed a memory perhaps of a scene with the mother, who brought him to his senses by seizing his arm? Yet, it might always be so for him, he had found the power once more to withstand the hot temptation. Not to be sure without subsequent regret.
For when he later sought his room he could not go to sleep and "his phantasy conjured up again, as often as he resisted it, that dark room about him and the bewitching Julie in his arms. He regretted a thousand times, so much did he distress himself, his joy at his instinctive flight, that he had not drunk that sweet poison to the full, whose mere touch had brought his whole being to this feverish pulsation."
He sought now to find cooling for his heated blood in the garden, and in fact the fragrance of the flowers and the rustling of the leaves so soothed his excited mind that gradually the sense of a pleasant languor came over him. In a half unconsciousness he went upstairs again and back to bed. He was just falling asleep when he saw a white form enter, whose features he could not make out because of his shortsightedness. As it disrobed and came toward him, he first, as if seeking for help, reached with his hands toward the side where his friend should be sleeping. He did not however find him, he apparently had been put into another room.
"The thought of being alone for the first time with a womanly being in the security of night crept over him at first like icecold drops, then like the glow of fire over all his nerves. His heart pounded audibly as the figure climbed into his bed. The strangeness and adventure of the situation was not fitted to work rationally upon the intoxicated man, whose excitement throbbed into his finger tips. The power of the warning inner voice disappeared with his reason and the strife was brief before nature came off conqueror."