Part 2

I now ask the way to the coal-mines, and this time, in order to make no mistake, I go the "five minutes' walk" which has been pointed out to me on foot. I walk for ten minutes, quarter of an hour, half an hour, till I come to an open plain, without a sign of buildings or chimneys to indicate the presence of a coal-mine. The plain, which is under cultivation, seems to stretch to infinity; there is not even a hut, and no one of whom to ask the way. It is the Devil who has played me this trick! I remain standing as though fast-bound and blinded, without being able to move a step forwards or backwards. Finally I return to the village, take a room, and have a good rest on a sofa.

After quarter of an hour I am roused out of my sad thoughts by a disturbance--a sound like that of hammering nails. Incredulous as to spirit-rappings, I attribute the phenomenon to malicious people or to greater ill-luck than usual. I ring, pay my bill, and betake myself to the station.

I have three hours to wait! That is a great deal when one is impatient, but there is no help for it. After I have spent two hours on a seat, a well-dressed female figure passes me, in order to enter into the first-class waiting-room. In the gait and manner of this lady and in her whole bearing was something that aroused vague recollections in me. Anxious to see her aspect from the front I watch the door, waiting for her reappearance. After waiting a long time I venture into the waiting-room. There is no one there at all, nor is there any other exit nor dressing-room. There are double windows, so that there is no possibility of her having gone out by them.

Do I suffer from optical delusion? Has anyone got the power to tamper with my faculty of sight? Can one make oneself invisible? These are unsolved questions which make me feel near despair. Am I mad? No, the doctors say I am not. There is inducement enough to believe in miracles.

If one may believe Swedenborg, I am a damned soul in hell and the Powers punish me ceaselessly and mercilessly. The spirits which I conjure up have no wish to enter the flask which I have unsealed.

I spend the evening of the same day in a good first-class hotel in the town of Malmö. At half-past ten they begin to split wood in the corridor without anyone objecting to it, and that in a continental hotel full of tourists! This is followed by dancing. Later on they turn a machine with wheel-work. I get up, pay my reckoning, and determine to continue my journey the whole night. Absolutely alone, in the cold January night, I drag myself on, with my carpet bag, under a pitch black sky. For a moment I think the best thing would be to lie down in the snow, and die. But the next moment I collect my strength, and turn into a deserted back street where I find an unpretending hotel. After making sure that I am not watched, I slink in through the door. Without taking off my clothes I stretch myself upon the bed, firmly resolved rather to let myself be killed than obliged to get up again.

There is a death-like silence in the house, and delightful sleep approaches. Suddenly I hear a sound as though an invisible paw was scratching in the paper covering of the ceiling immediately over my head. It cannot be a mouse, for the loosely hanging paper does not move; besides, it seems to be a fairly large paw, like that of a hare, or a dog. Till the grey of morning I lie awake, expecting to feel the claws in my flesh, but in vain, for anxiety is more painful than death.

Why do I not become ill after such tortures as these? Because I have to empty the cup of suffering to the dregs, in order that the punishments undergone may be equivalent to the wrongs committed. And it is really remarkable how I manage to endure the tortures; I swallow them down with a kind of grim joy in order to get done with them.

II

MY WRETCHEDNESS INCREASES

When the New Year with its numerous holidays has passed, I find myself one fine day alone. It is as though a hurricane had passed by; all are scattered, blown away, shipwrecked. My friend the doctor has entered the hospital as a patient. As a matter of fact, weakened by dipsomania, hard-pressed by poverty, and worn out by want of sleep, he is suffering from "neurasthenia." This is pitiful, and, instead of going to the tavern, I turn my steps to the hospital for an hour's conversation and society. In the café I am the only one who drinks anything alcoholic, for my three companions have taken the pledge. The poet has gone away. The young aesthete, the son of the Professor of Ethics, has been sent abroad in order to be freed from the evil companionship of the "seducer of youth," _i.e._ myself.

A doctor of philosophy is laid up through having broken his leg. At the same time it happens that the young chemist, the standard-bearer of the party of progress, falls ill and has to be treated for neurasthenia. He suffers from sleeplessness, attacks of nightmare and giddiness. All these sad events and others happen in the course of a month and a half. And what makes my situation insupportable is, that they attribute the blame more or less to me. I am the Evil One himself and have the evil eye! It is a good thing that they know nothing about the power of an evil will and the secret tricks of occultism and reject all ideas of it, otherwise they kill.

A depressing stagnation has settled down on the intellectual life of the University. There are no new productive ideas, no ferment and no movement. The natural sciences have suffered to fall into disuse the transformistic method which promised progress, and threaten to die of their common weakness. There is no more discussion, for people are agreed as to the futility of all efforts at reform. They have seen so many illusions perish, and in this condition of things the once great movement for liberty has dissolved or rather decomposed. The younger generation are waiting for something new without being clear as to what they want. Novelty at any price, whatever it be, with the exception of apologies and retreats! Forward to the unknown, no matter what, so long as it is not old! They want reconciliation with the gods, but they must be re-created or, rather, developed gods, who are up-to-date, have broad views, are free from petty prejudices, and intoxicated with the joy of life. The invisible powers have become all the more morose, envious of the freedom which mortals have won for themselves. Wine is poisoned, and causes madness instead of calling up pleasant visions. Love, regulated by social bonds, proves to be a life-and-death battle, and free love brings in its train nameless and numberless diseases, causes misery in homes, and its victims are execrated and outlawed. The period for experiments has passed away, and the experiments have produced only negative results. All the better for the men of the future who can derive wholesome lessons from the defeat of the advance guard, who have gone astray in the desert, and fallen in hopeless strife against superior force.

* * * * *

Lonely as I am, a wreck on a reef in the ocean, there are moments when I am seized with giddiness at the sight of the blue and vacant immensity. Is it the sky which reflects the outspread sea, or the sea which mirrors the sky? I have fled from men and men fly from me. In the loneliness which I longed for I am persecuted by a crowd of demons, and after all I begin to prefer the humblest mortal to the most interesting phantom. But when I look for a man, during the long evenings through the whole town, I find no one either at home or in the cafés.

But in the midst of my fated and inevitable need, Providence sends in my way a man, whose father I had in former times despised, both on account of his defective education as of his radical views, which had shut him out from the best social circles. Now came the recompense; I had rejected the father, although he was a rich man, and I was simply compelled to put up with the son. It must be added that the young man had as bad a name in the town as myself, and was doomed to equal isolation as a "seducer of youth." Our common misfortune causes us to form a real friendship. He invites me to share his house, he provides me with means of living, he watches over me as over a patient, and, as a matter of fact, the persecution to which I have been subjected has made me cause a scandal in my hotel, where I tried to get into a room near my own, convinced that I would find the disturbers of my peace there. If I had stayed another day in that hotel the police would certainly have interfered, and I should have spent the rest of my days in a madhouse.

At the same time the appearance of another young man convinces me that the gods do not cherish an irreconcilable grudge against me. He was a real youthful prodigy, with a precocious insight into all branches of human knowledge. His father, a learned man of high moral character, had brought him up well, but two years ago the young man was seized with a mysterious illness, the details of which he told me, with a view of learning my opinion, or rather of confirming his own suspicions.

The young man, who had led a pure life and imbibed the strictest moral principles, entered the world with favourable auspices, admired by his contemporaries and popular wherever he came. But one day he committed an act directly forbidden by his conscience. Since then nothing could give him peace. After a long period of mental torture his body also succumbed, while his spiritual crisis was intensified. Every day he realised the fresh advance of an imaginary disease, and at last he seemed to undergo death agonies. Then he thought he really was dead, and heard in all corners of the house the hammering of coffins. When he read the paper, for his mind remained clear, he expected to see the report of his own burial. At the same time his body seemed to suffer dissolution and exhaled a corpse-like odour, which frightened the attendants away from his bed, and alarmed him himself. Moreover a change seemed to take place even in his personality, for though he was formerly religiously minded in his way he was now attacked by doubts. One of his illusions, which he remembered afterwards, was that his attendants had wax-like or blue faces. And even when he rose from his bed to watch the people in the street all the passers-by seemed to him to have blue faces. What still further alarmed him was that, in the street below, there seemed to be passing an endless procession of beggars, ragged vagabonds, decrepit, limping, legless cripples on crutches, as though they had been summoned to pass in review before him. During the whole time the sick man had the impression that what he saw was, beyond all doubt, real, and yet he was obliged to attribute a symbolical meaning to it. Every book which he opened seemed to contain direct intimations for him. After he had ended his narrative he asked what I thought of the matter.

"Something half real," I answered, "a series of visions conjured up by someone with a special object. A living charade, from which it is for you to draw the lesson. How were you cured?"

"It is comical, but I will confess it to you. Formerly I had stood in opposition against my parents, who had surrounded me with unwearied care for soul and body, but now at last I brought my neck under the yoke, which had become pleasant and beneficial to me, since it had been imposed in pure love, and so I was healed."

"And have you had no relapse?"

"Yes, once, but of a very mild kind. A period of insignificant nervousness and sleeplessness, which yielded to the simplest medical instructions. But this time I had nothing to reproach myself with."

"And what were your doctor's orders?"

"To live regularly, to sleep at night, and to keep free of excesses."

"Why, that is the way of the Cross."

* * * * *

Thus I feel no longer lonely and deserted. The young scholar seems to have come to me as a messenger from the Powers; I can confide all to him, and while we compare our experiences, we lend each other mutual I support on the narrow path in the valley of suffering. He also has been struck in his youth, and all men are violently roused from sleep! There is a universal awakening proceeding, and what is to be its goal?

III

MY WRETCHEDNESS INCREASES (cont.)

Swedenborg, my guide in the darkness, has finally revealed himself as an avenger. His Arcana Coelestia speaks only of hell and of punishments which are executed by evil spirits, _i.e._ devils. Not a word of comfort or grace. And yet, while I was still young, the Devil had been got rid of; everyone laughed at him, and now, by the irony of accident, they are just preparing to keep the jubilee of the philosopher Bostrom, who did away with hell and annihilated the Devil. In my youth this thinker was regarded as a reformer, and now the Devil is preparing a renaissance for himself. He has crept into the productions of the so-called Satanic literature, into the fine arts by the side of Christ, and even into trade. Last Christmas I noticed that the Christmas presents were adorned with little devils and goblins, both the children's toys and comic objects which elder people buy for each other, such as spice cakes and almanacks. Is there really a devil, or is he only a half-real bugbear projected from the unseen in order to make a strong impression on us, and to drive us to the Cross? I had not yet succeeded in finding an answer to this question, when, one cold, wet evening my friends took me to a sculptor, who is a freethinker and atheist, as are the other members of the theosophical society to which he belongs. He has a private collection of clay ornaments on view intended for the Stockholm Exhibition. In these, with repulsive realism and cynicism, the Devil is represented in different attitudes, and always with a priest who is terrified at him. People laugh at them, but I cannot laugh, and think to myself "Wait, and we shall see!" After an interval of four months I meet the sculptor in the street. He looks troubled, as though some misfortune had happened to him. "Can you imagine," he says, "such a piece of infernal bad luck? They have just broken three of my best figures in unpacking them at the Exhibition." I feel immensely interested, and simultaneously with my condolence over his misfortune I ask with almost shameless curiosity, "And which of your statuettes were they?"

"Three of the Devil, I believe."

I do not laugh, but answer with a smile, "There, you see! Lucifer does not like to be caricatured."

Some weeks later the sculptor receives another letter, and learns that the other figures have fallen from their pedestals and been broken, without the managers being able to say how it has happened. Consequently the unfortunate artist has lost a year, not counting the costs of production, and he finds himself struck out of the list of exhibitors. In his despondency he comforts himself by attributing it to accident, which means nothing, and yet which saves a man's pride, while bowing to blind Chance. One stoops one's head before a stone flung at one, but what of the flinger whom one is not conscious of having seen?

* * * * *

Meanwhile I obtain Swedenborg's works, one after another, and always at some favourable moment. In his "Dreams" I find all the symptoms of my illness, the nightly attacks and the difficulty in breathing. The facts which he records in these notes belong to the time before he had his revelations. That was for Swedenborg the period of "desolation," when he was delivered over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh. This helps me to understand the beneficent purposes of the invisible powers, without, however, bringing me comfort. Not till I read _Heaven and Hell_ do I begin to get help. There is, then, an object in these mysterious sufferings--the improvement and development of my personality to something greater, something like Nietzsche's imaginary ideal, but differently conceived.

The Devil is not an independent being, equal to God, and His opponent. The invisible power which plagues us is the Spirit of discipline. A great step is taken when we see that evil does not exist for evil's sake, and we conceive a new hope of finding peace through penitence and conscientious watchfulness over our thoughts and actions. As I watch the events of daily life, a new method of education begins to operate upon me, and I learn to recognise, the system of signs which the invisible powers use. But my difficulties are great because of my age and the inveteracy of evil habits, and in consequence of a certain yieldingness of disposition I am all too prone to suit myself to my surroundings. It is so hard to be the first to quit a merry carouse; if I try to insist on my own way, my intimate friends call me "a bad boon-companion." But one has to learn to do everything in this world.

For instance, at dinner, which I take at two o'clock, I had been accustomed to remain behind for coffee. One day at the beginning of February I am sitting there with my back against the outer wall, when my friends begin to discuss whether they shall order a bowl of punch. Instantly there comes a direct answer in the form of a terrible noise behind my back, so that the cups of coffee on the tray jump. It can be imagined what kind of a face I make. The cause of the noise is quite simple,--a workman is repairing the decoration of the wall outside.

We adjourn to a special room. Immediately there breaks out a noise on the ceiling over my head. I rise and fly from the battlefield, and from that hour I never remain for coffee after dinner except on holidays. In the evening, on the other hand, I can drink a glass with my friends, since the object is not so much drink as the interchange of thought with learned people, who represent all branches of science. But often it happens that mere love of drink gets the upper hand, accompanied by unbridled hilarity and cynical suggestions. One's lower nature breaks through and the brutal instincts find free scope. It is so pleasant to be an animal for a while, one thinks to oneself, and besides life is not always so cheerful, and so on, to the same effect. One day, after I have for some time taken part in riotous drinking bouts, I am on the way to my restaurant. I pass by an undertaker's shop where a coffin is exposed to view. The street is strewn with fir branches, and the great bell of the cathedral is tolling a knell. Arrived at the restaurant, I find my table companion in trouble, as he has come straight from the hospital, where he has taken leave of a dying friend. As I return home after dinner by back streets, where I have not been before, I meet two funeral processions. How everything reeks of death to-day, and the tolling of the knell recommences!

In the evening, as I am about to enter the tavern, I see an old man leaning against the wall, obviously drunk and ill. In order not to meet him, I make a detour and enter the dining-hall. My headache from yesterday's debauch, combined with the funereal impressions I have received in the course of the day, inspire me with a secret fear of alcohol, so that I order milk for my supper.

In the midst of the meal there is a noise in the house mingled with cries of grief, and after a little while they carry in the old man I had seen near the entrance, his son leading the procession. His father was dead. A warning for drinkers!

In the night following I had a terrible attack of nightmare. Some one hung fast on to my back and shook me by the shoulders. This was sufficient cause for me to be careful how I prolonged my drinking to a late hour. But I did not entirely renounce it. At the end of January I take rooms in a private house, and confront my fate steadfastly without seeking to find distraction in the presence of a friend. It is a duel, and there is no possibility of escape. As soon as I come home in the evening I ascertain at once how it stands with my conscience. A choking atmosphere, even when the windows are open, gives warning of a bad night. The terrible fear I feel brings on fever accompanied with a cold sweat, and when I search my conscience I at once find where the shoe pinches. But I fly no more, for it is useless.

* * * * *

Among the lessons which the avenging powers have given me is one which I dare not forget, that is, the command not to search into hidden things, because they are to remain hidden.

For instance, in my excursions in Schonen, I had noticed a kind of stones found in scattered places of peculiar and very characteristic shapes. They represented either types of living creatures, such as birds, or hats and helmets. There were also others with furrows which resembled the tracings on meteoric stones. Without being clear as to their origin, I received the impression that they were not a mere freak of nature. Their form showed that they were works of art, produced and elaborated by human hands. For two years I continued to look for them, and after I had interested a friend of mine who lived at a distance in the matter, I told him where some could be found, that he might send me a photograph of them. But the expedition failed, and a year later I discovered that I had given him a wrong address. Ever since then, when I have obstinately set about such investigations, hindrances have arisen in such an extraordinary way that I could not attribute them to chance.

Thus, for instance, I had resolved one morning to make an expedition with an antiquarian in order to solve the question once for all. In the street before my door a nail came loose in my boot and stuck in my foot. At first I took no notice of it, but as I approached my friend's door the pain became so great that I had to stand still. It was impossible to proceed, or to turn back. In great annoyance I drew off my boot and flattened the nail with my knife. A vague remembrance of a passage I had read in Swedenborg came to me simultaneously-- "When the avenging spirits see an evil act, or the intention to commit a wrong, they punish by inflicting pain in the foot, the hand, or the neighbourhood of the diaphragm." But I was so spurred on by the thirst for knowledge, which I regarded as lawful and praiseworthy, that I resumed my interrupted attempt, and soon joined my companion. We intended first to investigate a grotto in the park. But the entrance was blocked up with heaps of abominable filth piled up in such a challenging or rather ironical way as to make me smile. The other place, well known to me, where these stones are to be found, is in a garden, where great blocks of them are grouped round a tree, and they are easily got at. But this morning the gardener has fenced off the tree and the antiquities with a row of flower-pots, so that I cannot get there to show my learned companion anything. A pretty fiasco! Irritated by all these hindrances, I take my friend, who begins to look sceptical, right through the town to a courtyard where a whole museum of these curiosities has been collected. There the matter will be settled once for all, and I expect to see him startled. On our arrival we are greeted by the barking of a vile cur; as we endeavour to drive him off, the occupants of the house come into the courtyard, and we have to shout what we want in order to drown the noise of the barking dog. The objects of our search are surrounded by a closed fence, and the key cannot be found.

"Are there any other places?" asks the antiquarian, who begins to despise me.

"Yes, there are, but outside the town."