The Inferno - August Strindberg (best book club books for discussion .txt) 📗

doubt, shows the skilful hand of the unseen, for there is no room for suspecting these people to whom I am entirely unknown.

A young man lays with an unmistakable gesture a sou on my table. A stranger, and alone among a crowd of people, I let it happen, but, blind with anger, I seek for an explanation.

He gives me a sou, as if to a beggar! Beggar! that is the dagger which I drive into my breast. Beggar! for thou deservest nothing, and⁠—

The waiter offers me a more comfortable place, and I leave the money lying. What a disgrace! He brings it after me, and informs me politely that the young man had found it under my table, and thought it was mine. I feel ashamed, and in order to calm my anger, order another absinthe.

The absinthe comes, and I feel quite comfortable, when a pestilential smell of ammonia almost stifles me. Again a miracle or some evil purpose! An escape-pipe flows out at the edge of the pavement, exactly where my seat is. I begin to understand that the good spirits wish to heal me of a sin, which at last leads to the madhouse. Blessed be Providence which has saved me!

May 25th.⁠—In spite of the regulations of the house which exclude women, a family has taken up its quarters next my room. For a day and a night crying babies afford me much pleasure, and remind me of the good old times when I was between thirty and forty and life was pleasantest.

May 26th.⁠—The family quarrel together and the children howl. How similar it is, and yet how pleasant it is for me⁠—now!

May 29th.⁠—A letter from the children of my first marriage informs that a telegram had come for them bidding them to be present in Stockholm at the farewell feast which was to celebrate my departure for the North Pole. They understand nothing about it, and I just as little. What a fatal error!

June 2nd.⁠—In the Avenue de l’Observatoire I find two pebbles shaped exactly like hearts. In the evening, in the garden of a Russian painter, I found a third heart of the same size, exactly like the two others. The playing of Schumann’s Aufschwung has ceased, and I am again calm.

June 9th.⁠—I visit the Danish painter in the Rue de la Santé. The great dog has disappeared; the entrance is free. We go to dine on a terrace in the Boulevard Port-Royal. My friend is cold and uncomfortable, and as he has forgotten his overcoat I lay mine over his shoulders. At first this quiets him; he feels himself dominated by me, and does not struggle against it. We are agreed on all points; he does not venture any more to oppose me. He admits that Popoffsky is a scoundrel, and that all my misfortunes are due to him. Suddenly a strange fit of nervousness takes hold of him; he trembles like a medium under the influence of the hypnotiser, gets excited, shakes off the overcoat, stops eating, lays his fork on one side, stands up and goes off. What is the meaning of it? Does he feel my coat to be a Nessus robe? Has my nervous fluid become stored up in it, and through its opposite polarity subjugated him? Does Ezekiel, chap. xiii, ver. 18, refer to something similar? “Woe to you that sew pillows upon all armholes, and make kerchiefs for the heads of persons of every stature, to catch souls.⁠ ⁠… I will tear your kerchiefs, and I will deliver my people out of your hand, and they shall no more be in your hand to be hunted; and ye shall know that I am the Lord.”

Have I become a wizard without knowing it?

June 7th.⁠—I visited my Danish friend in order to look at his pictures. When I arrived he seemed well and cheerful, but after half an hour he had a nervous attack, which increased so much that he had to undress and go to bed. What was the matter with him? Had he a bad conscience?

June 14th, Sunday.⁠—In the Jardin du Luxembourg I found a fourth heart-shaped pebble, like the three former ones. The stone has a piece of gold tinsel adhering to it; altogether it remains a puzzle, but seems to foreshadow something. I compare the four stones together before the open window, as the bells of St. Sulpice begin to ring; then the great bell of Notre-Dame commences, and through these usual sounds, there comes a heavy solemn peal, as though it issued from the bowels of the earth. I ask the waiter who brings my letters what it is. He says, “The great bell of the Church Sacré Cœur of Montmartre.”

It is then the festival of the Sacred Heart? And I contemplate these four hard stone hearts, curiously moved by this striking coincidence.

In the direction of Notre-Dame des Champs I hear a cuckoo, and yet it is impossible; or have my ears become so extra-sensitive that they can hear as far as the wood of Meudon?

June 15th.⁠—I go to the city to change a cheque into banknotes and gold. To my astonishment, the Quai Voltaire sways under my feet; certainly the Carrousel Bridge trembles under the weight of the carts. But today, this movement continues past the Tuileries to the Avenue de l’Opéra. There is always vibration in a town, but in order to notice it one must have very sensitive nerves.

The other side of the river is, for us dwellers in Montparnasse, a foreign world. It is nearly a year since I visited the Lyons Bank, or the Café de la Régence. On the Boulevard des Italiens, I felt homesick, and I hurried back to the river, where the