a good one.
In the evening I went out for a walk. I meant to go up Unter den Linden, through the great arch and into the Tiergarten: I went and had my walk and returned. Coming back under the arch, I noticed the light of one of the hotels shining into the darkness and looked away. For some reason or other, a few seconds later, when I was in the middle of the arch and complete darkness, I looked again and saw quite close to me a flash! For a moment I didn't know what it was and stopped. The next second I knew it was a big knife-like a carving knife-and I stepped to the right just in tune, for the man rushed at me and stabbed. My side step was just right, and as his knife came down, I struck him under the jaw as hard as I could and he went down like a log. In a second I had picked up the knife and saw that the man was Katchen's father. I was furious. His face was all distorted by his hatred and by my blow. His nose was bleeding and he looked a sorry sight, but the danger made me furious. I couldn't help it-I drew back and hit him as hard as ever I could, and down he went again. This time he lay still and I had to drag him by the legs out into the light. As he lay there, I kicked him two or three times and thought of calling the police. Thinking of his unhappy wife and children, I thought he had perhaps had punishment enough for once, so I lifted him up and sat him against the arch. In a few minutes he came to himself.
'You damn fool,' I said, 'you had better get home and behave better to your wife and children. It is lucky for you that I had given the order to leave your house, or I'd break every bone in your body. You murderous cur.'
'You go,' he muttered, 'or I'll kill you, you damned Englishman.'
'It's lucky for you,' I said, 'that I'm going to sleep somewhere else tonight, but the police ought to be notified about you.'
He got up on his feet and was evidently pretty shaky. 'I'm taking the knife,' I said, 'just as a memento.'
'I sharpened it for you,' said he, glaring at me.
As I went down Unter den Linden, it really seemed to me as if the man was mad. There was madness in his distorted face and in his growling voice. 'His wife will have to patch up his eye, and his jaw will prevent his eating for a few days,' I thought. But as I grew cooler, I suddenly noticed that I had taken the skin off the knuckles of both hands and they were smarting. What insanity! I could still see the woman's face and hear her voice: 'I'm so unhappy! No one in the world is so miserable. To have my dear little children ruined by their father!'
In my experience, incest is infinitely commoner among the Germanic peoples than it is among the Latins or Slavs. It is curious that in spite of the poverty and the fact that in some homes large families have to live in one room, incest is almost unknown among the Celts. But then I am of the opinion that the Irish and Scotch and even the Welsh Celts are far more moral in the highest sense of the word than their English neighbors.
Several of my men correspondents in America and in England have asked me to say something about venereal diseases, especially to tell them whether syphilis is curable. I am going to tell elsewhere how I met Ehrlich at the medical congress in London, I think, in 1913. He was the discoverer of salvarsan, or as he called it later '606.' I was one of the few who could talk German to him, so we became real pals. Since his death a good deal of doubt has been cast on the efficacy of '606'; but the best knowledge of today justifies me in saying that diligently used and followed by treatment with mercury, it can cure syphilis; cure it so completely that there isn't a trace in the blood, and that even subsequent offspring are perfectly healthy.
Ehrlich, as I shall tell in my portrait of him, was one of the great benefactors of humanity.
Gonorrhea is much more common and much more easily cured: a great deal of rest, and unlimited drinks of strong barley water, and no sign of wine, spirits or beer, should bring about a complete cure in a month, but during the month it is very distressing, very painful, very dirty, and there is always danger of worse developments if it isn't taken seriously.
One little story may find a place here. I remember a young friend of mine who had caught syphilis in New York and who showed me a loaded revolver with which he intended to kill the woman who had infected him. I laughed at him. 'The poor girl may not even have known she was ill,' I said. 'Don't be a fool; take my advice and always blame yourself for the mishaps of life, and no one else.'
CHAPTER XIV
In the second volume I promised that I would end this volume with an account of my life up to date, and so now I must tell what has befallen me in this past year, 1926.
I was astonished one day here in Nice to get a citation to appear before a Judge Bensa, to answer a charge of 'outrage aux bonnes moeurs'-an outrage on good morals; and the Judge informed me that the outrage in question was the publication of the second volume of My Life.
'Why not the first volume?' I asked.
'Oh, because that was published in Germany; we have nothing to do with it; but this volume was printed in France, so we must take note of it.'
'My crime, then,' I said, 'is that I wished to benefit French printers and to give them work; for if I had published the second volume in Germany or Italy, I should not have been molested.'
He shrugged his shoulders. 'Have you sold the book in France?' was the next question.
'It was 'privately printed,'' I said, 'as you can see. I didn't anticipate any sale in France and therefore I did not trouble to get the book into the shops; but later, here and there, a book-seller whom I know has told me that he has been asked for a copy of My Life by Americans or Englishmen who wished to complete their sets of my books, and so I have given these book-sellers copies to sell, always on condition that they should not be exhibited in the windows or held for ordinary sale. The sale in France has therefore been very restricted: certainly in all, I have not sold fifty copies. It has never been mise en vente (exposed for sale).'
The Judge took note of this, but said it didn't matter whether I sold thirty, or three, or three thousand; it was the fact of the sale that was important. I bowed, of course, to this judicial reasoning.
At first my advocate, Maitre Gassin, told me that the case would certainly not come before any court. It was ridiculous, he thought, to make the printing of a book in France a crime, when nothing was done with the book printed in Germany and brought into France by the thousands; but the second or third time I saw him, I found that he regarded the case much more seriously.
'We are not rich in France,' he said, 'and I felt they would never spend the two or three thousand francs in getting your book translated, but I have seen the authorities, and they tell me that the prosecution has been started from Paris, and the money for the translation of the book has been paid. You have got some enemy or enemies in Paris who are making their influence felt.'
I had already obtained from M. Bensa, the judge, a note of the pages which were objected to in the second volume of My Life: some forty in all out of four hundred, and among these marked forty were three or four pages together.
The moment I looked them out, I found that one of them was my description of English gormandizing at the Lord Mayor's banquets in the city of London, and another dealt with the conduct of Sir Robert Fowler, who was twice Lord Mayor, and his gluttony and disgusting behavior at Sir William Marriott's table when Lady Marriott had to leave the room.
Now this episode is merely revolting, and I had put it in simply because I thought it a duty to give as complete a record of my life as I could, and the habit of over-eating and over-drinking reigns in England all through the middle classes. I have told how Prince Edward put a stop to it in the best class by introducing the habit of going at once to coffee and cigarettes after dinner, instead of guzzling bottle after bottle of Burgundy or claret, which was the custom of the upper classes till he came.
Again I found that anything I had told of Prince Edward's liking for naughty stories and for witty limericks had also got me into trouble, and was marked down as offensive. Another passage especially objected to was the account of how Lord Randolph Churchill became infected with disease.
From these indications it seemed to me that the persecution came from the English Foreign Office; and this inference I have since found to be correct.
The publicity given by the prosecution will certainly add to the sale of the book, which accordingly is now
