Wenk at once recalled his experience with the old Professor. He was startled. Could it be possible that here too … and he thought of the Countess and of Cara Carozza. He asked Told, “Have you any suspicion at all?”
The Count did not understand the question.
“Any suspicion? What do you mean? That I have been like this before? Ill in this way? No, never!”
“No, a suspicion of any special person who was there?”
“The idea never occurred to me. I can’t understand how anybody else could. … No … I don’t suspect anyone!”
“Was there nobody in the company who did not seem to belong there, who was not quite like the other guests?”
“It was a company of the Privy Councillor’s intimate friends. No, there was nobody!”
Wenk rejected the idea. Besides, how could there be any connection between the criminal he was seeking and the Count’s act of cheating? It was apparently a momentary mental aberration, a loss of willpower. A subconscious process in a strange and elusive personality which bordered upon morbidity, which thus strove to register a mental impression upon its fellow-players. The Count ought to consult a psychiatrist. It was extraordinary that he should appeal to him, a criminal prosecutor, but he did not put any question to him on this head.
Told became silent, and the lawyer respected his mood. Then suddenly he seemed to pull himself together and said, “I realize that I am keeping you from your night’s rest; I beg you not to be vexed with me. In misfortune it seems as if the mind sinks into a gulf, and the consciousness grasps at the nearest support. You had rung up, and there was some connection between you and … my house, and so. …” He broke off. “But tell me, am I really saying what I want to, or am I talking nonsense? You see, that is the horror of such an experience as mine. It seems as if I shall always require a neurologist to guide my future life.”
“Reassure yourself, Count; you are speaking quite clearly and saying exactly what you want to express. I beg you to make use of me if you can. My calling in some respects borders upon the sphere of the specialist in nerve-disorders; perhaps it goes even further, and at any rate it is bound up with the most mysterious and most speculative part of man’s being. I am very sorry that the occasion that brings you to me is such an unfortunate one, else I should be only too pleased by your visit.”
While Wenk was speaking, desiring to convey that anything out of the common which was mentally or spiritually of an unusual and critical nature was really his concern, the idea occurred to him to enlist the Count’s sympathy in his own aims. Count Told was a man of the world. He belonged to a sphere through which Wenk hoped to be able to endow the life of the nation with nobler qualities and loftier ideals. In the practical necessities which the last few months had forced upon him he had almost neglected the ideal side of the task before him. The events of this night had brought him into unexpected relations with a human being, and he could best serve him by not leaving him alone. He explained his views to the Count.
“They talk of ours as the ‘upper’ class. This description, which certainly has a substratum of truth, must be made a living reality once more. Our class, free of the struggle to obtain a better social status, is more than ever called upon to foster intellectual development and mental gifts. It must cherish these noble qualities in itself and turn them to account for others. Our sphere of politics must be the spiritual one!”
Count Told’s life hitherto had been irreproachable. Both in sentiment and in the externals of life he had shown himself superior, but for lack of serious pursuits to which he could devote himself he had thrown his energies into following up his hobbies, such as the collection of Futurist works of art, for which there was as yet no standard to judge by. He patronized young poets who were at present but a minority and a novelty. They were brought into the light, and the discovery of their powers engaged the serious attention of himself and his like. The struggle to get possession of something new and striking was carried on in this respect just as it was by the profiteers of ordinary wares. … It was not the uneducated rich who devoted themselves to it, but those who sought for their wealth a channel which should return their gold stamped with the impress of beauty and of intellectual superiority. But these fell victims to the age, and their ideas dissolved in hysteria akin to that of a weeping woman whose whole consciousness can hold but one idea. The value of money declined, and in so doing its power
