“Seven virgins were sitting in a circle around the spring. But in the hair of the seventh, the first, the one, the sinking sun seemed mysteriously to be weaving a glimmering symbol of superiority. Her eyes were like troubled dreams, and yet her pure lips were smiling.
“They were singing. They kept their narrow faces turned towards the peak of the jet, just where, in a noble, weary curve, it inclines to fall again. And their soft, high voices hovered about its slender dance. Perhaps they held their frail hands folded across their knees while they sang.
“Do you recall the picture, Sir? Did you see it? You did not see it. Your eyes were not made for that, and your ears were not made to catch the shy sweetness of its melody. If you had seen it, you would not have dared to breathe. You would have struggled to keep down the pounding of your heart. You would have had to go, back into life, into your life, to preserve deep within you for the rest of your earthly existence this vision as something untouchable and imperishably sacred. But what did you do?
“This picture should have been an end in itself, Sir. Did you have to come and destroy it, that you might continue it in vulgarity and the ugliness of pain? It was a touching and placid deification, immersed in the crepuscular glory of decay, dissolution, and extinction. An ancient line, already too weary and too noble for the facts of life, was standing at the end of its days, and its last utterances were the sounds of art, a few notes on the violin, full of the penetrative melancholy of those who are ripe for death. Did you see the eyes from which these notes lured forth tears? It is possible that the souls of the six playmates belonged to life; but the other one should have had for her sister and mistress—beauty and death.
“You saw it, this beauty of death. You looked at it, but only to covet it. No reverence, no instinct to pull away, touched your heart at the thought of her appealing sanctity. It was not enough for you merely to behold; you had to possess, exploit, desecrate. How admirably you chose! You are an epicure, Sir, a plebeian epicure, a cultured peasant.
“Please let me assure you that I do not harbour the slightest desire to anger you. What I am saying is not an affront, but the formula, the simple psychological formula for your simple, artistically uninteresting personality. And I say all this only because I feel called upon to illuminate somewhat your life and actions for you, since it is my one inevitable calling on this earth to give things their names, to make them speak, and to throw more light on the unrealized. The world is full up of what I might call the ‘unconscious type.’ And I can’t bear them, all these unconscious types. I cannot stand all this blunt mindless and unthinking turmoil and commerce, this world all around me of exacerbating simplicity! I am driven with painful insistence to orient everything around me—in so far as I am capable—to express and bring it into consciousness, completely indifferent as to whether this results favourably or unfavourably, whether it brings with it consolation and improvement, or leaves nothing but anguish.
“As I have said, Sir, you are a plebeian epicure, a cultured peasant. Of an especially strong constitution, in one of the very lowest stages of development, with the aid of money and congenial living you have suddenly arrived at a barbaric corruption of the nervous system to an extent never before heard of in history. And along with this, you have acquired a certain lascivious refinement in your appetites. It is quite possible that when you decided to make Gabriele Eckhof your own, the muscles of your gullet went through the same smacking procedure as at the sight of some rare food, of a tasty soup.
“The truth is that you led her and her half-dreamed desires astray, that you took her out of the rich garden into life and ugliness, that you gave her your common name, and made her a wife, a housekeeper, a mother. You have lowered this shy, weary, full-hearted beauty of death with its exalted inutility; you have brought it down to subjection beneath the vulgarity of everyday life, and that stupid, relentless, and detestable idol which we call nature. And not a single suspicion of the deep degradation of your actions has ever crossed your rustic consciousness.
“Again; what happens? She, with eyes like troubled dreams, presents you with a child. Every bit of blood and strength which she possesses, she gives to this being which is a continuation of the low-minded existence of its father … she gives this, and dies. Sir, she is dying! And if she does not depart in commonness, if at last she has risen out of the depths of her denigration, and passed away proud and purified under the deadly kiss of beauty, it is I that saw to it. You, in the meantime, were trying to while away the hours with chambermaids in lonely corridors.
“But her child, Gabriele Eckhof’s son, lives, flourishes, and triumphs. Perhaps it will follow in the steps of its father, and become a good business man, a taxpayer and a well fed member of the community. Or perhaps a soldier or an official, some stupid, dependable pillar of the state. In any case, an amusical, normally functioning creature, trustworthy and unscrupulous, sturdy and ignorant.
“Kindly accept the confession, Sir, that I hate you, you and your child, because I hate the life, the common, ridiculous, and yet conquering life which you represent—the eternal contrast and deadly enemy to beauty. I do not dare to say that I detest you. I cannot. I will be frank. You are the stronger. I have only one thing to bring against you in battle, the sublime
