Excerpted From Confessions of a Fool

Strindberg

From Strindberg-Confessions of a Fool

It was noon when he passed the Place de la Concorde

and arrived at the Quays. Before the restaurants men

were sitting and lunching ; some of them had already

arrived at the coffee. They looked well-fed, but bored,

as if they were fulfilling a melancholy and painful duty

by keeping alive. But to the old man they were happy

mortals who had staved off death for a few hours, while

he felt his soul shrinking like a dried apple.

The barrow rattled past the Pont-Neuf , and every stone

against which the wheels pushed shook the muscles and

nerves of his tired arms. He had not broken his fast since

the early morning ; his voice sounded thin like the voice

of a consumptive, so that his cries were more like cries

for help now, with little preliminary sighs caused by want

of breath.

His feet were burning and his hands trembled ; he felt

as if the marrow in his spine were melting with the heat,

and the thin blood hammered in his temples as he turned

towards the city, seeking the shade of the Quai de

l'Horloge. He halted for a moment before a wine-shop

in the Place de Parvis, half inclined to spend his

few pennies on a glass of wine. But he pulled himself

together and trudged on, past Nôtre-Dame, towards the

Morgue.

He could not drag himself away from this mysterious

little house, where so many problems of life have been solved and he entered. How cool and beautiful it was  inside, where the dead lay on marble slabs, the hoar-frost

on their hair and beards sparkling as on a beautiful, bright

winter day. Some of them looked distressed, because the

rush of the water into their lungs, or the stab of the knife

into the heart, had given them pain ; one of them smiled

as if he were glad that all was over ; one lay there with an

expression of indifference on his face, as if nothing

mattered ; the problem was solved, at any rate : he had

lived until he died. No more clothes required, no more

food, no shelter ! No sorrow, no cares. All held in their

grasp the greatest boon life has to bestow : a calm which

neither want, failure of crops, sickness, death, war or

famine, American wheat or the hard laws which regulate

wages, could disturb. Sleep without dreams, how gentle

a sleep ! And without an awakening, how splendid !

The old man must have envied the sleepers, for he turned his head on leaving, to feast his eyes once more on the sight of those blessed ones, who slept in cool

seclusion behind the large glass panes.

He plodded on to the other side of the church and

stopped at the principal entrance. He asked the dealer in

relics to keep an eye on his barroav, and entered. He

stirred the holy water with his right hand and cooled lips

and broAv. Inside the church it was cool, for the sunbeams

were powerless to penetrate the stained-glass windows.

The pulpit Avas occupied by a little abbé, freshly shaved,

with traces of powder still visible on his bluish skin ; he

was speaking, and the old man listened.

" ' Consider the lilies in the field,' " said the abbé,

" ' how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin,

and yet Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like any

one of these ! Consider the ravens : for they neither sow

nor reap ; which neither have store-houses nor barn ; and

God feedeth them : how much more are ye better than

the fowls ! ' "

"How much more are we better than the fowls! "

sighed the old man.

" But rather seek ye the Kingdom of God," concluded

the abbé, "and all else will be added to you."

"All else," sighed the old man, "all else! First the

Kingdom of God, and then all else."

Leaning against a pillar in the side aisle, the wealthy

man, holding a Baedeker in his hand, tried to solve the

problem of the essence and origin of life by means of a

careful study of the architecture of the past. He did not

believe in the Kingdom of God, but he brooded over the

purpose of life, and could not understand why a man

should go to so much trouble to kill time until he was

seventy or at the most eighty years old. Had it not been

against all conventions, he would have gone to the old

man and said to him who had already passed his allotted

time —

"Give me your solution of the problem of life! "

And the old man, unless he had been too exhausted with

hunger and thirst, would have answered —

"The problem of life, as I understood it, is the main-

tenance of one's own life."

" Is that all? " the wealthy man would have answered,

astonished.

"All ? Isn't it enough ? All ? ' '

" We do not understand one another."

No, we do not understand one another ; we have never

understood one another."

" Because you are a selfish old man, who has lived but

for himself. But humanity. ..."

" Sir, I too have lived for humanity, for I have brought

up and educated four children, a problem which was

more difficult perhaps to solve than yours, the solu-

tion of which you can buy at any bookseller's. Yes,

go, sell all you have and give it to the poor, then

you will see whether there is room in life for anything

else ! "

But the wealthy man preferred to leave the problem

unsolved and keep his gold ; therefore he continued to

study his Baedeker, and did not ask the poor coster for

his opinion.

The old man, with faith unshaken, left the church, the

abbe's comforting words ringing in his ears: "Take no

heed of to-morrow," and crossed to the left shore of the

river.