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.
Excerpted From Confessions of a Fool
Yes or Schwab.