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TRAVEL 4- ADVENTUREMirror of China

LOUIS LALOYAfrica Dances

GEOFFREY GQRERHell-Hole of Creation

L. M. NESBITTChanging Asia

EGON EEWIN KISCHSalah and His American

LELAND HALL

THESE ARE BORZOI BOOKSPUBLISHED BY

ALFRED A. KNOPF


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ZEST FOR LIFE


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JOHAN W0LLER

ZEST FOE LIFERecollections of a Philosophic

Traveller

TRANSLATED FEOM THE DANISH BYCLAUDE NAPIER

1937

ALFRED A KNOPF NEW YORK


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Y PUBLISHED AS. , FHA LIMFJORDEN TIL BOROBUDUR

Copyfight 1935 ly o. A. KEITZELS FORLAG-, Copenhagen

Copyright 1986 by AIRBED A. KNOPF, INC.All rights reserved. No part of this book may bereproduced in any form without permission inwriting from the publisher, except by a reviewerwho may quote brief passages in a review to beprinted in a magazine or newspaper,

PIBST AMEEICAN EDITION

MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES O!F AMEEICA


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CONTENTS

Part IGOOD-BYE TO DENMARK 3BELGIUM 1PARIS &ON THE WAY TO ITALY 39EASTER IN NICE JflVENICE 70ON THE WAY TO EGYPT 8^CAIRO 96PORT SAID USINDIAN OCEAN SUMATRA

Part IIRATTAN 131THE FLYING FOXES


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Part IIIGOOD-BYE TO MID-JAVA 171

Part IVPENANG- AND TOKG-KAH 4,9A FEW BEMABKS ABOUT MOHS Q65

APPENDIX $77


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L Good-bye to DenmarkIN one's youth one said good-bye to Denmark, andlater, throughout life, again and again one wentaway from Denmark. One drove, one sailed, oneflew by train and motor-car, in big ships orsmall yachts: every means of transport servedwhen it was a question of leaving Denmark andthe Danish maidens.

This country is too small ; it lacks all perspec-tive and prospect, all the distant and the wild. It isas neat and tidy as an old maid's bedroom. It isso close-combed that soon the last louse will havebeen nipped and the last flea will have made itsdeath-leap not to speak of other game. It is asthoroughly docketed and labelled as a mutual in-surance company.

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ZEST FOR LIFEIt is necessary to leave it.And has one ever met a Dane of the youngergeneration who was something other and more

than his father's son who did not nourish plansof travel in his heart, who did not with eagernessaccept questionable offers from the most unques-tionably out-of-the-way corners if only those cor-ners were situated in other continents pref-erably as antipodal as possible in relation toDenmark?From the days of the Cimbri and Regnar, the

young Danish men have felt the lust to travelgnawing at their heart-strings as they roamed ourplacid but peculiarly bountiful and living land-scape. In few places in the world can one perceiveas in this country that the earth is alive, actuallysee it raise and lower its softly rounded breast andcapture the summer wind in its breathing. Theyoung men who do not apprehend the deep wis-dom in the land's long and quiet tempo, who can-not draw breath in time with the sedate rhythm ofthese latitudes, they must out and away to see andhear and savour, to seek the wisdom of vanishedtimes, the lore of distant lands well, not alwaysexactly that, perhaps.

But for most men it is not the quest for gold orhonour. We are not particularly ambitious, we

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GOOD-BYE TO DENMARKDanes many would say we are not ambitiousenough, and there are few people with so littleJewish blood in their veins. It is with a certainsecret shamefacedness that we dance round thegolden calf even if we are well versed in the ritual.No, what many of us longed for with the most se-cret longings of our romantic souls was in truthonly the distant and the wild, that which could fillus with the fruitful wonder which makes the soul,as it were, pause and come to rest and precipitatesomething. We have not, like the Germans, thedesire absolutely to understand and analyse theunfamiliar, which with them all too often leads tothe worst, the most fundamental misunderstand-ings. But we dimly perceive that something willgerminate later on, for we are an ancient earth-tilling people, and the soil of our soul is still deepand fertile.We wanted but this was before the age ofjazz and steel furniture, when, as we know, human

nature suddenly changed; we only wanted to sa-vour, to accept adventure* through all our nerve-fibres, and preferably in secret and without strik-ing an attitude. We wanted to be allowed to enjoyin peace seasick weeks in the tail of a typhoon, totry a sand-storm in Peking, to listen to the tropicrain that falls like lances. We wanted to see the

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BELGIUMthe outer world seen from a new angle of vision, andthe artist's task has always been the same: toselect and portray. Now too many seek only toportray their own abstractions, and consciousprimitiveness is surely the most poverty-strickenand depressing of all. One or two more wars, andthere will arise new and genuine primitives who willadorn splendidly the caves and mine-gallerieswhere the few survivors have sought refuge.But round Meunier's works everything was inblossom under the May showers ; in the chalices ofthe magnolias the drops were glistening with littlerainbows in the sun before they fell down like dewon the green lawns. Nature does not grow tired ofher " style," of her own opulence ; she knows noisms ; she repeats herself in works of genius everysingle day.By the way, one still sees in Brussels big dogs of

indeterminate breed running as draught animalsharnessed between the wheels of handcarts, withthe same imperturbable patience, the same willing-ness to the last that horses have. One can find inthe eyes of many working beasts a disquieting ex-pression of cool independence, a not entirely un-ironic contemplation of us, their gods.But how unnatural to see a dog set his paws

hard upon the pavement, strain the muscles of his17


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ZEST FOR LIFEThe actual female body quite certainly does not

lend itself to naturalistic reproduction in art andonly very seldom to exhibition in the nude in broaddaylight. Michelangelo's La Notte in San Lo-renzo is the only approach to an exception that Iknow, but that is a gigantic, a superhuman real-ism. And Ejnar Nielsen's Etw9 for examplefinely conceived and brilliantly painted ; I wonderwhether any healthy human being has looked atthis picture without a vague feeling of aversion,an impulse to contradiction, to revolt. It is withthe female body as with the subconscious, it is stilla question whether the analysis ought to be carriedso deep that the last veil is rent, the deepest rootslaid bare. A naked ballet is a horror, as clearly ap-pears attheFolies Bergere and other places despitethe flattering artificial lighting. And think of theatrocities with which the Germans inundated us intheir Nacktkultur advertisements ; there seems tobe no limit to their lack of taste. And I know wellthat it brands a man to say so, but hand onheart could not one wish some of our own post-war Abyssinian women and milkmaids clothed?Up in the garden stand busts of Watteau, Clio-

pin, and Mussct; each in his own way has addeda new province to the realm of lyrical beauty.They have their own sect, their secret lovers over


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PARISthe whole globe, certainly numerous in Denmarkalthough their adherents do not know one another.We have always been stronger in folk-song than inoratorio, we understand better the little melodythan the great tragic strain. They it is who haveso often started in my mind the fruitful vibrationsfrom which something rich was born, most often,alas, as with all dilettanti, soon to die again be-cause I lack energy to hold it fast and also theambition necessary to stimulate the unfortunatelyvery necessary labour. The soil is constantly beingmanured, but it is never ploughed, and since theseed is brought by every casual wind the crop can-not but be a queer mixture, mostly weeds but" with wild flowers here and there."

I come out on the great open place with thefountain in front of the palace. All its red haw-thorns are in full bloom and bleed quietly in thesun. Above them spreads the vaulting of the chest-nuts, the cathedral of the trees. Here Bailly standsin bronze and speaks impressively, eagerly, andpatriotically. But the young students of both sexesand many races who pass by the place do not listento his voice on a summer morning like this. Theytake life lightly as do all the young. It may havebeen only because there were a number of straightnoses, a number of classic profiles, but it struck me


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ZEST FOR LIFEthat, regarded as a whole, they seemed to havemore poise and gravity, more mental disciplinethan Danish students. Perhaps it was only thatthey were still living in the shadow of the war.There were many handsome types among them

and queer ones too. A young girl walked read-ing intently to and fro in the sun in the big openplace. Her only visible garment was a piece offlowered silk with one hole for the head and twofor the arms. Her legs were bare as far as could beseen, some two thirds of their entire length. Herarms and shoulders were like those of the Amazonin the Vatican. Her hair ash-blond, page-clipped

still a rarity at that time ; her face was classical,profoundly serious, She seemed not to be awarethat many eyes followed her, many heads wereturned. In imperturbable calm and complete ab-sorption in her book she moved her comely legsgravely across the open sun-drenched space, aloneas in a desert. When at last slowly and with dignityshe mounted the wide steps and disappeared be-neath the chestnuts, there were certainly othersbesides myself who still saw before our inward eyethe free grace of her bare legs and the noble curveof her neck under the page's hair? others besideme who felt with a catch at the heart as if youthand beauty untouched had wandered by,

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PARISThe goal of my ramble each morning was the

Medicis fountain up in the corner by the Odeon.I cannot judge of the artistic merit of this work;I have grown too fond of it. Probably it is notgreat. But for me who have sat and dreamedor often only sat in the shade of its plane treesand joined in the fountain's little contented mel-ody on so many summer mornings in succession,for me it is something of a sanctuary, one of thesmall altars along my road.

Of course it is the summer's fresh and yet sobland caress, the light that falls through the planetrees' leafy crowns down over the green surface ofthe basin, as abundantly, as penetratingly, as in-timately as the rain of gold descended into Danae'slap ; the moist, green, moss-grown sides of the basinand its cool surface bestrewn with chestnut blos-soms of course it is all this, the scenery morethan the monument itself, that creates the strange,tender, almost loving mood of the place.

I do not know at all who is the master who hasfashioned the two little naked human figures thatlie under the grotto's arch. He sitting, she lyingacross his lap with an arm yet flung up about hisneck. It is the moment after passion has reachedits goal and consumed itself. Their limbs are re-laxed; they have attained the deepest peace and

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ZEST FOR LIFEhappiness mankind can attain on tins earth ; if isthe brief moment in our life in which we are free,when all bonds are loosed, all heaviness vanished,where we are u afar from the sphere of our sor-row/' when we are almost gocls. And the spiritsand genii of nature seem to understand and admitit ; for a moment they accept the two little humanbeings as their like in kinship with the immortals.The great giant bends observant out over theedge of the grotto and looks down good-naturedlyunderstanding^ perhaps a little enviously, at theidyll beneath; he raises his hand warningly as ifto adjure all the wild and passionate spirits of thewood to peace. To the left Pan is playing on hisflute a melody inaudible to earthly ears and there-fore, as we know, sweeter than all heard melodies,while to the right a hamadryad smiles mockingly,half coy, very curious, and hushes the whisper ofthe leaves, the murmur of the springs, the songof the birds lest they disturb the so brief hour ofhappiness of the human pair.The sparrows come and go and bathe in the shal-low water on the terrace below the group,, and thepigeons, grey-violet, bronze-coloured, of a noblerrace. Two of them settle for a moment on thewoman's bare, white arm ; their small, lively, slen-der toes clasp the dead stone like fingers of


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PARIShappy, ravishing little movement she nestled upagainst him.It would have been impossible for me to take myeyes off her, and fortunately they were both whollysubmerged in the magic of the moment. She wasreminiscent of certain of Luini's women, thosemild and stately saints whose grave charm is notentirely freed from the earthly; but all at onceI realized that thus must Alcestis have looked asEuripides describes her in that strange comedywhich threatens at every moment to become atragedy. Yes, of course it was she, the youngQueen, contented as wife and mother, full of joyin, of zest for, everyday life and the day's work,but of the race of heroes, and willing as a natural,a reasonable, thing to sacrifice herself for her hus-band, her King, to give all, even her young, happylife.

It was obvious that he was in love ; he had con-stantly to touch her, her little finger, the tips ofher ears, but, by all the gods who command happi-ness on this earth, the lad in that moment possessedit wholly and completely ; he held beauty willingand surrendered in his arms ; the time was a sum-mer morning and the place the loveliest spot inParis. Did he understand this, did he feel that thiswas the " moment," perhaps the greatest and the

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ZEST FOR LIFEonly one of his life? Scarcely, for in youth one be-lieves that such scenes can be indefinitely repeated,that the moment always comes back. But one daywhen, old and wise, he is speaking of the happi-ness which is fleeting and difficult for us humanbeings to capture, then perhaps with a suddenpang that penetrates to the bottom of his beinghe will remember this May morning and realizethat he has held happiness between his hands andkissed its mouth and gazed into its smiling eyes,but lacked the strength, the singleness of purpose,and the humility to hold it fast.

After this scene, which was played out with anaturalness and a sam-gSnc as though they hadbeen alone on the globe, although half a hundredeyes observed them, they both grew serious anddiscussed with the greatest eagerness some obvi-ously purely practical question, most likely theday's financial worries.The young man got up and went, and soon after

two other students approached with dancing stepand open arms. One of them was an almost blackMoroccan or other type from the Dark Conti-nent. The white one without hesitation threw hisarms around Alcesbis' neck, while the Senegalesefrom the other side pouted his thick Negro lips

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PARISand to my horror tried to approach them to theclassic bow of her mouth. All as a quite naturalthing all in the day's work. But with grace andease she eluded them both, while her smile andhands, as it were, begged forgiveness that shecould not oblige them just then with what her eyestold them both at once would otherwise have beenthe dearest wish of her heart.

Alas, no Saint Catherine, no Alcestis ! The mythfell to earth, but the beauty remains, imperishableand undefiled, and it is capable of rising like alotus pure and virginal through the black andstinking mud and radiantly unfolding itself inthe world's sunshine.

I, too, got up and went slowly away. And al-though what I had seen was but a very everydayscene between a wanton girl and a couple of stu-dents, I felt myself moved to the depths, as it wereturned to stone after having looked upon theMedusa face of beauty. And with the old senseso often fought down of the loneliness of lifeand das Unzulangliche.How old Shakspere was when he wrote the littlepoem that ends :

Then come kiss me, sweet and twenty.Youth's a stuff will not endure,

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ZEST FOR LIFEI do not know, but when one Is trying to keepaway from

" the old fools' path," there is a certainconsolation to be found in the last line.I got up and went but Pan plays eternally

upon his flute above that grotto, and nymphssmile and listen and hush the gentle sounds of na-ture, while youth comes and goes with kisses andsmiles and tears ; sparrows bathe in the fountain,and doves wheel up to marvellous realms of sunand shade.

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ON THE WAY TO ITALYceased to multiply to any noticeable extent; theDutch and the Belgians not yet entirely. The Ger-mans are propagating at Hitler's bidding, but it isindeed doubtful if even he can induce the GermanHausfrau to go on bringing forth five children intoan isolated Germany dependent on its own produce.Even the Italians are beginning of late to back-slide, despite the united authority of Mussolini andthe Pope. The whole thing forms a situation whichEurope has not hitherto had to face. Is it a purelyeconomic phenomenon, or is it a throwing-up ofthe sponge, a pass declaration in the face of life,the mechanized modern life that gives so much andsuch strident cry and so desperately little wool?If the movement runs its course unchanged butas to that no one knows anything for certainthen in twenty years Italy will be the only youngnation in Europe ; she will have twice as big a per-centage of her population between the ages oftwenty and forty as the rest of Europe proper.We others will be peoples without youth, old and itis to be hoped wise and resigned, for we shall havea hard row to hoe.For many years the wise (and by that I am not

alluding to the statisticians) have said, shakingtheir heads when the talk turned on the fallingbirth-rate first and foremost in France and after-

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ZEST FOR LIFEwards in all countries** that nothing but a new re-ligion, a new Messiah, could alter it. No one can inreality foretell anything about these things. In thelast century Europe has trebled her populationan enormous effort. Would it on the face of it be re-markable if the old lady took a breathing-space,perhaps only reculer pour mieux sauter? The newreligions we have more or less got in some countries,nor can a certain effectiveness in them be disputed ;but who really believes in their permanence, andhow long at the best will they retain their stimu-lating power? Let France pass through anotherrevolution that upsets the rentier and dot ideas,and we shall see her doubling her population in ageneration.The younger Danish women of the self-support-ing academic world nowadays declare with onevoice that they want nothing so much as to havechildren they simply love children. But, be itobserved, without giving up their work ! In otherwords, they want to have children in their sparetime, an hour or two in the evening. Accordinglywe must have day-nurseries for the children anda new career for women, that of " day-mothers >5in contradistinction to the actual or evening-and-night mothers. These day-mothers might perhapsfitly be recruited from the new and rapidly grow-

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ON THE WAY TO ITALYing class that falls under the heading " acquittedof abortion " or " acquitted of infanticide."

Meanwhile we were rushing southward and east-ward through many long tunnels bored throughquite low hills. The straight way, the shortest be-fore everything, through mountains or over rivers.The Paris-Orient express has not time to followthe enchanting little rivers through their windingvalleys, though that indeed is nature's way and theone which mankind first followed. The water,the running water, knows the easiest way across thehills even if not always the shortest. Now we havegrown so much cleverer, if scarcely wiser. Now theimportant thing is to gain time for what?Shall we ever grow wise enough again to under-stand that nothing bestows greater peace thanslowly to follow nature's way, that nothing ismore fruitful for the mind than to linger by flow-ing water ?At dinner in the dining-car a young Frenchmarried couple sat opposite me. She was not morethan twenty or twenty-one, small, with an elegantfigure; pale, with a suggestion of Basedow's dis-ease. Her mouth was rather large and the lips alittle too full, but her profile was otherwise pure andhandsome, as so often in the Latin countries. She


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ZEST FOR LIFElong continue to fly between the two far regions inwhich it has acquired right of domicile and towhich it is rhythmically attracted and repelled asbetween magnetic poles.But so long as one has not altogether become" dust/ 5 one travels by ships of all sorts and is al-

ways landing in Marseille in every kind of weather.I well remember a time in March ; it was Good

Friday, and the mistral was blowing so insistentlyand hard from the north-west that the air was likea solid mass, an avalanche, a waterfall. The daywas dry and clear, so full of light that the retinawinced, and icy cold. The pale-green waters of theGulf of Lyon were hidden beneath the cloak offoam formed by the blown-off wave-tops. Thrice atthe last moment the pilot abandoned the attemptto steam in between the moles, for the wind tookthe tall ship's side with such a force that the manythousand horse-power was not enough to hold herto her course, and we circled again in an enormouscurve out into the open sea.But we got into harbour, and in a private room

in the Hotel de Noailles I made, as so often before,my obeisance to France and to Europe.Next morning I went out to look for the springwhich surely must be close by,, but the misbral tore

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EASTER IN NICEand with that the circle is closed, the cup emptiedof the bitter drink that is the wine of life.

No, it is not from the shores of the Bay ofAngels that one should see this coast, and it doesnot help to climb up into the heights behind Nice.The eruption of hotels and villas has spread formiles.

After all, one should not " seek " for beauty. Itis certain that all the views with one or more starsin Baedeker as it were fade, pale, lose their gloryif they be sought out according to a definite pro-gram and along the shortest way.

Beauty is the most fugitive of game, shy andmore easily scared than the ibex ; it is to be foundfortuitously but by the right person who knowsthe master word and carries the magic flower in hishand; that is to say, by artists and poets, the" born " lucky. Of common mortals those only cansee and approach beauty whose hearts have beenslowly ripened to encounter it.The best thing to do in a foreign town is, if theweather be good, to saunter out early in the morn-ing and, avoiding the principal streets and boule-vards, to look at the trees and the shop windows.Before long, one will be attracted by a cat in awindow licking and polishing itself sans gene.Nothing in the world exceeds its charm and grace.

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ZEST FOR LIFEThe objection that there is no need to travel to theworld's end to see this is neither here nor there. Itis in fact often only by travelling to the world'send that one's eyes are opened to the sweet andsimple things that make up the wonder of life.

In another window I saw one day a ring witha sapphire of rare purity. Its blue was deeper andlovelier than that of the Mediterranean ; it was asif the essence of all the blueness of sea and sky werecrystallized out in this stone from the bowels of theearth. And its blue will live and send out its radi-ance when the last cathedral has fallen into dust

when the last tourists have ceased their playupon this coast.

If one strolls on up to the higher ground, onegets now and then a view over this town which soemphatically exists u for pleasure only ?J and there-fore scarcely for much joy; one feels instinctivelythat it is sterile ; seen hence it is as if our childlessand barren time had set its stamp on all.

Better one morning early to wander in light mistup on to the wooded height where the vestiges ofan old castle still remain, to listen in solitude to themild roaring of the cascade and hear all the bellsof Nice ringing in Easter. There is verdure here,and in the mist the silence seems alive like the si-

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EASTER IN NICElence that prevails in a room where one knows thatpeople are sleeping.On a big round marble-topped table the pointsof the compass were engraved and a multitude ofdirections given, not only to the neighbouringpeaks and promontories, but to distant places likeMadrid and Amsterdam, Rome and Constanti-nople.An Arab spahi was wandering disconsolatelyamong the trees, and involuntarily I sought forMecca on the table, but it was not there. His mel-ancholy eyes looked as though, homeless, he wereseeking for a fixed point, a place, a direction to-wards which to make obeisance here in thisgreen land where the very crescent in the sky isshouted down by artificial, brutal, and garishlight.

Early another morning I wandered up along thehot asphalted road that is called La Grande Cor-niche. It was warm climbing. Fifteen hundred feetup I passed a little tavern, Aux Lilas Blancs, andthen I was alone; all the buses with tourists forMonte Carlo and Mentone had gone by, and theland lay like a study in grey. The grey rocks, thegrey pines, and the still greyer olives ; but downin the valleys everything was in bloom ; they were

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EASTER IN NICEmystical hour between night and daybreak, beforeour Lord is awake. One of the fairest seraphim issent to the tryst with Aurora, and a second holdsin the horses of the sun-god. The morning starpale and quivering on watch, while the youngcherubim float down with the archangels' daugh-ters about whom Frdding wove fantasies, down tothe delights of earth that lay outstretched beforetheir eyes, to the bay of Beaulieu, the lovely place.They grazed in play the night-blue bay with theirwing-tips, saw their own earthly, veiled andtherefore strangely more enticing images in thedeep mirror ; and, as though they had felt an elec-tric shock on contact with the earthly, they roseand glided over the low hills at Cap Ferrat, touchedfor the second time the sea at the roadstead ofVillefranche, and fluttered over Mont Boron, todescend upon the bay that since bears their name

and there remains for ever a gleam, an after-glow of their divine fire over these waters.The blueness of this bay is, like that of the lapislazuli, shot with a glint of precious metals.

I gazed long and, taught by experience, I knewthat the memory cannot hold fast such an image;one cannot later with certainty call it forth and seeit before the inward eye with its life and colours.But after many years perhaps as Proust has

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ZEST FOR LIFEtaught us the cat in the shop window, or thesapphire, or the old blind woman I met by a churchdoor, will emerge upon the plain of memory andin a flash the whole picture of the Azure Coast withsea and hills will stand warm and radiant beforethe inward eye, lovely, purged of all dross, super-naturally clear and pure ; for then the secret threadis found that knits one's past to the present, whenone has conquered time and seen a glimpse of theeternal.

Mankind, alas, is not able to remain long uponthe heights ; and I began the descent by steep goat-paths, passed the middle and lower Corniche, whileenchantment slowly faded and gave place to em-phatically mundane sensations, hunger and thirst.

I reached Beaulieu towards one o'clock afterseven hours' walking. It was Easter Sunday, andthe season was pretty well over, but after a reviewof my outward appearance I became convincedthat I was not presentable at the " better " estab-lishments. I went loitering past many eating-places which I judged to be of a class above me,but at last I saw a place with a dilapidated backgarden out towards the glowing asphalt street onwhich I was dragging myself forward with fireunder the soles of my feet and with the sense of

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EASTER IN NICEinward disquiet one has when all the cells are cry-ing aloud for meat and drink.Gathering all my courage and the last of myforces, I staggered in by an obscure door, but wasscarcely come inside before I was seized by re-spectful but determined hands. My hat was reftfrom me, and I was conducted into a toilet roomwhere a man, a woman, and a boy began upon ahighly necessary cleansing of my outer man. Mysports shirt was a deplorable but unalterable factwhich accordingly, with great tact, was over-looked, but with clean hands and manicured nails,with shining shoes and a parting in my hair thelike of which I had not known since my last ball atHerlufsholm, I was finally pushed " into the pres-ence."

I found myself in one of the most renowned res-taurants in France.My first impression was of being presented at

court, but this was quite wrong; after some mo-ments' dazzling confusion I realized where I was

namely, at divine service, and since, as I havesaid, it was Easter Sunday, I quickly found thisquite natural.As I came into the very long room, one side of

which looked out through enormous windows on59


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EASTER IN NICEman; a Provencal with a dark, powerful, hand-somely modelled head on a bull-neck, a slightlyhooked but quite un-Jewish nose, a martial mous-tache, and sparkling black eyes.

It was, as I said, the host himself, and, mon Dieu,if the violinist displayed too good a knowledge ofhis own dignity, this man went about in a perma-nent halo ; he was as a personification of the ideaof proprietorship itself. He was the deity and thiswas his house.

Fascinated, I observed him long for in theNorth we seldom see such pure types but I nevercaught him, not for a second, mixing himself upwith the service or the discussions between the con-gregation and the priests ; never did I see him withso much as a glance signify displeasure or ap-proval.He personally received each new group of wor-shippers. Chance strangers only with a cold bowand a motion of the hand that committed them tothe hands of the temple ministrants.More distant acquaintances were distinguishedby a condescending pressure of the hand per-haps a protective and reassuring hand laid upontheir shoulders.But with some few elder gentlemen of distinc-

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ZEST FOR LIFEdren-in-law, with amazement I saw him bendlightly forward and kiss them fleetingly on bothcheeks. The accolade and, by God, they feltthemselves honoured like an earl to whom a re-nowned bard has dedicated a heroic poem con-secrated to undergo the mystical and intricateceremonies that were to come.

For a French family on Easter Sunday, lunch-eon at R is no light matter.The bill of fare and the wine-card, each of the

size and thickness of a prayer-book, are treatedwith a corresponding devotion and reverence,studied with the strained attention with which thearchaeologist examines a new papyrus.The ministrants or I should rather say theadvisers or experts attached to each table par-took eagerly, though only on demand, in the dis-cussion. Each moment at a motion of his hand oneor two piccolos vanished, and returned wheelinginto the room nickel tables on rubber wheels andball bearings upon which the fundamentals ofluncheon lay exposed. Feathered creatures andfishes were exhibited and palpated. Vast lobstersand langoustes crawled heavily among baser crea-tures of the sea weighed down by the shields thatcould not save them. Swelling artichokes and enor-mous asparagus led the thoughts in the right cli-

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EASTER IN NICErection, while champignons and morels, trufflesand chanterelles spread about them the fragranceof soil after rain.But the discussion, which certainly was for many

not the least delicious part of the repast, went onnot least delicious because, in the spirit which

is always willing, one can make one's way throughendless menus, while the weak flesh is only capableof availing itself of an infinitesimal fraction of themarvels which the human spirit has created inthe territory of this fine art.

If the verbal exchange drew out too long, thema/itre d'hotel, the supreme pontiff, condescendedwith measured tread to approach the table and sayhis decisive, oracular word.With no less dignity le sommelier appeared, thechief butler, who, clad in his traditional blackapron, took up, with two adjutants, a post of ob-servation before the way down to his subterraneankingdom.The menu was submitted to him, and in a magis-terial manner he laid down which were the fewwines from among which the choice must necessar-ily be made. With him the discussion was seldomlong. None ventured to go against his omniscience,least of all I, when for my ~h,ors-d*(zwvres varies andthe langouste a VAmericaine which followed he in-

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ZEST FOR LIFEdicated a dry Montrachet that had a bouquet offlowering broom and wild berries. The saddle oflamb entered into a mystical, an astral union witha Chateau Margaux of which I have not sincetasted the like. Here in truth the lamb and the winemet in a manner which one did not need to be aconnoisseur of wine to understand. Every cell ofthe digestive organs from the tip of the tonguedownwards proclaimed it in silent ecstasy ; it wassolemn and yet festal like a triumphal entry, whenthat noble wine slowly descended and emitted itsimprisoned warmth,, while its mysterious bouquetradiated its ethereal essences like a play of elec-trical discharges in one's inner man.The most significant thing about this temple forthe body's needs was, next after the excellence ofthe food and wine themselves, the respect, the zealI am tempted to say, with which one is served.There prevailed here a ritual than which no divineservice has a stricter or one more utterly consistentin its performance and a discipline as in aGuard regiment.When a piccolo dropped one of the big nickeldishes on the floor with a noise like a roll of kettle-drums, there was not one of his superiors whoturned round, who so much as looked at him. He

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EASTER IN NICEdid not exist; he was thinner than air, invisible,,unthinkable.I came more than once during my stay in thisimprobable house to think of those remarkabledrawings by Bateman in his good period, in whichone sees human idiosyncrasies carried with logicaltrenchancy to the verge of insanity.What happened later to that unfortunate I darenot think.A broiled fish was wheeled in, lying steaming,brown, and garnished on its nickel dish. It had ob-viously not thirty seconds since left the pan. Nonethe less the wagon was stopped by one pf the staffofficers as soon as it came into the room. Helighted a little heap of shavings which was placedon the dish itself to windward of the fish, and asthe wagon rolled on upon its triumphal progresstowards the waiting guest, the flames from thislittle fire played over the fish, so that its delicatebrowning, the fragile crispness of its surface, itssteaming heat, should lose not the least fraction oftheir perfection in the fifteen seconds that wouldelapse before it reached its destination.

I am not going to attempt to describe the excel-lence of that meal absurd thought. Everythingthat was served was in the class which at exhibi-

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ZEST FOR LIFEtions is labelled HOTS de coiicours, Membre duJury. Alas, the same that we are beginning to saywith something of a wry smile about our own gen-eration.For all its evanescence it was the creation of an

artist, and the precise charm of a work of art can-not, as we know, be conveyed in words any morethan can the scent of the champak flower, the toneof a Stradivarius or the bouquet of a Chateaud'Yquem the most fugitive but the strongestessences in this world; those that one rememberslonger than one's youth's ideals, that go deeperinto one's being than first love.

I rounded off my luncheon with a pear as big asa small melon. It cost eighteen francs. The lunch-eon three hundred. But it was cheap ; what priceis too high for the unforgettable? It cost the sameto hear Toscanini conduct the New York Philhar-monic Orchestra at the Opera in Paris.There were a hundred and twenty-five musicians,and the kettle-drummer drew a higher salary thanthe leader of the orchestra at the Opera in Copen-hagen ; and for both manifestations of artistry theprice was just, they were co-equal, each perfect ofits kind.

This is not to say that I have not been moredeeply moved by hearing some summer evening a

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EASTER IN NICEyoung girl play one of Schubert's Moments mu-sicals. For In the domain of enjoyment everythingdepends on time and place, on the currents andtides in the humours of the body. Presumably thesethings are under the influence of the moon andstars. I must have absorbed this luncheon under afortunate constellation, for while I waited for cof-fee I felt myself to be in a frame of mind which Ialways recognize immediately; it is made up ofequal parts of solemnity, humble and mute won-der, and complete contentment. It comes, for ex-ample, in the Sistine Chapel, when I close the bookafter the last scene of King Lear, when I see Giot-to's Campanile rising like a divine flower towardsthe spring Florentine sky.

While I waited for coffee I kept seeing a coupleof the chief butler's swains carry an enormous bot-tle down through the room and stop at particulartables. It was a bottle of the kind that used to becalled a " Dame Jeanne " ; it contained some thirtyor forty litres, and its contents were poured withthe utmost care into the bottoms of big glasseswhich had first been lovingly warmed over a spiritlamp.

In my naivete I asked one of the experts whatthis might be. " Mais c'est notre fine, monsieur," hesaid indulgently.

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ZEST FOR LIFE" C'est bon? " I was incautious enough to ask.

Enfin one grows greatly daring after a lunch-eon like that. But this was too much for him. Helooked round the room as if for help but, since thetwo maUres d'hotel and Ic sommelier were far away ?he quite naturally turned his eyes towards heaven,muttered a brief prayer, made a deprecating ges-ture, and finally answered in a calm but small andice-cold voice :" Oui, monsieur, c'est tres bon." And good itwas ; there was no possible doubt, after the firstastonishing second when dark and cool and smoothit flowed lingeringly over the tongue ; dark as asummer night, cool, but with an inward warmththat dispersed itself as in swarms of released elec-trons, and smooth with a subterranean smoothnesslike moleskin from its life of many years in deepcellars.

It was good and everything was very good*A little later I settled down in an enormousDelage I was not going to profane that lunch-eon by travelling immediately after it by bus orstreet-car and I felt that which we human be-ings seldom feel in our time complete content-ment.

Complete but only brief, for scarcely had we gotout of Beaulieu before the chauffeur, as the habit

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EASTER IN NICEis with that shortlived but strenuous class of per-son, was rounding the innumerable sharp cornersat breakneck speed and whizzing through the tun-nels of one of the world's most dangerous andcrowded roads, the coast road between MonteCarlo and Nice.

Yes, this art is mature like that of the Renais-sance at its height. It is at its zenith, has not yetthrown out wild scions on all sides like the Chinese

the only culinary art which in my experiencedeserves to be mentioned beside it. With the Chi-nese there was the same gravity and austerity inthe original conception, but with them it has endedin wild rococo full of all the more or less legiti-mate refinements that so surely indicate decadence.We that is to say, almost all civilized peoplesmile a little self-ironically when we ourselves, andvery caustically if other people, ecstatically com-mend a meal. A Frenchman or a Chinese does not.It is impossible for them to see a joke in it.And these two peoples resemble one another inthis : that they regard the phenomena of daily, ofintimate, life in a fashion far more interested andat the same time soberer and more unprejudicedthan most.

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VENICEsurrendered and is for ever enrolled among theservants of the aged courtesan.But one ought to come to Venice by the sea way,through Malamocco and across the lagoon, or inpast the Lido, turn down into Canale de SanMarco, and anchor off the Piazzetta just oppositeSan Giorgio Maggiore. This was the way the gal-leys took when, decked for triumph or shot topieces and crippled, they headed home from Cy-prus or Morea, from Crete or the Black Sea. Inthese surroundings almost everything is still un-changed; it is thus one should approach the an-cient Queen of the Adriatic.But whether one has dropped anchor from one's

own schooner or come with the common herd fromthe railway station, one goes ashore at the Piaz-zetta and stands astonished on the world's mostentrancing place. This little square is perfectlylovely ; not monumental like St. Peter's or like itsgreat neighbour of San Marco, but complete,rounded off, at ease with itself as a finished workof art, as one of the world's few faultless lyricpoems. If this square were destroyed by an earth-quake, if it had been murdered by Austrian bombs,we should have felt it as something irreparable, agrief for mankind in all countries, among all na-tions. For one can hardly suppose that the human

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VENICEand dignity only somewhat destroyed by the all toonumerous and all too tame and fat pigeons ; and itis vulgarized further in these post-war years bythe multitude of American tourists, who are all-pervading. Yes, Venice, that never has been trod-den by the feet of her enemies, is in these years,for the first time in her long history, wholly andentirely in the hands of the barbarians.For the rest, in Venice as elsewhere one shouldhold strictly to the determination to avoid sight-seeing. In the first place, it is in itself a barren anddeadening occupation; and then I do not believein the beauty one seeks systematically, which oneinvokes like the Japanese who ring up the spiritsof their fathers with a bell when they desire topray or make sacrifice to them.

I have thus made no attempt to view even asmall part of the harvest of beauty that a thou-sand years have gathered in this city which formore than five centuries was the great power ofthe Levant. Centuries of wealth, of ostentation, ofmagnificence. Still less will I attempt any descrip-tion. I sought only in some sunny days and moon-lit nights to distil for myself a drop of what is theessence of Venice, its long dead soul; for, morethan in any other of the cities that the touristsseek, everything in Venice belongs to the past. The

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ZEST FOR LIFEnew city is like all new cities, not worse than most,and one gets accustomed to motor-boats on theGrand Canal. Dead greatness, crumbling beauty,vanished wealth, and half-forgotten memoriesthose are the rather bitter ingredients of the cock-tail that Venice provides.

Keats scarcely knew the lagoon city when, atthe age of twenty-three, he wrote his " Ode to Mel-ancholy 9? :She dwells with Beauty Beauty that must die,And Joy, whose hands are ever at Ms lips,Bidding adieu ;but the poem is like an ode to Venice, a temple ofmelancholy whose beauty so wholly belongs to avanished time, where literally every stone speaksof the transitoriness of all things.

While the gypsies played, Drachmann sang ofthe death of youth and love :And how sobs the violin as if it could have knowledgeThat the fair one is long dead and balconies but

balconies.

Yes, this is the city of empty balconies ; marble-white they hang over silent canals among marvel-lously beautiful capitals that slowly crumble andbit by bit vanish into the water of the lagoon.

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VENICEweep a moment for the death of beauty, butquickly flies to the Lido and the cities of the liv-ing and the saxophone's consoling notes. But forthe elder who has learned to know the sombre joysof solitude and its bitter triumphs this is a holyplace ; here are the right surroundings for medi-tating upon vanished youth and dead love; herehe may raise an altar to melancholy and becomeits minister and priest, and it may be that hereamong its dim trophies his spirit will find its abid-ing place.What does one do if brought by fate to Veniceat the end of May and is alone but not yet ripe toconsecrate oneself to melancholy? One seeks firstof all for shade and coolness and therefore goesinto the Doges 9 Palace, where the interesting sightis these droves of tourists who, surrendered at dis-cretion to a guide, drag themselves through scoresof rooms whose walls and ceilings are adorned withenormous paintings by Tintoretto and Veronese.One scarcely believes one's ears when one hears thisguide, in a voice which by eternal repetitions haslost whatever it might have possessed of humansound and expression, grinding out the same rig-marole about these allegories, about these tri-umphs and victories from Venetian history ; I haveoften watched these men's faces and eyes during

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ZEST FOR LIFEthe recital, and there was not one in twenty of themwho so much as simulated interest. What a powerhas snobbery that it can drive these poor wretchesin herds to the most tiring and deadening occupa-tion day after day, when they had much rather sitin the shade at Florian 9s and drink cold, foamingPilsner ! in truth both a more profitable and aworthier pastime.

Early one morning after having saunteredthrough the labyrinth of passages to SS. Giovannie Paolo, so as to make obeisance to the condottiereon his " towering plinth," on my way back Isought shade

in Santa Maria Formosa, which thenlay half in ruins after the war's bombs, and satawhile in its poor and not particularly beautifulinterior. Together with three or four old womenI heard Mass, which an aged priest celebrated,served by a single choir-boy. And on the way outI saw by chance a painting, a Santa Barbara byPalma Vecchio. A marvel, hanging there alone inthe half-dark side chapel. Unforgettable, an ad-venture that filled that morning with an excitementstrong enough to carry me back day after day.The picture is without doubt very fine a crownedVenetian princess rather than any saint and isnow certainly starred in Baedeker; but it had adouble, nay, a tenfold effect because it was found

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VENICEby chance, because it hung there so alone, so poorand forsaken, like a queen in rags.If it hung in the Accademia among all the Bel-linis and Carpaccios, it would either itself lose itslustre or would rob its neighbours of theirs. It isindeed impossible for a work of art to achieve morethan a fraction of its effect when it hangs on a wallwith scores of others, all excellent works in them-selves. Every work of art is a separate entity anddemands to be seen and judged alone. Titian'sAssunta, which formerly hung in the Accademiaamong many others, has, thank Heaven, been re-stored to its place over the high altar in the Frari,where it now fills the huge space with its light andits warmth.Museums are and always will be an evil, though

of course a necessary evil we cannot all travelto Santa Maria Formosa but they are for artstudents, for serious professionals, and not foramateurs in search of beauty. I am by no meansentirely convinced that the art " education " thatis given to our democratic masses would not bebetter achieved by photographs which could belooked over at leisure one by one and, when it isdesired to compare, two by two, but without thekaleidoscopic and bewildering effect of a museum.Where the Night Watch hangs in the Rijksmu-

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VENICElive, that Is to say, according to his " standard ofliving/

5 and that for the great majority of thepopulation who receive more from the State thanthey contribute is absolutely taboo. We all knowthat in these days a standard of living can rise.That it should possibly decline is unthinkable. Hewas now travelling round Europe with his wife ina car with a trailer for the luggage. They spentthe winter in Arosa, and the spring at the Italianlakes or the Lido, crossing the Alps to visit Nor-mandy In the summer. In this way he escaped alltaxation, and it was cheaper than living in Hol-land. Is one to be condemned to end one's existenceas the Wandering Jew?But of an evening, warm evenings with the fullmoon over the Grand Canal surely one of earth'smost gorgeous theatrical sets of an eveningtherewas In Venice nothing else to do but what all tour-ists, and, come to that, an endless succession offamous men throughout the centuries, have done

namely, to hire a gondola and drift with thestream. And the astonishing thing is that this in-credibly hackneyed spectacular piece has preservedits enchantment. It is like many of the older Italianoperatic tunes which, although for a hundredyears they have been played by thousands of hurdy-gurdies and cafe orchestras and millions of ama-

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ZEST FOR LIFEteurs, and In spite of their having been condemnedand executed by hundreds of German musical phi-losophers and pedagogues,, have retained in a re-markable way their freshness and power of cap-tivating. This is of course due simply to the factthat they are really original., sprung from the soulsof musicians of genius. And they have not only aspontaneous simplicity, an insinuating catchinesswhich all can understand, but there is besides aboutmany of these arias of Rossini and Donizetti andthe young Verdi a primitive naive virility whichperhaps is what makes them eternal. They speakto the child that lives in all of us; they strip usbare again, blow away the sophistries and greytheories with which we have muffled ourselves, andlead us back to fundamental things. They are likeworn but genuine louis-d'or, while, for example,in Wagner's gold pieces there is almost always alack of ring, a suspicion of an alloy of less noblemetal So of an evening one did the inevitable thingand resigned oneself alone to the current and themoon " In such a night . . ."When the moon has risen over San Giorgio Mag-giore it looks down on hundreds of illuminatedgondolas rocking their absurd, elegant lines, andpicks out their incredibly suggestive silhouettesagainst the fafades of the palaces ; a scene not less

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VENICEanimated, but with, fewer colours, more vulgar,than in former days.

"Ah, where are the bannersof old and the silk? " Yes, where are the mask and

the rapier, the fan and the mantilla? From mostone hears music, mandolins and guitars, and thoseItalian voices to which the language has given thatpeculiar timbre which makes them so easily recog-nizable among the singers of all other nations ; aring of metal, of steel and bronze, at once insinuat-ing and martial, like the resting Ares. It is a mis-take to suppose that it is pure honey; there isstrength in their sweetness, vigour and natural-ness in their sensuality.

In the book which bears the pretty but some-what affected title Amori et Dolori Sacrum, theSacredness of Love and Pain, in which Barresmoreover wallows a little too much in the voluptu-ousness of dissolution and decay, he makes Tainesay that we can only endure life by forgetting it.How does one forget life, its loneliness, its disap-pointments, its sorrows and defeats, the black back-scene which, with, increasing, terrifying haste,moves nearer and at last closes its four sidestogether?Many try to run away, however ridiculous it

seems. Some hide themselves in a cell and seek inthat way to cheat life. Others still believe that for-

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ZEST FOR LIFEgetfulness can be found In what we call pleasurethe philosophy of Omar. They, as we know, findonly stupefaction and its inevitable sequel of peni-tence and shame. Fortunately the vast majority ofhuman beings live their lives in the faith of theirfathers, with a hope of immortality as background.The day's work and the night's sleep give to lifeits rhythm as its sun and moon, and love sustainsits hours of rest. In every faith and in all regionsof the world it has appeared that mankind can livelife worthily and accept death with tranquillity.Only with the help of love and work, and with therich gift of night, can one forget life ; that is to say,forget oneself and thereby enter into the greatcommon heaven of human experience that opens aprospect of eternity.One is fond of cities in various ways, with vari-

ousqualities

offeeling.

Of Paris as of an elderly,wise, and smiling woman friend ; of Florence as ofthe love of one's first youth. Rome one approachesas one of the heroines of history, one of the " greatinconsolables." But Venice one loves with the bittervoluptuousness which the octogenarian Ninon'slovers must have felt on approaching the immor-tal, the world's most practised courtesan.

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VII. On the Way to EgyptTo reach Egypt from Venice one sails for threedays over a silken, glittering sea ; wine-dark, theancients said, and they were right. Especially atsunset, when the tissue of the surface plays withevery shade of purple, this is transfused by a darkand affluent blue that comes from the lower depthsand that only grapes possess.The shores are withered green and rose-grey,

violet and orange like those of China or Japan.The Dalmatian islands, Apulia, Peloponnesus, andCrete glide past in rapid succession, for this is asumptuous express steamer which in the seasoncarries the fashionable world of north-western Eu-rope to Cairo and so it is above all important towaste no time upon the sea of Odysseus.

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ON THE WAY TO EGYPTWe are nearing Alexandria and the land in

which, most likely, humanity first became consciousof itself, first meditated upon life and death, andfashioned works not directly intended to supportlife.On this sea Odysseus was tossed about for ten

years, the story tells, pursued by the malice of an-gry gods. But the man's courage and enduranceand wisdom won him the protection of other andmightier gods and brought him safely through alladventures and perils and what adventures!Perhaps in the night we have passed the isle of thePhaeacians, which now is not to be found on anychart, but which in our dreams ever rises dewy freshout of the sea ; the isle of harmony which lies on themeridian of the golden mean, but in unknown lati-tude and therefore undiscoverable, since none cansteer along the hair-fine, the Olympian line, the is-land we shall never reach though we sail across end-less seas, round innumerable headlands and capes,and see myriads of palm-girt islands emerging fromthe sea. Circe's island and Calypso's have longbeen on established routes, but mankind has neverbeen further from the island of the Phseacians thantoday. There to Odysseus came his goodliest adven-ture. There he encountered the young womanwhose figure seems to me the freshest, the most

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ZEST FOR LIFEharmonious of all that human imagination has cre-ated, the King's daughter, Nausicaa. No figure inthe world's literature is drawn so "vividly in so fewlines as she, from the first meeting with Odysseuswhen she was playing with her ball upon the shoreuntil the hero's departure. Nothing happens, nosignificant words are exchanged between them, andyet the whole tragedy lives before our eyes. Thetragedy, but that is just it; there is no tragedyhere, for Nausicaa was of a different stuff from theheroines of tragedy ; she was not in revolt againstlife and its necessities ; her nerves were like those ofa Spartan woman ; her blood fresh and pure as seawater. She felt herself drawn to the hero, but un-derstood that he was under the ban of a greaterdestiny, and she bowed obediently, without rebel-lion, in pride and humility, to the inevitable. Shedid not throw herself into the sea from the rockfrom which she watched his ship sailing away forever ; she returned to her father's house, marrieda Phaeacian hero, and bore him sons and daughtersof the race that shapes a people's greatness. Thereis no tragedy in this, and one understands Goethehaving abandoned it after working on it for years.But where lives now your spirit, Nausicaa, and

where are the daughters you bore and brought up86


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ON THE WAY TO EGYPTin your image? Them it is for whom men seek dayand night and in dreams. They it is who win men'slove till death ; it is only women like these who canmake men of us and heroes.On another island where Odysseus landed lived

another woman of another, far less uncommontype. She was beautiful, hospitable, and sociable.But she gave nothing for nothing, and men werechanged into swine in her proximity, for men havenever of their own power been able to resist thesorcery of seduction. Circe's island has become amighty realm, with colonies in all parts of theworld, and in all lands men grunt and root withtheir snouts round the palaces of Circe.But in the time of Odysseus there was still bal-

ance in things ; life was not yet twisted awry ; andso the antidote to the sorcery grew upon the islanditself. The plant moly, whose root was black butits flower white as milk and which gave power toits bearer to resist the enchantment that issuesfrom the breasts and loins of women.

" The gods called it moly, for mortal man willscarce prevail to dig it up, but to the gods allthings are possible."And the god of wisdom came to Odysseus' aid.Where now grows the rare and potent plant?

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ZEST FOR LIFEWhat god will help us weaklings to find its hiddenhabitat? For our time stands in need of it morethan any before, especially perhaps on the otherside of the Atlantic. It is said that America gaveus the potato. Would it not be a royal return giftif a bold and crafty European were secretly toplant moly in the fertile and still so virgin soil ofthe United States?We touch at Brindisi, the terminus of Via Ap-pia, at the narrowest point of the Adriatic ; herethe legions embarked that Rome sent to the East.Plutarch tells of their leaders, of JEmilius Paulus,poor, noble, and austere, one of the last from theheroic days of Rome. It was he who, apparentlywithout cause, divorced his excellent wife, by whomhe had full-grown and promising sons. When hisfriends, scandalized, reproached him for this, hetook off his shoes, showed them, and said : " Is thereanything the matter with these shoes, are they notnew, of the best material, made by the most skilfulcraftsmen? And yet they pinch me." He conqueredMacedonia, the land which a hundred and fiftyyears before had been invincible, whose armies hadsubdued the Balkans, Asia Minor, Syria, Egypt,Mesopotamia, Persia, Turkestan, Afghanistan,and the western part of India. What if Alexanderhad lived thirty, nay, even ten years longer, and

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ON THE WAY TO EGYPThad turned his arms against the West, againstItaly ? How then would the history of Rome and ofthe world have taken shape? In any event in a dif-ferent and to us an inconceivable fashion. A mancatches a fever in Babylon, and the world's destinyis changed decisively ; and yet modern historianslove to belittle and explain away the importance ofthe great geniuses, especially if they were soldiers.

Plutarch tells of Titus Flaminius, the first greatHellenophil, the first known to history of the longline of enthusiasts for the Greek who have this, ifnothing else, in common, that they all became pro-foundly disillusioned when they learned to knowthe object of their enthusiasm more intimately. Inthis imperfect world one should certainly confineone's enthusiasm to abstract conceptions, such asliberty, democracy, the emancipation of women,and the like. Since in the nature of things one willnever live to see their complete realization, one isable in a certain degree to preserve the illusion.Flaminius gave the Greeks freedom, the greatestblessing of a people, it is said. But undoubtedly themost dangerous of gifts. An infernal machine thatis certain to explode, but is not set for a definitetime. I wonder if any other freedom has value thanthat which is won and maintained by the hardeststruggles, with the bloodiest sacrifices.

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ZEST FOR LIFEThis view is quite certainly not shared by our

young, already a little tired, Danish democracy,which in full freedom has been allowed to reformDenmark into the existing Fools' Paradise., butwhich is unwilling to sacrifice the life of a singleunemployed man to preserve it.The only real democracy which to my knowledgehas been able to maintain itself for long namely,the Swiss seems always firmly determined to de-fend itself to the last against all comers.We read, too, about Sulla, Rome's first tyrant,the only one of Rome's dictators before Augustusto die a natural death, although he resigned thepower during his lifetime. A genius who, in con-trast with modern radicals who believe in the god-dess of reason, trusted in luck, in dreams, and inthe inspiration of the moment.Now, too, Rome has a dictator, and affronted

democrats the world over cannot find words hardenough to condemn the tyranny of the Blackshirts.Yet is there any perceptible difference betweenSulla's lictors and proscription lists, and the Fas-cists' castor oil and their internments on little out-of-the-way islands? The mass executions of theRussian revolution, its rule of terror, and its sadis-tic cruelties, continued through many years, havenever to any extent worth mentioning aroused the

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ZEST FOR LIFEmian shop clerks and Polish labourers andcoal-miners ; there were not a few with a secondary-school education. All together physically a prettyvigorous and not undernourished set of people,and thus far well qualified to till the soil under thesun of Palestine but can farmers be made ofthe town Jews of central Europe? What futurehas this colonization which England staged in aromantic but unreflecting moment? And how willthey get on with the Arabs, the successors of theCanaanites of old? It will be extraordinarily in-teresting for the next generation to see the resultof this new immigration into the Promised Land,There is no sign of a new Joshua, and in our daysit will take more than a blast of trumpets to bringdown the walls of Jericho. The worst difficulty willperhaps be of an insuperable kind will lie inthe incapacity of the Jews for maintaining goodand peaceful terms with the people among whomthey live. On an ancient stele in the ArchaeologicalMuseum in Cairo, King Menephta, of I do notknow which dynasty, records categorically in somany words that he has given orders for the com-plete extermination of the Jews. This as we knowwas never accomplished ; the vigour of the race wastoo great; but how many times in the course ofhistory, and in how many countries, has not such a


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VIII. Cairo

IF for your sins you be stranded in Cairo in themonth of June, your problem will be to find coolplaces of refuge where you can defend your lungsagainst the dust and your eyes against the littleubiquitous flies that attack them with phenomenalpersistence. One rest and solace to the eyes is thegreat red-blossoming acacia which flowers here inJune. Flamboyant," " Flame of the Forest/' itis called, and to Europeans it is the first heraldfrom the world of the tropics. He who has never seen" the crimson tree " of which Johannes V. Jensensang upon the travels of his youth must forgo oneof the world's miracles. What is red? Roses andrubies, cinnabar and blood. Roses, I say, the red-

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CAIROdest roses Northern fancy ever dreamed of, are tothe crimson tree as a Danish romance to the sextetin Lucia, as a quiet summer evening to a night oftropic storm. When the red acacia leaps into bloomin Java it arches its flaming cupola for months to-gether5 lifts and spreads it against the tropic sunlike an eruption, an outbreak of the pent-up, half-stifled, savage fire of the very tropics. We do notunderstand this pitch of inflorescence, we are in-clined to a certain coolness in the matter of floralorgies ; but there it is, the miracle ; it stands pal-pably before our eyes, this flaming crown full ofthe murmuring of doves, of the hum of thousandsof drunken bees, alive with the fluttering of myri-ads of butterflies. We can but humbly bow ourheads and mutter our " Allah akbar."A good cool place for the later afternoon hoursof these penitential weeks is the Zoological Gar-dens. A cool, shady park with much running water,which by the strangest of optical illusions seems torun uphill and to have been led over the highest-lying parts of the garden. There are pretty reed-fringed ponds and little lakes on which tropicalducks and black swans swim, while flamingoesstand dreaming and delicately flushing on theirpatient vigil. Black and white speckled kingfisherskeep zealous watch perched on withered boughs,

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ZEST FOR LIFEand plunge from time to time with such startlingviolence and so vertical a drop that it seems theirstraight, sharp, heavy beaks must stick in the bot-tom for good. Herons by the score sit in the bushesand trees round the lake or stand in the shallowwater by the margin, all completely motionless,marvellously cocksure and malicious, while thesharp little eyes above their pedantic beaks stareat the still, green surface of the water with sopiercing an intensity that one would suppose theywere seeking for something irreplaceable that hadbeen lost, that the philosophers' stone, the answerto the riddle of the Sphinx lay hidden at the bot-tom of the lake.

Great cactuses and oleanders are everywhere inbloom, and the crimson tree's crown shouts downall other instruments in the symphony of colour.

Suddenly above the quiet surface the hippo-potamus lifts his island of a head as with a gentlesubmarine volcanic eruption, a rugged, bare, androcky island ; it seems too incredible, as if the Cre-ator's imagination had run dry, like Scheherazade'son the thousand and first day, before the riverhorse was created.

I saw the ostriches perform their sunset dance.These handsomely dressed, distressingly largebirds, the cocks correct and elegant in black and

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CAIROwhite, the hens ravishing in a froth of rose andgrey they suddenly lift all their shining wingand tail feathers into the air and in the executionof downright indecent dance steps exhibit theircompletely naked bodies and thin legs passing intopowerfully developed thighs before all the unpre-pared and greatly shocked spectators. It was arepulsive and, because of the prodigious size of thebirds, an almost uncanny spectacle which recalledto me a disagreeable memory.One hot summer day I was wandering alone inthe Bois de Boulogne out in the neighbourhood ofthe big cascade at Longchamps. The day was ex-ceptionally fine, with clear sun and still air trem-bling in the heat, but with cool, pale-green shadowover all the little paths that wind through the thickundergrowth. It was still June, and myriads ofsong-birds were in full song, butterflies were flut-tering, bees and wasps humming, the air was satu-rated with the scent of hawthorn, honeysuckle, andwild chervil. I had lunched at Armenonville, hadsat alone under the chestnuts by the little pond andwatched a pair of flycatchers plunging by turnsfrom their look-out station in a weeping willowinto the sea of air in search of prey; strangelyfascinating to see the little pied bodies rolling andtumbling off invisible waves like corks in a rough

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ZEST FOR LIFEsea; they always returned in triumph with theprey. For a long time I watched their graceful playand envied them their apparently limitless ap-petite,, while myself I ate one of the best luncheonsthat hitherto has come my way. A half-bottle of anot very young Montrachet had finally created inmy mind, if not downright peace with this worldand its affairs and ways, at least a definite ar-mistice. In a receptive mood and in the weatherdescribed above I accordingly sauntered out alongthe narrow, shady paths towards Longchamps.There was not a soul in sight.At a turn of the path in a place where the un-

dergrowth was very thick and the shadows deeper,the scent of the thorns stronger, more stupefying, Isaw a woman, quite well dressed, coming to meetme. She looked to be in the middle thirties ; herface seen from some distance was quite handsome,but with the most extinct and devastated expres-sion I have ever seen in a human countenance.Only in certain drawings by Hops is there any-thing to be found which could compare with it.When we had come quite near to each other shesuddenly stopped in front of me and calmly andsilently with a slow, patient gesture lifted herskirts about her and showed, like the ostriches,without a smile, without so much as an attempt at

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CAIROa smile, that she had nothing else on. As an honesttradesman exhibits goods about which he himselfhas no illusions. Her face was completely expres-sionless ? her eyes stared vacantly,, extinct like twincraters, at mine. Dumbly and blindly she offeredherself, her poor body, like yes, like what? Foreven the female of the brute creation in heat pre-serves a trace of redeeming coquetry, tries to playthe fugitive pursued by the compelling male.Blindly and dumbly as a plant that offers its chal-ice to the bee.But she was a human being, one of our like,made in God's image and with " a soul that was

created to strive." How, through how many, whatcountless defeats, had she reached this completeshamelessness, this final degradation? I silentlyshook my head and passed on, but the armisticewas over. The sunlight had lost something of itsradiance, and the song of the birds and the coolfragrance of the shade their enchantment. It wasas though unreason and despair had knocked atthe door, had impudently shown their spectre-faces for a moment in the light of day, as thoughone had heard a snarl from the cage in which dayby day we hold them imprisoned in the depths ofconsciousness.

I left the ostriches still engaged in their pecul-101


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ZEST FOR LIFEiar dance, felt no desire to stop by the monkeycages, but looked with unmixed pleasure at thegiraffes moving quietly about in their shady littlegrove. The giraffe has the gentlest philosopher'shead imaginable and, unlike that of his cousin thedromedary, his philosophy is obviously optimistic,which is the more remarkable in that he is the mostpersecuted of animals and is able neither to defendhimself nor to hide himself nor to run away. Whatcan have been the intention in putting this big,defenceless animal on open plains inhabited bylions and leopards? But he is not alone in thisworld in holding fast to a philosophy which is in-creasingly repudiated by life. There are many tothis day who hold that we all live among lions andleopards, between the devil and the deep sea, andthat we cannot do much otherwise than the giraffe

namely, try constantly to forget it.With the dromedary it is otherwise. His philos-ophy is of an austerer school. He is born and

brought up in a land where it is always far to greengroves and cool, shady places. A frightful land ofyellow sand, of naked, savage rocks and thornyvegetation, under a burning sun and a whiteburnt-out sky. There are years between its rain-storms and scores of miles between its wells. Incompensation the night sky arches purer, colder,

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CAIROand darker and the stars twinkle with a harsherflame than in other places. In this land is born thedromedary with a hump upon his back, formed tobe laden. No wonder that he carries his queer, flat,snaky head so high, that he waves it with such asuperior air on his curved neck as with his long,gliding step he enters the oasis. He has a right tocurl his thin, expressive lips disdainfully at oxenand asses on his way through stinking, clamorousbazaars, to lower his heavy eyelids so haughtilyabove his strong and melancholy desert profile.He is a realist and a cynic ; he bears his humpand its burden through life's boundless and eternaldesert without complaint, without ostentation ; likea Diogenes he asks only water, bread, and a littleshade.

In the morning one of the coolest places in Cairois the Egyptian Museum, which lies down by theKasr-el-Nil bridge alongside of enormous bar-racks which, in spite of all polite and ceremoniousproclamations of Egypt's so-called independence,still fortunately accommodate twelve thousandEnglish soldiers.

In these vast, cool halls one stands suddenly faceto face with a wonderful and ancient art thatmakes an overwhelming, an enchanting, a fas-cinating impression. For these statues of kings

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ZEST FOR LIFEand gods in granite and limestone and diorite aremany of them colossal and in the highest degreemonumental ; but the astonishing thing is that thefaces are at the same time often treated with a deli-cacy, an expressiveness, an individualized realismof which one will scarcely find the like.

Centred in front of the end wall of the greatmain hall is enthroned the mighty double statueof King Amenhotep III and his Queen, Taia, inwhite limestone twenty-three feet high. On thebase their three children are represented in highrelief. A happy couple who smile the smile ofcontentment, of secure possession. They havelearned to know this world and its glory ; while notovervaluing what it has to give, they consider that,all in all, the game is well worth the candle. Theysit beside each other, and she lays her right armabout his loins with a discreet, possessive gesture ;in bearing and the carriage of the head they areevery inch a king and a queen.On one of the side walls stands King SenwosriIII, in reddish-grey granite, a short-necked, broad-shouldered type, who with clenched hands andarms along the sides of his body strides forwardwith a long, firm, heavy tread. The face seemssurprisingly familiar to a Northerner; it has acertain simplicity and ponderousness, something

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CAIRO" nordic " in its expression ; indeed I am inclinedwith Johannes V. Jensen to call it Cimbric, not tosay Jutic. Though he is beyond question a man anda warrior, his mouth has preserved something sulkyand boyish which would make him irresistible tothe motherly type of woman.

In one of the side galleries there are severalportraits of Tutankhamen, a fine and intelligentyoung man's face, modern, full of the awarenessand understanding which are human rather thanroyal virtues. A melancholy, resigned mouth andweary eyes, despite his youth.

It is to this young man's grave that the bar-barians are now (1927) streaming from both sidesof the Atlantic to the wildest Negro music of ad-vertisement and sensation, while the world's great-est and most " reputable " newspaper has securedto itself the sole right to make public the details ofthe violation of the tomb. It is as if this face, whichis irradiated with an ancient and exquisite culture,by its melancholy smile had foreseen and forgiveneven this barbarism ; one can very well read uponhis sensitive lips the words : " Forgive them, forthey know not what they do."From high above gleams the goddess Mat'smysterious, fateful Gioconda smile. In its aston-ishing virtuosity it is reminiscent of Leonardo, but

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ZEST FOR LIFEthe achievement Is finer, more divine, more sphinx-like, attained with greater economy of means. Shereminds one not a little of certain Buddha andBodhisattva heads of the classical Hindu-Javanese period.The imperious face of Thotmes III is renderedin many different statues both sitting and stand-ing. Vivid, clear-cut, vigorous features ; delicatelycurved nose, thin lips ; a suspicion of a smile thatbetrays the consciousness of inexhaustible reserves.Isis is his mother ; his features have been given tonumerous sphinxes.The goddess Hathor, who is represented in thelikeness of a cow, is met with everywhere. Kings

seek shelter and refuge and sustenance under herneck and belly. She is the goddess of love asthe life-giving principle " representing what istrue, good and best in women as daughter, wife andmother," says a guide-book published by a mod-ern Egyptian in ludicrous English. There is inthe cow's head and eyes a profound sense of fecun-dity and quietude, and in the gentle yet proud anddignified movement of its body and limbs a pon-derous but godlike grace, that completely reconcileus to this somewhat unexpected symbol of the god-dess of love.But it is undeniably a far cry to the Venus of

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CAIROankles, and small feet in high-heeled Parisian shoesto do themselves full justice. A white veil of themost transparent silk muslin covers the tip of thenose and the lower part of the face, while allowingthe full, lacquer-red lips to be more than suspected,and it is carefully adjusted so that well-wavedtendrils of hair come into view on either temple.The whole effect is the daintiest imaginable and farfrom nunlike.Le ciel defend, de vrai, certains contentements.Mais on trouve avec lui des accommodements.There is a considerable elasticity in modern

Islam's maintenance of the traditions.For the rest we have another confirmation here

that there is nothing new under the sun. As clearlyappears from several statues both in wood and instone, bobbed hair was the mode at court in thedays of the fourth dynasty that is to say, threeor four thousand years before our era and thewell-to-do middle class then as later adopted thefashions of the aristocracy see the woodenstatue of " the overseer's wife/ 5 also of the fourthdynasty. It is pleasantly reassuring to see the im-mutability of human nature demonstrated beforeone's eyes, the recurrence of the same thing. Itgives hope that our own angels will come back from

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CAIROit be before it once more begins to bloom? Thegenius of the Italians is of a more active kind;true, it began a couple of thousand years later, butwith what incredible fertility it has now through-out long ages been producing geniuses, soldiersand priests, statesmen and saints, scientists andartists ! When the tremendous flow of the Renais-sance ebbed out in baroque and rococo, a newspring welled forth ; the talent was transferred tomusic and filled the nineteenth century with itsmelodies ; and even in our fathers' time there werea Garibaldi and a Cavour, the last and greatestcondottiere and a new Machiavelli who wove upona larger loom.And everything is to be expected of the latestItaly, which for the first time is taking all thefaculties of the people into her service; what wesee is changed every day before our eyes " intosomething rich and strange."

Despite the Pyramids and the Sphinx, which iscompletely ruined, despite the sunset seen fromthe parapet of the citadel by the Mosque ofMehemet AH, despite the Nile and the whole manythousand years old patina that lies over this land,I cannot say that it made any profound impres-sion upon one who knows something of the fartherEast apart from its sculpture. The ancient

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IX. Port Said

IT was once my lot to spend a week in a hotelroom in Port Said waiting for a ship. There hadbeen rioting in Cairo and Alexandria, and theSirdar had been murdered; there was a certaindisquiet in the air, a certain tension, which, how-ever, one had difficulty in taking quite seriouslyin this country. None the less it was particularlyreassuring to see from my hotel window an Englishbattleship glide in past the de Lesseps statue, fol-lowed by its bodyguard of cruisers and destroyers ;to see her come to anchor in the Canal and lie,quiet but astonishingly threatening, off the CanalCompany's offices, with the big guns of her turretsturned upon the town.

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ZEST FOR LIFEShe was the Iron Duke, Jellicoe's flagship at

Horns Reef. In her conning tower had stood in thehistoric hours of that summer day and night theman who, as Churchill says, was the only man whocould have lost the war in half an hour. A uniqueresponsibility. One understands the Nelson signalsnot havin

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