‘And why did you show me and this gentleman into this room, and not the other, eh?’ I asked the porter, seizing his arm to prevent his going away. ‘What right had you to decide from his appearance that this gentleman must be in this and not in the other room? Are not all who pay on an equal footing in an hotel – not only in a republic, but all over the world? Yours is a scurvy republic! … This is your equality! You dare not show those English people into this room – the very Englishmen who listened to this gentleman without paying him – that is, who each stole from him the few centimes they ought to have given him. How dared you show us in here?’
‘The other room is closed,’ replied the porter.
‘No!’ I cried. ‘That’s not true – it’s not closed.’
‘You know better then.’
‘I know! I know that you are lying.’
The porter turned his shoulder towards me.
‘What is the use of talking?’ he muttered.
‘No, not “what is the use …” ’ I shouted. ‘Take us to the other room at once!’
Despite the hunchbacked woman’s and the singer’s entreaties that we should go away, I had the head waiter called and went into the other room with my companion. When the head waiter heard my angry voice and saw my excited face he did not argue with me, but told me with contemptuous civility that I might go where I liked. I could not convict the porter of his lie, as he had disappeared before I went into the other room.
The room was really open and lighted up, and at one of the tables the Englishman with the lady was having supper. Though we were shown to another table, I sat down with the dirty singer close to the Englishman, and ordered the unfinished bottle to be brought me.
The Englishman and the lady looked first with surprise and then with anger at the little man who sat beside me more dead than alive. They exchanged some words, and the lady pushed away her plate, and rustled her silk dress as they went away. Through the panes in the door I could see the Englishman speaking angrily to the waiter, pointing in our direction all the time. The waiter thrust his head in at the door and looked towards us. I waited with pleasure for them to come to turn us out, and to be able at last to vent my whole indignation on them – but fortunately, though I then regretted it, they left us in peace.
The singer, who had before refused the wine, now hastened to empty the bottle in order to get away as soon as possible. However, he thanked me, feelingly I thought, for his entertainment. His moist eyes became still more tearful and shining, and he expressed his gratitude in a most curious and confused little speech. But that speech, in which he said that if everyone respected artists as I did he would be well off, and that he wished me all happiness, was very pleasant to me. We went out into the vestibule. The waiters were there and my enemy the porter who seemed to be complaining of me to them. They all looked on me, I think, as insane. I let the little man come up to them all, and then, with all the respect I could show, I took off my hat and pressed his hand with its ossified and withered finger. The waiters made a show of not taking any notice of me, but one of them burst into a sardonic laugh.
After bowing to me, the singer disappeared into the darkness, and I went up to my room, wishing to sleep off all these impressions and the foolish, childish anger which had so unexpectedly beset me. Feeling too agitated however for sleep, I went out again into the street to walk about till I should have calmed down, and also I must admit with a vague hope of finding an opportunity to come across the porter, the waiter, or the Englishman, to prove to them how cruel and above all how unjust they had been. But I met no one except the porter, who turned his back on seeing me, and I paced up and down the embankment all alone.
‘This is the strange fate of art!’ I reflected, having grown a little calmer. ‘All seek it and love it – it is the one thing everybody wants and tries to find in life, yet nobody acknowledges its power, nobody values this greatest blessing in the world, nor esteems or is grateful to those who give it to mankind. Ask anyone you like of all these guests at the Schweizerhof what is the greatest blessing in the world, and everyone, or ninety-nine out of a hundred, assuming a sardonic expression, will say that the best thing in the world is money! “Maybe this idea does not please you and does not conform to your lofty ideas,” he will tell you, “but what is to be done if human life is so constituted that money alone gives people happiness? I cannot help letting my reason see the world as it is,” he will add, “that is – see the truth.”
‘Pitiful is your reason, pitiful the happiness you desire, and you are a miserable being who does not know what you want.… Why have you all left your country, your relations, your occupations, and your financial affairs, and congregated here in this small Swiss town of Lucerne? Why did you all come out onto the balcony this evening and listen in respectful silence to the songs of that poor little mendicant? And had he chosen to go on singing you would still have remained silent and listened. What money, even millions of it, could have driven you all from your country and assembled you in this little corner, Lucerne? Could money have gathered you all on those balconies and made you stand for half an hour silent and motionless? No! One thing alone causes you to act, and will always influence you more strongly than any other motive power in life, and that is the need for art, which you do not acknowledge, but which you feel and will always feel as long as there is anything human left in you. The word “art” seems ridiculous to you. You use it as a scornful reproach; you perhaps allow love of the poetic in children and in silly girls, but even then you laugh at them; but for yourselves you require something positive. But children see life healthily, they love and know what men should love, and what gives happiness, but life has so enmeshed and depraved you that you laugh at the one thing you love, and seek only that which you hate and which causes you unhappiness. You are so enmeshed that you do not understand your obligation to this poor Tyrolese who has afforded you a pure enjoyment, yet you feel yourselves bound to humble yourselves gratuitously before a lord, without advantage or pleasure, and for some reason sacrifice for him your comfort and convenience. What nonsense! What incomprehensible senselessness! But it was not this that struck me most this evening. This ignorance of what gives happiness, this unconsciousness of poetic enjoyment, I almost understand, or have become used to, having often met it in my life; nor was the coarse, unconscious cruelty of the crowd new to me. Whatever the advocates of the popular spirit may say, a crowd is a combination possibly of good people, but of people who have come in touch merely on their base, animal sides, and it expresses only the weakness and cruelty of human nature. How could you, children of a free, humane nation, as Christians or simply as human beings, respond with coldness and ridicule to the pleasure afforded you by an unfortunate mendicant? But no, in your country there are institutions for the needy. There are no beggars and must be none, nor must there be any compassion, on which mendicancy is based. But this man had laboured, he gave you pleasure, he implored you to give him something from your superabundance for his pains, of which you availed yourselves. But you, from your lofty, brilliant palace, regarded him with a cold smile and there was not one among you hundred, happy, rich people who threw him anything. He went away humiliated, and the senseless crowd followed him laughing, and insulted not you but him, because you were cold, cruel, and dishonest; because you stole the pleasure he had afforded you, they insulted him.’