a bad influence on me. They wanted me to spend my time with the huntsmen, who were thought to have a good influence; but I hated the huntsmen, as I have said, and always went to see the gardeners, whom I loved. I was scolded whenever it transpired that I had been with the gardeners, and they were scolded too for paying attention to me, because their company was considered very harmful to me, as my mother put it. Whenever my brother visited the huntsmen they would say, It’s nice that you’ve been with the huntsmen — that’s what we like to see. And they always said it in my hearing, when they were sure of hurting me. Once, when I had been with the huntsmen because for some reason I wanted to go and see them — I cannot recall why — they asked me where I had been, and I told them I had been with the huntsmen. They did not believe me and boxed my ears in the presence of my brother, who knew that I had been with the huntsmen, as he had gone with me, but instead of coming to my aid and telling them the truth, he kept quiet. He always kept quiet, even when our mother boxed my ears because I had told what she took to be a lie, when in fact it was the truth. I recall that even when I grew up, my parents never believed me. If someone had been to see me they would ask the name of the visitor, but when I told them, they refused to believe me, saying that they knew very well who had been to see me, and it was not the person I said it was. If I had been to Wels and they asked me where I had been, I would tell them, whereupon they would say that I had not been in Wels: they knew where I had really been — in Vöcklabruck, in Linz, in Styria, but not in Wels. They could never be persuaded of the truth. They never believed anything I told them; they considered me to be not just a normal liar but, as my mother used to say, a born liar. What do you do all the time in the library? they would ask when I emerged from one of our five libraries, all of which were suspect, as I was the only person to use them. You certainly don’t go there to read, they would say, and take me to task. It was no good assuring them that I went to the library only to read. You go to the library to pursue your perverse thoughts, my mother would insist, no matter how often I protested that I went to the library in order to read and for no other purpose, and that I did nothing else there. I repeatedly swore that I went to the library only to read, that I spent my time there reading. She would not be convinced but called me a liar and repeatedly maintained that I had gone to the library to pursue my perverse thoughts. When I asked her what she meant by my perverse thoughts, she refused to answer but called me a troublemaker, as she had so often since my early childhood. She added that I was an impudent liar and walked off. She constantly suspected me of pursuing perverse thoughts. She probably had no idea what she meant by this, but it became a stock reproach, and even in company I was not safe from it. At dinner, in the presence of strangers, usually the kind of guests I found most repugnant — middle-class people from the neighboring small towns whom she had known since childhood and still kept up with — she would say that I was always pursuing my perverse thoughts. I have to say that my mother loved my brother, Johannes, above all because he never felt any need to visit the libraries. Johannes, she would say, doesn’t go to the library to pursue perverse thoughts: he goes to the Huntsmen’s Lodge, where it’s fun. In my view, based on experience, the fun at the Huntsmen’s Lodge was of a fairly basic and vulgar variety, consisting in the endless recital of crude and utterly vulgar jokes that I could never find amusing without feeling dirty. This was the main reason that I abhorred the Huntsmen’s Lodge, whereas my mother always enjoyed the crude, basic, and abysmally primitive jokes that circulated at the Huntsmen’s Lodge. Nothing delighted her more, and she always left the Huntsmen’s Lodge with tears of laughter in her eyes — which on one occasion even my father called perverse. You go to the Gardeners’ House, she used to say to me, where it’s all so boring — that’s typical. She thought nothing of spending half the night with the huntsmen, joining in their brainless songs, pressing up close to them on a bench, and permitting them to make unequivocal verbal passes at her; indeed, as the evening progressed she would not object to their making physical passes or even, I have to say, pinching her bottom. When my brother had finished his homework he was always told he had done well, but when I had finished mine they always found something to criticize, noticing a mistake here, an irregularity there, and constantly upbraiding me for what they called my illegible writing. If my brother came home with a good mark they naturally praised him, but in my case a good mark was acknowledged only by a reluctantly friendly nod. I recall that my brother was given the best bed linen, unlike the worn sheets that I had to sleep on, and first-class pillows, unlike mine, which were patched and mended. My stockings, coats, and jackets had to last longer than his; his clothes were replaced when they became dirty or had unsightly holes in them, but it was no use my asking for new clothes. If I did I was called a wastrel, but they never called my brother a wastrel. I do not think my parents ever treated me fairly, for even in my early childhood they had a feeling that I might be superior to them, though I cannot say exactly what prompted this feeling. Only my grandparents were fair to me. They treated me just as they treated Johannes; for them there was no difference between their grandsons, or at least they made no difference between us. Our happiest times at Wolfsegg were when our grandparents were alive. This was natural, I once told Gambetti, as they showed no favoritism. As soon as they died I became aware that my parents wished to punish me because they thought my grandparents had treated me better than my brother. This was not true, but it was what my parents always imagined, especially my mother. It was as though our parents, after the death of our grandparents, had thought to themselves, Now we must turn our attention to Johannes, who had a raw deal from his grandparents; we must treat him particularly well because he was always put down by his grandparents and had to suffer from the favoritism they showed to his brother. The truth is that my brother was never put down by our grandparents, nor was I ever shown favoritism. Our parents, however, believing that I had been at an advantage and my brother at a disadvantage, decided that from now on I should be made to pay for what they imagined to have been the case, though it bore no relation to the truth. And so, once our grandparents were dead, our parents always treated Johannes with affection and me with aversion, and in due course the favoritism they showed him became unbearable, and its effect was compounded by the aversion they showed to me. They became accustomed, in short, to loving my brother and hating me. It’s absurd, I had told Gambetti on the Pincio, that in a house that boasts five libraries the mind should be held not only in low regard but in positive contempt. I have to suppose that one library was not enough for those who built Wolfsegg and were its first occupants. They had a natural need for thought and intellectual activity and were undoubtedly passionate thinkers, who were devoted to mental endeavor and made thinking their chief preoccupation, as so much of the evidence we have about them shows. They were convinced that the consummation of human existence was to lead a life of thought, a life centered on the mind, Gambetti, not one bounded by everyday concerns and everyday stolidity, as my family believed. What times those were, when understanding was elevated to the plane of thought and to think was the supreme imperative! Today everything that once distinguished Wolfsegg has atrophied, having been consciously belittled by successive generations and actually trodden in the dirt in the past century, above all in recent decades. They provided themselves not just with one library but with five, I told Gambetti — the upper left library, the upper right, the lower left, the lower right, and the one in the Children’s Villa. For centuries all branches of learning were represented in them, all schools of thought, all the arts. On one occasion, Gambetti, I had retired to the upper left library to read Jean Paul’s