brilliant career such as had seldom been witnessed, especially in the history of the Church, she said. Gambetti had first assessed me, not I him, Spadolini told me, to see whether I was fit to be his teacher. He had devised a very precise method for assessing me and my teaching abilities. Spadolini quoted Gambetti as saying that I had passed the test to his entire satisfaction, I now recalled as I sat in the chair. We think we are our pupil’s teacher from the beginning, but for months we are actually being assessed by him, I thought. At the very start of our relationship Gambetti asked me many odd questions, unusual questions, it seemed to me at the time, and I did not know why. At first Spadolini, Gambetti, and I often met for dinner near the Piazza Minerva, at an establishment where one is served exclusively by nuns, who naturally made a great fuss over Spadolini, somewhat to his embarrassment. Maria went there once with me, but never again, as she found it so distasteful. On the evening in question numerous clerics were present, and the nuns were so assiduous in their attentions that Maria must have found it unbearable. We had met to discuss her poems, especially her Bohemian poem, which has since become world famous and is certainly one of the finest and most beautiful poems in the German language. I said to her, You’ve now written the finest and most beautiful poem ever written by a woman in our language. It was not just a compliment: I was telling the truth, which has meanwhile been acknowledged by the rest of the world. I have always loved Maria’s poems: they are so Austrian, yet at the same time universal, uniquely imbued with the mood of the world around us, and written by the most intelligent woman poet ever. Maria’s poems are entirely antisentimental, I thought, quite unlike those written by others, which for all their wildness and waywardness are informed by nothing but Austrian sentimentality. Maria’s poems are antisentimental and clear and deserve to be rated as highly as Goethe’s, as those poems by Goethe that I value most. Maria had to go to Rome to be able to write them, I told myself, sitting in the chair and again thinking of Spadolini, whom I have to thank for Gambetti, my dearest and most valued friend in Rome. What would my life in Rome be like without Gambetti, I thought, who confronts me daily with new ideas and new questions, who daily refreshes me by bringing me face-to-face with the real problems of our world? Gambetti, who is forever questioning and never lets up, who never gives me a moment’s peace, who comes to my apartment and questions me all night long, until the cold light of dawn comes up, whom I cannot escape. Gambetti, who wants to know everything, through the medium of German literature, which he uses merely as a device for learning about everything else, Gambetti the anarchist, who under my guidance has become a true anarchist, whom I have possibly trained in anarchism, turning him against his parents, his surroundings, and himself, I thought, yet who is also the driving force behind my own anarchism and set it in motion again in Rome. Gambetti, who throws the CorrieredellaSeraon my desk — and as it were in my face — and questions me about everything. Gambetti, the young man whom Maria loves more than me; Gambetti, the greatest doubter I have ever known, who far outdoes me in his doubting, who has made doubting a principle of life, and who once told me that with his doubting he had started to dismantle the whole world in order to study it properly; Gambetti, who would dearly love to blow the world sky-high but at the same time spends hours walking around Rome in a red sweater, carrying books by Jean Paul and Kleist and Wittgenstein under his arm, while dreaming of dismantling the world and blowing it sky-high. Gambetti, who, on the other hand, dines with his parents at the Hotel de la Ville and does not disturb them in their outdated attitudes, who shops only in the Via Condotti and whose room not merely is tastefully furnished but evinces the most exquisite culture. Gambetti, whom I cling to as much as he clings to me. Gambetti, I thought, sitting in my father’s chair, the quintessence of intellectual curiosity and cold calculation — Gambetti, the youthful bewitcher of all around him. I looked over to the Orangery, now illuminated from within, a picture I had not seen before. There was now only a handful of guests in the park, and I could not recognize them. I had a duty to present myself to them, I thought, to go down and shake hands with them, but I was not up to it and had unloaded this formality on my sisters, who were in any case better qualified to perform it. After all, they’re the daughters and know how to deal with their own kind, whereas I’ve long since forgotten how to deal with their kind, I told myself, gazing in fascination at the Orangery, which was illuminated solely by the feeble candlelight from within. The prelude is drawing to a close, I thought. Spadolini still hasn’t arrived, and the others don’t really matter. I’ve nothing whatever in common with them, I thought; they don’t concern me. All these people are just tiresome. I despise them and they despise me. Suddenly I thought I saw my cousin Alexander enter the park, without his wife, and it occurred to me that my sisters would naturally have sent a telegram to him in Brussels. I had not thought of him until now. It really was Alexander approaching the Orangery. I watched him shake hands with several of the people standing in front of it, in that characteristic way of his that again struck me as so attractive, both elegant and entirely natural. I recalled that Alexander, my dreamer, was exactly my age. We had parted thirty years before, when he left the boarding school and went to Belgium with his parents, but we had never severed our contact. His marriage, which I must admit I at first regarded with misgiving, actually deepened our friendship, which had nothing to do with our being related to each other, a fact that neither of us considered important. I have often visited Brussels. I stayed there during my first journey to London, and since then I have always gone over to Brussels whenever I was staying in Paris. When I stayed with him and his wife they took me out into the country near Brussels to visit their Belgian friends, and also to Ostend. They introduced me to the art of Ensor and Delvaux, and the fine country houses near Brussels. But chiefly I remember spending whole nights with Alexander, sitting with him in his study while he set the world to rights, as they say. During these nocturnal sessions, Alexander the philosopher would paint his philosophical picture in my head, and for weeks afterward I would be obsessed by it. I went for walks with him in Brussels and visited his friends, who all lived in reduced circumstances, virtually destitute, and came from various countries, chiefly Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Romania — East Europeans who had fled from their national regimes into Alexander’s arms, as it were. His first contact with these political refugees was at an office next to the Gare Luxembourg at Ixelles, where he offered to protect them against arrest and imprisonment, to which they were liable as illegal immigrants. In other words, he set himself the task of helping these political refugees, and was well qualified to perform it. No sooner had they realized that he genuinely wished to help them, prompted solely by his excellent character, than he was snowed under, as they say. They pestered him day and night, but that was what he wanted, I thought, observing him from the window of my father’s room. Although he had just arrived from Brussels, he looked as if he had merely taken a walk behind the Farm or the Children’s Villa. He wore the simplest of clothes, with no trace of pretension or ostentation. The people he associated with often called him a fool, finding him