at first a frightful habit, over the last years it eventually became an agreeable habit to her, whenever I asked her about it, she always said it was an agreeable habit for her to go with me to the Kunsthistorisches Museum, to our White-Bearded Man by Tintoretto and to sit on the Bordone Room settee, Reger said. I do in fact believe that the Kunsthistorisches Museum is the only refuge left to me, Reger said, I have to go to the old masters to be able to continue to exist, precisely to these so-called old masters, who have long, that is for decades, been abhorrent to me, because basically nothing is more abhorrent to me than these so-called old masters here at the Kunsthistorisches Museum and old masters generally, all old masters, no matter what their names are, no matter what they have painted, Reger said, and yet it is they who keep me alive. I walk through the city and I think that I cannot bear living in this city any longer and that I not only cannot bear the city any longer but that I cannot bear the whole world and in consequence the whole of mankind any longer, because the world and all mankind have meanwhile become so ghastly that soon they will no longer be bearable, at least not for a person such as me. For a man of intellect just as for a man of sensitivity like me the world and mankind will soon no longer be bearable, believe me, Atzbacher. I no longer find in this world and among these people anything that I appreciate, he said, everything in this world is dull-witted and everything in this mankind is just as dull-witted. This world and our mankind have now reached a degree of dull-wittedness which a person like myself can no longer afford, he said, such a person can no longer live in such a world, such a person can no longer coexist with such a mankind, Reger said. Everything in this world and in our mankind has been dulled down to the lowest level, Reger said, everything in this world has reached such a degree of public danger and base brutality that I am finding it well-nigh impossible to go on living even for a single day at a time in this world and in our mankind. Such a degree of low dullwittedness had not been thought possible even by the most clear-sighted thinkers in history, Reger said, not by Schopenhauer, not by Nietzsche, not to mention Montaigne, Reger said, and as for our outstanding world poets, our poets of mankind, what they have predicted for the world and for mankind in terms of horror and decline is nothing compared to the actual state at present. Even Dostoyevsky, one of our greatest clairvoyants, described the future merely as a ludicrous idyll, just as Diderot only described a ludicrous idyll of the future. Dostoyevsky's terrible hell is so harmless compared with the one in which we find ourselves today that we only feel a cold shiver running down our spines when we think of it, and the same applies to the hell predicted and pre-described by Diderot. The one, from his Russian and West-Eastern point of view, no more foresaw or predicted or pre-described this absolute hell than his Western counter-thinker and counterwriter Diderot, Reger said. The world and mankind have arrived at a state of hell, such as the world and mankind have never before arrived at throughout history, that is the truth, Reger said. What these great thinkers and these great writers have pre-described is a positive idyll, Reger said, all of them, while believing that they were describing hell, merely described an idyll, a positively idyllic idyll compared to the hell in which we now exist, Reger said. Everything today is full of baseness and full of malice, lies and betrayal, Reger said, mankind has never been as shameless and perfidious as today. We may look at whatever we please, we may go wherever we please, we only look at malice and infamy and at betrayal and lies and hypocrisy and forever only at nothing but absolute baseness, no matter where we look, no matter where we go we are confronted with malice and with lies and with hypocrisy. What else do we see but lies and malice, hypocrisy and betrayal, the meanest baseness, whenever we walk out into the street, when we dare to walk out into the street, Reger said. We go out into the street and we walk into baseness, he said, into baseness and shamelessness, into hypocrisy and malice. We say that there is no country more mendacious and none more hypocritical and none more malicious than this country, yet when we leave this country, or even look beyond it, we see that outside our country too there reigns nothing but malice and hypocrisy and lies and baseness. We have the most distasteful government imaginable, the most hypocritical, the most malicious, the meanest and, at the same time, the stupidest, that is what we say and of course what we believe is true, and we say so at every other moment, Reger said, but when we look out from this mean, hypocritical and malicious and mendacious and stupid country we find that other countries are just as mendacious and hypocritical and altogether just as mean, said Reger. But those other countries are not really our concern, Reger said, we are concerned with our country alone and that is why we are so stunned each day that we have long come to exist actually stunned in a country whose government is mean and dull-witted and hypocritical and mendacious and utterly stupid to boot. Every day, if we think, we are aware of nothing so much as that we are governed by a hypocritical and mendacious and mean government, which moreover is the stupidest government imaginable, Reger said, and we think that we can do nothing about it, that really is the most terrible thing, that we can do nothing about it, that we simply have to watch impotently as this government is getting ever more mendacious and more hypocritical and meaner and baser every day, that we have to watch in a more or less permanent state of dismay as this government is getting progressively worse and progressively more unbearable. But not only the government is mendacious and hypocritical and mean and base, parliament is so too, Reger said, and sometimes it seems to me that parliament is yet a lot more hypocritical and mendacious than the government, and think how mendacious and how mean the judiciary is in this country and the press in this country and eventually culture in this country and eventually everything in this country; nothing but mendaciousness and hypocrisy and meanness and baseness have reigned in this country for decades, Reger said. This country has in fact now reached an absolute low, Reger said, and before long it will have given up its meaning and purpose and its ghost. And everywhere that nauseating twaddle of democracy! You walk out into the street, he remarked, and you constantly have to shut your eyes and ears and even hold your nose pinched in order to be able to survive in this country which has eventually become a positively dangerous state, Reger said. Any day you can scarcely believe your eyes and you can scarcely believe your ears, he said, any day you experience the decline of this ruined country and of this corrupt state and of this stultified people with an ever greater shock. And the people in this country and in this state are doing nothing about it, Reger said, that is what torments someone like me every day. Of course the people see or feel how this state is debasing itself every day and becoming meaner every day, but they are not doing anything about it. The politicians are the murderers, indeed the mass murderers of every country and of every state, Reger said, the politicians have been murdering the countries and the states for centuries and there is no one to stop them. And we Austrians have the most cunning and at the same time most brainless politicians as murderers of our country and state, Reger said. Politicians as state murderers are at the head of our state, politicians as state murderers sit in our parliament, he said, that is the truth. Every chancellor and every minister is a state murderer and hence also a national murderer, Reger said, and when one of them departs another arrives, Reger said, when one murderer departs as chancellor, another chancellor arrives as a murderer, when one minister departs as a state murderer another arrives at once. The people are always a people murdered by politicians, Reger said, but the people do not see it, admittedly they feel that this is how things are but they do not see any of it, that is the tragedy, Reger said. No sooner do we rejoice that one state murderer has gone as chancellor than another arrives, Reger said, it is horrible. The politicians are state murderers and national murderers, and they murder while they are in power, unabashed, and the state judiciary supports their vile and infamous murdering, their vile and infamous abuse. But of course every people and every society deserves the state they have, and they therefore deserve also its murderers as politicians, Reger said. Those mean and dull-witted state abusers and mean and perfidious abusers of democracy, he exclaimed. The politicians dominate the Austrian scene absolutely, Reger then said, the state murderers dominate the Austrian scene absolutely. Political conditions in this country are at present so depressing that one might expect them to give one nothing but sleepless nights, but then all other Austrian conditions are nowadays just as depressing. If by any chance you come into contact with the judiciary you will find that it is nothing but a corrupt and vile and mean judiciary, not to mention the fact that so-called