King Midas: A Romance

King Midas: A Romance [with
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Title: King Midas
Author: Upton Sinclair
Release Date: January, 2004 [EBook #4923] [Yes, we are more than
one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on March 27,
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Language: English
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START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, KING MIDAS
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Edited by Charles Aldarondo ([email protected]).

KING MIDAS
A ROMANCE
By UPTON SINCLAIR

I dreamed that Soul might dare the pain, Unlike the prince of old, And
wrest from heaven the fiery touch That turns all things to gold.
New York and London
1901

NOTE

In the course of this story, the author has had occasion to refer to
Beethoven's Sonata Appassionata as containing a suggestion of the
opening theme of the Fifth Symphony. He has often seen this stated,
and believed that the statement was generally accepted as true. Since
writing, however, he has heard the opinion expressed, by a musician
who is qualified to speak as an authority, that the two themes have
nothing to do with each other. The author himself is not competent to
have an opinion on the subject, but because the statement as first made
is closely bound up with the story, he has allowed it to stand unaltered.
The two extracts from MacDowell's "Woodland Sketches," on pages
214 and 291, are reprinted with the kind permission of Professor
MacDowell and of Arthur P. Schmidt, publisher.

PART I

In the merry month of May.

KING MIDAS

CHAPTER I

"O Madchen, Madchen, Wie lieb' ich dich!"
It was that time of year when all the world belongs to poets, for their
harvest of joy; when those who seek the country not for beauty, but for
coolness, have as yet thought nothing about it, and when those who
dwell in it all the time are too busy planting for another harvest to have
any thought of poets; so that the latter, and the few others who keep
something in their hearts to chime with the great spring-music, have the
woods and waters all for their own for two joyful months, from the
time that the first snowy bloodroot has blossomed, until the wild rose
has faded and nature has no more to say. In those two months there are
two weeks, the ones that usher in the May, that bear the prize of all the
year for glory; the commonest trees wear green and silver then that
would outshine a coronation robe, and if a man has any of that
prodigality of spirit which makes imagination, he may hear the song of
all the world.
It was on such a May morning in the midst of a great forest of pine
trees, one of those forests whose floors are moss-covered ruins that
give to them the solemnity of age and demand humility from those who
walk within their silences. There was not much there to tell of the
springtime, for the pines are unsympathetic, but it seemed as if all the
more wealth had been flung about on the carpeting beneath. Where the
moss was not were flowing beds of fern, and the ground was dotted
with slender harebells and the dusty, half-blossomed corydalis, while
from all the rocks the bright red lanterns of the columbine were
dangling.
Of the beauty so wonderfully squandered there was but one witness, a
young man who was walking slowly along, stepping as it seemed
where there were no flowers; and who, whenever he stopped to gaze at

a group of them, left them unmolested in their happiness. He was tall
and slenderly built, with a pale face shadowed by dark hair; he was clad
in black, and carried in one hand a half-open book, which, however, he
seemed to have forgotten.
A short distance ahead was a path, scarcely marked