The Bride of Dreams | Page 4

in my little provincial
town in Holland, where I shine my own boots, then after all I feel
compassion for the two - for my cool, well-bred father, as well as for
my pale, languishing, distinguished mother. For they considered their
high position just and righteous, and complete, and did not see in how
much it was wanting. My mother did not see how tasteless the fashion
was, - her draped and be-ruffled gown in which she thought herself so
elegant and stately, - her own physical beauty and natural grace barely
saving her from becoming an object of absolute ridicule. And my father
did not know how much his traditional power of heredity had already
been undermined by the democratic ideas everywhere astir.
Our luxury too was strangely deficient in many respects. I have
suffered bitter cold in the great chilly palace; at night one might break
one's neck on the dark stone stairway; in some parts an ofttimes very
foul and disgusting stench prevailed; the servants slept in stuffy hovels;
there was a lavatory of which my father was very proud and which had
cost enormous sums of money, but where in broad daylight one had to
light a candle in order to wash ones hands.
I feel compassion for my proud father when I think of how he collected
art treasures and bought paintings by distinguished artists of the time,
which he would contemplate for hours through a monocle, and which
formed the subject of long intricate critical speculations with his friends
- paintings which after all were really only trifling daubs of no value
whatever at the present time.
It was a dream of wholly successful social glory dreamed by my Italian
parents as confidently as that other dream, dreamed by the Dutch
merchants of this little seaport town. And this Italian dream I dreamed

with them in perfect soberness. I can still become wholly absorbed in
the illusion. I see the purple velvet with the white plume and the large
diamond on my mother's hat, - a small, round bonnet, on the thick,
blonde hair gathered into a net. I stand by her side in the carriage and
feel myself the little prince, the little son of the Contessa - and see the
people bowing with profound respect. I breathe the faint, fine perfume
of frankincense and lavender exhaling from my mother's clothes. And I
recollect my sensation of calm and pride at the meals with the heavy
pretentious plate, the great bouquets of roses, the violet hose of the
clergy who were our guests, the fragrance of the heavy wine.
And I am touched when I think of the self-delusion of so proud,
arbitrary, critical and sceptical a man as my father, who was prejudiced
so completely by this illusion of his greatness. He would have looked
down scornfully upon the civic pomp of these seventeenth-century
Hollanders and yet that was assuredly finer, even as was the older
Italian civilization, which my father thought to surpass while he was
really living in a state of sad decline.
It is quite comprehensible that in this family feud I sided with my
mother, and that my sister, who was older than I, took my father's part.
Also that my father would by no means submit to this, and that I very
soon began to notice that I myself was the main subject of the strife,
which fact did not tend to increase my modesty. It is strange how, as
children, we take part in these conflicts, apparently wholly absorbed in
our books and games and yet quite aware of the significant glances, the
tears and passions hidden before us, the conversations suddenly
arrested at our entrance, the artificial tone employed toward us children,
the peculiar signs of dreary suspense, of momentous events beyond our
ken imminent in the family circle and which we know we must pass
without comment. Little as I was, I knew full well that the priests were
on my mother's side and that my father fought against a coalition. But
with my mother I felt a sense of warmth, gentleness and tenderness,
and had already been won over to her side long before I knew what the
contest was about. Her beauty, which I heard praised; the deference I
saw her met with; her sanctity, which I recognized as a great power,
which my father, otherwise yielding to nothing or no one, dared only

resist with faltering mockery; the sphere of suffering and tears in which
she lived - all this drew my chivalrous heart to her. I considered my
father a great man, a giant who dared anything and could get whatever
he pleased - but for this very reason would I defend my mother against
him. I went to church with her