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    I made up by day for the sleep I had lost at night. After a bath I went home dead tired. I darkened my bedroom and as I undressed I came on the verses in my pocket; but I fot them again and lay down forthwith. I fot Maria and Hermine and the Masked Ball and slept the clock round. It was not till I had got up in the evening and was shaving that I remembered that the Ball began in an hour and that I had to find a dress shirt. I got myself ready in very good humor a out thereafter to have dinner.

    It was the first masked ball I was to participate in. In earlier days, it is true, I had now and again attended such festivities and even sometimes found them very eaining, but I had never danced. I had been a speerely. As for the enthusiasm with which others had talked and rejoiced over them in my hearing, it had always struck me as id now the day had e for me too to find the occasion one of almost painful suspense. As I had no parto take, I decided not to go till late. This, too, Hermine had seled me.

    I had seldom of late been to the Steel Helmet, my former refuge, where the disappointed men sat out their evenings, soaking in their wine and playing at bachelor life. It did not suit the life I had e to lead sihis evening, however, I was drawn to it before I was aware. In the mood between joy ahat fate and parting imposed on me just now, all the stations and shrines of meditation in my lifes pilgrimage caught once more that gleam of pain ay that es from things past; and so too had the little tavern, thick with smoke, among whose patrons I had lately been numbered and whose primitive opiate of a bottle of cheap wine had lately heartened me enough to spend one more night in my lonely bed and to endure life for one more day. I had tasted other specifid stroimulus sihen, and sipped a sweeter poison. With a smile I ehe a hostel. The landlady greeted me and so, with a nod, did the silent pany of habitués. A roast chi was ended and soo before me. The limpid Elsasser sparkled ihick peasant glass. The  white wooden tables and the old yellow paneling had a friendly look. And while I ate and drank there came over me that feeling of ge and decay and of farewell celebrations, that sweet and inwardly painful feeling of being a living part of all the ses and all the things of an earlier life that has never yet been parted from, and from which the time to part has e. The modern man calls this seality. He has lost the love of inanimate objects. He does not even love his most sacred object, his motorcar, but is ever hoping to exge it as soon as he  for a later model. This modern man has energy and ability. He is healthy, cool and strenuous—a splendid type, and in the  war he will be a miracle of efficy. But all that was no  of mine. I was not a modern man, nor an old-fashioned oher. I had escaped time altogether, a my way, with death at my elbow ah as my resolve. I bad no obje to sealities. I was glad and thankful to find a trace of anything like a feeling still remaining in my burned-out heart. So I let my memories of the old tavern and my attat to the solid wooden chairs and the smell of smoke and wine and the air of use and wont and warmth and homelihat the place had carry me away. There is beauty in farewells and a gentleness in their very tohe hard seat was dear to me, and so was the peasant glass and the cool racy taste of the Elsasser and my intimacy with all and everything in this room, and the faces of the bent and dreaming drinkers, those disillusioned ones, whose brother I had been for so long. All this was beois seality, lightly seasoned with a touch of the old-fashioned romance of inns, a romaning from my boyhood when inns and wine and cigars were still forbidden things—strange and wonderful. But no Steppenwolf rose before me baring his teeth to tear my seo pieces. I sat there in pea the glow of the past whose setting still shed a faint afterglow.

    A street seller came in and I bought a handful of roasted chestnuts. An old woman came in with flowers and I bought a bunch of violets and presehem to the landlady. It was not till I was about to pay my bill a in vain for the pocket of the coat I usually wore that I realized once more that I was in evening dress. The Masked Ball. And Hermine!

    It was still early enough, however. I could not vince myself to go to the Globe Rooms straight away. I felt too—as I had in the case of all the pleasures that had lately y way—a whole array of checks aances. I had no ination to ehe large and crowded and noisy rooms. I had a schoolboys shyness of the stramosphere and the world of pleasure and dang.

    As I sauntered along I passed by a ema with its dazzling lights and huge colored posters. I went on a few steps, then turned again a in. There till eleven I could sit quietly and fortably in the dark. Led by the ushers flashlight I stumbled through the curtains into the darkened hall, found a seat and was suddenly in the middle of the Old Testament. The film was one of those that are nominally not shown for money. Much expense and many refis are lavished upon them in a more sacred and nobler cause, and at midday even school-children are brought to see them by their religious teachers. This one was the story of Moses and the Israelites i, with a huge crowd of men, horses, camels, palaces, splendors of the pharaohs and tribulations of the Jews in the desert. I saw Moses, whose hair recalled portraits of Walt Whitman, a splendidly theatrical Moses, wandering through the desert at the head of the Jews, with a dark and fiery eye and a long staff and the stride of a Wotan. I saw him pray to God at the edge of the Red Sea, and I saw the Red Sea parted to give free passage, a deep road between piled-up mountains of water (the firmation classes ducted by the clergy to see this religious film could argue without end as to how the film people mahis). I saw the prophet and his awestruck people pass through to the other side, and behind them I saw the war chariots of Pharaoh e into sight and the Egyptians stop and start on the brink of the sea, and then, when they ventured ceously on, I saw the mountainous waters close over the heads of Pharaoh in all the splendor of his gold trappings and over all his chariots and all his men, recalling, as I saw it, Handels wonderful duet for two basses in which this event is magnifitly sung. I saw Moses, further, climbing Sinai, a gloomy hero in a gloomy wilderness of rocks, and I looked on as Jehovah in the midst of storm and thunder and lightning imparted the Ten as to him, while his worthless people set up the golden calf at the foot of the mountain and gave themselves over to somewhat roisterous celebrations. I found it se and incredible to be looking on at all this, to be seeing the sacred writ, with its heroes and its wonders, the sour our childhood of the first dawning suspi of another world than this, presented for money before a grateful public that sat quietly eating the provisions brought with it from home. A tle picture, indeed, picked up by  the huge wholesale clearance of culture in these days! My God, rather than e to such a pass it would have beeer for the Jews and every one else, let alohe Egyptians, to have perished in those days and forthwith of a violent and beih instead of this dismal pretence of dying by ihat we go in for today. Yes indeed!

    My secret repressions and unfessed fright in face of the Masked Ball were by no means lessened by the feelings provoked in me by the ema. On the trary, they had grown to unfortable proportions and I had to shake myself and think of Hermine before I could go to the Globe Rooms and dared to enter. It was late, and the Ball had been for a long time in full swing. At once before I had even taken off my things I was caught up, shy and sober as I was, in the swirl of the masked throng. I was accosted familiarly. Girls summoned me to the champagne rooms. s slapped me on the back, and I was addressed on all sides as an old friend. I respoo none of it, but fought my way through the crowded rooms to the cloakroom, and when I got my cloakroom ticket I put it in my pocket with great care, refleg that I might  before very long when I had had enough of the uproar.

    Every part of the great building was giveo the festivities. There was dang in every room and in the basement as well. Corridors and stairs were filled to overflowing with masks and dang and musid laughter and tumult. Oppressed i I stole through the throng, from the Negro orchestra to the peasant band, from the large and brilliantly lighted principal room into the passages and on to the stairs, to bars, buffets and champagne parlors. The walls were mostly hung with wild and cheerful paintings by the latest artists. All the world was there, artists, journalists, professors, business men, and of course every adherent of pleasure iown. In one of the orchestras sat Pablo, blowing with enthusiasm in his curved mouthpiece. As soon as he saw me he sang out a greeting. Pushed hither and thither in the crowd I found myself in one room after another, upstairs here and downstairs there. A corridor in the basement had been staged as hell by the artists and there a band of devils played furiously. After a while, I began to look for Hermine or Maria and strove time after time to reach the principal room; but either I missed my way or had to meet the current. By midnight I had found no one, and though I had not danced I was hot and giddy. I threw myself into the  chair among utter strangers and ordered some wine, and came to the clusion that joining in such rowdy festivals was no part for an old man like me. I drank my glass of wine while I stared at the naked arms and backs of the women, watched the crowd of grotesquely masked figures drifting by and silently deed the advances of a few girls who wished to sit on my knee et me to dance. "Old Growler," one called after me; and she was right. I decided to raise my spirits with the wine, but even the wi against me and I could scarcely swallow a sed glass. And then the feeling crept over me that the Steppenwolf was standing behih his to. Nothing pleased me. I was in the wrong place. To be sure, I had e with the best iions, but this was no plae to be merry in; and all this loud effervesce of pleasure, the laughter and the whole foolery of it on every side, seemed to me forced and stupid.

    Thus it was that, at about one oclock, in anger and disillusio I steered a course for the cloakroom, to put on my coat again and go. It was surrender and backsliding into my wolfishness, and Hermine would scarcely five me for it. But I could not do otherwise. All the way as I squeezed through the throng to the cloakroom, I still kept a careful lookout in case I might yet see one of my friends, but in vain. Now I stood at the ter. Already the attendant olitely extending his hand for my number. I felt in my waistcoat pocket—the number was no lohere! The devil was in it if even this failed me. Often enough during my forlorn wanderings through the rooms and while I sat over my tasteless wine I had felt in my pocket, fighting back the resolve to go away again, and I had always found the round flat che its place. And now it was gone. Everything was against me.

    "Lost your number?" came in a shrill voice from a small red and yellow devil at my elbow. "Here, rade, you  take mine," and he held it out to me without more ado. While I meically took it and tur over in my fihe brisk little felloidly disappeared.

    When, however, I examihe pasteboard ter for a number, no number was to be seen. Ihere was a scribble in a tiny hand. I asked the attendant to wait ao the  light to read it. There in little crazy letters that were scarcely legible was scrawled:

    TONIGHT AT THE MAGIC THEATER

    FOR MADMEN ONLY

    PRICE OF ADMITTANIND.

    NOT FOR EVERYBODY.HERMINE IS IN HELL.

    As a marioe whose thread the operator has let go for a moment wakes to new life after a brief paralysis of death and a and once more plays its lively part, so did I at this jerk of the magic thread throw myself with the elasticity and eagerness of youth into the tumult from which I had just retreated in the listlessness and weariness of elderly years. Never did sinner show more haste to get to hell. A moment before my pateher shoes had galled me, the heavily sted air disgusted me, and the heat undone me. Now on my winged feet I nimbly oepped through every room on the way to hell. The very air had a charm. The warmth embedded me and wafted me on, and so no less did the<s></s> riotous music, the intoxication of colors, the perfume of womens shoulders, the clamor of the huohe laughter, the rhythm of the dance, and the glances of all the kindled eyes. A Spanish dang girl flung herself into my arms: &quot;Dah me!&quot; &quot;t,&quot; said I. &quot;Im bound for hell. But Ill gladly take a kiss with me.&quot; The red mouth beh the mask met mine and with the kiss I reized Maria. I caught her tight in my arms and like a June rose bloomed her full lips. By this time we were dang, our lips still joined. Past Pablo we danced, who hung like a lover over his softly wailing instrument. Those lovely animal eyes embraced us with their half-abstracted radiance. But before we had gowenty steps the music broke off afully I let go of Maria.

    &quot;Id have loved to have danced with you again,&quot; I said, intoxicated with her warmth. &quot;e with me a step or two, Maria. Im in love with your beautiful arm. Let me have it a moment longer! But, you see, Hermine has summoned me. She is in hell.&quot;

    &quot;I thought so. Farewell, Harry. I wont fet you.&quot; She left me—left me indeed. Yes, it was autumn, it was fate, that had given the summer rose so full and ripe a st.

    On I went through the long corridors, luxuriously thronged, and dowairs to hell. There, on pitch-black walls shone wicked garish lights, and the orchestra of devils laying feverishly. On a high stool at the bar there was seated a pretty young fellow without a mask and in evening dress who scrutinized me with a cursory and mog glance. Pressed to the wall by the swirl of dancers—about twenty couples were dang in this very fined space—I examined all the women with eager suspense. Most were still in masks and smiled at me, but none was Hermihe handsome youth on the high stool glanced mogly at me. At the  pause, thought I, she will e and summohe danded but no one came.

    I went over to the bar which was squeezed into a er of the small and low room, and taking a seat he young man ordered a whisky. While I drank it I saw his profile. It had a familiar charm, like a picture from long ago, precious for the very dust that has settled on it from the past. Oh, then it flashed through me. It was Herman, the friend of my youth.

    &quot;Herman!&quot; I stammered.

    She smiled. &quot;Harry? Have you found me?&quot;

    It was Hermine, barely disguised by the make-up of her hair and a little paint. The stylish cave an unfamiliar look to the pallor of her intelligent face, the wide black sleeves of her dress coat and the white cuffs made her hands look curiously small, and the long black trave a curious elegao her feet in their blad white silk socks.

    &quot;Is this the e, Hermine, in whiean to make me fall in love with you?&quot;

    &quot;So far,&quot; she said, &quot;I have tented myself with turning the heads of the ladies. But now your turn has e. First, lets have a glass of champagne.&quot;

    So we did, perched on our stools, while the dance went on around us to the lively and fevered strain of the strings. And without Hermine appearing to give herself the least trouble I was very soon in love with her. As she was dressed as a boy, I could not dah her nor allow myself any tender advances, and while she seemed distant aral in her male mask, her looks and words aures encircled me with all her feminine charm. Without so much as having touched her I surreo her spell, and this spell itself kept within the part she played. It was the spell of a hermaphrodite. For she talked to me about Herman and about childhood, mine and her own, and about those years of childhood when the capacity for love, in its first youth, embraot only both sexes, but all and everything, sensuous and spiritual, and endows all things with a spell of love and a fairylike ease of transformation such as in later years es again only to a chosen few and to poets, and to them rarely. Throughout she kept up the part of a young man, smoking cigarettes and talking with a spirited ease that often had a little mockery in it; a was all iridest with the rays of desire and transformed, as it reached my senses, into a charmiion.

    How well and thhly I thought I knew Hermine, a what a pletely new revelation of herself she opened up to me that night! How gently and inspicuously she cast the  I longed for around me, and how playfully and how like a pixie she gave the sweet poison to drink!

    We sat and talked and drank champagne. We strolled through the rooms and looked about us. We went on voyages of exploration to discover couples whose love-making it amused us to spy upon. She pointed out women whom she reended me to dah, and gave me advice as to the methods of attack to be employed with each. We took the floor as rivals and paid court for a while to the same girl, danced with her by turns and both tried to win her heart. A was all only a ival, only a game betweewo of us that caught us more closely together in our own passion. It was all a fairy tale. Everything had a new dimension, a deeper meaning. Everything was fanciful and symbolic. There was one girl of great beauty but looking tragid unhappy. Herman danced with her and drew her out. They disappeared to drink champagogether, and she told me afterwards that she had made a quest of her not as a man but as a woman, with the spell of Lesbos. For my part, the whole building reverberated everywhere with the sound of dang, and the whole intoxicated crowd of masks, became by degrees a wild dream of paradise. Flower upon flower wooed me with its st. I toyed with fruit after fruit. Serpents looked at me from green and leafy shadows with mesmeric eyes. Lotus blossoms luxuriated over black bogs. Ented birds sang allurement from the trees. Yet all rogress to one longed-foal, the summons of a new yearning for one and one only. Once I was dang with a girl I did not know. I had swept her with the ardor of a lover into the giddy swirl of dancers and while we hung in this unreal world, she suddenly remarked with a laugh: &quot;One wouldnt know you. You were so dull and flat before.&quot; Then I reized the girl who had called me &quot;Old Growler&quot; a few hours before. She thought she had got me now, but with the  da was another for whom my ardlowed. I danced without ceasing for two hours or more—every dand some, even, that I had never danced before. Every now and then Herman was near me, and gave me a nod and a smile as he disappeared ihrong.

    An experience fell to my lot this night of the Ball that I had never known in all my fifty years, though it is known to every flapper and student—the intoxication ofbbr></abbr> a general festivity, the mysterious merging of the personality in the mass, the mystiion of joy. I had often heard it spoken of. It was known, I ko every servant girl. I had often observed the sparkle in the eye of those who told me of it and I had always treated it with a half-superior, half-envious smile. A huimes in my life I had seen examples of those whom rapture had intoxicated and released from the self, of that smile, that half-crazed absorption, of those whose heads have been turned by a ohusiasm. I had seen it in drunken recruits and sailors, and also i artists ihusiasm, perhaps, of a musical festival; and not less in young soldiers going to war. Even i days I had marveled at and loved and mocked and ehis gleam and this smile in my friend, Pablo, when he hung over his saxophone in the blissful intoxication of playing in the orchestra, or when, enraptured aatic, he looked over to the ductor, the drum, or the man with the banjo. It had sometimes occurred to me that such a smile, such a childlike radiance could be possible only to quite young persons or among those peoples whose s permitted no marked differences between one individual and another. But today, on this blessed night, I myself, the Steppenwolf, was radiant with this smile. I myself swam in this deep and childlike happiness of a fairy tale. I myself breathed the sweet intoxication of a on dream and of musid rhythm and wine and women—I, who had in other days so often listened with amusement, or dismal superiority, to its panegyri the ballroom chatter of some student. I was myself no longer. My personality was dissolved ioxication of the festivity like salt in water. I danced with this woman or that, but it was not only the one I had in my arms and whose hair brushed my face that beloo me. All the other women who were dang in the same room and the same dand to the same musid whose radiant faces floated past me like fantastic flowers, beloo me, and I to them. All of us had a part in one another. And the men too. I was with them also. They, too, were ners to me. Their smile was mine, and miheir wooing and theirs mine.

    A new dance, a fox trot, with the title &quot;Yearning,&quot; had swept the world that winter. Once we had beard it we could not have enough of it. We were all soaked in it and intoxicated with it and everyone hummed the melody whe layed. I danced without stop and with anyone who came in my way, with quite young girls, with women in their earlier or their later prime, and with those who had sadly passed them both; and with them all I was enraptured—laughing, happy, radiant. And when Pablo saw me so radiant, me whom he had always looked on as a very lamentable poor devil, his eyes beamed blissfully upon me and he was so inspired that he got up from his chair and blowing lustily in his horn climbed up on it. From this elevation he blew with all his might, while at the same time his whole body, and his instrument with it, swayed to the tune of &quot;Yearning.&quot; I and my partner kissed our hands to him and sang loudly in response. Ah, thought I, meanwhile, let e to me what may, for o least, I, too, have been happy, radiant, released from myself, a brother of Pablos, a child.

    I had lost the sense of time, and I dont know how many hours or moments the intoxication of happiness lasted. I did not observe either that the brighter the festal fire burhe narrower were the limits within which it was fined. Most people had already left. The corridors were silent and many of the lights out. The stairs were deserted and in the rooms above one orchestra after another had stopped playing and gone away. It was only in the principal room and in Hell below that the y still raged in a cresdo. Since I could not dah Hermine as a boy, we had only had fleeting enters in the pauses between the dances, and at last I lost sight of her entirely—and not only sight but thought. There were no thoughts left. I was lost in the maze and whirl of the dance. Sts and tones and sighs and words stirred me. I was greeted and kindled by strange eyes, encircled by strange faces, borher and thither in time to the music as though by a wave.

    And then of a sudden I saw, half ing to my senses for a moment, among the last who still kept it up in one of the smaller rooms, and filled it to overflowing—the only one in which the music still sounded—of a sudden I saw a black Pierrette with face painted white. She was fresh and charming, the only masked figure left and a bewitg apparition that I had never in the whole course of the night seen before. While in everyone else the late hour showed itself in flushed aed faces, crushed dresses, limp collars and crumpled ruffs, the black Pierrette stood there fresh a with her white face beh her mask. Her e had not a crease and not a hair was out of place. Her ruff and pointed cuffs were untouched. I rushed towards her, put my arms around her, and drew her into the dance. Her perfumed ruff tickled my . Her hair brushed my cheek. The young vigor of her body answered my movements as no one elses had dohat night, yielding to them with an inward tenderness and pelling them to new tacts by the play of her allurements. I bent down to kiss her mouth as we danced. Its smile was triumphant and long familiar. Of a sudden I reized the firm , the shoulders, arms and hands. It was Hermine, Herman no longer. Hermine in a ge of dress, fresh, perfumed, powdered. Our lips met passionately. For a moment her whole body to her knees g in longing and surreo mihen she drew her mouth away and, holding back, fled from me as we danced. When the music broke off we were still clasped where we stood. All the excited couples round us clapped, stamped, cried out and urged the exhausted orchestra to play &quot;Yearning&quot; ain. And now a feeling that it was m fell upon us all. We saw the ashen light behind the curtains. It warned us of pleasures approag end and gave us symptoms of the weario e. Blindly, with bursts of laughter, we flung ourselves desperately into the dance more, into the musid the light that began to flood the room. Our feet moved in time to the music as though we were possessed, every couple toug, and once more we felt the great wave of bliss break over us. Hermine abandoned her triumphant air, her mockery and ess. She khat there was no more to do to make me in love with her. I was hers, and her way of dang, her looks and smiles and kisses all showed that she gave herself to me. All the women of this fevered night, all that I had danced with, all whom I had kindled or who had kindled me, all whom I had courted, all who had g to me with longing, all whom I had followed with enraptured eyes were melted together and had bee ohe one whom I held in my arms.

    On and ohis nuptial daime after time the music flagged. The winds let their instruments fall. The pianist got up from the piano. The first fiddle shook his head. And every time they were won over by the impl persistence of the last intoxicated dancers and played once more. They played faster and more wildly. Then at last, as we stood, still entwined and breathless after the last eager dahe piano was closed with a bang, and our arms fell wearily to our sides like those of the winds and strings and the flutist, blinking sleepily, put his flute away in its case. Doors opehe cold air poured in, attendants appeared with cloaks and the bar waiter turned off the light. The whole se vanished eerily away and the dancers who a moment ago had been all on fire shivered as they put on coats and cloaks and turned up their collars. Hermine ale but smiling. Slowly she raised her arm and pushed back her hair. As she did so one arm caught the light and a faint and indescribably tender shadow ran from her armpit to her hidde, and this little trembling line of shadow seemed to me to sum up all the charm and fasation of her body like a smile.

    We stood looking at one ahe last in the hall, the last in the whole building. Somewhere below I heard a door bang, a glass break, a titter of laughter die away, mixed with the angry hurried noise of motorcars starting up. And somewhere, at an ierminable distand height, I heard a laugh ring out, araordinarily clear and merry peal of laughter. Yet it was eerie and stra was a laugh, made of crystal and ice, bright and radiant, but cold and inexorable. Where had I heard this laugh before? I could not tell.

    We stood and looked at one another. For a moment I came to my sober self. I felt a fearful weariness desd upon me. I felt with repugnanoist and limp my clothing hung around me. I saw my hands emerging red and with swollen veins from my crumpled and wilted cuffs. But all at ohe mood passed, banished by a look from Hermi this look that seemed to e from my own soul all reality fell away, even the reality of my sensuous love of her. Bewitched we looked at one another, while my poor little soul looked at me.

    &quot;Youre ready?&quot; asked Hermine, and her smile fled away like the shadows on her breast. Far up in unknown space rang out that strange and eerie laughter.

    I nodded. Oh, yes, I was ready.

    At this moment Pablo appeared in the doorway and beamed on us out of his jolly eyes that really were animals eyes except that animals eyes are always serious, while his always laughed, and this laughter turhem into human eyes. He beed to us with his usual friendly cordiality. He had put on a geous silk smoking jacket. His limp collar and tired white face had a withered and pallid look above its red fags; but the impression was erased by his radiant black eyes. So was reality erased, for they too had the witchery.

    We joined him when he beed and in the doorway he said to me in a low voice: &quot;Brother Harry, I invite you to a little eai. For madmen only, and one prily—your mind. Are you ready?&quot;

    Again I nodded.

    The dear fellow gave us ea arm with kind solicitude, Hermine his right, me his left, and ducted us upstairs to a small round room that was lit from the ceiling with a bluish light and nearly empty. There was nothing in it but a small round table and three easy chairs in which we sat ourselves.

    Where were we? Was I asleep? Was I at home? Was I driving in a car? No, I was sitting in a blue light in a round room and a rare atmosphere, in a stratum of reality that had bee rarefied ireme.

    Why then was Hermine so white? Why ablo talking so much? Was it not perhaps I who made him talk, spoke, indeed, with his voice? Was it not, too, my own soul that plated me out of his black eyes like a lost and frightened bird, just as it had out of Hermines gray ones?

    Pablo looked at us good-naturedly as ever and with something ceremonious in his friendliness; aalked mud long. He whom I had never heard say two secutive sentences, whom no discussion nor thesis could i, whom I had scarcely credited with a sihought, discoursed now in his good-natured warm voice fluently and without a fault.

    &quot;My friends, I have invited you to aertaihat Harry has long wished for and of which he has long dreamed. The hour is a little late and no doubt we are all slightly fatigued. So, first, we will rest and refresh ourselves a little.&quot;

    From a recess in the wall he took three glasses and a quaint little bottle, also a small oriental box inlaid with differently colored woods. He filled the three glasses from the bottle and taking three long thin yellow cigarettes from the box and a box of matches from the pocket of his silk jacket he gave us a light. And now we all slowly smoked the cigarettes whose smoke was as thick as inse, leaning ba our chairs and slowly sipping the aromatic liquid whose straaste was so utterly unfamiliar. Its effect was immeasurably enlivening and delightful—as though one were filled with gas and had no longer any gravity. Thus eacefully exhaling small puffs and taking little sips at lasses, while every moment we felt ourselves growing lighter and more serene.

    From far away came Pablos warm voice.

    &quot;It is a pleasure to me, my dear Harry, to have the privilege of being your host in a small way on this occasion. You have often been sorely weary of your life. You were striving, were you not, for escape? You have a longing to forsake this world and its reality and to pee to a reality more native to you, to a world beyond time. You know, of course, where this other world lies hidden. It is the world of your own soul that you seek. Only within yourself exists that other reality for which you long. I  give you nothing that has not already its being within yourself. I  throw open to you no picture gallery but your own soul. All I  give you is the opportunity, the impulse, the key. I  help you to make your own world visible. That is all.&quot;

    Agai his hand into the pocket of his geous jacket and drew out a round looking glass.

    &quot;Look, it is thus that you have so far seen yourself.&quot;

    He held the little glass before my eyes (a childish verse came to my mind: &quot;Little glass, little glass in the hand&quot;) and I saw, though indistinctly and cloudily, the refle of an uneasy self-tormented, inwardly lab ahing being—myself, Harry Haller. And within him again I saw the Steppenwolf, a shy, beautiful, dazed wolf with frightened eyes that smoldered now with anger, now with sadness. This shape of a wolf coursed through the other in ceaseless movement, as a tributary pours its cloudy turmoil into a river. In bitter strife, each tried to devour the other so that his shape might prevail. How unutterably sad was the look this fluid inchoate figure of the wolf threw from his beautiful shy eyes.

    &quot;There you see yourself,&quot; Pablo remarked and put the mirror away in his pocket. I was thankful to y eyes and take a sip of the elixir.

    &quot;And now,&quot; said Pablo, &quot;we have had our rest. We have had our refreshment and a little talk. If your fatigue has passed off I will duct you to my peep show and show you my little theater. Will you e?&quot;

    We got up. With a smile Pablo led. He opened a door and drew a curtain aside, and we found ourselves in the horseshoe-shaped corridor of a theater, aly in the middle. Oher side, the curving passage led past a large number, indeed an incredible number, of narrow doors into the boxes.

    &quot;This,&quot; explained Pablo, &quot;is our theater, and a jolly o is. I hope youll find lots to laugh at.&quot; He laughed aloud as he spoke, a short laugh, but it went through me like a shot. It was the same bright and peculiar laugh that I had heard before from below.

    &quot;This little theater of mine has as many doors into as many boxes as you please, ten or a hundred or a thousand, and behind each door exactly what you seek awaits you. It is a pretty et of pictures, my dear friend; but it would be quite useless for you to gh it as you are. You would be checked and bli every turn by what you are pleased to call your personality. You have no doubt guessed long sihat the quest of time and the escape from reality, or however else it may be that you choose to describe your longing, means simply the wish to be relieved of your so-called personality. That is the prison where you lie. And if you were to ehe theater as you are, you would see everything through the eyes of Harry and the old spectacles of the Steppenwolf. You are therefore requested to lay these spectacles aside and to be so kind as to leave yhly esteemed personality here in the cloakroom where you will find it again when you wish. The pleasant dance from which you have just e, the treatise oeppenwolf, and the little stimulant that we have only this moment partaken of may have suffitly prepared you. You, Harry, after havi behind your valuable personality, will have the left side of the theater at your disposal, Hermihe right. Onside, you  meet each other as you please. Hermine will be so kind as to go for a moment behind the curtain. I should like to introduce Harry first.&quot;

    Hermine disappeared to the right past a gigantic mirror that covered the rear wall from floor to vaulted ceiling.

    &quot;Now, Harry, e along, be as jolly as you . To make it so and to teach you to laugh is the whole aim iing up this eai—I hope you will make it easy for me. You feel quite well, I trust? Not afraid? Thats good, excellent. You will now, without fear and with unfeigned pleasure, enter our visionary world. You will introduce yourself to it by means of a trifling suicide, sihis is the .&quot;

    He took out the pocket mirrain and held it in front of my face. Again I was fronted by the same indistind cloudy refle, with the wolfs shape encirg it and c through it. I k too well and disliked it too sincerely for its destru to cause me any sorrow.

    &quot;You will now erase this superfluous refley dear friend. That is all that is necessary. To do so, it will suffice that you greet it, if your mood permits, with a hearty laugh. You are here in a school of humor. You are to learn to laugh. Now, true humins when a man ceases to take himself seriously.&quot;

    I fixed my eyes otle mirror, where the man Harry and the wolf were going through their vulsions. For a moment there was a vulsion deep withioo, a faint but painful one like remembrance, or like homesiess, or like remorse. Then the slight oppression gave way to a new feeling like that a man feels when a tooth has beeracted with coe, a sense of relief and of letting out a deep breath, and of wonder, at the same time, that it has not hurt in the least. And this feeling was apanied by a buoyant exhilaration and a desire to laugh so irresistible that I was pelled to give way to it.

    The mournful image in the glass gave a final vulsion and vahe glass itself turned gray and charred and opaque, as though it had been burned. With a laugh Pablo threw the thing away and it went rolling down the endless corridor and disappeared.

    <cite>９９ｌib?</cite>&quot;Well laughed, Harry,&quot; cried Pablo. &quot;You will learn to laugh like the immortals yet. You have doh the Steppenwolf at last. Its no good with a razor. Take care that he stays dead. Youll be able to leave the farce of reality behind you directly. At our  meeting well drink to brotherhood, dear fellow. I never liked you better than I do today. And if you still think it worth your while hilosophize together and argue and talk about musid Mozart and Glud Plato and Goethe to your hearts tent. You will uand now why it was so impossible before. I wish you good riddance of the Steppenwolf for today at any rate. For naturally, your suicide is not a final one. We are in a magic theater; a world of pictures, not realities. See that you pick out beautiful and cheerful ones and show that you really are not in love with yhly questionable personality any longer. Should you still, however, have a hankering after it, you need only have another look in the mirror that I will now show you. But you know the old proverb: A mirror in the hand is worth two on the wall. Ha! ha!&quot; (Again that laugh, beautiful and frightful!) &quot;And now there only remains otle ceremony and quite a jolly one. You have now to cast aside the spectacles of your personality. So e here and look in a proper looking glass. It will give you some fun.&quot;

    Laughingly with a few droll caresses he turned me about so that I faced the gigantic mirror on the wall. There I saw myself.

    I saw myself for a brief instant as my usual self, except that I looked unusually good-humored, bright and laughing. But I had scarcely had time tnize myself before the refle fell to pieces. A sed, a third, a tenth, a tweh figure sprang from it till the whole gigantic mirror was full of nothing but Harrys or bits of him, each of which I saw only for the instant nition. Some of these multitudinous Harrys were as old as I, some older, some very old. Others were young. There were youths, boys, schoolboys, scamps, children. Fifty-year-olds and twenty-year-olds played leap frog. Thirty-year-olds and five-year-olds, solemn and merry, worthy and ic, well-dressed and uable, and even quite naked, long haired, and hairless, all were I and all were seen for a flash, reized and gohey sprang from each other in all dires, left and right and into the recesses of the mirror and  out of it. One, a young fellow, leaped laughing into Pablos arms and embraced him and they went off together. And one who particularly pleased me, a good looking and charming boy of sixteen or seventeen years, sprang like lightning into the corridor and began reading the notices on the doors. I went after him and found him in front of a door on which was inscribed:

    ALL GIRLS ARE YOURS

    ONE QUARTER IN THE SLOT

    The dear boy hurled himself forward, made a leap and, falling head first into the slot himself, disappeared behind the door.

    Pablo too had vanished. So apparently had the mirror and with it all the tless figures. I realized that I was now left to myself and to the theater, and I went with curiosity from door to door and read on each its alluring invitation.

    The inscription

    JOLLY HUNTING

    GREAT HUNT IN AUTOMOBILES

    attracted me. I opehe narrow door and stepped in.

    I was swept at oo a world of noise aement. Cars, some of them armored, were run through the streets chasing the pedestrians. They ran them down aher left them mangled on the ground or crushed them to death against the walls of the houses. I saw at ohat it was the long-prepared, long-awaited and long-feared war between men and maes, now at last broken out. On all sides lay dead and deposing bodies, and on all sides, too, smashed and distorted and half-burned cars. Airplanes circled above the frightful fusion and were being fired upon from many roofs and windows with rifles and mae guns. On every wall were wild and magnifitly stirring placards, whose giaers flamed like torches, summoning the nation to side with the men against the maes, to make an end at last of the fat and well-dressed and perfumed plutocrats who used maes to squeeze the fat from other mens bodies, of them and their huge fiendishly purring automobiles. Set factories afire at last! Make a little room on the crippled earth! Depopulate it so that the grass may grow again, and woods, meadows, heather, stream and moor return to this world of dust and crete. Other placards, oher hand, in wonderful colors and magnifitly phrased, warned all those who had a stake in the try and some share of prudence (in more moderate and less childish terms which testified to the remarkable cleverness and intellect of those who bad posed them) against the rising tide of anarchy. They depicted in a truly impressive way the blessings of order and work and property and education and justice, and praised maery as the last and most sublime iion of the human mind. With its aid, men would be equal to the gods. I studied these placards, both the red and the green, and reflected on them and marveled at them. The flaming eloquence affected me as powerfully as the pelling logic. They were right, and I stood as deeply vinced in front of one as in front of the other, a good deal disturbed all the time by the rather juicy firing that went on all round me. Well, the principal thing was clear. There was a war on, a violent, genuine and highly sympathetic war where there was no  for Kaiser or republic, for frontiers, flags or colors and other equally decorative and theatrical matters, all nonse bottom; but a war in which every one who lacked air to breathe and no longer found life exactly pleasing gave emphatic expression to his displeasure and strove to prepare the way feneral destru of this iron-cast civilization of ours. In every eye I saw the uncealed spark of destru and murder, and in mioo these wild red roses bloomed as rank and high, and sparkled as brightly. I joihe battle joyfully.

    The best of all, however, was that my schoolfriend, Gustav, turned up close beside me. I had lost sight of him for dozens of years, the wildest, stro, most eager auresome of the friends of my childhood. I laughed in my heart as I saw him blink at me with his bright blue eyes. He beed and at once I followed him joyfully.

    &quot;Good Lustav,&quot; I cried happily, &quot;I havent seen you in ages. Whatever has bee of you?&quot;

    He gave a derisive snort, just as he used to do as a boy. &quot;There yain, you idiot, jabbering and asking questions. Im a professor of theology if you want to know. But, the Lord be praised, theres no occasion for theology now, my boy. Its war. e on!&quot;

    He shot the driver of a small car that came sn towards us and leaping into it as nimbly as a monkey, brought it to a standstill for me to get in. Then we drove like the devil between bullets and crashed cars out of town and suburbs.

    &quot;Are you on the side of the manufacturers?&quot; I asked my friend.

    &quot;Oh, Lord, thats a matter of taste, so we  leave it out of at—though now you mention it, I rather think we might take the other side, si bottom its all the same, of course. Im a theologian and my predecessor, Luther, took the side of the princes and plutocrats against the peasants. So now well establish the balance a little. This rotten car, I hope itll hold out another mile or two.&quot;

    Swift as the wind, that child of heavetled on, and reached a green and peaceful tryside many miles distant. We traversed a wide plain and then slowly climbed into the mountains. Here we made a halt on a smooth and glistening road that led in bold curves betweeeep wall of rod the low retaining wall. Far below shohe blue surface of a lake.

    &quot;Lovely view,&quot; said I.

    &quot;Very pretty. Well call it the Axle Way. A good many axles of one sort or another are going to crash here, Harry, my boy. So watch out!&quot;

    A tall pine grew by the roadside, and among the tall branches we saw something like a little hut made of boards to serve as an outlook and point of vantage. Gustav smiled with a knowing twinkle in his blue eyes. We hurried out of the car, climbed up the trunk and, breathing hard, cealed ourselves ilook post, which pleased us much. We found rifles and revolvers there and boxes of ammunition. We had scarcely cooled down when we heard the hoarse imperious horn of a big luxury car from the  bend of the road. It came purring at top speed up the smooth road. Our rifles were ready in our hands. The excitement was intense.

    &quot;Aim at the chauffeur,&quot; anded Gustav quickly just as the heavy car went by beh us. I aimed, and fired at the chauffeur in his blue cap. The man fell in a heap. The car careened on, charged the cliff face, rebounded, attacked the lower wall furiously with all its unwieldy weight like a great bumble bee and, tumbling over, crashed with a brief and dista into the depths below.

    &quot;Got him!&quot; Gustav laughed. &quot;My tur.&quot;

    Another came as he spoke. There were three of four octs packed in the back seat. From the head of a woman a bright blue veil streamed out behind. It filled me with genuine remorse. Who could say how pretty a face it might adood God, though we did play the brigand we might at least emulate the illustrious and spare pretty women. Gustav, however, had already fired. The driver shuddered and collapsed. The car leaped against the perpendicular cliff, fell bad overturned, wheels uppermost. Its engine was still running and the wheels turned absurdly in the air; but suddenly with a frightful explosion it burst into flames.

    &quot;A Ford,&quot; said Gustav. &quot;We must get down and clear the road.&quot;

    We climbed down and watched the burning heap. It soon burned out. Meanwhile we made levers of green wood and hoisted it to the side of the road and over the wall into the abyss, where for a long time it went crashing through the undergrowth. Two of the dead bodies had fallen out as we turhe car over and lay on the road with their clothing partly burned. One wore a coat which was still in fairly good dition. I searched the pockets to see who he was and came across a leather portfolio with some cards in it. I took one and read: Tat Twam Asi.

    &quot;Very witty,&quot; said Gustav. &quot;Though, as a matter of fact, it is all one what our victims are called. Theyre poor devils just as we are. Their names dont matter. This world is done for and so are we. The least painful solution would be to hold it under water for ten minutes. Now to work—&quot;

    We threw the bodies after the car. Already another one was tooting. We shot it down with a volley where we stood. It made a drunken swerve and reeled on for a stretch: then turned over and lay gasping. One passenger was still sitting inside, but a pretty young girl got out unihough she was white and trembling violently. We greeted her politely and offered our assistance. She was too much shaken to speak and stared at us for a while quite dazed.

    &quot;Well, first let us look after the old boy,&quot; said Gustav and turo the oct of the car who still g to his seat behind the chauffeur. He was a gentleman with shrey hair. His intelligent, clear gray eyes were open, but he seemed to be seriously hurt; at least, blood flowed from his mouth and he held his neck askew and rigid.

    &quot;Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Gustav. We have taken the liberty of shooting your chauffeur. May we inquire whom we have the honor to address?&quot;

    The old man looked at us coolly and sadly out of his small gray eyes.

    &quot;I am Attorney-General L,&quot; he said slowly. &quot;You have not only killed my poor chauffeur, but me too, I fancy. Why did you shoot on us?&quot;

    &quot;For exceeding the speed limit.&quot;

    &quot;We were not traveling at more than normal speed.&quot;

    &quot;What was normal yesterday is no longer normal today, Mr. Attorney-General. We are of the opinion that whatever speed a motorcar travels is too great. We are destroying all cars and all other maes also.&quot;

    &quot;Your rifles too?&quot;

    &quot;Their turn will e, granted we have the time. Presumably by tomorrow or the day after we shall all be done for. You know, of course, that this part of the world was shogly overpopulated. Well, now we are going to let in a little air.&quot;

    &quot;Are you shooting every one, without distin?&quot;

    &quot;Certainly. In many cases it may no doubt be a pity. Im sorry, for example, about this charming young lady. Your daughter, I presume.&quot;

    &quot;No. She is my stenographer.&quot;

    &quot;So much the better. And now will you please get out, or let us carry you out, as the car is to be destroyed.&quot;

    &quot;I prefer to be destroyed with it.&quot;

    &quot;As you wish. But allow me to ask you one more question. You are a public prosecutor. I never could uand how a man could be a public prosecutor. You make your living by bringing other men, poor devils mostly, to trial and passien them. Isnt that so?&quot;

    &quot;It is. I do my duty. It was my office. Exactly as it is the office of the hangman to hang those whom I n to death. You too have assumed a like office. You kill people also.&quot;

    &quot;Quite true. Only we do not kill from duty, but pleasure, or much more, rather, from displeasure and despair of the world. For this reason we find a certain amusement in killing people. Has it never amused you?&quot;

    &quot;You bore me. Be so kind as to do your work. Sihe ception of duty is unknown to you—&quot;

    He was silent and made a movement of his lips as though to spit. Only a little blood came, however, and g to his .

    &quot;One moment!&quot; said Gustav politely. &quot;The ception of duty is certainly unknown to me—now. Formerly I had a great deal of official  with it. I rofessor of theology. Besides that, I was a soldier ahrough the war. What seemed to me to be duty and what the authorities and my superior officers from time to time enjoined upon me was not by any means good. I would rather have dohe opposite. But granting that the ception of duty is no longer known to me, I still know the ception of guilt—perhaps they are the same thing. In so far as a mother bore me, I am guilty. I am o live. I am obliged to belong to a state, to serve as a soldier, to kill and to pay taxes for armaments. And now at this moment the guilt of life has brought me once more to the y of killing the people as it did in the war. And this time I have nnance. I am resigo the guilt. I have no obje to this stupid gested woing to bits. I am glad to help and glad to perish with it.&quot;

    The public proseade an effort to smile a little with his lips on which the blood had coagulated. He did not succeed very well, though the good iion was ma.

    &quot;Good,&quot; said he. &quot;So we are colleagues. Well, as such, please do your duty.&quot;

    The pretty girl had meanwhile sat down by the side of the road and fainted.

    At this moment there was agaiooting of a car ing down the road at full speed. We drew the girl a little to one side and, standing close against the cliff, let the approag car run into the ruins of the other. The brakes were applied violently and the car reared up in the air. It came to a standstill undamaged. We seized our rifles and quickly had the newers covered.

    &quot;Get out!&quot; anded Gustav. &quot;Hands up!&quot;

    Three men got out of the car and obediently held up their hands.

    &quot;Is any one of you a doctor?&quot; Gustav asked.

    They shook their heads.

    &quot;Then be so good as to remove this gentleman. He is seriously hurt. Take him in your car to the own. Forward, a on with it.&quot;

    The old gentleman was soon lying iher car. Gustav gave the word and off they went.

    The stenographer meanwhile had e to herself and had been watg these proceedings. I was glad we had made so fair a prize.

    &quot;Madam,&quot; said Gustav, &quot;you have lost your employer. I hope you were not bound to the old gentleman by other ties. You are now in my service. So be ood rade. So much for that; and now time presses. It will be unfortable here before long.  you climb, Madam? Yes? Then go ahead and well help you up between us.&quot;

    We all climbed up to our hut iree as fast as we could. The lady did not feel very well up there, but we gave her some brandy, and she was soon so much recovered that she was able to admire the wonderful view over lake and mountains and to tell us also that her name was Dora.

    Immediately after this, there was another car below us. It steered carefully past the overturned ohout stopping and then gathered speed.

    &quot;Poltroon!&quot; laughed Gustav and shot the driver. The car zigzagged and dashing into the wall stove it in and hung suspended over the abyss.

    &quot;Dora,&quot; I said, &quot; you use firearms?&quot;

    She could not, but we taught her how to load. She was clumsy at first and hurt her finger and cried and wanted court-plaster. But Gustav told her it was war and that she must show her ce. Then it weer.

    &quot;But whats going to bee of us?&quot; she asked.

    &quot;Dont know,&quot; said Gustav. &quot;My friend Harry is fond of pretty girls. Hell look after you.&quot;

    &quot;But the polid the soldiers will e and kill us.&quot;

    &quot;There arent any polid such like any more. We  choose, Dora. Either we stay quietly up here and shoot down every car that tries to pass, or else we  take a car and drive off in it ahers shoot at us. Its all the same which side we take. Im for staying here.&quot;

    And now there was the loud tooting of another car beh us. It was soon ated for and lay there wheels uppermost.

    Gustav smiled. &quot;Yes, there are ioo many men in the world. In earlier days it wasnt so noticeable. But now that everyone wants air to breathe, and a car to drive as well, one does notice it. Of course, what we are doing isnt rational. Its childishness, just as war is childishness on a gigantic scale. In time, mankind will learn to keep its numbers in check by rational means. Meanwhile, we are meeting an intolerable situation in a rather irrational way. However, the principles correct—we eliminate.&quot;

    &quot;Yes,&quot; said I, &quot;what we are doing is probably mad, and probably it is good and necessary all the same. It is not a good thing when marains his reason and tries to reduce to rational order matters that are not susceptible of rational treatment. Then there arise ideals such as those of the Ameris or of the Bolsheviks. Both are extraordinarily rational, and both lead to a frightful oppression and impoverishment of life, because they simplify it so crudely. The likeness of man, once a high ideal, is in process of being a mae-made article. It is for madmen like us, perhaps, to en again.&quot;

    With a laugh Gustav replied: &quot;You talk like a book, my boy. It is a pleasure and a privilege to drink at such a fount of wisdom. And perhaps there is even something in what you say. But now kindly reload your piece. You are a little too dreamy for my taste. A couple of bucks  e dashing by here again any moment, and we t kill them with philosophy. We must have ball in our barrels.&quot;

    A car came and was dropped at ohe road was blocked. A survivor, a stout red-faced maiculated wildly over the ruins. Theared up and down and, disc our hiding place, came for us bellowing and shooting up at us with a revolver.

    &quot;Get off with you or Ill shoot,&quot; Gustav shouted down. The man took aim at him and fired again. Then we shot him.

    After this two more came and were bagged. Then the road was silent aed. Apparently the news had got about that it was dangerous. We had time to enjoy the beauty of the view. On the far side of the lake a small town lay in the valley. Smoke rose from it and soon we saw fire leaping from roof to roof. Shooting could be heard. Dora cried a little and I stroked her wet cheeks.

    &quot;Have we all got to die then?&quot; she asked. There was no reply. Meanwhile a man on foot went past below. He saw the smashed-up cars and began nosing round them. Leaning over into one of them he pulled out a gay parasol, a ladys handbag and a bottle of wihe down tentedly on the wall, took a drink from the bottle and ate something ed in tinfoil out of the handbag. After emptying the bottle he went on, well pleased, with the parasol clasped under his arm; and I said to Gustav: &quot;Could you find it in you to shoot at this good fellow and make a hole in his head? God knows, I couldnt.&quot;

    &quot;Youre not asked to,&quot; my friend growled. But he did not feel very fortable either. We had no sooner caught sight of a man whose behavior was harmless and peaceable and childlike and who was still in a state of innoce than all our praise-worthy and most necessary activities became stupid and repulsive. Pah—all that blood! We were ashamed of ourselves. But in the war there must have been generals even who felt the same.

    &quot;Do us stay here any longer,&quot; Dora implored. &quot;Lets go down. We are sure to find something to eat in the cars. Arent you hungry, you Bolsheviks?&quot;

    Down in the burning town the bells began to peal with a wild terror. We set ourselves to climb down. As I helped Dora to climb over the breast work, I kissed her knee. She laughed aloud, and then the planks gave way ah fell into vacy—

    Once more I stood in the round corridor, still excited by the hunting adventure. And everywhere on all the tless doors were the alluring inscriptions:

    MUTABOR

    TRANSFORMATION INTO ANY ANIMAL OR PLANT

    YOU PLEASE

    KAMASUTRAM

    INSTRU IN THE INDIAN ARTS OF LOVE

    COURSE FINNERS; FORTY-TWO DIFFERENT

    METHODS AND PRACTICES

    DELIGHTFUL SUICIDE

    YOU LAUGH YOURSELF TO BITS

    DO YOU WANT TO BE ALL SPIRIT?

    THE WISDOM OF THE EAST.

    DOWNFALL OF THE WEST

    MODERATE PRICES. NEVER SURPASSED

    PENDIUM OF ART

    TRANSFORMATION FROM TIME INTO SPACE

    BY MEANS OF MUSIC

    LAUGHING TEARS

    ET OF HUMOR

    SOLITUDE MADE EASY

    PLETE SUBSTITUTE FOR ALL FORMS OF

    SOCIABILITY.

    The series of inscriptions was endless. One was

    GUIDAN THE BUILDING UP OF THE

    PERSONALITY. SUCCESS GUARANTEED

    This seemed to me to be worth looking into and I went in at this door.

    I found myself in a quiet twilit room where a man with something like a large chessboard in front of him sat iern fashion on the floor. At the first glahought it was friend Pablo. He wore at any rate a similar geous silk jacket and had the same dark and shining eyes.

    &quot;Are you Pablo?&quot; I asked.

    &quot;I am not anybody,&quot; he replied amiably. &quot;We have no names here and we are not anybody. I am a chess player. Do you wish for instru in the building up of the personality?&quot;

    &quot;Yes, please.&quot;

    &quot;Then be so kind as to place a few dozen of your pieces at my disposal.&quot;

    &quot;My pieces—?&quot;

    &quot;Of the pieces into which you saw your so-called personality broken up. I t play without pieces.&quot;

    He held a glass up to me and again I saw the unity of my personality broken up into many selves whose number seemed even to have increased. The pieces were now, however, very small, about the size of chessmen. The player took a dozen or so of them in his sure and quiet fingers and placed them on the grouhe board. As he did so he began to speak in the monotonous way of one who goes through a recitation or reading that he has often gohrough before.

    &quot;The mistaken and unhappy notion that a man is an enduring unity is known to you. It is also known to you that man sists of a multitude of souls, of numerous selves. The separation of the unity of the personality into these numerous pieces passes for madness. Sce has ied the name sania for it. Sce is in this sht as no multiplicity may be dealt with uhere be a series, a certain order and grouping. It is wrong insofar as it holds that one only and binding and lifelong order is possible for the multiplicity of subordinate selves. This error of sce has many unpleasant sequences, and the single advantage of simplifying the work of the state-appointed pastors and masters and saving them the labors inal thought. In sequence of this error many persons pass for normal, and indeed fhly valuable members of society, who are incurably mad; and many, oher hand, are looked upon as mad wheniuses. He is that we supplement the imperfect psychology of sce by the ception that we call the art of building up the soul. We demonstrate to anyone whose soul has fallen to pieces that he  rearrahese pieces of a previous self in what order he pleases, and so attain to an endless multiplicity of moves in the game of life. As the playwright shapes a drama from a handful of characters, so do we from the pieces of the disied self build up ever new groups, with ever new interplay and suspense, and new situations that are eternally inexhaustible. Look!&quot;

    With the sure and silent touch of his clever fingers he took hold of my pieces, all the old men and young men and children and women, cheerful and sad, strong and weak, nimble and clumsy, and swiftly arrahem on his board fame. At ohey formed themselves into groups and families, games and battles, friendships aies, making a small world. For a while he let this lively a orderly wh its evolutions before my enraptured eyes in play and strife, making treaties and fighting battles, wooing, marrying and multiplying. It was indeed a crowded stage, a moving breathless drama.

    Then he passed his hand swiftly over the board aly swept all the pieces into a heap; and, meditatively with an artists skill, made up a new game of the same pieces with quite roupings, relationships aas. The sed game had an affinity with the first, it was the same world built of the same material, but the key was different, the time ged, the motif was differently given out and the situations differently presented.

    And in this fashion the clever architect built up one game after another out of the figures, each of which was a bit of myself, and every game had a distant resemblao every other. Each belonged reizably to the same world and aowledged a i each was entirely new.

    &quot;This is the art of life,&quot; he said dreamily. &quot;You may yourself as an artist develop the game of your life and lend it animation. You may plicate and enrich it as you please. It lies in your hands. Just as madness, in a higher sense, is the beginning of all wisdom, so is sania the beginning of all art and all fantasy. Even learned men have e to a partial reition of this, as may be gathered, for example, from Prince Wunderhorn, that enting book, in which the industry and pains of a man of learning, with the assistance of the genius of a number of madmen and artists shut up as such, are immortalized. Here, take your little pieces away with you. The game will often give you pleasure. The piece that today grew to the proportions of an intolerable bugbear, you will degrade tomorrow to a mere lay figure. The luckless derella will in the  game be the princess. I wish you much pleasure, my dear sir.&quot;

    I bowed low in gratitude to the gifted chess player, put the little pieces in my pocket and withdrew through the narrow door.

    My real iion was to seat myself at on the floor in the corridor and play the game for hours, for whole eternities; but I was no sooner in the bright light of the circular theater passage than a new and irresistible current carried me along. A dazzling poster flashed before my eyes:

    MARVELOUS TAMING OF THE STEPPENWOLF

    Many differeions surged up i the sight of this annou. My heart ainfully tracted by all kinds of fears and repressions from my former life and the reality I had left behind. With trembling hand I opehe door and found myself in the booth of a fair with an iron rail separating me from a wretched stage. Oage I saw an animal tamer—a cheap-jack gentleman with a pompous air—who in spite of a large moustache, exuberantly muscular biceps and his absurd circus getup had a malicious and decidedly unpleasant resemblao myself. The strong man led on a leash like a dog—lamentable sight—a large, beautiful but terribly emaciated wolf, whose eyes were cowed and furtive; and it was as disgusting as it was intriguing, as horrible as it was all the same secretly eaining, to see this brutal tamer of animals put the noble a so ignominiously obedie of prey through a series of tricks aional turns.

    At any rate, the man, my diabolically distorted double, had his wolf marvelously broken. The wolf was obediently atteo every and and responded like a dog to every call and every crack of the whip. He went down on his knees, lay for dead, and, aping the lord of creation, carried a loaf, an egg, a pieeat, a basket in his mouth with cheerful obedience; and he even had to pick up the whip that the tamer had let fall and carry it after him in his teeth while he wagged his tail with an unbearable submissiveness. A rabbit ut in front of him and then a white lamb. He bared his teeth, it is true, and the saliva dropped from his mouth while he trembled with desire, but he did not touch either of the animals; and at the word of and he jumped over them with a graceful leap, as they cowered trembling on the floor. More—he laid himself dowween the rabbit and the lamb and embraced them with his foremost paws to form a toug family group, at the same time eating a stick of chocolate from the mans hand. It was an agony to withe fantastic extent to which the wolf had learo belie his nature; and I stood there with my hair on end.

    There was some pensation, however, both for the horrified spectator and for the wolf himself, in the sed part of the program. For after this refined exhibition of animal taming and when the man with a winning smile had made his triumphant bow over the group of the wolf and the lamb, the roles were reversed. My engaging double suddenly with a low reverence laid his whip at the wolfs feet and became as agitated, as shrunken and wretched, as the wolf had been before. The wolf, however, licked his chops with a grin, his straint and dissimulation erased. His eyes kindled. His whole body was taut and showed the joy he felt at rec his wild nature.

    And now the wolf anded and the man obeyed. At the word of and the man sank on his knees, let his tongue loll out and tore his clothes off with his filed teeth. He went on two feet or all-fours just as the wolf ordered him, played the human being, lay for dead, let the wolf ride on his bad carried the whip after him. With the aptness of a dog he submitted gladly to every humiliation and perversion of his nature. A lovely girl came on to the stage a up to the tamed man. She stroked his  and rubbed her cheek against his; but he remained on all-fours, remained a beast. He shook his head and began to show his teeth at the charming creature—so menagly and wolfishly at last, that she ran away. Chocolate ut before him, but with a ptuous sniff he thrust it from him with his snout. Finally the white lamb and the fat mottled rabbit were brought on again and the docile man gave his last turn and played the wolf most amusingly. He seized the shrieking creatures in his fingers ah, tore them limb from limb, grinningly chewed the living flesh and rapturously drank their warm blood while his eyes closed in a dreamy delight.

    I made for the door in horror and dashed out. This Magic Theater was clearly no paradise. All hell lay beh its charming surface. O God, was there even here no release?

    In fear I hurried this way and that. I had the taste of blood and chocolate in my mouth, the one as hateful as the other. I desired nothing but to be beyond this wave of disgust. I wrestled with myself for more bearable, friendlier pictures. &quot;O Friend, not these notes!&quot; sang in my head, and with horror I remembered those terrible photographs from the Front that one saw occasionally during the war—those heaps of bodies entangled with each other, whose faces were ged to grinning ghouls by their gas masks. How silly and childish of me, a humanely minded oppo of war though I was, to have been horrified by those pictures. Today I khat no tamer of beasts, no general, no insane person could hatch a thought or a picture in his brain that I could not match myself with one every bit as frightful, every bit as savage and wicked, as crude and stupid.

    With an immense relief I remembered the notice I had seen on first entering the theater, the ohat the nice boy had stormed so furiously—

    ALL GIRLS ARE YOURS

    and it seemed to me, all in all, that there was really nothing else so desirable as this. I was greatly cheered at finding that I could escape from that cursed wolf world, a in.

    The fragrance of spring-time met me. The very atmosphere of boyhood and youth, so deeply familiar a so legendary, was around me and in my veins flowed the blood of those days. All that I had done and thought and been since, fell away from me and I was young again. An hour, a few minutes before, I had prided myself on knowing what love was and desire and longing, but it had been the love and the longing of an old man. Now I was young again and this glowing current of fire that I felt ihis mighty impulse, this unloosening passion like that wind in March that brings the thaw, was young and new and genuine. How the flame that I had fotten leaped up again, how darkly stole on my ears the tones of long ago! My blood was on fire, and blossomed forth as my soul cried aloud and sang. I was a boy of fifteen or sixteen with my head full of Latin and Greek and poetry. I was all ardor and ambition and my fancy was laden with the artists dreams. But far deeper and stronger and more awful than all there burned and leaped ihe flame of love, the hunger of sex, the fever and the foreboding of desire.

    I was standing on a spur of the hills above the little town where I lived. The wind wafted the smell of spring and violets through my long hair. Below iown I saw the gleam of the river and the windows of my home, and all that I saw and heard and smelled overwhelmed me, as fresh and reeling from creation, as radiant ih of color, swayed by the wind of spring in as magical a transfiguration, as when once I looked on the world with the eyes of youth—first youth and poetry. With wandering hand I pulled a half-opened leaf bud from a bush that was newly green. I looked at it and smelled it (with the smell everything of those days came ba a glow) and then I put it between my lips, lips that no girl had ever kissed, and began playfully to bite it. At the sour and aromatically bitter taste I k ond exactly what it was that I was living ain. It all came back. I was living again an hour of the last years of my boyhood, a Sunday afternoon in early spring, the day that on a lonely walk I met Rosa Kreisler and greeted her so shyly and fell in love with her so madly.

    She came, that day, alone and dreamingly up the hill towards me. She had not seen me and the sight of her approag filled me with apprehension and suspense. I saw her hair, tied in two thick plaits, with loose strands oher side, her cheeks blown by the wind. I saw for the first time in my life how beautiful she was, and how beautiful and dreamlike the play of the wind in her delicate hair, how beautiful and provocative the fall of her thin blue dress over her young limbs; and just as the bitter spice of the chewed bud coursed through me with the whole dread pleasure and pain of spring, so the sight of the girl filled me with the whole deadly foreboding of love, the foreboding of woman. In that moment was taihe shod the forewarning of enormous possibilities and promises, nameless delight, unthinkable bewilderments, anguish, suffering, release to the innermost and deepest guilt. Oh, ho was the bitter taste of spring on my tongue! And how the wind streamed playfully through the loose hair beside her rosy cheeks! She was close now. She looked up and reized me. For a moment she blushed a little and looked aside; but when I took off my school cap, she was self-possessed at ond, raising her head, returned my greeting with a smile that was quite grown-up. Theirely mistress of the situation, she went slowly on, in a halo of the thousand wishes, hopes and adorations that I sent after her.

    So it had once been on a Sunday thirty-five years before, and all that had been then came bae in this moment. Hill and town, March wind and buddy taste, Rosa and her brown hair, the welling-up of desire and the sweet suffocation of anguish. All was as it was then, and it seemed to me that I had never in my life loved as I loved Rosa that day. But this time it was giveo greet her otherwise than on <var>..</var>that occasion. I saw her blush when she reized me, and the pains she took to ceal it, and I k ohat she had a liking for me and that this enter meant the same for her as for me. And this time instead of standing ceremoniously cap in hand till she had gone by, I did, in spite of anguish b on obsession, what my blood bade me do. I cried: &quot;Rosa! Thank God, youve e, you beautiful, beautiful girl. I love you so dearly.&quot; It was not perhaps the most brilliant of all the things that might have been said at this moment, but there was no need for brilliance, and it was enough and more. Rosa did not put on her grown-up air, and she did not go on. She stopped and looked at me and, growing even redder than before, she said: &quot;Heaven be praised, Harry—do you really like me?&quot; Her brown eyes lit up her strong face, and they showed me that my past life and loves had all been false and perplexed and full of stupid unhappiness from that very moment on a Sunday afternoon when I had let Rosa pass me by. Now, however, the blunder ut right. Everythi differently and everything was good.

    We clasped hands, and hand in hand walked slowly on as happy as we were embarrassed. We did not know what to do or to say, so we began to walk faster from embarrassment and then broke into a run, and ran till we lost our breath and had to stand still. But we did not let go our hands. We were both still children and did not know quite what to do with each other. That Sunday we did not even kiss, but we were immeasurably happy. We stood to get our breath. We sat on the grass and I stroked her hand while she passed the other one shyly over my hair. And the up again and tried to measure which of us was the taller. Iy, I was the taller by a fingers breath, but I would not have it so. I maintaihat we were of exactly the same height and that God had designed us for each other and that later on we would marry. Then Rosa said that she smelled violets and we k in the short spring grass and looked for them and found a few with short stalks and I gave her mine and she gave me hers, and as it was getting chill and the sun slanted low over the cliffs, Rosa said she must go home. At this we both became very sad, for I dared not apany her. But now we shared a secret and it was our dearest possession. I stayed behind on the cliffs and lying down with my face over the edge of the sheer dest, I looked dowhe town and watched for her sweet little figure to appear far below and saw it pass the spring and over the bridge. And now I khat she had reached her home and was going from room to room, and I lay up there far away from her; but there was a boween her ahe same current ran in both of us and a secret passed to and fro.

    We saw each ain here and there all through this spring, sometimes on the cliffs, sometimes over the garden hedge; and when the elder began to bloom we gave each other the first shy kiss. It was little that children like us had to give each other and our kiss lacked warmth and fullness. I scarcely veo touch the strands of her hair about her ears. But all the love and all the joy that was in us were ours. It was a shy emotion and the troth we plighted was still unripe, but this timid waiting on each other taught us a neiness. We climbed otle step up on the ladder of love. And thus, beginning from Rosa and the violets, I lived again through all the loves of my life—but under happier stars. Rosa I lost, and Irmgard appeared; and the sun was warmer and the stars less steady, but Irmgard no more than Rosa was miep by step I had to climb. There was much to live through and much to learn; and I had to lose Irmgard and Anna too. Every girl that I had once loved in youth, I loved again, but now I was able to inspire each with love. There was something I could give to each, something each could give to me. Wishes, dreams and possibilities that had once had no other life than my own imagination were lived now iy. They passed before me like beautiful flowers, Ida and Laura and all whom I had loved for a summer, a month, or a day.

    I was now, as I perceived, that good-looking and ardent boy whom I had seen making so eagerly for loves door. I was living a bit of myself only—a bit that in my actual life and being had not been expressed to a tenth or a thousandth part, and I was living it to the full. I was watg it grow ued by any other part of me. It was not perturbed by the thinker, nor tortured by the Steppenwolf, nor dwarfed by the poet, the visionary or the moralist. No—I was nothing now but the lover and I breathed no other happiness and no other suffering than love. Irmgard had already taught me to dand Ida to kiss, and it was Emma first, the most beautiful of them all, who on an autumn evenih a swaying elm gave me her brows to kiss and the cup of passion to drink.

    I lived through mu Pablos little theater and not a thousandth part  be told in words. All the girls I had ever loved were mine. Each gave me what she alone had to give and to each I gave what she alone knew how to take. Much love, much happiness, mudulgence, and much bewilderment, too, and sufferio my share. All the love that I had missed in my life bloomed magically in my garden during this hour of dreams. There were chaste and tender blooms, garish ohat blazed, dark ones swiftly fading. There were flaring lust, inward reverie, glowing melancholy, anguished dying, radiant birth. I found women who were only to be taken by storm and those whom it was a joy to woo and win by degrees. Every twilit er of my life where, if but for a moment, the voice of sex had called me, a womans glance kindled me or the gleam of a girls white skin allured me, emerged again and all that had been missed was made good. All were mine, ea her own way. The woman with the remarkable dark brown eyes beh flaxen hair was there. I had stood beside her for a quarter of an hour in the corridor of an express and afterwards she often appeared in my dreams. She did not speak a word, but what she taught me of the art of love was unimaginable, frightful, deathly. And the sleek, still ese, from the harbor of Marseilles, with her glassy smile, her smooth dead-black hair and swimming eyes—she too knew undreamed-of things. Each had her secret and the bouquet of her soil. Each kissed and laughed in a fashion of her own, and in her own peculiar way was shameful and in her own peculiar way shameless. They came a. The stream carried them towards me and washed me up to them and away. I was a child iream of sex, at play in the midst of all its charm, its danger and surprise. And it astonished me to find how rich my life—the seemingly so poor and loveless life of the Steppenwolf—had been in the opportunities and allurements of love. I had missed them. I had fled before them. I had stumbled ohem. I had made haste tet them. But here they all were stored up in their hundreds, and not one missing. And now that I saw them I gave myself up to them without defend sank down into the rosy twilight of their underworld. Even that sedu to which Pablo had onvited me came again, and other, earlier ones which I had not fully grasped at the time, fantastic games for three or four, caught me up in their dah a smile. Many things happened and many games, best uioned, were played.

    When I rose once more to the surface of the unending stream of allurement and vid enta, I was calm and silent. I was equipped, far gone in knowledge, wise, expert—ripe for Hermine. She rose as the last figure in my populous mythology, the last name of an endless series; and at once I came to myself and made an end of this fairy tale of love; for I did not wish to meet her in this twilight of a magic mirror. I beloo her not just as this one pie my game of chess—I beloo her wholly. Oh, I would now so lay out the pieces in my game that all was tered in her ao fulfillment.

    The stream had washed me ashore. Once again I stood in the silent theater passage. What now? I felt for the little figures in my pocket—but already this impulse died away. Around me was the inexhaustible world of doors, notices and magic mirrors. Listlessly I read the first words that caught my eye, and shuddered.

    HOW ONE KILLS FOR LOVE

    was what it said.

    Swiftly a picture was flashed upon my memory with a jerk and remaihere one instant. Hermi the table of a restaurant, turning all at once from the wine and food, lost in an abyss of speech, with a terrifying earness in her face as she said that she would have one aim only in making me her lover, and it was that she should die by my hand. A heavy wave of anguish and darkness flooded my heart. Suddenly everything fronted me once more. Suddenly once more the sense of the last call of fate gripped my heart. Desperately I felt in my pocket for the little figures so that I might practise a little magid rearrahe layout of the board. The figures were no lohere. Instead of them I pulled out a knife. In mortal dread I ran along the corridor, past every door. I stood opposite the gigantic mirror. I looked into it. In the mirror there stood a beautiful wolf as tall as myself. He stood still, glang shyly from u eyes. As he leered at me, his eyes blazed and he grinned a little so that his chops parted and showed his red tongue.

    Where ablo? Where was Hermine? Where was that clever fellow who had discoursed so pleasantly about the building up of the personality?

    Again I looked into the mirror. I had been mad. I must have been mad. There was no wolf in the mirror, lolling his tongue in his maw. It was I, Harry. My face was gray, forsaken of all fancies, wearied by all vice, horribly pale. Still it was a human being, someone one could speak to.

    &quot;Harry,&quot; I said, &quot;what are you doing there?&quot;

    &quot;Nothing,&quot; said he in the mirror, &quot;I am only waiting. I am waiting for death.&quot;

    &quot;Where is death then?&quot;

    &quot;ing,&quot; said the other. And I heard from the empty spaces withiheater the sound of music, a beautiful and awful music, that musi Don Giovanni that heralds the approach of the guest of stone. With an awful and an iron g it rang through the ghostly house, ing from the other world, from the immortals.

    &quot;Mozart,&quot; I thought, and with the word jured up the most beloved and the most exalted picture that my inner life tained.

    At that, there rang out behind me a peal of laughter, a dear and ice-cold laughter out of a world unknown to men, a world beyond all suffering, and born of divine humor. I turned about, frozen through with the blessing of this laughter, and there came Mozart. He passed by me laughing as he went and, strolling quietly on, he opehe door of one of the boxes a in. Eagerly I followed the god of my youth, the object, all my life long, of love and veion. The musig on. Mozart was leaning over the front of the box. Of the theater nothing was to be seen. Darkness filled the boundless space.

    &quot;You see,&quot; said Mozart, &quot;it goes all right without the saxophohough to be sure, I shouldnt wish to tread ooes of that famous instrument.&quot;

    &quot;Where are we?&quot; I asked.

    &quot;We are in the last act of Don Giovanni. Leporello is on his knees. A superb se, and the music is fioo. There is a lot in it, certainly, thats very human, but you  hear the other world in it—the laughter, eh?&quot;

    &quot;It is the last great music ever written,&quot; said I with the pomposity of a saster. &quot;Certainly, there was Schubert to e. Hugo Wolf also, and I must not fet the poor, lovely Chopiher. You frown, Maestro? Oh, yes, Beethoven—he is wonderful too. But all that—beautiful as it may be—has something rhapsodical about it, something of disiion. A work of such plentitude and power as Don Giovanni has never since arisen among men.&quot;

    &quot;Dont overstrain yourself,&quot; laughed Mozart, in frightful mockery. &quot;Youre a musi yourself, I perceive. Well, I have given up the trade aired to take my ease. It is only for amusement that I look on at the business now and then.&quot;

    He raised his hands as though he were dug, and a moon, or some pale stellation, rose somewhere. I looked over the edge of the box into immeasurable depths of space. Mist and clouds floated there. Mountains and seashlimmered, ah us extended world-wide a desert plain. On this plain we saw an old gentleman of a worthy aspect, with a long beard, who drearily led a large following of some ten thousand men in black. He had a melancholy and hopeless air; and Mozart said:

    &quot;Look, theres Brahms. He is striving for redemption, but it will take him all his time.&quot;

    I realized that the thousands of men in black were the players of all those notes and parts in his scores which acc to divine judgment were superfluous.

    &quot;Too thickly orchestrated, too much material wasted,&quot; Mozart said with a nod.

    And thereupon we saw Richard Wagner marg at the head of a host just as vast, ahe pressure of those thousands as they g and closed upon him. Him, too, we watched as he dragged himself along with slow and sad step.

    &quot;In my young days,&quot; I remarked sadly, &quot;these two musis passed as the most extreme trasts ceivable.&quot;

    Mozart laughed.

    &quot;Yes, that is always the way. Such trasts, seen from a little distance, always tend to show their increasing similarity. Thick orchestration was in any case her Wagners nor Brahms personal failing. It was a fault of their time.&quot;

    &quot;What? And have they got to pay for it so dearly?&quot; I cried in protest.

    &quot;Naturally. The law must take its course. Until they have paid the debt of their time it ot be knowher anything personal to themselves is left over to stand to their credit.&quot;

    &quot;But they t either of them help it!&quot;

    &quot;Of course not. They ot help it either that Adam ate the apple. But they have to pay for it all the same.&quot;

    &quot;But that is frightful.&quot;

    &quot;Certainly. Life is always frightful. We ot help it and we are responsible all the same. Ones born and at one is guilty. You must have had a remarkable sort ious education if you did not know that.&quot;

    I was now thhly miserable. I saw myself as a dead-ilgrim, dragging myself across the desert of the other world, laden with the many superfluous books I had written, and all the articles and essays; followed by the army of positors who had had the type to set up, by the army of readers who had had it all to swallow. My God—and over and above it all there was Adam and the apple, and the whole inal sin. All this, then, was to be paid for in endless purgatory. And only then could the question arise whether, behind all that, there was anything personal, anything of my ow over; or whether all that I had done and all its sequences were merely the empty foam of the sea and a meaningless ripple in the flow of what was over and done.

    Mozart laughed aloud when he saw my long face. He laughed so hard that he turned a somersault in the air and played trills with his heels. At the same time he shouted at me: &quot;Hey, my young fellow, does your tongue smart, man, do your lungs really pinch, man? You think of your readers, those carrion feeders, and all your typesetters, those wretched abettors, and saber-whetters. Yon, you make me laugh till I shake me and burst the stitches of my breeches. O heart of a gull, with printers ink dull, and soul sorrow-full. A dle Ill leave you, if thatll relieve you. Belittled, betattled, spectacled and shackled, and pitifully snagged and by the tail wagged, with shilly and shally no more shall you dally. For the devil, I pray, who will bear you away and slice you and splice you till that shall suffice you for your writings and rotten plagiarisings ill-gotten.&quot;

    This, however, was too mue. Anger left me no time for melancholy. I caught hold of Mozart by the pigtail and off he flew. The pigtail grew longer and longer like the tail of a et and I was whirled along at the end of it. The devil—but it was cold in this world we traversed! These immortals put up with a rarefied and glacial atmosphere. But it was delightful all the same—this icy air. I could tell that, even in the brief moment that elapsed before I lost my senses. A bitter-sharp and steel-bright icy gaiety coursed through me and a desire to laugh as shrilly and wildly and uhly as Mozart had done. But theh and sciousness failed me.

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