ould come upon us sitting together at one of the
little tables in front of the club house, let us say, at Homburg, taking
tea of an afternoon and watching the miniature golf, you would have said
that, as human affairs go, we were an extraordinarily safe castle. We
were, if you will, one of those tall ships with the white sails upon a
blue sea, one of those things that seem the proudest and the safest of
all the beautiful and safe things that God has permitted the mind of men
to frame. Where better could one take refuge? Where better?

Permanence? Stability? I can't believe it's gone. I can't believe that
that long, tranquil life, which was just stepping a minuet, vanished in
four crashing days at the end of nine years and six weeks. Upon my word,
yes, our intimacy was like a minuet, simply because on every possible
occasion and in every possible circumstance we knew where to go, where
to sit, which table we unanimously should choose; and we could rise and
go, all four together, without a signal from any one of us, always to
the music of the Kur orchestra, always in the temperate sunshine, or, if
it rained, in discreet shelters. No, indeed, it can't be gone. You can't
kill a minuet de la cour. You may shut up the music-book, close the
harpsichord; in the cupboard and presses the rats may destroy the white
satin favours. The mob may sack Versailles; the Trianon may fall, but
surely the minuet--the minuet itself is dancing itself away into the
furthest stars, even as our minuet of the Hessian bathing places must
be stepping itself still. Isn't there any heaven where old beautiful
dances, old beautiful intimacies prolong themselves? Isn't there any
Nirvana pervaded by the faint thrilling of instruments that have
fallen into the dust of wormwood but that yet had frail, tremulous, and
everlasting souls?

No, by God, it is false! It wasn't a minuet that we stepped; it was a
prison--a prison full of screaming hysterics, tied down so that they
might not outsound the rolling of our carriage wheels as we went along
the shaded avenues of the Taunus Wald.

And yet I swear by the sacred name of my creator that it was true. It
was true sunshine; the true music; the true splash of the fountains from
the mouth of stone dolphins. For, if for me we were four people with the
same tastes, with the same desires, acting--or, no, not acting--sitting
here and there unanimously, isn't that the truth? If for nine years I
have possessed a goodly