orm and shape. You have expressed yourself in an admirable way, Baron."

"And have you given up in final resignation with regard to your
spirits?" asked Eberhard, in a serious tone.

"Resignation? To what? Of what? Do you imagine that is necessary in my
case? I am the counterpart of Cronos. My children devour me; they devour
my living body. I conjure up spirits and endow them with flesh and
blood, and in return for what I do they convert me into a shadow. They
are rebellious fellows, I tell you, quite without mercy. I am supposed
to arouse a citizenry on their behalf that is petrified with
indifference. The very thing, or things, that offend and disgust me, I
am supposed to take up and carry about on an unencumbered shoulder. I am
supposed to be their prostitute and offer them my body at a price. I am
supposed to be their retail grocer and haggle in their behalf. There is
something inspiring about a struggle, and when the enemy is worthy of
one's steel there is a distinct pleasure in entering the fray. But my
little spirits want to be pampered and have a lot of attention paid
them. The hate, consequently, that is being dammed up within me is
possibly nothing but rage at my fruitless wooing. No, mine is not an
honest hate, because I long to get at every ragged beggar who will have
nothing to do with my spirits, because my entire life consists in
pleading for an audience with people who do not care to listen, and
scraping together pennies of love from people who cannot love, because
two or three are not enough for me, because I must have thousands and am
nothing if I don't have thousands, and pine away in anguish and distress
if I cannot imagine that the whole world is keeping step with my pace
and keeping in time with the swing of my baton. I can despise Mushroom
Mike who lies down by his wife at night drunk as a fool, and to whom the
name of Beethoven is an empty sound; Jason Philip Schimmelweis makes me
laugh when he looks me in the face and says, I don't give a damn for
all your art. And yet there is humanity in such people, and so long as
this is true I must have them; I must convince them, even if my heart is
torn from my breast in the attempt. Would you call this life? This
digging-up of corpses from the graves, and breathing the breath of life
into them so that they may dance? And doing it with the consciousness
that this moment is the only one? I am; I exist; here is the table,
there are the wax candles, and over