bitterly. Commoners are stupid; but you worshippers of beauty who
call me phlegmatic and without yearning, ought to reflect that there is
an artistry so deep, so primordial and elemental, that no yearning
seems to it sweeter and more worthy of tasting than that for the
raptures of commonplaceness.

I admire the proud and cold who go adventuring on the paths of great
and demoniac beauty, and scorn "man"--but I do not envy them. For if
anything is capable of making a poet out of a man of letters, it is
this plebeian love of mine for the human, living, and commonplace. All
warmth, all goodness, all humor is born of it, and it almost seems to
me as if it were that love itself, of which it is written that a man
might speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and yet without it
be no more than sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal.

What I have done is nothing, not much--as good as nothing. I shall do
better things, Lisaveta--this is a promise. While I am writing, the
sea's roar is coming up to me, and I close my eyes. I am looking into
an unborn and shapeless world that longs to be called to life and
order, I am looking into a throng of phantoms of human forms which
beckon me to conjure them and set them free: some of them tragic, some
of them ridiculous, and some that are both at once--and to these I am
very devoted. But my deepest and most secret love belongs to the blond
and blue-eyed, the bright-spirited living ones, the happy, amiable, and
commonplace.

Do not speak lightly of this love, Lisaveta; it is good and fruitful.
There is longing in it and melancholy envy, and a tiny bit of contempt,
and an unalloyed chaste blissfulness.

LUDWIG THOMA

* * * * * *

MATT THE HOLY (1904)

_The remarkable fortunes of the Reverend Matthew Fottner of
Eynhofen, Studiosus, Soldier, and later Pastor at Rappertswyl_

TRANSLATED BY BAYARD QUINCY MORGAN, PH.D.
Assistant Professor of German, University of Wisconsin

Whoso has six horses in the stable is a freeholder, and he sits next to
the burgomaster in the tavern and is a burgess. When he sees fit to
open his head and grumble about the hard times and the taxes, his words
are heeded, and the small fry go about the next day telling how
Harlanger, or whatever his name is, has spoken his mind for once.

Whoso has five horses or less is a farmer, and he