if I were foolish enough to say: Mary is in that red garden over there—why, by the way, red, and not yellow, or mauve?—to listen to the chattering and giggling of the violets or to the fairy-tales which the roses are secretly pouring into each other’s ears. Even if such a thing could be true, what good would it be to Mary, if after all it happens so secretly that she wouldn’t understand a word of it? But it’s all lies, silly lies! And not even pretty ones, for you just take a pencil and draw a rose with an ear, and see what it looks like! And what does it mean that those fairy-tales are so like scent? Shall I just tell you in good round Dutch? It means that there is a bad odour about those silly fairy-tales . . . that’s what it is!
With sage, devout eyes agleam,
And murmurs afar sonorous
The wave of the sacred stream.
There softly, so softly sinking
Where palm-trees rustle above,
Dreamlike we shall be drinking
The peace and rapture of love.
Cannot you go to Artis[1]—you have written to your father that I am a member, haven’t you?—now think, can you not be suited in Artis, if you want to see strange animals at any price? Must it be absolutely those gazelles on the Ganges, which in any case you can never observe so well in their wild state as in a neat enclosure of coal-tarred iron? Why do you call those animals devout and sage! The latter description may pass—they, at any rate, don’t make such absurd verses—but devout! What does it mean? Isn’t it abusing a sacred expression that should only be used for people of the true faith? And that sacred stream? Are you justified in telling Mary things that will make her a heathen? Are you justified in shaking her in the conviction that there is no holy water but that of baptism, and no sacred river but Jordan? Isn’t this sapping
- ↑ The zoological gardens in Amsterdam.
