Free The Green Face by Gustav Meyrink

would gain entry to a parallel existence that we lead in
the depths of sleep; at the moment we are unaware of it because it is beyond our physical being and is forgotten as we retrace our
steps across the dream bridge that connects day and night. The
things that the ecstatics of your Christian mystical tradition
write about the `rebirth’ without which it is impossible ‘to see
the Kingdom of Heaven’, seem to me to be nothing other than
the awakening of the soul, which until that point has been as
dead, in a world that exists beyond the range of our external
senses, in, to put it in a nutshell, paradise.” He took abook down
from the shelves and pointed to a picture in it. “I am sure the tale
of Sleeping Beauty has some connection with it, and what else
could be the sense of this old alchemical illustration of ‘rebirth’:
a naked man rising from his coffin and beside it a skull with a
lighted candle on top? By the way, as we have got on to the
subject of Christian ecstatics, Juffrouw van Druysen and I are
going to a meeting of that kind this evening on the Zeedijk.
Oddly enough, your olive-green face haunts that place, too,”

    “On the Zeedijk?” laughed Pfeill. “But that’s an extremely
shady part of town. What humbug have you fallen for there?”
    “It’s not as bad as it used to be, I hear, there’s only one sailors’
tavern left, though a pretty rough one at that, called the Prince
of Orange. Otherwise the district is inhabited by harmless
craftsmen.”
    “One of them is an aged eccentric who lives with his sister,
he’s a crazy butterfly collector called Swammerdam, and when
he’s not collecting butterflies he imagines he’s King Solomon.
We have been invited to visit them”, added the young lady with
a laugh. “My aunt goes there every day. She is a Mademoiselle
de Bourignon - you see what aristocratic relations I have? And
to avoid any unfortunate misconceptions: she is a venerable
Canoness of the Beguine Convent and quite formidably pious.”
    “What?! Old Jan Swammerdam is still alive?” exclaimed the
Baron with a laugh, “he must be over ninety by now! Does he
still wear those shoes with the two-inch rubber soles?”
    “You know him? what kind of person is he really?” asked
Juffrouw van Druysen in pleased surprise. “Is he really a
prophet, as my aunt maintains? Tell me what you know of him,
please.”
    “With pleasure, if you would like to hear it, my dear. But I am in a hurry as I don’t want to miss my train again. I will say my
farewells now so that I can dash off as soon as I have finished.
But you mustn’t expect any spine-tingling revelations - ribtickling would be a more appropriate expression.”

    “All the better.”
    “Well then: I have known Swammerdam since I was fourteen, though in more recent years I have lost contact with him.
As an adolescent I was full of wild enthusiasm for everything
except school, and amongst other things I collected insects and
kept reptiles. Whenever a bull-frog or an Asiatic toad the size
- and approximate shape - of a handbag appeared in any of the
pet shops I would snap it up and take it home, where I kept such
things in heated terrariums. At night there was such a cranking
and croaking that it made the windows rattle in the neighbours’
houses. And the stuff the beasts needed to eat! I used to bring
it in by the sackload. The fact that there are so few flies left in
Holland today is solely the result of my perseverance in collecting food for my little charges. Cockroaches, for example, I
completely eradicated. The frogs themselves I never actually
saw; by day they hid under stones and at night my parents had
the strange idea that I ought to be in bed. Eventually my mother
suggested it would make no difference and be simpler if I set the
animals free and just kept the stones, but I was naturally horrified by such ignorance and rejected the suggestion.
    My passion for collecting insects