Free Love in a Bottle by Antal Szerb Page A

there’s a boring tale for you.”
    Lytto’s fingers trembled on the lyre. No one had ever heard the Duke speak like this before.
    “When you were young, my lord, did you never go down into Milan?”
    “Never, my boy. If I had, they would have killed me within the hour.”
    “But what about your bodyguards?”
    “Lytto, perhaps you think I am some sort of coward. Well, perhaps. Who can say he truly knows himself? But then, a man who holds the lives of hundreds of thousands of people in his hands, and would put all that in jeopardy, is probably exempt from the charge. No, Lytto, I’m not afraid of the assassin’s dagger, believe me, nor do I think I shall escape it in the end. What does horrify me is the depth of hatred—you know—the loathsome atmosphere of the hatred of slaves. It would smother me, down there. I begin to wonder if this isn’t my greatest achievement, that no man was ever so deeply hated as I am.”
    The words burst from Lytto’s mouth:
    “My lord, in the name of all the saints, why do they hate you, who are so good, so virtuous in your life, and always act for the best?”
    Galeazzo shrugged his shoulders.
    “I don’t know, and I’m not really interested. The hatred is in them, not in me. My soul will be found pure on the Day of Judgement. I’m incapable of hatred, myself.”
    Lytto leapt to his feet.
    “My lord, I shall go right now and tell them they are wrong!”
    Galeazzo’s smile was a sharp as a razor.
    “Calm yourself down, my boy, and then we can continue the discussion. No more of these loud words and wild gestures , if you please. Believe an older man, Lytto, there’s no helping this hatred until these people change, and change totally, and become like you, and me, and everyone else. The fact is, they hate themselves in me.”
    “I don’t follow you, my lord.”
    “I’m not surprised, and it isn’t important that you should. Every living thing strives for power, Lytto—for domination. Some consciously, some not. The Lord Mayor orders the heads of guilds about, the guildsman lords it over the bootmaker , the bootmaker bullies his apprentices, the apprentice no doubt has younger siblings who torture the cat, the cat torments the mouse, and no doubt even the mouse isn’t at the bottom of this ghastly hierarchy. So the mouse hates the cat, the cat hates the children, and everyone hates me, because I am the one with power.”
    “Is the possession of power worth all the hatred, my lord?”
    “I could declaim in poetical tropes, Lytto, how one minute of power is equal to a thousand years of hell. Of course power isn’t an end in itself. It is simply an instrument. But it is absolutely necessary.”
    “Then what is its purpose?”
    “Go and ask the meanest beggar in Milan and he will tell you—freedom. That is what glitters at the bottom of the well of their dreams. It’s all they worship, and for its sake they will struggle for power, hating whatever power is greater than their own. And yet not one of these people has any idea what freedom is. They are bound by a thousand shackles, these unfortunates: wives, children, relatives, the state of the country, the ceaseless urgings of the body. And everyone is dependent on everyone else. Beat one of them and others will be sure to suffer. If the judge’s wife sprains her little finger you can’t guarantee that the next day six children won’t weep for a father languishing in prison. What they call freedom is a squalid, meaningless lie, because if they did kill me they’d get someone a thousand times worse around their necks. They’ve got so used to all this they can’t live without it. I could even argue that when I do away with these conspirators I do so in their own best interests… but how odd it is, that I should be the only one who knows what freedom means,” he added, rising to his feet.
    “To be free, Lytto, act as if you were utterly alone—without love, without hatred, without fear and without hope. What man