Free Selected Stories by Robert Walser Page A

and desire to bestow upon it a short and fleeting visit, I did
     not hesitate to step in, with an obvious good grace, while I permitted myself of course
     to consider that in me appeared far rather an inspector, or bookkeeper, a collector
     of information, and a sensitive connoisseur, than a favorite and welcome, wealthy
     book buyer and good client. In courteous, thoroughly circumspect tones, and choosing
     understandably only the finest turns of speech, I inquired after the latest and best
     in the field of belles-lettres. “May I,” I asked with diffidence, “take a moment to
     acquaint myself with, and taste the qualities of, the most sterling and serious, and
     at the same time of course also the most read and most quickly acknowledged and purchased,
     reading matter? You would pledge me in high degree to unusual gratitude were you to
     be so extremely kind as to lay generously before me that book which, as certainly
     nobody can know so precisely as only you yourself, has found the highest place in
     the estimation of the reading public, as well as that of the dreaded and thence doubtless
     flatteringly circumvented critics, and which further-more has made them merry. You
     cannot conceive how keen I am to learn at once which of all these books or works of
     the pen piled high and put on show here is the favorite book in question, the sight
     of which in all probability, as I must most energetically suppose, will make me at
     once a joyous and enthusiastic purchaser. My longing to see the favorite author of
     the cultivated world and his admired, thunderously applauded masterpiece, and, as
     I said, probably also at once to buy the same, aches and ripples through my every
     limb. May I most politely ask you to show me this most successful book, so that this
     desire, which has seized my entire being, may acknowledge itself gratified, and cease
     to trouble me?” “Certainly,” said the bookseller. He vanished out of eyeshot like
     an arrow, to return the next instant to his anxious and interested client, bearing
     indeed the most bought and read book of real enduring value in his hand. This delicious
     fruit of the spirit he carried carefully and solemnly, as if carrying a relic charged
     with sanctifying magic. His face was enraptured; his manner radiated the deepest awe;
     and with that smile on his lips which only believers and those who are inspirited
     to the deepest core can smile, he laid before me in the most winning way that which
     he had brought.
    I considered the book, and asked: “Could you swear that this is the most widely distributed
     book of the year?”
    “Without a doubt!”
    “Could you insist that this is the book which one has to have read?”
    “Unconditionally.”
    “Is this book also definitely good?”
    “What an utterly superfluous and inadmissible question.”
    “Thank you very much,” said I cold-bloodedly, left the book which had been most absolutely
     widely distributed because it had unconditionally to have been read, as I chose, where
     it was, and softly withdrew, without wasting another word. “Uncultivated and ignorant
     man!” shouted the bookseller after me, for he was most justifiably and deeply vexed.
     But I let him have his say, and walked at my ease on my way, which, to be accurate,
     as I shall at once discuss and expound more closely, led into the next stately banking
     establishment.
    The very place I wished to inquire at and receive reliable information about certain
     securities. “To hop into a money institute, just in passing,” I mused, or said to
     myself, “in order to manage one’s financial affairs, and to produce questions, which
     one utters in no more than a whisper, is pleasant, and looks uncommonly good.”
    “It is good and wonderfully convenient that you come to us in person,” the responsible
     official at the counter said to me, in a very friendly tone, and he proceeded with
     an almost knavish, at any rate very charming and gay smile,