Free The Complete Symphonies of Adolf Hitler by Reggie Oliver Page A

rise, but something physical was holding me there. I looked behind me and saw what looked like the black web of a great spider which had been woven onto the back of my coat, binding me to the seat of the bench. I tried to detach myself from it but my hand became ensnared. It stuck to me, this black and viscous horror.
    ‘Ah, you will say, it was merely pitch or black paint which I had inadvertently sat down upon. You Americans are irreconcilably prosaic, but that is because you are young. Youth is the oldest tradition of your nation, and the young are always prosaic. The young believe that poetry is only a beautiful way of telling lies; whereas the old know it to be the sole medium of bitter truth. Where was I?’
    ‘Still in the Garden of Strangers.’
    ‘Ah, yes. Well, I believe that I might have been caught forever in that dreadful web, but just then the sun broke from behind the hills overlooking the bay of Naples, and it was at last a new day. With the dawn all my spirits fled from me, their mist burned up by the sun’s morning rays. So I wrenched my coat off the seat, quitted the Garden of Strangers and never returned. My coat was ruined which saddened me because we had become attached to one another. After all, I owed my tailor a great deal of money for it.’
    He broke off wistfully and stared into space for a moment. ‘The really precious things in life are those for which one cannot pay. Would you care for another brandy, or does your soul revolt against such excess?’
    I shook my head.
    ‘I should not have asked. One should never try to lead others astray: it is the one unpardonable sin and a privilege one must reserve for one’s self. I was once very nearly tempted into playing a game of football. Fortunately I was able to plead successfully that I had a feverish intellect, so they let me off. But had I succumbed, only think what dreadful consequences would have ensued. I might have become respectable.’
    ‘What is so wrong with that?’ I asked, hoping, I guess, to provoke him once more, but I got more than I bargained for.
    ‘My dear Ellwood,’ said Oscar, now without a trace of melancholy or languor in his voice, ‘respectability is the only crime because it is the betrayal of the self. Respectability is the taking up of moral attitudes and the denial of morality. It condemns the sinner in public, but in secret condones the sin. How could I, its most notorious victim, defend respectability? It prefers the simple lie to the bewildering truth. It is the comfort of cruel men, the ice on the mirror, the cloak that hides the dagger. It was the crucifier of Christ; it is the suicide of the soul. If I had murdered myself that day in the Garden of Strangers I would have become respectable because, in the eyes of my fellow countrymen, I would have “done the decent thing”. And there is no more indecent act in this world than to do the decent thing for the sake of respectability.’
    When Oscar had finished there was a silence while the fire slowly departed from his eyes. He sighed as if suddenly exhausted by his own conversation; then summoned the waiter to order another cognac for himself. I asked him if, since his adventures in the Garden of Strangers, he had ever been tempted again to take his own life.
    ‘No. I was cured of that. You see, I knew that all three of those shades had killed themselves in vain. And when I thought that such would be the fate of my soul too, the temptation to kill myself left me and has not come back.’
    ‘And after all, how could you have imagined spending all your after-life in Naples?’ I said.
    Oscar laughed: ‘No, the cooking is really too bad. At least I shall be dying in Paris where the cuisine approaches that which one can expect from the after-life at its best. When one is about to feast with the dead, it is as well to know what is on the menu.’
    ‘And who pays for that particular feast?’ I asked, as the waiter entered the room. Oscar settled the bill with