FRIENDS OF HIS YOUTH
151
Clarisse had her doubts.
Walter said violently: "Everything is crumbling nowadays! An
intellectual pit without a bottom to it! He has an intellect, I grant
you that. But he has no notion of the power of an unbroken soul!
What Goethe calls personality, what Goethe calls mobile order–
that's something he hasn't got an inkling of! 'This beautiful concep–
tion of power and restraint, of wantonness and law, of liberty and
moderation, of mobile order-' "
The lines floated in waves from his lips.
Clarisse watched these lips in amiable astonishment, as though
they had sent a pretty toy flying up into the air. Then, remembering
her role of good little housewife, she interrupted:
"Do you want some beer?"
"Hm? Why not? I always have some, don't I?"
"But I haven't any in the house!"
"Pity you asked me," Walter said with a sigh. "I mightn't have
thought of it."
So far as Clarisse was concerned, that settled the question. But
Walter had now lost his equilibrium and did not quite know how
to go on. "Do you remember our talk about the artist?" he asked
uncertainly.
"Which one?"
"The one we had a few days ago. I explained to you what a
living creative principle means to a human being. Don't you remem–
ber how I came to the conclusion that in the old days, instead of
death and logical mechanization, it was blood and wisdom that
prevailed?"
"No."
Walter was frustrated. He searched, he wavered. Suddenly he
burst out: "He is a man without qualities!"
"What's that?" Clarisse asked, with a little laugh.
"Nothing. That's just the point- it's nothing!"
But the expression had aroused Clarisse's curiosity.
"There are millions of them nowadays," Walter declared. "It's
the human type that our time has produced." He was pleased with
the expression that had so unexpectedly come to him.
As
though he
were beginning a poem, the words drove him forward before he had
got the meaning. "Just look at him! What would you take him for?
