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"For, after all, what sight is more pitiful than life making an attempt at art? We artists despise no one more thoroughly than the dilettante, the red-blooded man, who thinks he can be an artist occasionally and on the side. I assure you, this kind of disdain is one of my own most personal experiences. I find myself in company in an aristocratic house, we eat, drink, and converse, and understand each other perfectly, and I feel glad and grateful to be able to disappear for a time among harmless and regular people as a normal man. Suddenly—this has happened to me—an officer rises, a lieutenant, a handsome, well-built fellow, of whom I should never have suspected an action unworthy of his honorable dress, and begs in unambiguous words for permission to communicate to us a few verses which he has manufactured. With a smile of consternation the permission is given him, and he carries out his purpose, reading his composition from a slip of paper which he has till then kept hidden in his coat-tail,—something about music and love;—in short, as deep in feeling as it is ineffective. Now in the name of all the world: a lieutenant! One of the lords of the earth! He surely doesn’t need it! … Well, the result is inevitable: long faces, silence, a little artificial applause, and the profoundest discomfort round about. The first spiritual fact of which I become conscious is that I feel myself an accomplice in the upsetting of the company by this indiscreet young man; and sure enough: I too, upon whose province he has encroached, catch glances of mockery and scepticism. But the second fact is that my opinion of this man, for whose whole being I had just felt the most honest respect, suddenly falls, falls, falls … A compassionate benevolence seizes me. With other courageous and good-natured gentlemen I step up to him and encourage him.’Congratulations,’ I say, ‘what a delightful talent! Really, that was most charming.’ And I am not far from clapping him on the shoulder. But is benevolence the feeling that one should have toward a lieutenant? … His own fault! There he stood and in great embarrassment atoned for the erroneous idea that one may pluck a leaf, just one, from the bay-tree of art, without paying for it with one’s life. No, there I agree with my colleague, the criminal banker. But tell me, Lisaveta, don’t you think I am endowed with the eloquence of a Hamlet today?"

"Are you through now, Tonio Kröger?"

"No. But I will say no more. "

"Nor do you need to. —Do you expect an answer?"

"Have you any?"

"I should think I had. —I have listened closely to you, Tonio, from beginning to end, and I will give you the answer which fits everything you have said this afternoon, and which is the solution of the problem that has disquieted you so. Well, then! The solution is this, that you, just as you sit there, are simply an ordinary man. "

"Am I?" he asked, collapsing a little.

"That is a cruel blow, isn’t it? It must be. And therefore I will soften my sentence a little, for I can do so. You are an ordinary man astray, Tonio Kröger,—an erring commoner. "

—Silence. Then he stood up resolutely and reached for hat and cane.

"I thank you, Lisaveta Ivanovna; now I can go home in peace. I am finished. "

V

Toward autumn Tonio Kröger said to Lisaveta Ivanovna,

"Yes, I am going away now, Lisaveta; I must take an airing, and I am going off, going to take to the open. "

"Well, how is it, Little Father, will it be your royal pleasure to return to Italy?"

"Good gracious, go on with your Italy, Lisaveta! Italy is indifferent to me to the point of contempt. It is a long time since I imagined I belonged there. Art, eh? Velvety blue sky, fiery wine, and sweet sensuality … In short, I don’t like it. I resign. The whole bellezza makes me nervous. Nor I don’t like all these frightfully lively human beings down there with their black animal eyes. None of the Romance peoples have any conscience in their eyes…. No, now I am going up to Denmark for a while. "