While Constance went in and out of the shops, on her numberless errands, Paul never left her side:
“You see,” he said, glad to have some one to listen to him for the first time in his life, “what I call human wretchedness is not confined to the social question, but exists everywhere, everywhere. . . . Look around you, in the street. It’s raining; and people are walking under dripping umbrellas. Look at those women in front of us: wet skirts; muddy shoes, worn at heel, splashing through the puddles: that is human wretchedness. . . . Look at that man over there: fat stomach; squinting eyes; gouty fingers clutching a shabby umbrella-handle: that is human wretchedness. . . . Everything that is ugly, squalid, muddy, drab, abnormal from any one point of view is human wretchedness. . . . Look at all those shops, where you buy—or don’t buy—trashy manufactured things that have blood clinging to them, things which you are now pretending that you need for your house: that is human wretchedness. . . . It’s all ugly; and the trail of a morbid civilization shows through it all. . . . Look around you, at those big, lying letters, those gaudy posters: that is human wretchedness. One cheats the other; and the whole thing has become such a matter of system that nobody is really taken in. It’s the same with politics and religion as with a pound of sugar or a box of throat-lozenges. It is all humbug and all human wretchedness. And it drags on, piecemeal, through any average human life. It is all squalid, vulgar, insincere, selfish, ugly and full of human wretchedness. You think me a pessimist? Far from it. I am an idealist: in my own mind, I see everything in a rosy light. My power of imagination is so strong that I see everything white and gold and blue, like the marble statues of ancient temples, with their blue sky and golden sun. But, when I take leave of my imagination, then I see that everything is human wretchedness: wars; politics; the fat stomach of our friend yonder; the rain; and those pots and pans which you’re wanting for your kitchen. All life, high and low, general and individual, in the masses and in the classes, is squalid, ugly, insincere and full of human wretchedness. Look at that creature over there. What a miserable object: she is knock-kneed; her nose is a yard long; and the reason why she’s in this filthy street is absurd! You think I don’t know what I’m talking about, but I do. You never see anything beautiful except at the theatre, or in a book, or in a picture or an etching . . . or in a great writer taking up his pen in defence of some outcast, as Zola did. But even then there is very little; and I at once see the human wretchedness through it all: the pose, the affectation—even that of soberness—the ambition to succeed, or to imitate some one or other. No one has a pure thought for purity’s sake . . . except a fellow like Zola. There’s no beauty anywhere. Have you ever noticed, in a train, or in a tram-car, or at a theatre, all those stupid, ugly faces, those crooked bodies, either too fat or too thin, one with a blink—like this—another with a squint—like that—this one with little hairs in his ears and that one with hands that make you sick. I don’t know if you understand me; but all of this, with politics and the social question and those swarms of fat stomachs like our friend’s just now: all of this is what I call human wretchedness. . . . I may write a book about it some day; but perhaps my book itself would be merely human wretchedness. . . .”
In the meantime, he had been following his sister into three shops, one after the other, and she had managed to make her purchases in between his philosophizings. Whenever he saw his chance, he went on speaking, walking aslant beside her and talking into her ear, constantly having to move off the narrow pavements of the Hoogstraat and Veenestraat, losing her for a moment, because they were separated by a couple of carriages going at a foot-pace, but soon catching her up again. And he never lost the thread of his thoughts:
“I see that you have never reflected much, just like most women. What I say is quite new to you. You have not even observed much. You should observe, you should note all the queer things and people about you. Not that you and I ourselves are not queer and behave queerly. We can’t help it. We too stumble along in our human wretchedness. But in your boy—it was quite attractive—I saw something funny; and yet he was very serious, much too serious for a child. Your boy, your boy is certainly a man of the future. Sometimes you see a thing like that in a child: then you say to yourself, ‘He’ll be this, he’ll be that, he’ll be the other, later on, when he grows up.’ Do you follow me? No, I see you don’t follow me. It’s just your motherly vanity that feels flattered! Oh, how small you are! That is your human wretchedness! Don’t you see the sunniness in your boy? No, you don’t see it. I saw it at once. It was most attractive. Not one of Bertha’s or Gerrit’s or Adolphine’s children has it. I can’t explain it to you, you know, if you don’t understand. . . . Yes, Sissy, life is not gay. You are forty-two and I am only thirty-five, but I find it no gayer than you do. I see through everything too clearly. I should never be able, consciously, to join in anything that had to do with human wretchedness, to join in rushing after an unnecessary object. That is why I do nothing, except observe. I’m a dilettante, you see. My income is enough to live on; and I loathe myself for playing the capitalist with a bit of money like that, like the middle-classes; but I can’t help it, you know. I ought to have been rich, very rich. I should have planted a castle on a mountain-top, amid the whiteness of the Alps, and I would have done a great deal to mend human wretchedness; but I would not have had it around me. I hate it so: I turn sick at the smell of a beggar; and meantime my heart breaks and I feel a physical compassion for the poor devil. It’s the fault of my stomach or my nerves: they simply turn. It’s very unfortunate when you’re built that way. . . . How do you like my new overcoat, with the velvet turn-back cuffs? They’re rather neat, aren’t they? Pity they’re getting wet. But it’s good velvet, it doesn’t spoil. . . . And yet, yesterday, I was really alarmed when I saw my back in two looking-glasses. I had no idea that I had such a rotten back, a back full of human wretchedness, in spite of my fine overcoat. The line went like that, with a sort of hump. It was terrible; it upset me for all the rest of the day. Then, in the evening, I sat down at my piano and played Isolde’s Liebestod; and then it all passed. . . . You can’t make your little brother out, eh? A mad chap, you think, what? Yes, I am—almost—the maddest of the bunch. Bertha is very well-balanced; only, her eyes are always blinking. . . . Karel: what he might have become, I don’t know; but now he is a round nought, kept in equilibrium by the roundness of Cateau with her owl’s eyes. . . . Then you have Gerrit: he looks well-balanced, but isn’t; puts on a jovial and genial air; and is a melancholy dreamer all the time. You don’t believe it? You’ll see it for yourself, when you know him better. . . . Next come you: well, you yourself tell me you’ve had a strange life with your two husbands. . . . After that, they all go down-hill: Ernst behaves very oddly; Dorine too is sometimes queer, with that everlasting trotting about; and I look at all their queerness and have a tile loose myself. . . . So you think we are a very sensible family? My dear Constance, we have a great crack running right through us, slanting, like that! But we are nice people and we don’t let the world know. You wait: you’ll see. And now, Sissy, here’s your tram and here I leave you. . . .”
He helped her in; and she saw him walk away under his umbrella, carefully drying with his handkerchief the velvet turn-back cuffs of his new overcoat.