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THE FINDER
He no longer needed the company of many people.
Not that he had become unsociable. He liked sitting in a merry circle in the evenings and joined in the laughter at a good joke. But he did not feel at home among people who got together to be jolly at any price: genuine joy could not be forced. He enjoyed general discussion, but preferred the to-and-fro of argument with one person. He liked to be sure that his opponent really thought for himself and was not simply answering with catch-phrases that he had picked up somewhere. Dreary prattle about trivia and the everyday concerns of so- called society seemed to him an irresponsible waste of an all-too-short lifetime, as objectionable as the coarse familiarity of those who see others only as vessels into which they can pour the not-always-pleasant contents of their minds; In Berlin his ceaseless and taxing work had left him little time for associating with other people, and what little time he had had to spare in the last year had belonged to the woman he loved. He knew that he would always be able to find friends if he looked for them, but he began to feel that friends can be an expensive luxury; to possess them can be riches but to be unable to do without them for a time is abject poverty. He liked best to be alone with himself and could not understand those who were bored with their own company. Such people must be bores themselves. He did not know the feeling of loneliness. He was happy in the bustle of great cities, happy in the silence of wide woods and valleys. Never was he happier than when he was alone with himself and his thoughts. He renewed old acquaintances and made new ones. Here, too, he found friends without having to look for them. The great movement, sweeping like a whirlwind through the old world in order to create a new one, was tearing the old world asunder and scattering parts abroad like seed, some to die and some to bear fruit. This beautiful city on the Limmat had long been a gathering place for the refugees of the movement and they and their arguments jostled in its narrow confines. Here he found them all again, that often strange band that made up the vanguard and the rearguard of the movement. Every facet seemed to be represented. Full of noise and demands, they jostled for the best position: the prophets and the saviours of humanity; the fanatics and the believers; the revolutionaries and the reformers, mostly young, but among them also men of |