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THE MAN
he was in many ways a disappointed man, but not bitter and, although no
longer young, still filled with enthusiasm in the defence of his opinions and
still filled with the great love of his life, the love of all that was free or wanted
to become free. Now at last he had found what he had sought and he knew
what he had found.
In this love of freedom he now met the so much younger man. They met by choice and were soon brought closer together by memories of London which they shared, although Auban had already left the city by the time Foerster came there during his first half-year of searching. They had common memories of many people with whom Auban had generally been in much closer contact than Foerster, who had usually only seen and heard them from afar. In spite of all the differences in their circumstances, their lives had been strangely similar, and they soon became close friends. One had hardly known his mother and the other had never known his at all, both had to earn their daily living with literary hackwork; yet in spite of this, both were as far removed from being literary men as anyone could be; both had experienced in their early youth the untameable urge to grasp Life and to understand it. Considerable similarity in feeling and thought, together with often surprising agreement in their judgements, soon brought about an exchange of confidences; and the love of Freedom, which to neither of them was an empty word, cemented their friendship. They did not have to discuss anything. What they had to exchange were not doubts but the results of long and fruitful thinking. They did not have to debate. They talked things over, and new hopes and plans grew out of such talk. Even if they were not always of one mind in every one of their conclusions, they were in full agreement on all basic questions. It could not have been otherwise since they had both learned to think logically and consistently. Foerster found in Auban an unrivalled guide to Paris. He knew the history of every stone in his city, and at the same time he followed the happenings of the day with a sharp and experienced eye. Auban found in his association with the younger man a new source of courage to face the day and, stem and serious though he was, he learned to laugh again at human folly and vanity. Usually it was Auban who visited Foerster in the evenings in his small apartment in Montparnasse, and it was always with pleasure that Foerster heard his friend's heavy tread upon the stairs (Auban dragged his left foot slightly), when he came bringing an evening of stimulating talk. In Auban the wish to convert others was perhaps still stronger than it ever |