Europe, including England, into his clutches.  Europe is also dabbling a little in Renaissance ideals and Renaissance beasts.  It is busily working away, so to speak, on its own rascalization.  But America is in advance by ten horse lengths.  Europe’s Cesare Borgias sit in the cafes with Glockenroecken a la Biedermaier and give voice to their criminal genius in fairly innocent verses.  They all look sickly, as if a barber had cupped all the blood out of their veins.  If Europe wants to save herself, she has only one hope—­to make a law by which it will be a crime to surrender an adventurer, an embezzler, a fraudulent bankrupt, the keeper of a disorderly house, a thief, or a murderer to America.  On German, English and French vessels in American ports, such people have already been placed under the special protection of Europe.  Then you will see how soon Europe will outdistance Uncle Sam.”

The physicians burst out laughing.

“When did geniuses ever do anything morally?  Even the creator of heaven and earth did not know how to.  He produced an immoral world.  Every high form of human intellectual activity has thrown ethics overboard.  What would a historian be who, instead of making researches, would moralise?  What would a physician be who would stop to moralise?  Or a great statesman, who would toe the chalk-line of your middle-class ten commandments?  As for an artist, when he moralises, he is a fool and a knave.  And please tell me, what sort of a business would the church do if all of us were moral?  There would be no church.”

There was a cold gleam of audaciousness in the Swede’s eyes.  His utterances produced a strange impression.  Even if he had pronounced fewer wild paradoxes, Frederick von Kammacher would have succumbed to his spell.  He eagerly sought for resemblances between father and daughter, or, more accurately, he observed them without seeking.  They were very evident to one who, alas, to his own torture, was carrying the daughter’s picture alive in his soul.  As long as the Swede spoke, he could not help wavering between repugnance and admiration, and he kept asking himself whether this man was really the sort of person that Arthur Stoss had described him to be, no gentleman, a weakling, an idle ragamuffin.

XXIII

As they arose from table and were ascending the companionway to the deck, Hahlstroem suddenly said to Frederick: 

“My daughter is expecting you.  We have a friend on board, Mr. Achleitner, a soft creature, but the possessor of much money, which he doesn’t know the best way to get rid of.  So he made it worth while for one of the officers to give up his luxurious cabin opening on deck to my daughter.  Unfortunately, that gives him the right to make an unmitigated nuisance of himself sometimes.”

When the men entered the comparatively roomy cabin on deck, they found Achleitner sitting on a rather unsteady chair, while Mara, carefully wrapped up, was lying stretched out on a couch.  She instantly called to her father, please to remove Mr. Achleitner, who was boring her, and signified to Frederick that she had a special favour to ask of him.  Hahlstroem and Achleitner obediently withdrew, and Frederick nolens volens had to seat himself on the camp-chair.