Beware of Pity by Stefan Zweig Page A

especially privileged young men, and it was the same in the regiment. I was therefore absolutely convinced that if I suddenly suffered a fatal accident, say I fell off my horse and broke my neck, my comrades might perhaps say, “What a shame about him,” or, “Poor old Hofmiller,” but by the time a month was up no one would really miss me. It had been just the same with the relationships I struck up with a couple of girls in the two garrisons where I had been stationed. There was a dentist’s assistant in Jaroslav, and in Vienna Neustadt just south of the capital I used to go out with a little seamstress. On Annerl’s day off we would go to her room, I gave her a little coral necklace for her birthday, we exchanged the usual loving words, and she probably genuinely meant them. But when the regiment was stationed elsewhere we had both been quick to console ourselves. For the first three months we wrote the obligatory letters to one another from time to time, and then found other partners, and the only difference was that in tender moments she said Ferdi to her new friend instead of Toni. All over and forgotten. So far, however, and I was now twenty-five years old, I had never felt that I was the cause of any strong, passionate emotion, and at heart all that I myself expected and wanted of life was to do my duty properly and not incur disapproval.
    But now the unexpected had happened, and I examined myself with surprise and curiosity. Did I, an ordinary young man, really have power over other people? I had hardly fiftycrowns in the world, and could I make a rich man happier than any of his friends? Could I, Lieutenant Hofmiller, help and console someone else? If I sat talking to a crippled, disturbed girl for an evening or two, did my presence really brighten her eyes, make her face come to life, and bring light to the whole gloomy house?
    In my agitation I walked so fast through the dark streets that I felt quite warm. I wanted to fling my coat open as my heart expanded in my chest. For a new, second and even more intoxicating notion unexpectedly mingled with my astonishment—the thought that it was so easy, so incredibly easy to make these people my friends. And what exactly had I done? I had shown a little sympathy, I had spent two evenings in the house—two cheerful, animated, lively evenings—and was that really enough to do it? Then how stupid it would be to spend all my leisure time sitting apathetically in the café playing dull games of cards with my tedious comrades, or strolling up and down the promenade. Well, there’d be no more of that tedium from now on, no more wasting my time so stupidly! I would go to the café less often, would stop playing tarot and billiards, draw a firm line under all those ways of killing time that did no one any good and merely stupefied my own mind. I would rather go and visit the sick girl, I would even make preparations beforehand so that I always had something new and amusing to tell her and Ilona, we would play chess or indulge in some other agreeable pastime together. In itself, my resolve to make myself useful to others from now on aroused a kind of enthusiasm in me. I felt like singing, I felt like doing something ridiculous in my elation. Only when we know that we mean something to other people do we feel that there is point and purpose in our own existence.
     
    So it was that over the next few weeks I spent my late afternoons, and usually my evenings as well, at the Villa Kekesfalva. Soon those friendly hours of talk became a habit, even an indulgence that had a touch of danger in it. But how enticing it also was for a young man who, from his boyhood years, had been passed from one military institution to another to find a home so unexpectedly, a home after his own heart instead of cold barrack rooms and the smoke-filled officers’ mess. When the day’s duties were over, and I strolled out to the villa, my hand was hardly on the knocker before the manservant was