Selected Stories by Robert Walser

hopes, plans, and dreams
     completely undestroyed? Where is the soul whose longings and daring aspirations, whose
     sweet and lofty imaginings of happiness have been fulfilled without that soul’s having
     had to deduct a discount?”
    Receipt for one thousand francs was handed out, or in, to me, whereupon the steady
     creditor and accounted competitor, namely no other than myself, was entitled to bid
     good day and to withdraw. My heart glad that this capital sum should fall to me, magically,
     as from a blue sky, I ran out of the high and beautiful vestibule into the open air,
     to continue my walk.
    Add I would, can, and I hope may (since nothing new and shrewd strikes me at the moment),
     that I carried in my pocket a polite, a delicious invitation from Frau Aebi. The invitation
     card humbly requested me, and encouraged me, to be so good as to appear punctually
     at half past twelve for a modest lunch. I firmly intended to obey the summons and
     to emerge promptly at the time stated in the presence of the estimable person in question.
    Since, dear kind reader, you give yourself the trouble to march attentively along
     with the writer and inventor of these lines, out forthwith into the bright and friendly
     morning world, not hurrying, but rather quite at ease, with level head, smoothly,
     discreetly, and calmly, now we both arrive in front of the above-mentioned bakery
     with the gold inscription, where we feel inclined to stop, horrified, to stand mournfully
     aghast at the gross ostentation and at the sad disfigurement of sweet rusticity which
     is intimately connected with it.
    Spontaneously I exclaimed: “Pretty indignant, by God, should any honorable man be,
     when brought face to face with such golden inscriptional barbarities, which impress
     upon the landscape where we stand the seal of self-seeking, money-grubbing, and a
     miserable, utterly blatant coarsening of the soul. Does a simple, sincere master baker
     really require to appear so huge, with his foolish gold and silver proclamations to
     beam forth and shine, bright as a prince or a dressy, dubious lady? Let him bake and
     knead his bread in all honor and in reasonable modesty. What sort of a world of swindle
     are we beginning, or have already begun, to live in, when the municipality, the neighbors,
     and public opinion not only tolerate but unhappily, it is clear, even applaud that
     which injures every good sense, every sense of reason and good office, every sense
     of beauty and probity, that which is morbidly puffed up, offers a ridiculous tawdry
     show of itself, that which screams out over a hundred yards’ distance and more into
     the good honest air: ‘I am such and such. I have so and so much money, and I dare
     make so bold as to make an unpleasant impression. Of course I am a bumpkin and a blockhead
     with my hideous ostentation, and a tasteless fellow; but there’s nobody can forbid
     me to be bumpkinish and blockheaded.’ Do golden, far-shining, loathsomely glittering
     letters stand in any acceptable, honorably justified relation, in any healthy affinitive
     proportion to … bread? Not in the least! But loathsome boasting and swaggering began
     in some corner, in some nook of the world, at some time or other, advanced step by
     step like a lamentable and disastrous flood, bearing garbage, filth, and foolishness
     along with them, spreading these throughout the world, and they have affected also
     my respectable baker, spoiled his earlier good taste, and undermined his inborn decency.
     I would give much, I would give my left arm, or left leg, if by such a sacrifice I
     could help recall the fine old sense of sincerity, the old sufficiency, and restore
     to country and to people the respectability and modesty which have been plentifully
     lost, to the sorrow of all men who seek honesty. To the devil with every miserable
     desire to seem more than one is. It is a veritable catastrophe, which spreads over
     the earth danger of war,