Page:The Quest Volume 13 (1921-22).djvu/100



I am is easy to tell. From my twenty-fifth to my sixtieth year I was valet de chambre to his lordship Count du Ghazal. Before that I had been employed as under-gardener, tending the flowers in the monastery of Apanua, where I had also lived the monotonous dull days of my early youth. I was taught reading and writing by the kindness of the Abbot. I was a foundling and had been adopted after my confirmation by the old head gardener of the Abbey; since then I have had the right to call myself Meyrink.

As far as I can think back in memory, I have always had the feeling as though I wore an iron ring round my head, encircling my brain and hindering the development of what is commonly called phantasy. I should say that one of my inner senses is wanting, but in compensation my eyes and ears are as keen as those of a savage.

If I close my eyes, I can see even to-day with almost oppressive lucidity the black sharp outlines of the cypresses silhouetted against the crumbling walls of the old Abbey. I see the worn bricks in the pavement of the cloisters, one by one, so that I could count them. Yet all this remains cold and mute for me; it does not tell me anything, though things are said to speak to others, as I have often read. I state with full candour and quite openly what is amiss with me, for I would lay claim to absolute