Well, it had been amusing for a time, and he had made quite a pile; but even he had to confess that a prolonged submersion in the rank swamplands of the modern mass soul was not the most pleasant way in which to spend one’s bit of time on the merry way to extinction. Besides, it was clear that even the most tedious cynic such as himself could not be a cynic except in relation to an ideal, and it therefore followed that even he, and perhaps he especially, had a sense of what was being dragged down. His dabbling in the clockwork line had enabled him to recognize that August’s figures were brilliant, and entirely out of place in the windows of the Preisendanz Emporium. He, Hausenstein, confessed to a weakness for brilliance, on the rare occasions when he came across the real thing; and his wealth now permitted him to indulge a whim. In short, he was proposing to finance August Eschenburg in the little matter of an automaton theater. He had the place selected already, in Berlin; he himself would manage the theater but would exercise no control whatever over August. He did not pretend to be disinterested: he had reason to believe that he would rake in a nice profit, and in addition he was curious to see the direction Eschenburg’s talent would take, once left to its own devices.

August listened to all this with amusement, with interest, and with growing irritation. He felt irritated because he felt tempted; somehow or other, this debonair and embittered visitor had given voice to one of his deepest longings. Even during the Preisendanz years, when from the sidewalk he had watched his early automatons going through their motions, the idea of a theater had scattered its seeds across his mind; and since his return to Mühlenberg, the idea had taken secret root and begun to grow. And now, at the touch of Hausenstein’s words, it had burst into dangerous flower. August could not make sense of Hausenstein: he distrusted him, and yet there was a disarming frankness about him that left August puzzled and uneasy. Why had he come? Hausenstein was obviously bored, bored deep in his spirit, in the manner of someone whose intelligence is far greater than his talent; but ennui had distractions far more amusing than the automatons of a watchmaker in Mühlenberg. Was he—this mocker of men and self-declared apostle of the Untermensch—was he perhaps secretly afraid that he too was one of the mediocre? Did he need to bathe himself in the fluid of another’s creativity, in the hope that he would be washed clean of all that was common in him?