“A fight over Schnak is just what we need to relieve the dowdy simplicity of this opera venture,” said Powell. “Art is so lacking in passion, don’t you think? With the Doctor and Penny contesting like the Bright and the Dark Angel for the body and soul of Hulda Schnakenburg, we shall add a little salt to the dreary porridge of our lives.”

What do they do? Arthur wants to know, and I, happy in my privileged position, may say that I do know.

I must be careful about my privileged position. “Is there a cosier condition than being thoroughly pleased with oneself?” I must be careful not to become like Kater Murr. Even in Limbo, I suppose, one can sink into Philistinism.

But what Dr. Gunilla and Hulda Schnakenburg do is far from Philistine, and indeed far from the anti-Philistine world as I knew it when I was a part of what is now flatteringly called The Romantic Movement. Of course there were intense and intimate friendships between women then, but whatever physical amusement they generated was not known or seriously considered. Certainly some young ladies hung about each other’s necks in public; they often dressed in identical gowns; they swooned or had hysterics at the same time, for both swooning and hysterics were high among the feminine luxuries of the day, and were thought to show great delicacy of feeling. But it was always assumed that these sensitive creatures would marry at last, and after marriage the intimacy with the female friend might become even more precious. I suppose if, after the first raptures of marriage, your husband was in the habit of coming to bed drunk, or smelling of the bawdy-house, or in a mood to black an eye or give a few hard slaps to a critical wife, it was delightful to have a friend who treated you with delicate respect and who could perhaps rouse an ecstasy that your disappointing husband thought was outside the emotional range of a well-bred woman. That was how it was, you see: that special ecstasy was thought to be the prerogative of whores, and whores became expert at faking it, and thereby flattering their clients.

It was all quite different, in my day. Love was an emotion greatly valued, but it was valued for its own sake, and an unhappy love or a torturing love was perhaps even more valued than a love that was fulfilled. After all, love is an ecstasy, but sex is an appetite, and one does not always satisfy an appetite at the best restaurant in town. The bordel where Devrient and I used to go in Berlin was quite a humble affair, and the women there knew their trade and their place; they did not presume to intimacy with the visitors, who were always called Mein Herr, unless the visitors liked endearments and smutty talk, which was extra, and had to be considered in the tip. It was in Russia and Poland that people who liked that sort of thing became familiar with the whore and, in my opinion, made fools of themselves. I cannot recall the face of a single whore, though I employed many.

Why? Why did I go to the bordel, even when I was out of my mind with love for the unattainable pupil, the lovely Julia Marc? Even in my most love-stricken hours I did not cease to eat, or drink—or visit the bordel. Love was not an appetite, but an ecstasy. Whores were not women, but servants.

What about my wife? Do you suppose that when I was head over ears in love with another woman I would insult my wife, my dearest Michalina Rohrer, by seeking out her bed? Do you suppose I had no respect for her, and all she meant to me? She was a fact, and an extremely important fact, of my life, and I would not have insulted her, even if she were unconscious of the insult—and I do not for a moment suppose she was ignorant of my passion for Julia. She had a close friend, by the way, and I never made inquiry or interfered in whatever may have passed between them. Nor, I suppose, did Dante, when he was sighing for his Beatrice. Dante was a very good family man, and so was I, in the manner of my time. Romantic love and a firm domestic life were not incompatible, but they were not expected to mingle. Marriage was a contract, to be taken seriously, and the fidelity it demanded was not to be trifled with. But the obsession of love might, and often did, lie elsewhere.

Is there love between Gunilla and Hulda? On Hulda’s side I am sure it is so, and whether either of them expects it to last, as marriage is expected to last, I cannot say. It was Hulda’s initiation into that sweet ecstasy; Gunilla is a woman of great experience. It was she, for instance, who introduced Hulda to what they called the Love Potion.

It was a sort of jam, really. Jam was the heart of it; the very best raspberry jam made by Crabtree and Evelyn. With the jam was mixed honey and a few chopped walnuts. Gunilla would spread a path of it on Hulda’s tender belly, beginning at the navel and extending downward. Having licked the jam out of the navel, Gunilla would lick slowly and gently in a southward direction and in time—it all had to be done lentissimo e languidamente—to the pintle of ecstasy, and then there were sighs and sometimes cries. After a restful period of kissing, Hulda took her turn, anointing Gunilla’s belly and performing the same slow ritual. With Gunilla it always ended in quite loud cries. It was she who most appreciated the walnuts, which gave, she said, a sort of traction that was very exciting.

All innocent and delightful, concluding with a bath together (enlivened with a couple of aquavits apiece) and a refreshing sleep. Who was harmed? Nobody. And there was no resorting to the bordel, simply as a convenience.

That is what I envy them. For it was in the bordel, somewhere—I cannot tell in what city of the many where I pursued my career—it came about that I acquired the disease that was one of the contributing elements in my early death. I underwent a cure, of course, but the cures in those days cured nothing except the debts of the physicians. I thought I had been cured, but later I knew better. That was in 1818, and when I became horribly ill and died in 1822 I knew that it was not simply the liver ailment that grew from all that champagne, or the mysterious paralysis that was at last diagnosed as tabes dorsalis—one of the many names given to the old, old disease—that carried me off. As it carried off poor Schubert, who, as I saw from the vantage of Limbo, was brought to wearing an absurd wig, to disguise the baldness that syphilis had brought upon him. And Schumann, who died of a self-inflicted starvation: but it sprang from the madness that had so long possessed him—madness that arose from the Morhus Gallicus.

It was my legs that first became useless to me, then the paralysis settled in my hands and I could not hold a pen. I was determined to complete Arthur of Britain if I could, and when writing was impossible I dictated my music to my wife, my dear faithful Michalina, who was a skilled amanuensis. But I could achieve nothing but sketches for the music I wanted—the sketches from which Schnak is so cleverly divining what was in my mind. The disease that made me unable to control the pen seemed to enlarge and enrich my musical imagination; I have long believed that certain poisons—tobacco and wine, to name two of the commonest—may do that in minds of fine quality, where the poisons do not induce the usual stupor. A truly Romantic notion, some would say. But the tortures and wrenchings that came with the inspirations were terrible, and it was to them that I at last succumbed.

It is the disease of genius, many people have said, because so many men of note, and many of them my contemporaries, died of it, or were hastened to the grave because syphilis underlay whatever it was the doctors said had killed them. Would I have sacrificed my genius to avoid the pain and degradation? Fortunately there is no necessity to answer that question.