"The Art of Life"

Paradoxical but Unquestionably Practical Solutions to Two Delicate Problems in Ethics

FERENC MOLNÁR

I HAVE already written in Vanity Fair about the late Odon Salamon, that regally haughty Bohemian. He was wise and noble, and those who knew him know that there are many occasions when, speaking of wisdom and nobility of character, one may safely refer to him. I shall write of him now because, some time ago, anent something or other, I was once more reminded of the simple economic fact that money is worth, not as much or as little as it has written or printed on it, but as much or as little as it can purchase. It is not a joke that a millionaire's twenty dollars are worth more than a poor man's—and it doesn't matter what the proverbs say.

We were living on St. Margit's Island, a little colony of writers and journalists, some twenty-five years ago. We called Odon Salamon the king because he was the most distinguished character among us. He never had any money. If, by a lucky coincidence, he had five kronen in his pocket, he considered himself a millionaire. Nevertheless, he always dressed as superbly as the late Prince de Sagan, and those who saw him for the first time would never have thought that they beheld a poor newspaper man and not a rich land owner on his way to Paris for the Autumn races. But he seemed precisely the same when he had only twenty filler in his pocket—and this occurred very frequently.

ONE day, none of us had any money for dinner. Such things happened quite often, as a matter of fact. At such times we, the inexperienced youngsters ate our dinner and signed the check—according to the timehonoured, ancient custom.

"No," said the king, "you shouldn't do that. One is not respected in restaurants to whose owners one is indebted. And it is extremely important that one should always be respected."

We gazed at him.

"But we have no money!"

"Well, then don't eat."

"Have you any?" some one asked him. "No," he replied with noble simplicity. "Or rather, I have a little. I have exactly eighty filler."

"That is to say, you will either not eat any dinner at all, or you will go to some filthy little place where you can get a dinner for eighty filler."

"Not I! Gentlemen eat only in good restaurants. But, in case you are interested, come with me and learn how to eat in a restaurant, where the cheapest dish is one kronen sixty, on eighty filer so that no one will look down upon you. Everybody will respect me and no one will believe that I have only eighty filler in my pocket."

We went with him. I recommend this tale to all those who seek useful knowledge. It teaches more than dozens of thick volumes of philosophy.

This is what happened.

"Waiter," said Salamon in a tone of ennui, "What is good to-day?"

The waiter handed him the carte du jour. With a bored look, Salamon quickly glanced through it, then cast it aside.

"There's no sense in ordering any of your ready dishes—they are all stale, tasteless things. Make something to order for me. Something filling because I'm very hungry to-day." We stared at him.

The king continued: "Order me chopped beefsteak—but not beef. Make it veal, tender, young veal. Broil it gently. I like it crisp. And bring some good vegetables with it. Shall we say, green peas? But, a lot."

WE just gazed and gazed and waited for the end. Twenty minutes later the waiter brought in the dish. It was a beautiful, nicely broiled, crisp, chopped beefsteak but, despite its name, it was not made of beef. And the green peas were enticing. He put it down on the table.

"But my dear boy," said Salamon, "aren't you people ashamed of yourself?"

"Why, sir?" stuttered the waiter.

"Do you call this meat?"

"Yes, sir."

"This? Why, this is burnt, this is seared! You must have prepared this in a fiery furnace, it's so hard. . . I said, broil it a bit! But I didn't ask you to char it!"

"But, sir—," the waiter began.

"Don't talk back!" said Salamon in a tone which implied that the Penal Code prescribed ten years in the penitentiary as an adequate punishment for talking back.

"Yes, sir," said the waiter meekly. "I'll take it back to the kitchen."

"And you think I'll wait here for another half an hour until you ruin another steak for me. Or do you want me to take something from that frightful bill of fare of yours? No, my friend, my stomach can't tolerate those things. I consider myself a man of some refinement, I can't touch them."

The waiter did not know what to do. "Take the meat back to the kitchen," said Salamon in a more peaceful voice. "Tell them that I cannot eat it; that I shall never step inside this restaurant again."

The waiter reached for the dish.

"Leave the peas here," said the king. "After all, I can't starve."

The waiter left the peas and took the meat away. Salamon ate the vegetable, ate a piece of bread, then called the timid waiter.

"Bring me a dozen ripe figs."

The waiter did not say a word. But his features reflected utter embarrassment.

"A dozen ripe figs," the king repeated. "I beg your pardon, sir," he stammered, "we have no ripe figs."

"What a restaurant! All one can do here is get angry. Send me the head-waiter with my check. I assure you, you won't ever see me here again."

The head-waiter appeared instantaneously and bowed deeply.

"Look here," Salamon turned to him, "it seems I shall have to stop coming here. I ordered an entree, the kitchen ruined it. Then I ordered ripe figs, a whole dozen of them, because I wanted to offer some to my friends, and you haven't any. All I intend to pay is a side-dish of green peas. Shame on you."

"Forty filler " said the head-waiter.

Salamon paid him the forty filler. He gave a twenty filler tip to him, twenty filler to the waiter, then rose, and started to leave. At this moment, the proprietor appeared on the scene.

"I beg your pardon, Mr. Salamon," he said, "may I trouble you for ofcte second."

"Well, what is it?" Salamon said in the most dignified tone in the world.

"Mr. Salamon, I only wished to beg your pardon because I understand you haven't had a good dinner here. I promise you this will never happen again. Please, don't be angry with us and honour us with your visits in the future."

Salamon did not even deign to answer. He merely nodded and then, between two rows of bowing waiters, left the restaurant. The restaurateur accompanied him to the door, bowing at every step.

"You see, boys," — the king turned to us—"this is the way to eat in a dignified manner on eighty filler. But I must add a warning. You can do this sort of thing only once in any given restaurant. And I promise you that the next time I have twenty kronen, I shall spend all of it here."

This is, in miniature and in caricature, what they call "the art of living". This is what every man ought to apply, throughout his life, to all of his affairs. "Ought to," I say, because I have not succeeded in applying it. But this is, to be sure, what conserves one, gives one contours, and lends one colour and character.

IT is not an important problem* but it belongs to the science of life, because, as far as the majority is concerned, life is composed of appearances, and because there are not two people out of every hundred who can live their lives for themselves only, alone, smilingly, with heads erect, loftily, who do not need this basically false art of swindling. Consequently, this art is a useful art because life, after all, belongs to the swindlers—although I must declare most emphatically that I do not think of Salamon now, not even as an instance. He, poor soul, was driven to the use of this system in order to hide a noble, pure, and proud poverty from the gaping crowd. But I do think of all the million people who grow up, get grey, and fight through life without learning the fact that they must live for themselves and not for the world or they must laugh in a different way, pay in a different way, eat, come, go, work and live in a different way, and not the way they would like to.

A captain of Hussars is the hero of this story which took place many, many years before the Great War. He was six foot seven inches tall, a fencing master in a military academy. He was all bones, muscles, and skin, without the thinnest layer of fat—a lean man, but he weighed 220 pounds. He had large, wide-open eyes, full of merry courage, and original, waggish brains, and unrestrained temperament. Military life in times of peace offered him few opportunities to give free reign to his energy, so he created opportunities for himself. For instance, he kept wolves just as some people kept dogs. He had four wolves in the Budapest Zoo. After a night of merry-making, at five o'clock in the morning, he would invite his guests, ladies in evening gowns and gentlemen in swallow-tails, to the Zoo, to see his favourite wolves. He had a pair of gloves woven of fine steel wire. He would pull them on and then enter the cage with the four wolves. He would wrestle with them, and play ball with them, throwing them against the wall, hurling them in the air. From the wolves, he would take his guests to see his bear. The bear did not live in the Zoo; it had a cage in the barracks of the mounted police. He had given it to them when still a cub, and it had been raised by the policemen. Once more he would enter the cage and wrestle with the beast. (Once the bear, out of pure love, patted him on the head so enthusiastically that his scalp slipped to one side. Two doctors worked for a day before they succeeded in pulling the scalp back into its original place and sewing it on again.) He took an active part in every complicated affair of honour. He was the leading second in every important duel. He was a superb boxer and wrestler, a wild and daring horseman. In place of the regulation sword, he carried a broadsword so heavy that ordinary mortals could hardly lift it. He loved to stay up until the morning hours in the company of artists and writers, and he sat at their tables in the cafes modestly, silently, attentively, with a school-boy's naive amazement in his eyes.

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Once, in the Vaczi-utca, at high noon, when hundreds of fashionable promenaders filled the narrow thoroughfare, the captain was sauntering in the sunshine. In front of him walked a young man escorting a lady and whirling his cane merrily in the air. As the captain passed the youth, the boy, carelessly and accidentally, knocked off the captain's shako with his stick. The captain stopped. The boy looked at him, recognized him, and instantly turned pale as a corpse. In half a minute, hundreds of people had gathered around. They were all certain that the pavement would be spattered with blood in a second. But the captain suddenly embraced the terrified and trembling youth and kissed him on both cheeks.

"Servus, dear boy," he cried goodhumouredly—this was the first time he had ever seen him in his life— picked up his shako, took the boy by the arm, and, feigning merry conversation, began to walk up and down the promenade with him. The boy, half-dead, went along with him mechanically. When they had managed to push out of the crowd, the captain turned to him.

"We shall walk the length of the street at least ten times, laughing and talking, so that all those who witnessed the incident will believe that it was merely an accident, and be convinced that you are my best friend. This farce is absolutely necessary, for if rumour gets around that you knocked my shako off with your stick and I, an officer of the Hussars, have neither challenged you to a duel nor cut you to pieces on the spot, I am a lost man."

And he dragged the pale, trembling youngster up and down the street, laughing loudly and telling him old jokes. After the tenth turn, he let him go. The youngster remembered only then to introduce himself.

"Thank you," said the captain, "there is no necessity of my knowing your name. Don't overestimate my benevolence—I despise you. I have done all this because, to my mind, the essence of chivalry is still what it was in the Middle Ages: the protection of the weak. And this was the only way to rescue you from my sword."

He left the youth without even bidding him good-bye.