CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
On a spring afternoon of the year 19—, when our continent layunder such threatening weather for whole months, Gustav Aschenbach, orvon Aschenbach as his name read officially after his fiftieth birthday,had left his apartment on the Prinzregentenstrasse in Munich and hadgone for a long walk. Overwrought by the trying and precarious work ofthe forenoon—which had demanded a maximum wariness, prudence,penetration, and rigour of the will—the writer had not been ableeven after the noon meal to break the impetus of the productivemechanism within him, that motus animi continuus whichconstitutes, according to Cicero, the foundation of eloquence; and hehad not attained the healing sleep which—what with the increasingexhaustion of his strength—he needed in the middle of each day. Sohe had gone outdoors soon after tea, in the hopes that air and movementwould restore him and prepare him for a profitable evening.
It was the beginning of May, and after cold, damp weeks a falsemidsummer had set in. The English Gardens, although the foliage wasstill fresh and sparse, were as pungent as in August, and in the partsnearer the city had been full of conveyances and promenaders. At theAumeister, which he had reached by quieter and quieter paths, Aschenbachhad surveyed for a short time the Wirtsgarten with its lively crowds andits border of cabs and carriages. From here, as the sun was sinking, hehad started home, outside the park, across the open fields; and since hefelt tired and a storm was threatening from the direction of Föhring,he waited at the North Cemetery for the tram which would take himdirectly back to the city.
It happened that he found no one in the station or its vicinity. Therewas not a vehicle to be seen, either on the paved Ungererstrasse, withits solitary glistening rails stretching out towards Schwabing, or onthe Föhringer Chaussee. Behind the fences of the stone-masons'establishments, where the crosses, memorial tablets, and monumentsstanding for sale formed a second, uninhabited burial ground, there wasno sign of life; and opposite him the Byzantine structure of the FuneralHall lay silent in the reflection of the departing day; its façade,ornamented in luminous colours with Greek crosses and hieraticpaintings, above which were displayed inscriptions symmetricallyarranged in gold letters, and texts chosen to bear on the life beyond;such as, "They enter into the dwelling of the Lord," or, "The light ofeternity shall shine upon them." And for some time as he stood waitinghe found a grave diversion in spelling out the formulas and letting hismind's eye lose itself in their transparent mysticism, when, returningfrom his reveries, he noticed in the portico, above the two apocalypticanimals guarding the steps, a man whose somewhat unusual appearance gavehis thoughts an entirely new direction.
Whether he had just now come out from the inside through the bronzedoor, or had approached and mounted from the outside unobserved,remained uncertain. Aschenbach, without applying himself especially tothe matter, was inclined to believe the former. Of medium height, thin,smooth-shaven, and noticeably pug-nosed