Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler quotes

It was only outwardly, however, that Hull appeared undisturbed. He felt a good deal of excitement within, and a veil seemed to be obscuring his mental vision. His banknotes fluttered across to the stranger without his appearing aware of the fact.

His senses seemed to be imprisoned in a delicate, invisible web, pressing ever more and more closely upon him.

He drank a brandy and soda, and then ordered a bottle of champagne. The only effect of that was to make him open another compartment of his pocketbook and bring out the thousand-mark notes which he had procured from the bank that morning.

Circles that were exclusive had ceased to exist.

Money was a key that opened all doors, the wearing of a fur coat could conceal any calling, and a diamond scarf-pin shed lustre on any character.

A man could go into whatsoever company he desired.

His convictions were well grounded and his recognition of the national danger constantly confirmed to an alarming extent.

In the attics and basements folks were gambling for five-mark pieces, and on the first floors for five thousand.

They laid their wagers in the streets and the lanes, at home and abroad. They gambled with cards, with goods, with ideas and with enjoyments, with power and with weakness, with themselves and with their nearest and dearest.

In the attics and basements folks were gambling for five-mark pieces, and on the first floors for five thousand. They laid their wagers in the streets and the lanes, at home and abroad.

They gambled with cards, with goods, with ideas and with enjoyments, with power and with weakness, with themselves and with their nearest and dearest.

At this period, too, people who were not naturally given to hazardous risks, who were habitually calm and self-reliant, were wont to be guided by chance conditions and circumstances, instead of combating them where necessary.

The Minister smiled; he was new to his office. He said, “The nation is sound enough; you are a pessimist!”

But Wenk replied, “It is diseased and rotten! How can it be healthy, after such years and such a life?”

Then the Minister, who felt his position somewhat insecure and was willing to try anything that might lead to stability, yielded the point, and created a new post, which Wenk at once took over.

“There’s nothing to be done.

His will is like a sledgehammer, therefore don’t oppose it.

So long! I must go after him.”

That was five hundred men for the smuggling alone. If he reckoned the buyers and the Bolzano collectors as well, it was really seven hundred. With their families he might consider that he was keeping, roughly, about four thousand people. That was a small township.

A little town lay in his grasp, pledged to evil purposes, working in dark nights, stealing along mysterious byways, avoiding the revolvers of Customs officials, working stealthily, steadily, at his will.

They had no thought either, but of him, the owner of the money, the employer and dictator, the possessor of all power and force. They ventured their lives for him, but he had never seen one of them.

Spoerri, tired out by the carousal of the previous night, watched over Mabuse devotedly. He tried many simple devices to persuade him to stop drinking, but Mabuse soon saw through them, and ordered full bottles to be brought and no tricks to be played.

Alcohol was a necessity to him; it inflamed his wild and evil spirit, and in the fantasies of intoxication he found all his great ideas.

There was no thwarting of his will from without, and when drunk he felt himself enclosed as in a castle of the Arabian Nights.

He bathed in it as he might do in the love of some fair woman, yielding himself to it wholly, bridging chasms, attempting new feats, working unrestrainedly and overcoming all obstacles. …

He became a law unto himself, a world of which he was the sun.

“Spoerri, how do you like Europe?” he stuttered.

“Ah, now I understand you, dear lady. Listen. Not more really human or greater, for power is power. One display of it cannot be measured by another; it is only its essence we can judge.

Everything is human, the good as well as the bad.

Evil forces only reap their advantage through the destruction of good ones, and this advantage is for the destroyer alone. The forces of good benefit all without yielding their possessor that gross material gain which he who practises evil strives to attain.

“Ah, now I understand you, dear lady. Listen. Not more really human or greater, for power is power. One display of it cannot be measured by another; it is only its essence we can judge. Everything is human, the good as well as the bad.

Evil forces only reap their advantage through the destruction of good ones, and this advantage is for the destroyer alone.

The forces of good benefit all without yielding their possessor that gross material gain which he who practises evil strives to attain. Which is the nobler?

“Is he the fashionable jeweller nowadays?” asked Wenk, who seemed somewhat at sea.

“Herr von Wenk,” said the Countess gravely, “Endivian is the fashionable young Goethe of this season.”

Then she laughed. “No!

Many such men there were, strong in body and mind, living merely on their nerves, dedicating to a life of the senses powers which would have made them successful in the walk of life for which they were destined.

Hull and his kind, feeble and enervated, represented the spirit of the age. What would the dawn of such a midnight yield?

Wenk went to the telephone and gave the address of the new gaming-house.

Thus the police had found Hull when their colleague, blinded with pepper and bleeding from a wound, whistled for help. The body lay motionless, curled up like the gnarled root of a tree.

The blood which had flowed from its wounds shone like black marble under the searching light.

Wenk was convulsed with horror at the mental images he sought to overcome. He tried to photograph the details of the scene upon his memory, getting the exact position of the corpse.

In this I am counting on the assistance of yourself and your colleagues. May I beg you most earnestly not to make known anything concerning the Hull affair which has not first been seen by me?

We are living in an age of mental and spiritual epidemics, and those who would help to bring healing must be prepared to sacrifice themselves.

”

“Next Saturday at this time.” She rose.

“The grey prison walls will begin to shine!” said Wenk.

“Because of such odd proceedings,” laughed she.

He confessed that he did not know what he was doing when he pressed his fingers deep into the girl’s throat. Something seemed to seize upon him in the dark when he came round that corner by the Jägerstrasse, and drove him to do it.

The town was enveloped as in a misty fog, impressionable and passionate as the human heart, and the spring beyond it was obscured.

The lights thrown on life became glaring, its shadows of a wild and overwhelming blackness. Men’s hearts were torn in two, and everywhere there was internal conflict.

The town was enveloped as in a misty fog, impressionable and passionate as the human heart, and the spring beyond it was obscured. The lights thrown on life became glaring, its shadows of a wild and overwhelming blackness.

Men’s hearts were torn in two, and everywhere there was internal conflict.

“That’s all right then, otherwise you would never leave this place alive. But if you are lying, and I had told it you, I tell you now, he has no name.

He is a thousand men, a whole nation, a part of the universe!

”

“Nothing is different,” asserted the dancer vehemently. “

Everything is as it was and will ever be. He is out there, free as the air; I am here like a carcass rotting on the ground.

Tell everything you know.”

My wife died when he was but a child. I think many sons in our days have had a similar experience.” He spoke evenly, almost harshly. “But that does not free me from blame.

Our sons were our pleasure, our business our duty. It would have been better had it been the other way about.

I cannot desire such a life as his to be restored, for what I have heard from various sides about the circumstances of the case is sufficient, and I do not wish to know more, but I have allowed myself the liberty of calling upon …

Then the woman’s heart was overcome with a strange sad feeling, stilling the fever in her breast—a feeling of lofty womanly sympathy. He seemed such a child, she said to herself. “Without me he would be defenceless.

He is like a hoop rolling down the street, its course determined by the obstacles and unevennesses in its path.

”

Then Mabuse said: “

Games of chance are the oldest form, the strongest and most widespread form, in which a man who is not gifted with artistic expression may yet feel himself an artist.

”

Told became silent, and the lawyer respected his mood. Then suddenly he seemed to pull himself together and said, “I realize that I am keeping you from your night’s rest; I beg you not to be vexed with me.

In misfortune it seems as if the mind sinks into a gulf, and the consciousness grasps at the nearest support.

You had rung up, and there was some connection between you and … my house, and so. …” He broke off. “But tell me, am I really saying what I want to, or am I talking nonsense?

You will notice that the Futurist eo ipso is also a theosophist or an anthropologist. But it is not because these ideas are really inwardly connected, but because the pursuance of them is united.

You will always find nowadays that those who most freely deplore the materialism of our age are those who in private life are most devoted to it.

Moreover, in the one case as in the other, it is not always a question of money. Mental and spiritual greed is also an aspect of this age, which exchanges the dominion of one for that of another.

It is inconceivable that there should be a single heartbeat that does not belong to thee.’ It is as if all the races in all the ages had united their powers in these two beings, instead of giving each individual a beggarly portion of it.

What a puny creature is man, but if it were the other way with the race he would be the image of God and of creation!

”

“That name pleases me,” said Mabuse. “I consider it flattering. It is, without your realizing it, a caress.

Next time you will call me Lucifer, for I shall bring you light!

”

Mabuse went backwards and forwards in his room.

He was like a caged beast, caught between his rage for vengeance and lust of domination on the one hand and the resistance raised to the attainment of his goal on the other.

That which baffled him was such a trifle, merely the memories binding a wife to the hours she has passed with her husband, either alone or in company, and because it was so slight an obstacle, the desire to remove and destroy it utterly possessed …

It seemed like a wedge fastened there, fitting tightly between the two halves of the brain. Fear seized upon him and tore his courage to shreds. “Doctor, Doctor,” he shouted, and he heard his voice reecho in the empty rooms.

The world was so wide, yet he was alone.

And then he became unconscious.

“Do you know who I am?” he asked, and his tone was one of frenzied delirium. “

I am a werwolf; I suck man’s blood.

Every day my hatred burns up all the blood in my veins, and every night I fill them again by sucking the blood of some human being. If men caught me, they would tear me into little bits.

Thus it is that I have become, as it were, the chief of a robber horde.

I have known but two states: the desire to dominate and the necessity to hate!

But now you have come upon the scene. At first I thought that your spirit would be consumed in the twin flames that inspire mine, but it is not so.

Wenk was almost beside himself.

He felt like an empty shaft, down which everything good and beautiful and all that was lofty and successful had fallen into a bottomless abyss.

They tapped the walls with their hatchets, suspecting some hidden space, and soon the secret nook was discovered and the riddle solved.

The whole country already rang with reports of the existence and operations of the robber-king.

Dr. Mabuse, the gambler! It was like a ballad, expressing the devilry and defiance of all who offered resistance to existing law and order, and it spread from place to place.

In all the towns the police arrested men in gangs, but when the criminals were sorted out, this man, whose capture was worth more to them than all the rest, was never to be found.

Wenk, coming to a sudden resolve, pulled himself together and calmly and boldly ascended the stage, the very first to respond.

Far better to look the wild beast in the face than be behind him!

Then he noticed that Baron Prewitz, whom everybody had forgotten, followed him up. Stepping forward as before, automatically, he came after him, still holding the revolver.