The groundlings push and shove noisily on the floor of the theatre, as if in harbour, the finer folk smile down and chat idly with the players. Impatiently, they call for the play to begin. They stamp and shout, bang the hilts of their daggers on the boards, until at last a few flickering candles are brought out to illuminate the stage below, and casually costumed figures step forward to perform what appears to be an improvised comedy. And then—I remember his words to this day—“a storm of words suddenly blows up, the sea, the endless sea of passion, sends its bloody waves surging out from these wooden walls to reach all times, all parts of the human heart, inexhaustible, unfathomable, merry and tragic, full of diversity, a unique image of mankind—the theatre of England, the drama of Shakespeare.”

With these words, uttered in an elevated tone, he suddenly ceased. A long, heavy silence followed. Alarmed, I turned round: my teacher, one hand clutching the table, stood there with the look of exhaustion I knew well. But this time there was something alarming in his rigidity. I jumped up, fearing that something had happened to him, and asked anxiously whether I should stop. He just looked at me, breathless, his gaze fixed, and remained there immobile for a while. But then his starry eye shone bright blue again, his lips relaxed, he stepped towards me. “Well—haven’t you noticed anything?” He looked hard at me. “Noticed what?” I stammered uncertainly. Then he took a deep breath and smiled slightly; after long months, I felt that enveloping, soft and tender gaze again. “The first part is finished.” I had difficulty in suppressing a cry of joy, so warmly did my surprise surge through me. How could I have missed seeing it? Yes, there was the whole structure, magnificently built on foundations of the distant past, now on the threshold of its grand design: now they could enter, Marlowe, Ben Jonson, Shakespeare, striding the stage victorious. The great work was celebrating its first anniversary. I made haste to count the pages. This first part amounted to a hundred and seventy close-written sheets, and was the most difficult, for what came next could be freely drawn, while hitherto the account had been closely bound to the historical facts. There was no doubt of it, he would complete his work—our work!

Did I shout aloud, did I dance around with joy, with pride, with delight? I don’t know. But my enthusiasm must have taken unforeseen forms of exuberance, since his smiling gaze moved to me as I quickly read over the last few words, eagerly counted the pages, put them together, weighed them in my hand, felt them lovingly, and already, with my calculations running on ahead, I was imagining what it might be like when we had finished the whole book. He saw his own hidden pride, deeply concealed and dammed up as it was, reflected in my joy; touched, he looked at me with a smile. Then he slowly came very, very close to me, put out both hands and took mine; unmovingly, he looked at me. Gradually his pupils, which usually held only a quivering and sporadic play of colour, filled with that clear and radiant blue which, of all the elements, only the depths of water and of human feeling can represent. And this brilliant blue shone from his eyes, blazed out, penetrating me; I felt its surge of warmth moving softly to my inmost being, spreading there, extending into a sense of strange delight; my whole breast suddenly broadened with that vaulting, swelling power, and I felt an Italian noonday sun rising within me. “I know,” said his voice, echoing above this brilliance, “that I would never have begun this work without you. I shall never forget what you have done. You gave my tired mind the spur it needed, and what remains of my lost, wasted life you and you alone have salvaged! No one has ever done more for me, no one has helped me so faithfully. And so it is you,” he concluded, changing from the formal Sie to the familiar du pronoun—“it is you whom I must thank. Come! Let us sit together like brothers for a while!”

He drew me gently to the table and picked up the bottle standing ready. There were two glasses there as well—he had intended this symbolic sharing of the wine as a visible sign of his gratitude to me.