The recent “big ups and downs” of Bitcoin prices have made many countries more vigilant. According to a report by German Economic Weekly on the 24th, the German Banking Association issued a warning on the 24th, calling on the German government to implement stricter supervision of digital currencies. Billionaire Lakash Zhujunwala, known as “Buffet of India”, said in an interview with CNBC on the 23rd that Bitcoin is currently the highest-level “speculative asset”. “I don’t want to participate in it, and I will never Will buy bitcoin”. According to the report, although the Indian government has not yet made a decision on the regulation of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, there is widespread speculation in the market that India is planning to ban the private circulation of all cryptocurrencies and launch an official version of the digital currency.
According to estimates by the Indian financial media, about 5 million Indians currently hold or have held Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies. The Bitcoin held by Indians is less than 1% of the current total development, which is lower than the level of the United States, the European Union, Japan and China. There have always been disputes between the Indian government and cryptocurrency platforms and investors on the issue of “regulation or prohibition”. The Central Bank of India issued a notice in 2018, requiring entities under its supervision to suspend the provision of trading services related to cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin within 3 months, triggering strong market resistance. In March last year, the Indian High Court ruled to reject the central bank’s notice, which brought this controversy to an end. However, at the end of January this year, the Indian parliamentary documents disclosed by Bloomberg revealed that the government is planning to submit a bill to the parliament to prohibit the use of non-governmental endorsed cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin in India.
Countries are also studying and accelerating the construction of digital currency. The People’s Bank of China Digital Currency Research Institute stated on the 24th that the People’s Bank of China Digital Currency Research Institute has joined the multilateral central bank digital currency bridge research project, which aims to explore the application of central bank digital currency in cross-border payments.
German News Television said on the 24th that European Central Bank President Lagarde recently stated that the European Central Bank will accelerate the construction of the digital euro and make the digital euro a reality in the next five years. At the same time, the European Central Bank hopes to have the final say in the legal status of private stable currencies in the EU. It is believed that the European Central Bank will supervise Bitcoin.
Burkhardt’s departure attacked the painter a strange feeling of being alone. The same loneliness in which he had lived for years and years, and to which he had made himself hard and almost insensitive in so long habituation, now attacked him like an unknown, completely new enemy and collapsed on him from all sides, suffocating. At the same time he felt cut off from his family, even from Pierre, more than ever. He did not know, but it was because he had first spoken out about these matters.
In some hours he even got to know the unfortunate, humiliating feeling of boredom. So far, Veraguth had led the unnatural but consistent life of a voluntarily walled in, who no longer interested in life and whose existence was more a bearing than an experience. The friend’s visit had punched holes in this cave, through a hundred cracks flashed and sounded, smelled and felt the life of the lonely man old spell was broken and the awakening felt every call from outside with half pain.
Furious, he threw himself into work, he started two large compositions almost at the same time, he started the day with a cold bath at sunrise, worked without a break until noon, then after a short rest he kept himself lively with coffee and a cigar and sometimes woke up palpitations or headache at night. But no matter how much he forced himself and forcibly clamped himself in, the news always remained alive and present in his consciousness under a thin veil that a door was open and that a quick step could bring him to freedom at any time.
He didn’t think about it, he numbed all thoughts with constant exertion. The feeling in which he lived was this: You can go at any hour, the door is open, the fetters are to be broken – but it costs a tough decision and a heavy, heavy sacrifice – so don’t think about it, just not about it think! That resolution that Burkhardt expected from him and to whom perhaps his own nature had already secretly admitted, sat in his soul like a bullet in the flesh of a wounded man; it was just a question of whether it would work its way out festering or would it grow encapsulated inside. It festered and hurt, but not hurt enough yet; nor was the pain he feared from the sacrifice too great. So he did nothing, let the secret wound burn and quietly felt a desperate curiosity as to how it would all turn out.
In the midst of this distress he painted a large figure picture, the plan of which he had long gone and which now suddenly irritated him violently. The thought about it was many years old, he had once enjoyed it until it seemed to him more and more empty and allegorical and became completely repugnant. But now the picture had become completely visible to him and he began the work purely from the freshness of the vision, without feeling the allegory any more.
There were three life-size figures: a man and a woman, each lost in thought and the other strange, and a child playing between them, happy and unaware of the cloud overhead. The personal meaning was clear, but neither the male figure resembled the painter, nor the woman his wife, only the child was Pierre, but depicted a few years younger. He painted this child with all the charm and nobility of his best portraits, the figures on either side sat in rigid symmetry, severe, painful images of loneliness, the man with his head propped up in his hand gave in to heavy brooding, the woman in sorrow and emptiness Lost dullness.
The servant Robert did not have pleasant days. Herr Veraguth had become strangely nervous. He couldn’t stand the slightest noise in the next room when he was working.
The secret hope that had come to life since Burkhardt’s visit to Veraguth sat like a fire in his chest, burned on in spite of all oppression, and at night colored his dreams with alluring and exciting light. He didn’t want to listen to her, he didn’t want to know anything about her, he wanted nothing but work and have peace of mind. And he could not find peace, he felt the ice of his joyless existence melt and all the foundations of his existence were shaken, he saw his studio locked and cleared in dreams, he saw his wife travel away from him, but she had taken Pierre with her and the boy stretched out his thin arms to him. In the evening he would sometimes sit alone in his uncomfortable little living room for hours, absorbed in the sight of the Indian photographs, until he pushed them away and closed his tired eyes.
Two powers fought a hard battle within him, but the hope was stronger. Again and again he had to repeat his conversations with Otto, all the suppressed desires and needs of his strong nature rose ever warmer from the depths where they had been trapped and frozen for so long, and the old madness could not withstand this upward thrust and spring-like warming, the sick delusion that he was an old man and had nothing more to do than endure life. The The deep, powerful hypnosis of resignation had been interrupted, and through the gap the unconscious instinctual forces of a long restrained and deceived life entered gushing.
The clearer these voices rang out, the more anxious the painter’s consciousness twitched in the painful fear of his final awakening. Again and again he convulsively closed his blinded eyes and resisted the necessary sacrifice, feverish in every fiber.
Johann Veraguth rarely appeared in the house over there, he had almost all meals brought to the studio and often spent the evenings in town. But when he met his wife or Albert, he was quiet and gentle and seemed to have forgotten all hostility.
He didn’t seem to care much about Pierre. Otherwise he had lured the little one over to him at least once a day and had him with him or had been in the garden with him. Days could go by now without his seeing the child or asking for him. If the boy ran into him, he kissed him thoughtfully on his forehead, looked into his eyes with sad absent-mindedness, and went on his way.
Once Veraguth came over to the chestnut garden in the afternoon, it was mild and windy and a warm rain sprayed down diagonally in tiny drops. Music sounded from the house through open windows. The painter stopped and listened. He didn’t know the piece. It sounded pure and serious with a very severe, well-built, and balanced beauty, and Veraguth listened with thoughtful glee. Strange, actually it was music for old people, it sounded so gentle and masculine and had nothing at all of the Bacchic frenzy of the music that he himself once loved more than anything in his youth.
He stepped quietly into the house, climbed the stairs and appeared silently in the music room, where only Frau Adele noticed his arrival. Albert played and his mother stood by the piano, listening. Veraguth sat in the nearest chair, bowed his head, and paused, listening. In between he looked up and let his gaze rest on his wife. She was at home here, she had lived silent, disappointed years in these rooms like he did in the workshop over by the lake, but she had had Albert, she had gone and grown with him, and now the son was her guest and friend and with him your home. Frau Adele had aged a little, she had learned to be quiet and content herself, her gaze was fixed and her mouth a little dry; but it was not uprooted, it was secure in its own atmosphere, and it was in its air that the sons grew up. She had little exuberance and not too much impulsive tenderness to give, she lacked almost everything that her husband had once looked for and hoped for in her, but there was home around her, there was kind and character in her face, in hers Beings, in their rooms, there was a floor here,
Veraguth nodded in satisfaction. There was no one here who could lose anything if it disappeared forever. He was dispensable in this house. He would return again and again anywhere in the world Being able to build a studio and surrounding oneself with activity and enthusiasm, but it would never become a home. Actually, he had known that for a long time, and it was a good thing.
Now Albert stopped playing. He felt, or saw his mother’s eyes, that someone had come into the room. He turned around and looked at his father in astonishment and suspicion.
“Good afternoon,” said Veraguth.
“Hello,” answered the son, embarrassed, and began to occupy himself with the music cabinet.
“You made music?” Asked the father in a friendly manner.
Albert shrugged his shoulders as if to ask: “Didn’t you hear it?” His face went red and hid it in the deep compartments of the cupboard.
“It was nice,” continued the father, and smiled. He felt deeply how much his visit was disturbing, and he said, not without a slight hint of malicious glee: “Please, play something more! What you want! You have made good progress. ”
“Oh, I never like it,” Albert protested angrily.
“It will be ok. I ask for it. ”
Frau Veraguth gave her husband a scrutinizing look.
“So, Albert, sit down!” She said, and put on a music book. With her sleeve she brushed against a small silver flower basket full of roses that stood on the wing, and a row of pale petals fell on the reflective black wood.
The youth sat down on the piano stool and began to play. He was confused and full of anger and played down the music like an annoying workload, quick and unkind. Father listened attentively for a while, then sank into thought, finally got up suddenly and walked noiselessly out of the room before Albert had finished. As he left he heard the boy pounding furiously on the keys and stopping his game.
“You will miss nothing when I’m gone,” thought the painter as he went down the stairs. “Lord God, how far apart are we, and yet we were once a kind of family!”
Pierre ran to meet him in the corridor, beaming and in great excitement.
“O Papi,” he called out breathlessly, “it’s good that you’re here! Imagine I have a mouse, a little living mouse! Look, there in my hand – do you see the eyes? The yellow cat caught her and she played with her and tormented her so much and let her run a little and caught again. I grabbed it very, very quickly and caught the mouse from under her nose! What do we do with her now? ”
He looked up hot with joy, and yet shuddered when the mouse rummaged in his small, tightly clasped hand and gave short, anxious whistles.
“We’ll let them run outside in the garden,” said the father, “come with me!”
He asked for an umbrella and took the boy with him. It trickled faintly from the brighter sky, the wet, smooth trunks of the beech trees gleamed black as cast iron.
Between the lush, tough knots They stopped at the roots of some trees. Pierre crouched down and very slowly opened his hand. His face was flushed and the light, gray eyes shone with intense tension. And suddenly, as if the expectation were becoming unbearable, he opened his little hand wide. The mouse, a tiny, young animal, darted blindly out of custody, stopped a cubit further in front of a strong root strand and sat there still. One saw her flanks moved by heavy breaths and her little black, shiny eyes looking around fearfully.
Pierre cheered loudly and clapped his hands. The mouse was startled and disappeared into the ground as if enchanted. The father gently pushed back the boy’s thick hair.
“Are you coming with me, Pierre?”
The little one put his right hand in his father’s left and went with him.
“Now the little mouse is already at home with her mom and dad and tells them everything.”
He went on chatting, and the painter closed his arms around his little warm hand with firm fingers, and with every word and shout of the child his heart twitched and sank back into dependency and heavy love spell.
Oh, never again in life would he be able to feel such love as for this boy. Never again would he be able to experience moments so full of warm, radiant tenderness, so full of playful self-forgetfulness, so full of strong, melancholy sweetness as with Pierre, with this last, beautiful picture of his own youth. His grace, his laughter, the freshness of his small, self-confident being were the last happy, pure sound in Veraguth’s life, it seemed to him; they were to him what the last rose tree in full bloom is in a late autumn garden. Warmth and sun, summer and happiness in the garden depend on it, and when the storm or frost leaves it, all charm and every hint of splendor and joy is over.
“Why don’t you really like Albert?” Asked Pierre suddenly.
Veraguth squeezed the child’s hand tighter.
“I already like him. He just prefers his mother to me. You can’t do anything for that. ”
“I think he doesn’t like you at all, papa. And you know, he never likes me as much as he used to. He just keeps playing the piano or sitting alone in his room. The first day he came I told him about my own garden, which I planted myself, and he made such a great face straight away, and then he said: ‘Tomorrow we want to see your garden.’ But now he hasn’t asked about it all the time. He’s not a good comrade, and he’s got a little mustache too. And he’s always with his mother, I can almost never have her alone. ”
“He’s only here for a couple of weeks, boy, you don’t have to forget that. And if you can’t find mom alone, you can always come to me. You do not like?”
“It’s not the same, papi. Sometimes I like to come to you, and sometimes I prefer to come to you Mummy. And you always have to work so terribly. ”
“You don’t need to worry about that, Pierre. If you would like to come to me, you can always come – you hear, always, even when I’m in the studio and working. ”
The boy made no answer. He looked at his father, sighed a little, and looked dissatisfied.
“Isn’t that okay with you?” Asked Veraguth, apprehensive about the expression on the child’s face, which a few moments ago had glowed with noisy boyish lust and now looked turned away and much too old.
He repeated his question.
“Just tell me, Pierre! Are you not satisfied with me? ”
“Yes, papa. But I don’t like to come to you when you paint. I used to come sometimes – – – ”
“Well, what didn’t you like?”
“You know, papa, when I visit you in the studio, you always stroke my hair and don’t say anything and have completely different eyes, and sometimes you made angry eyes, yes. And when someone says something to you, you can see in your eyes that you are not listening at all, you are just saying yes, yes, and not paying attention. And if I come to you and want to tell you something, then I want you to listen! ”
“You have to come back anyway, darling. Just think: when my thoughts are very, very firmly attached to what I am currently working on, and when I have to think hard about how I can best do it, then sometimes I cannot get away from it and listen to you. But I want to try when you come back. ”
“Yes, I understand. I also often have to think of something, and then someone calls me and I should follow him – that’s disgusting. Sometimes I like to be quiet all day and think, and then just then should I always play or study or do something, and then I get really angry. ”
Pierre looked straight ahead, trying hard to express what he meant. It was difficult, and most of the time people weren’t quite understood.
They had entered Veraguth’s living room. He sat down and took the little one between his knees.
“I know what you mean, Pierre,” he said soothingly. “Do you want to look at pictures now, or do you like to draw? I mean, maybe you could draw the mouse story? ”
“Oh yes, I want to do that. But for that I have to have a nice big piece of paper.
The father found a piece of drawing paper from a drawer, sharpened a pencil, and pushed a chair over to the boy. Pierre immediately began, kneeling on the armchair, to draw the mouse and the cat. Veraguth, so as not to disturb him, sat down behind him and looked at the thin, tanned neck, the supple back and the noble, headstrong head of the child, who was completely absorbed in what he was doing and followed his work with impatient lip-play. Every line, every little step forward and every failure was clearly reflected in the mobile mouth, in the movement of the browbones and forehead wrinkles.
“Oh, it’s nothing!” Cried Pierre after a while, straightened himself up on the flat of his hands and looked critically at his drawing with narrowed eyes.
“It won’t work!” He complained angrily. “Dad, how do you make a cat? Mine looks like a dog. ”
The father took the paper in his hands and dealt with it seriously.
“We have to erase a little,” he said calmly. “The head is too big and not round enough, and the legs are too long. Just wait, we’ll find out. ”
Carefully he ran the rubber over Pierre’s sheet of paper, took out a new piece of paper, and drew a cat on it.
“Look, that’s how it has to be. Take a look at it and then draw a new cat. ”
Pierre’s patience alone was exhausted, he gave it Pencil back and now Papa had to go on drawing, with the cat a little kitten, and then a mouse, and then as Pierre comes and frees her, and finally he asked for a carriage with horses and a coachman on it.
And suddenly that too was boring. The boy ran through the room a few times, singing, looked through the window to see if it was still raining, and danced to the door and out. His fine, high-pitched, childlike song sounded under the windows, then it fell silent and Veraguth sat alone, the sheet of paper with the cats in hand.