But such was life. Those
who were happy were also blind. Through misfortune he had learned to
see; everything was full of injustice and lies, the entire earth was a
huge, rotting lie; faith, friendship, mercy, a lie it was, a lie was
each and everything; but that which was called love, it was the
hollowest of all hollow things, it was lust, flaming lust, glimmering
lust, smoldering lust, but lust and nothing else. Why had he to know
this? Why had he not been permitted to hold fast to his faith in all
these gilded lies? Why was he compelled to see while the others
remained blind? He had a right to blindness, he had believed in
everything in which it was possible to believe.
Down in the village the lights were being lit.
Down there home stood beside home. My home! my home! And my
childhood's belief in everything beautiful in the world.--And what if
they were right, the others! If the world were full of beating hearts
and the heavens full of a loving God! But why do I not know that, why
do I know something different? And I do know something different,
cutting, bitter, true . . .
He rose; fields and meadows lay before him bathed in moonlight. He
went down into the village, along the way past the garden of the
manor-house; he went and looked over the stone-wall. Within on a
grass-plot in the garden stood a silver poplar, the moonlight fell
sharply on the quivering leaves; sometimes they showed their dark
side, sometimes their white.
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