not ignorant. They know. … "
"Johannes, if you say to a child, 'Do not touch that fire; it will hurt,' and then the child does touch it, because it knows not what pain is, can you claim freedom from blame, and say, 'The child was not ignorant?' You knew when you spoke, that it would not heed your warning. Men are as foolish and stupid as children. Glass is fragile and clay is soft; yet He who made man, and considered not his folly, is like him who makes weapons of glass, careless lest they break—or bolts of clay, not expecting them to bend."
These words fell upon Johannes' soul like drops of liquid fire, and his heart swelled with a great grief that supplanted the former sorrow, and often caused him to weep in the still, sleepless hours of the night.
Ah, sleep! sleep! There came a time after long days when sleep was to him the dearest thing of all. In sleep there was no thinking—no sorrow; and his dreams always carried him back to the old life. It seemed delightful to him, as he dreamed of it; yet, by day he could not remember how things had been. He only knew that the sadness and longing of earlier times were better than the dull, listless feeling of the present. Once he had grievously longed for Windekind—once he had waited, hour after hour, on Robinetta. How delightful that had been!
Robinetta! Was he still longing? The more he learned, the less he longed—because that feeling, also, was dissected, and Pluizer explained to him what love really was. Then he was ashamed, and Doctor Cijfer said that he could not yet reduce it to figures, but that very soon he would be able to. And thus it grew darker and darker about Little Johannes.
He had a faint feeling of gratitude that he had not recognized Robinetta on his awful journey with Pluizer.
When he spoke of it, Pluizer said nothing, but laughed slyly; and Johannes knew that he had not been spared this out of pity.
When Johannes was neither learning nor working, Pluizer made use of the hours in showing him the people. He took him everywhere; into the hospitals where lay the sick—long rows of pale, wasted faces, with dull or suffering expressions. In those great wards a frightful silence reigned, broken only by coughs and groans. And Pluizer pointed out to him those who never again would leave those halls. And when, at a fixed hour, streams of people poured into the place to visit their sick relations, Pluizer said: "Look! These all know that they too will sometime enter this gloomy house, to be borne away from it in a black box."
"How can they ever be cheerful?" thought Johannes.
And Pluizer took him to a tiny upper room, pervaded with a melancholy twilight, where the distant tones of a piano in a neighboring house came, dreamily and ceaselessly. There, among the other patients, Pluizer showed him one who was staring in a stupid way at a narrow sunbeam that slowly crept along the wall.
"Already he has lain there seven long years," said Pluizer. "He was a sailor, and has seen the palms of India, the blue seas of Japan, and the forests of Brazil. During all the long days of those seven long years he has amused himself with that little sunbeam and the piano-playing. He cannot ever go away, and may still be here for seven more years."
After this, Johannes' most dreadful dream was of waking in that little room—in the melancholy twilight—with those far-away sounds, and nothing ever more to see than the waning and waxing light.
Pluizer took him also into the great cathedrals, and let him listen to what was being said there. He took him to festivals, to great ceremonies, and into the heart of many homes. Johannes learned to know men, and sometimes it happened that he was led to think of his former life; of the fairy-tales that Windekind had told him, and of his own adventures. There were men who reminded him of the glow-worm who fancied he saw his deceased companions in the stars—or of the May-bug who was one day older than the other, and who had said so much about a calling. And he heard tales which made him think of Kribblegauw, the hero of the spiders; or of the eel who did nothing, and yet was fed because a fat king was most desired. He likened himself to the young May-bug who did not know what a calling was, and who flew into the light. He felt as if he also were creeping over the carpet, helpless and maimed, with a string around his body—a cutting string that Pluizer was pulling and twitching.
Ah! he would never again find the garden! When would the heavy foot come and crush him?
Pluizer ridiculed him whenever he spoke of Windekind, and, gradually, he began to believe that Windekind had never existed.
"But, Pluizer, is there then no little key? Is there nothing at all?"
"Nothing, nothing. Men and figures. They are all real—they exist—no end of figures!"
"Then you have deceived me, Pluizer! Let me leave off—do not make me seek any more—let me alone!"
"Have you forgotten what Death said? You were to become a man—a complete man."
"I will not—it is dreadful!"
"You must—you have made your choice. Just look at Doctor Cijfer. Does he find it dreadful? Grow to be like him."
It was quite true. Doctor Cijfer always seemed calm and happy. Untiring and imperturbable, he went his way—studying and instructing, contented and even-tempered.
"Look at him," said Pluizer. "He sees all, and yet sees nothing. He looks at men as if he himself were another kind of being who had no concern about them. He goes amid disease and misery like one invulnerable, and consorts with Death like one immortal. He longs only to understand what he sees, and he thinks everything equally good that comes to him in the way of knowledge. He is satisfied with everything, as soon as he understands it. You ought to become so, too."
"But I never can."
"That is true, but it is not my fault."
In this hopeless way their discussions always ended. Johannes grew dull and indifferent, seeking and seeking—what for or why, he no longer knew. He had become like the many to whom Wistik had spoken.
The winter came, but he scarcely observed it.
One chilly, misty morning, when the snow lay wet and dirty in the streets, and dripped from trees and roofs, he went with Pluizer to take his daily walk.
In a city square he met a group of young girls carrying school-books. They stopped to throw snow at one another—and they laughed and romped. Their voices rang clearly over the snowy square. Not a footstep was to be heard, nor the sound of a vehicle—only the tinkling bells of the horses, or the rattling of a shop door; and the joyful laughing rang loudly through the stillness.
Johannes saw that one of the girls glanced at him, and then kept looking back. She had on a black hat, and wore a gay little cloak. He knew her face very well, but could not think who she was. She nodded to him—and then again.
"Who is that? I know her."
"That is possible. Her name is Maria. Some call her Robinetta."
"No, that cannot be. She is not like Windekind. She is like any other girl."
"Ha, ha, ha! She cannot be like nobody. But she is what she is. You have been longing to see her, and now I will take you to her."
"No! I do not want to go. I would rather have seen her dead, like the others."
And Johannes did not look round again, but hurried on, muttering:
"This is the last!
