"Gione interrupted me: 'And every virtuous and wise man is a proof of another world.' "'And,' continued Nadine quickly, 'every one who undeservedly suffers.' "'Yes,' I answered; 'that is what draws our thread of life through a long eternity. The threefold echo of virtue, truth, and beauty, created by the music of the spheres, calls us from this hollow earth to the neighborhood of the music. Why and wherefore were these desires given us? Merely that, like a swallowed diamond, they should slowly cut through our earthly covering. Wherefore were we placed upon this ball of earth, creatures with light wings, if instead of soaring with our wings of ether, we are to fall back into the earth-clods of our birth?... Is an angel to be imprisoned in the body to be its dumb servant, its stove-warmer and butler, its _cuisinier_ and porter at the door of the stomach? Shall the ethereal flame merely serve to fill the circular stove with life's warmth, obediently burn and warm, then become cold and extinguished?'" "Very good, indeed," I interrupted. "He knows how to put things in a virile way.' "'The discrepancy between our wishes and our relations, between the _soul_ and the _earth_, remains a _riddle_ if we continue; and if we cease to live, a _blasphemy_. Strangers, born upon mountains, we consume in lowly places, with unhealthy _heimweh_ (home-sickness). We belong to higher regions, and an eternal longing grows in our hearts at music, which is the _Kuhreigen_ of our native Alps....' "'From hence what follows?' asked the chaplain (a Kantian).