"Do you know what an unhappy marriage is, Herr Kreisphysikus? But how should you? You're a bachelor. You've seen and heard of the thing, but that's nothing. One must live through it oneself, one must experience it in one's own person; then only can you realize that it's the saddest, most fearful thing that can happen to a human being. Both parties are to blame; it's always the fault of both. For neither has the courage to admit the truth, to confess, We've made a mistake; we don't suit each other. They drag through their entire lives in sorrow and deception; and again and again the heart is bruised, and one's own life and the life of others is embittered. And when you finally see into it all, it's too late. When your understanding comes, you're too old. And then you think, it doesn't pay to begin anew for the few years that are left. But the few years are long. Each year has twelve months; each month, thirty days, and some have even thirty-one; each day, twenty-four hours; each hour, sixty minutes; each minute, sixty seconds; and in each second you grieve and fret and live your whole trouble again." His face took on a thoughtful expression. "Do you know, Herr Kreisphysikus, they say man's life is short; and what are seventy, or, at the extreme, eighty years in the infinity of time? As a moment. But I tell you, every man who reaches his maturity lives a thousand years, because an entire life is condensed in every moment in which he has an experience. I don't know if you understand me, Herr Doktor. I do not mean those experiences that make up our ordinary life, our habits, and our needs. I mean the things our souls live through. And every sensation of the soul is a whole world in itself, a whole life; everything in us awakens at one blow, and leaps into life, and experiences the entire thing with us. We feel it with all our parts. And now imagine, Herr Kreisphysikus, how many moments each man lives through, how many thousands of lives. This is the standard we should use for measuring our age. And if a man reaches the end of the seventies, like myself, Herr Doktor, and has gone through so many things, his life has not been short, but a thousand years long and more." Again I stood before the riddle: how did this plain old man arrive at philosophic deductions covering every field of thought, and with singular strength of reasoning lightly solve the most difficult problems, unconsciously, led only by intuition, which clearly and firmly guided him along a path where others groped for the way of truth? Did he not instinctively arrive at the correct thing, when he measured the extent of life by intensity, and not by number of years? What _had_ Simon Eichelkatz lived through? As though he read the question on my face he continued: