Then he passed an old church. A woman, her head and shoulders covered with a black cashmere shawl, pulled open the heavy church door and entered. He followed her in. The woman did not turn right or left but walked up to the altar, knelt on the stone steps and began to pray. He stood in the rear, his eyes gazing blankly in front of him. The church was deserted, gloomy, a strange sombre light sifting in through the many colored window-panes, leaving the long archways in twilight dimness; a swinging oil lamp in front of the beautiful image of the Madonna accentuated the nocturnal shadows beyond the reach of this glimmering light. It was noiseless yet there sounded in his ears dying echoes. Now and then a soft murmur came from somewhere as if the great organ, weary of prolonged silence, emitted a soft sigh. A thousand invisible phantoms seemed to people this empty, age-smelling church. The kneeling, praying woman, the stone images of saints, the indefinable forms flitting here and there back of the pillars, the murmuring from the side chapel, the emaciated priests outside, the Jesuits at Munich, all the religious controversies—Oh, God, what a travesty, what a jest! He wondered which was the greater jest, the festive gods of Olympus, who went about their business merrily and drank toasts from golden goblets and made love to the goddesses and slew their rivals, or the solemn, abstemious gods surrounded by shaven monks who fretfully cajoled and fawned upon their Jupiter, sadly rolling their eyes, praying for favors. He suddenly rushed out of the church and proceeded through a narrow alley which afforded a short cut to the Uffizi. At present everything appeared farcical to him; nothing was serious. Politics, religion, love, spaghetti, literature, painting, the Seven Sins—or was it the Seven Wonders?—amusing jests all! As he entered the _Palazzo degli Uffizi_, walking past marble statues, Florentine tapestries, Satyrs, Wrestlers, Fauns, Madonnas, Venuses, Popes, Cupids, the Flight from Egypt and the Flight into Egypt, the _Weltschmerz_—the soul-weariness—of it all seized him and almost choked him with Satanic laughter. At a glance he beheld the Sublime Jesters of all ages!—Michael Angelo, Raphael, Titian, Correggio, Botticelli, Fra Angelico, da Vinci—the sublimest jester of all—each one busy with the jest of life in his own way. He traversed vestibules and corridors, lofty vaulted chambers and frescoed palaces, and suddenly halted before a relief of the Sacrifice of Iphigeneia and close beyond it the Martyrdom of St. Justina by Paul Veronese. Were these jests, too? He passed his hand over his eyes, then rubbed his forehead. Was he insane or had the rest of the world lost their wits? again passed through his mind. If he was sane the rest of the world could not be sane. The rest of the world took all this seriously, almost tragically—the Satyrs and the Fauns and the Madonnas and the Martyrs—and did not see the jest of it all.