"Forget the priest for once," said he, "and speak to your Fritz as one man and sinner speaks to another. What do you think about my guilt, and what do you advise me to do?" The pastor shot another shower of lightning darts from beneath his shaggy brows. The billows of his chin champed up and down as if he would crack the difficult nut between his ivory grinders. "Look here, Fritzchen," he began, "on bright days, that is to say on days when this old brain is bright, I imagine myself to be God, or I put myself in His place. I try to understand what passes in His head when He looks down out of heaven on us miserable scum. He made us what we are. I say to myself, 'Why should He punish us for sins which are His work also?' (If you write all this to my consistory, Fritzchen, in spite of your patronage, I shall have to go begging for bread and office, so keep it to yourself, please.) And just to demonstrate the matter, I go into the fir wood near Wengern and find an ant-hill. I station myself straddle-legged above it--an exalted attitude, Fritzchen--and I imagine that I am God of this ant-heap. Why should it not be so when besides the German Emperor there is a Prince of Schleiz-Greiz-Lobenstein? There under me they crawl and work, quarrel and bite each other dead. I look on and--grin. Underneath they are certainly sinning, but I the Lord God look on and--grin. 'It is all right,' I say to myself, 'because they sin according to method. Otherwise my beautiful ant-heap would go to pieces.' And I say to myself further, 'So the Lord God is amused at the sins of men, because they are nothing more than the evidence of His laws. He wants sin as well as virtue, otherwise He would not have created it.'" Leo gave a sigh of relief. He had not hoped for such conciliatory views from this hard old fanatic. But the latter immediately proceeded to add a damping rider. "Don't make merry too soon," said he; "we haven't come to the end yet. _Why_ this is so we cannot know, our poor understanding is too feeble. But that good may come of sin, as good comes of virtue, that the sinner as well as the just man shall be answerable to the same laws. He has established His system of salvation. According to it every man is apportioned a certain measure of sin; he may not transgress the limits, or the whole structure would fall in ruins. Therefore God has ordained for him the following circular route: _Sin_--_repent_--penance--absolution--and afterwards with renewed zest start afresh, as a pure man, sinning again because every one else does. So all is done in order, and each is allowed the amount of sin that he needs to bring his old Adam into harmony with the Christian commandments. In short, sin means life, but sin without repentance is death." Leo sprang up and began to pace the room with long strides. "And because of this bogey you are stoking the fires of hell for me," he cried.