“Bravo!” said Crammon, and, comfortably eating, he philosophized: “It would be saddening were it otherwise. I repeat what I have often said: Ariel was born for the stars. There are blessed stars and fateful stars. Some are inhabited by good spirits, others by demons. We have known that from times immemorial. Let them wage their battles among themselves. If it comes to collisions and catastrophes, it is a cosmic matter in which we mortals have no share. When all is said and done, you are but a mortal too, though one so blessed that you were even granted a stay in the happy hunting grounds of the gods. But excesses are evil. You cannot compete with Muscovite autocrats. Siegfried can conquer the dragons in the end; were Lucifer to attack him with fire-breathing steeds, the hero would but risk his skin in vain. Your renunciation is as wise as it is delightful. I drink to your pleasant future, dearest boy!” Christian went to a buffet where magnificent fruit was exposed for sale. He knew Crammon’s passionate delight in rare and lovely fruit. He selected a woven basket and placed in the middle a pine-apple cut open so that its golden inside showed. He surrounded it with a wreath of flawless apples and of great, amber-coloured peaches from the South of France. They were elastic and yet firm. He added seven enormous clusters of California grapes. He arranged the fruit artistically, carried the basket to Crammon, and presented it to him with jesting solemnity. They separated. When, late that afternoon, Crammon returned to the hotel, he learned to his bitter amazement that Christian had left. He could not compose himself. It seemed to him that he was the victim of some secret cabal. “They all leave me in the lurch,” he murmured angrily to himself; “they make a mock of me. It’s like an epidemic. You are through with life, Bernard Gervasius, you are in every one’s way. Go to your cell and bemoan your fate.” He ordered his valet to pack, and to secure accommodations on the train to Vienna. Then he placed the basket of fruit on the table, and in his sad reflections plucked berry after berry of the grape. XXIV In his quiet little house, furnished in the style of the age of Maria Theresa, he forgot what he had suffered. He lived an idyl.