“It serves no purpose to talk in that manner,” Christian said. “You misunderstand my being here and my ... how shall I put it?--my interest in you. No, not interest. That’s not the right word. But the word doesn’t matter. You probably think it was my purpose to have you surrender to the authorities and to repeat in court the confession you have made to me. But I assure you that that does not seem important to me or, rather, important only in so far as it is desirable for the sake of Joachim Heinzen, who is innocent and whom his position and inner confusion must make very wretched. He must be in a terrible state. I have felt that constantly, and felt the pain of it especially since your confession. I can almost see him. I have a vision of him trying to climb up the stony prison wall and wounding his hands and knees. He doesn’t understand; he doesn’t understand how a wall can be so steep and stony; he doesn’t understand what has happened to him. The world must seem sick to him at its core. You have evidently succeeded in hypnotizing him so effectively and lastingly, that under this terrible influence he has lost all control of his own actions. There is something in you that makes the exertion of such power quite credible. I am quite sure that your very name has faded from his memory. If some one went to him and whispered that name, Niels Heinrich Engelschall, into his ear, he would probably collapse as under a paralytic stroke. Of course, as I have thought it out, it is an exaggeration. But try to imagine him. One must try to grasp men and things imaginatively. Very few people do it; they cheat themselves. I see him as robbed of his very soul, as so poverty-stricken that the thought is scarcely bearable. You will reply: he is an idiot, irresponsible, with an undeveloped sensorium--more animal than human. Even science uses that argument; but it is a false argument. The premises are false and therefore the conclusion. My opinion is that all human beings have equally deep perceptions. There is no difference in sensitiveness to pain; there is only a difference in the consciousness of that sensitiveness. There is, one may say, no difference in the method of bookkeeping, only in the accounting.”