“I never dreamed of such folly,” Amadeus answered. “My occupation is research, not moralizing. I have ceased sacrificing myself to phantoms. I no longer believe in ideas or in the victory of ideas. So far as I am concerned, the battle has been decided, and peace has been made. Why should I not admit it frankly? I have made a pact with things as they are. Do not call it cynicism; it is an honest confession of my sincere self. It is the fruit of the insight I have gained into the useful, the effective, into all that helps man actually and tangibly. There was no necessity in the wide world for me to become a martyr. Martyrs confuse the world; they tear open the hell of our agonies, and do so quite in vain. When or where has pain ever been assuaged or healed through pain? Once upon a time I went the way of sighs and the way of the cross; I know what it means to suffer for dreams and spill one’s blood for the unattainable; breast to breast have I wrestled with Satan till at last it became clear to me: you can strip him off only if you give yourself to the world wholly and without chaffering. Nor must you look back, or, like Lot’s wife, you will be turned into a pillar of salt. Thus I overcame the devil, or, if you prefer, myself.” “It was, to say the least, a very weighty and significant transformation,” said Johanna, cutting the buns in half and buttering them. Her gestures were of an exquisitely calculated ease and charm. “And what did you finally say to Wolfgang Wahnschaffe?” asked Botho von Thüngen. He sat beside the window, and from time to time looked out into the yard, for in him too there was a deep desire for Christian’s presence. In each of them was a dark feeling of his nearness. “I told him just about what I think,” Voss answered. “I said: ‘The best thing you can do is to let everything take its natural course. He will be entangled in his own snares. Resistance offers support, persecution creates aureoles. Why should you want to crown him with an aureole? A structure of paradoxes must be permitted to fall of its own weight. All the visions of Saint Anthony have not the converting power of one instant of real knowledge. There must be no wall about him and no bridge for his feet; then he will want to erect walls and build bridges. Have patience,’ I said, ‘have patience. I who was the midwife of his soul on the road of conversion may take it upon myself to prophesy; and I prophesy that the day is not far off when he will lust after a woman’s lips.’ For this, I confess, was the thing that mainly gave me pause--this life without Eros. And it was not satiety, no, it was not, but a true and entire renunciation. But let Eros once awaken, and he will find his way back. Nor is the day far off.” His face had a look of fanatical certitude. “It will be another Eros, not him you name,” said Thüngen. Then Michael arose, looked upon Voss with burning eyes, and cried out to him: “Betrayer!”