"I knew I should see you again. I expected you long ago. I did not think you would stand it so long in the great desert outside. Weep on! Tears are the price with which we buy our souls back again, when we find what a wretched bargain we had made before we knew better. Ere we give up life we have to learn that it is better not to live. Some learn that sooner, others later. Be glad that you are one of those who during the bitterness of the Sansara have already a foretaste of the sweetness of the Nirvana." He left Oswald, and took his hat and cane from the table. "Come!" he said. Oswald was so deeply moved by this scene that the recollection of Berger's odd costume only suggested to him the conviction how utterly impossible it would be to speak to such a man of such things. He would as lief have reminded a mother who was weeping over the body of her child of some defect in her toilet, a bow out of place, or a ribbon which had come loose. They passed through the long passages, down the broad stone staircase and out into the court-yard. As they went across the latter, the young man who was sitting on the bench came up to them and repeated the question which he had before asked of Oswald: "I certainly have the honor to address the Emperor of Fez and Morocco?" "No!" replied Berger, "The emperor is not coming; you may rely upon it." "Is not coming!" repeated the young man; and his pale face became still paler, and his eyes wandered restlessly to and fro; "is not coming! how do you know that?" "Because, if he should come it would not be for your happiness, as you imagine, but for your final ruin. Why do you wish him to come? To bring you gold, which you will gamble away? and jewels, which you will lavish upon your mistresses; to afford you the means of continuing a life which you ought to thank God on your knees you have escaped from--if you believe in any God? What appears to you a star of promise, is a will-o'-the-wisp from the moors. Do not trust in its glimmer--it lures you hither and thither, and each time deeper into the moor. Turn resolutely back from it! I tell you once more, the emperor is not coming! and it is fortunate for you that he does not come!" "Do you know his majesty so intimately?" stammered the young man. "Very intimately," said Berger, and a peculiar smile played on his features, "only too intimately. I also was misled by his majesty. You expect from his promise money and lands. I was promised--never mind what; and thus he promises everybody something else, in order to fool and trick everybody. The conviction that his majesty's promises are nothing but wind--that is the beginning of wisdom, and the last conclusion of wisdom into the bargain."