"Because you had to learn this also; because, as long as you were with me in Grunwald, you still believed in that great falsehood which we call life; because the pride with which you insisted upon its being a truth had to be broken. I have led you the shortest and safest way to wisdom. I knew you would allow yourself to be dazzled by false splendor; I knew you would hasten with beating heart, with parched tongue, through the lonely, white sand of the desert, towards the blue lake with the wooded shore, which drew back further and further as you thought you were coming nearer, until you would at last break down, cursing your sufferings and your existence. Be joyful! You have gone through with it; you have finished your first and hardest course in as many weeks as it took me years. You have opened your eyes and looked at what was there, and behold! it was not good! The value of life, the purpose of life, has become doubtful to you. You have begun to understand that the assertion of superficial optimists: Life is the purpose of life! is hardly correct--unless one could find satisfaction in striving after a purpose which can never be accomplished, or which, if it be accomplished, is worth nothing. You have seen how indissolubly untruth, stupidity, and vulgarity are interwoven with truth, honesty, wisdom, and majesty. This knowledge, which only the brutalized slave, grinning under the lash of the driver, receives with indifference, but which saddens noble hearts unto death, is the beginning of wisdom, the entrance to the great mystery." "And the great mystery?" Berger made no reply; he looked again with fixed eyes at the distance. Oswald dared not repeat his question. Deep silence all around. Silently the light gossamer floated through the clear air; silently the evening sunshine wove its golden net around the heather and the dark-green tops of the pine-trees. They sat thus speechless side by side--silent and sad, like two children lost in the woods. But while the one, who had wound up his life, and who was fearfully in earnest with his contempt of the world, suffered himself to sink deeper and deeper into the abyss of his grief, the young, fresh vitality of the other struggled mightily towards light and air. "What is this in me which rouses me at this very moment, when I least expected it, to oppose your wisdom?" he inquired, looking up at Berger. "My reason tells me you are right, but my eye drinks with delight the beauty of this evening landscape; drinks it down into the heart, and there, in my heart, a voice whispers: 'The world is so fair, so fair! and even if life makes you suffer bitter things without end, it is still sweet.' Tell me, Berger, did you ever love with all the strength of your heart? and can love die, as the summer dies, and the flowers, and the warm sunlight?" Berger smiled--it was a strange, weird smile. "Did I ever love?"