I thought the shadows of the hanging vine outside the lattice darkened over the old man's face as he spoke, and there seemed to come into his clear keen eyes a sudden mist as of tears that would not flow. Whether or not the gentle woman beside him also saw these things, I cannot tell, but when he paused she asked him softly, if his life had not been a sorrowful one? She feared he must have suffered deeply.
"To all of us," he answered, "life is a sorrowful thing, because to all of us it is a mystery past finding out. Have you found it sweet, Frau 'Lora? no? nor have I. But what I have lost, if indeed I lost anything, I lost not wilfully. Well,—I have realised my destiny; the meanest can do no less, the greatest can do no more."
"But you withdrew yourself of your own accord from the world, dear Herr; you buried yourself in your own solitude, and kept yourself apart from the honor you might have earned by your learning in the world? You chose to be silent?"
"Yes," he echoed, mournfully, "I chose to be silent. Why should I have wasted my breath in idle disputation, or to what end should I have laboured to get a string of empty letters tacked to my name, like the flypapers of a boy's kite? I do not seek to be dragged back to the ground, I prefer to mount without a string. Everything we attempt to do falls short of its conception in its fulfilment. All glory is disappointment,—all success is failure; how acutely bitter, only the hero himself can know!"
"You lave no regrets, then, Herr Ritter?" said 'Lora, with her clear earnest gaze full upon his face.
"None," he answered, simply.
"And will you always keep silence?"
"Always, so far as I can see," said the old German. "There are quarrels enough in the world without my intervention, there are dogmas enough in the world without my enunciations. I do not think I should do any good by speaking to men. Could I make them any wiser, purer, gentler, truer than they are? Could I teach them to be honest in their dealings with each other, compassionate, considerate, liberal? If they have not heard the prophets, nor even the divine teacher of Nazareth, shall I be able to do them any good? Are not their very creeds pretexts for slaughter and persecution and fraud? Do they not support even their holiest truths, their sincerest beliefs, by organised systems of deceit and chicanery? Chut! I tell you that the very vesture which men compel Truth to wear, is lined and stiffened with lies! The mysteries of life are so terrible, and its sadness so profound, that blatant tongues do not become philosophers. Words only serve to rend and vex and divide us. Therefore I think it best to hide my thoughts in my heart, believing that in matters which we cannot fathom, silence is noblest; and knowing that when I say, `I am nothing, but God is all,—I am ignorant, but God is wise,'—all I am able to say is said. By-and-by, in the brighter light of a more perfect day beyond the sun, I shall see the King in His beauty, face to face; I shall know, even as I am known!"
"This, then," asked 'Lora, gently, "is why you gave up the world, that you might be alone?"
"I gave up the world, dear Frau, because I found in it all manner of oppression done in the names of justice and of Virtue. My heart turned against the Wrong, and I had no power to set it Right. The mystery of life overcame me; I refused the gold and the honours which might have been mine, if I could have been content in being dishonest. But God gave me grace to be strong, and the world cast me out of its gilded nursery. I became a man, and put away childish things."