But Kristin never went. Once indeed she got as far as the steamer bridge, but turned round and entered the wood, whence the doctor had to fetch her home.
The doctor's only acquaintance was the postmaster at Fagervik, an old comrade of his student days, who came over every Saturday evening. Then the two drank and gossiped till past midnight and the postmaster remained till Sunday morning. They certainly did not look at life and their fellow-men from the same point of view, for the postmaster was a decided member of the Left Party, and the doctor was a sceptic, but their talk suited each other so well, that their conversation was like a part-song, or piece of music, for two voices, in which the voices, although varying, yet formed a harmony. The doctor, with his wider, mental outlook, sometimes expressed disapproval of his companion's sentiments somewhat as follows:
"You party-men are like one-eyed cats. Some see only with the left eye, others with the right, and therefore you can never see stereoscopically, but always flat and one-sidedly."
They were both great newspaper readers and followed the course of all questions with eagerness. The most burning question, however, was the religious one, for the political ones were settled by votes in the Reichstag and came to an end, but the religious questions never ended. The postmaster hated pietists and temperance advocates.
"Why the deuce do you hate the pietists?" the doctor would say. "What harm have they done you? Let them enjoy themselves; it doesn't affect me."
"They are all hypocrites," said the postmaster dogmatically.
"No," answered the doctor, "you cannot judge, for you have never been a pietist, but I have, and I was—deuce take me—no hypocrite. But I don't do it again. That is to say—one never knows, for it comes over one, or does not—it all depends on——"
"On what?"
"Hard to say. Pietism, for the rest, is a kind of European Buddhism. Both regard the world as an unclean place of punishment for the soul. Therefore they seek to counteract material influences, and in that they are not so wrong. That they do not succeed is obvious, but the struggle itself deserves respect. Their apparent hypocrisy results from the fact that they do not reach the goal they aim at, and their life always halts behind their teaching. That the priests of the church hate them is clear, for our married dairy farmers, card players and good diners do not love these apostles who show their unnecessariness and their defects. You know our clergy out there on the islands; I need not gossip about them, for you know. There you have the hypocrites, especially among the unfortunates, who after going through their examination have lost faith in all doctrines."
"Yes, but the pietists are enemies to culture."