"You did not sleep?" resumed the doctor.
The postmaster felt embarrassed.
"Well, old fellow, you are not cheerful! What is the matter? Stop a minute!" The doctor indicated with his forefinger the space between his friend's eyes and nose as though he wished to show him something, "I believe ... you have been crying!"
"Nonsense!" answered the postmaster, and straightened himself up. "But, at any rate, you know I am not easily befooled, but as I said that fellow is a wizard."
"Tell us, tell us! Fancy your believing in wizards!"
"Yes, it was so strange." He paused for a while and continued:
"Can you imagine it? He preached, as was to be expected, especially to me. And in the middle of his preaching he told me all the secrets which, like everyone else, I have kept most jealously hidden from my childhood's days and earlier. I felt that I reddened, and that the whole congregation looked at me as though they knew it also, which is quite impossible. They nodded, keeping time with his words and looking at me simultaneously. Yes, they turned round on their seats. Even regarded as witchcraft it was——"
"Yes, yes, I know it, and therefore I take care. What it is I don't know, but it is something which I keep at arm's length. And it is the same with Swedenborg. I sat once in an ante-room waiting for admission. Behind me stood a book-case from which a book projected and prevented me from leaning my head back. I took the book down and it was part of Swedenborg's 'Arcana Coelestia.' I opened it at random and—can you imagine it? in two minutes a subject which just then occupied my thoughts was explained to me in such detail and with an almost alarming amount of expert knowledge, that it was quite uncanny. In two minutes I was quite clear regarding myself and my concerns."
"Well, tell us about it."
"No, I won't. You know yourself that the life we live in thought is secret, and what we experience in secret.... Yes, we are not what we seem."