The Norwegian summoned all his Buddhistic philosophy to his aid, got down from the chair, and sat expecting to be led off by gendarmes as he had been caught in the act. It was impossible to explain his conduct, for none of the authorities could approve such an eccentric act as the inoculation of an apple-tree with morphia.
Meanwhile a minute passed while the angry man was running along by a fence and entering the enclosure. Like one condemned to death, the Norwegian sat there awaiting a blow from the stick as an earnest of what was to follow. He was firmly resolved to die like a warrior, and did not trouble to devise useless explanations, but only thought: "This is the most devilish experience I have had in my whole terrible life."
Sixty seconds are a long time but they pass at last!
Whether it was the Norwegian's carefully groomed exterior and expensive suit, the wine and the best kind of cigarettes, or something quite different which had a mollifying effect, the angry man, who had certainly not had such a stylish customer before, bared his head, and only asked whether the gentleman had been attended to. The Norwegian, answering politely, noticed how the restaurant keeper stared at the morphia syringe, the powder box and the glass of water.
With the free-and-easy tone of a man of the world, the Norwegian explained the embarrassing situation: "I am a botanist, and was just about to make an experiment when you surprised me in a very suspicious position."
"Pray, doctor, do as though you were in your own house, and be quite at your ease," was the reply.
After exchanging some remarks about the weather, the restaurant keeper went indoors; he muttered something to the waitress which the Norwegian thought he overheard. It caused him to take his departure, but in a leisurely way. "He thought I was one of the lunatics," he said to himself. "That was my deliverance. I can't come here again, however."
Several hours passed, but the impression of the sixty seconds of humiliation and the lifted stick still remained. "That is not mischance; that is something else," was his conclusion, as usual.
The next morning he took his walk and meditated on his destiny. "Why haven't you shot yourself?" Let him say who can. One view was that, finally, all difficulties are disentangled and experience shows that the end is good. This used to be called "hope," and by means of it one warped one's ship half an ell farther, as with a kedge anchor. Others maintained that it was curiosity which supported people. They wanted to see the sequel, just as when one reads a novel, or sees a play.
The Norwegian, for his part, had never found an aim in life. Religion certainly said that one should be improved here below, but he had only seen himself forced into situations from which he emerged worse than before. One certainly became a little more tolerant towards one's brother-men, but this tolerance strongly resembled moral laxity. Those who smile indulgently at others' crimes are not far from being criminals themselves. When in conversation it was alleged that one should love one's fellow-men, he used to deliver himself of his final sentiment as follows: "I neither love them nor hate them; I put up with them as they put up with me."