Before Eric could answer, the invalid lay back upon the pillow. He seemed to have fallen asleep. Nothing was heard but the ticking of the clock; and now a carriage drove into the court-yard, the wheels cutting into the gravel.
Clodwig awoke.
"That is the Doctor," he said aloud. He requested the attendant to say to the physician that he would like to be left with Eric alone for a time. The nurse gave the commission to the servant, and remained in the anteroom. Sitting upright, Clodwig said,—
"Shut the door: I want to speak to you in private."
Eric sat by the bedside, and Clodwig began,—
"This Sonnenkamp, so audacious, and yet—hypocrisy, it is everywhere; a jumble of grimaces, of masks who do not know one another. A sentence upon Sonnenkamp? I have let him off entirely. His path is zigzag, his goal horrible. Who shall judge? I say it here to you, my brain received a fatal lesion when the fearful thought entered into it. When I look over my own life, what is it? I have filled out a uniform: we are walking, empty sentry-boxes, painted with the national color. If a discharge comes, we think it something very mysterious; we whisper—all a farce. The life of most persons is hypocrisy, and so is mine, so long, so honorable! We have no courage, we do not confess what we are. We are encumbered with forms, compliances, courtesies, conformities; and all is false inside. We never tell each other what we are as we acknowledge it to ourselves. Don't be afraid. I have no crime, no transgression, now, to acknowledge and to feel remorse for. I have been all my life pure as thousands, as millions, by my side; but I have not been the person that I really am. Do you know that grand word which God spake when he revealed himself in the desert to the holy Shepherd? It is this. This is God. 'I am that I am.' This is the truth, truthfulness, the divine in every man; and men deny it. Who can say I am that I am? I never could, and millions by my side could not. We are all glossed over outside, all and everywhere over-refined—no, not all, but most of us: were all so, the sun would never again rise upon the earth. But the time will come, and you are one of those awaiting its coming, you will share in its life,—the time will come, when men shall dissemble no more, shall lie no more, shall pass themselves off for no more than they are, and shall be what they profess to be. Do you comprehend me?"
"Perfectly, perfectly."
"Know, then, I tell you that I have not done what I ought to have done. I have not gone from hour to hour into the presence of those in power, and said, 'Thus am I, and thus must you be.' I have lulled myself with a false philosophy; I have persuaded myself that all would be spontaneously unfolded of itself; that we are in the direct line of the developing tendencies, and we have nothing to do in furtherance thereof. Ha, ha! unfold of itself! Yes, death comes of itself, death comes, and takes away the life that was no real life, no candid revealment, no genuine self. I once knew a great actor. To an actor, death will always be the hardest, not only because he has so often counterfeited death, but because he knows that he leaves behind him his parts, his masks, his paints, his wilted wreaths, his rounds of applause, and he can never be called out again. My son, we diplomatists, we die the death of the actor. I have led an unprofitable life. I had no fatherland to give me other than diplomatic farces to perform. My life has been a busy inactivity: I have spent the greatest part of my life in the livery and the defence of a cause which I did not respect, scarcely had any regard for. Here is this slave-trader. Fie! the whole world calls out in horror: and yet, in circles held in high estimation, there are far worse than slave-traders. Others, again, are not in the house of correction, because they were under no necessity of stealing, and because they were bought off by money from being positively immoral. There, give me now, I beg, a cooling draught, my mouth is parched."
Eric gave Clodwig a draught; but they were both so awkward, that it was almost all spilled.
"No matter, no matter," said Clodwig, smiling, "that's the way in this world: only the smaller part is really drunk, the larger part gets spilled, wasted. There, now go, and let the Doctor come, but come back again afterwards."