'A good man, don't you think?' said Pluizer. 'He takes them away from this at any rate. But even here men are afraid of him.'
When night had fallen and hundreds of lights flared in the wind, casting long, straggling reflections in the black water, they made their way down the quiet streets. The tall old houses seemed tired out, and asleep as they leaned against each other. Most of them had their eyes shut; but here and there a window still showed a pale gleam of yellow light.
Pluizer told Johannes many a long tale of those who dwelt within, of the sufferings which were endured there, and the struggle waged between misery and the love of life. He spared him nothing: he sought out the gloomiest, the lowest, the most dreadful facts, and grinned with delight as Johannes turned pale and speechless at his horrible tales.
'Pluizer,' Johannes suddenly asked, 'do you know anything about the Great Light?' He thought the question might deliver him from the darkness which grew thicker and more oppressive about him.
'All nonsense!' said Pluizer. 'Windekind's nonsense! Mere visions and dreams! Men alone exist—and I myself. Do you suppose that a God, or anything at all like one, could take pleasure in governing such a muddle as prevails on this earth? And such a Great Light would not shine here in the dark.'
'But the stars, what about the stars?' asked Johannes as if he expected that the visible Splendour would raise up the squalor before him.
'The stars! Do you know of what you are talking, boy? There are no lights up there like the lamps you see about you here below. The stars are nothing but worlds, a great deal larger than this world with its thousand cities, and we move among them like a speck of dust; and there is no "above" or "below," but worlds all round, and on every side more worlds, and no end of them anywhere.'
'No, no!' cried Johannes in horror. 'Do not say so, do not say so! I can see the lights against a great dark background overhead.'
'Very true. You cannot see anything but lights. If you stared up at the sky all your life long you would still see nothing but lights against a dark background overhead. But, you know, you must know, that there is no above nor beneath. Those are worlds, amid which this clod of earth, with its wretched, struggling mass of humanity, is as nothing—and will vanish into nothing. Do not ever speak of "the stars" in that way, as though there were but a few dozen of them. It is foolishness.'
Johannes said no more. The immensity which ought to have elevated the squalor had crushed it.