"How can they ever be cheerful?" thought Johannes.
And Pluizer took him to a tiny upper room, pervaded with a melancholy twilight, where the distant tones of a piano in a neighboring house came, dreamily and ceaselessly. There, among the other patients, Pluizer showed him one who was staring in a stupid way at a narrow sunbeam that slowly crept along the wall.
"Already he has lain there seven long years," said Pluizer. "He was a sailor, and has seen the palms of India, the blue seas of Japan, and the forests of Brazil. During all the long days of those seven long years he has amused himself with that little sunbeam and the piano-playing. He cannot ever go away, and may still be here for seven more years."
After this, Johannes' most dreadful dream was of waking in that little room—in the melancholy twilight—with those far-away sounds, and nothing ever more to see than the waning and waxing light.
Pluizer took him also into the great cathedrals, and let him listen to what was being said there. He took him to festivals, to great ceremonies, and into the heart of many homes. Johannes learned to know men, and sometimes it happened that he was led to think of his former life; of the fairy-tales that Windekind had told him, and of his own adventures. There were men who reminded him of the glow-worm who fancied he saw his deceased companions in the stars—or of the May-bug who was one day older than the other, and who had said so much about a calling. And he heard tales which made him think of Kribblegauw, the hero of the spiders; or of the eel who did nothing, and yet was fed because a fat king was most desired. He likened himself to the young May-bug who did not know what a calling was, and who flew into the light. He felt as if he also were creeping over the carpet, helpless and maimed, with a string around his body—a cutting string that Pluizer was pulling and twitching.
Ah! he would never again find the garden! When would the heavy foot come and crush him?
Pluizer ridiculed him whenever he spoke of Windekind, and, gradually, he began to believe that Windekind had never existed.
"But, Pluizer, is there then no little key? Is there nothing at all?"
"Nothing, nothing. Men and figures. They are all real—they exist—no end of figures!"
"Then you have deceived me, Pluizer! Let me leave off—do not make me seek any more—let me alone!"