"However!" he said at last. "He would have been obliged to languish all his life in that frightful prison! At all events, he is not suffering now! Now he is better off! Evidently, so had his Fate decreed!
"And yet, it is a pity, from a human point of view!"
And the good soul continued to sob inconsolably over his unlucky friend.
December, 1878.
CHRIST
I saw myself as a youth, almost a little boy, in a low-ceiled country church.—Slender wax tapers burned like red spots in front of the ancient holy pictures.
An aureole of rainbow hues encircled each tiny flame.—It was dark and dim in the church…. But a mass of people stood in front of me.
All reddish, peasant heads. From time to time they would begin to surge, to fall, to rise again, like ripe ears of grain when the summer breeze flits across them in a slow wave.
Suddenly some man or other stepped from behind and took up his stand alongside me.
I did not turn toward him, but I immediately felt that that man was—Christ.