The fields of amaranth? Yes: all had heard of them. But no one knew any one who had ever found them. And, for themselves, they were content to know these waited for them somewhere. They had ties—they had businesses—they were content to live and wait.
"When I return from them, shall I give you tidings of them?" asked the young man, earnestly.
"No, no!" They were vehement in their dissuasions that he should not: finally even fleeing from him in terror at the thought.
And the young man mused perplexedly as he walked on. "Are there really fields of amaranth for those who can find them?" he asked of a wrinkled, white-haired wayfarer. "Or is it merely a bait, a delusion, and a lie?"
"Yes, surely, my son, these fields await us all: else life, at best, were a sorry game for most of us. It is there we shall rest and reap our reward."
"But no one seems eager to set out for them and discover them."
"No one?" quoth the old man, looking at him strangely: "there are many ways of getting there: you have chosen only one. There are other roads, and crowded ones: though you know nothing of them yet."
The young man brushed past him hot with disdain. He was merely an old dotard: empty-minded like the rest.
The lures of the highway were many and formidable; but the young man turned aside from them impatiently. "I am bound for the fields of amaranth," cried he haughtily: "when I return I will taste these good things you offer."
"Will he ever return?" whispered a girl to her mother.