Niels Heinrich still sat on the edge of the table.
Christian said: “That took a long time.”
XXX
Niels Heinrich slid from the edge of the table, and began to pace up and down the entire length of the hall. Christian’s eyes followed him uninterruptedly.
He had once read in a book, Niels Heinrich said, the story of a French count, who had killed an innocent peasant girl, and had cut the heart out of her breast and cooked and eaten it. And that had given him the power of becoming invisible. Did Christian believe that there was any truth to that story?
Christian answered that he did not.
He, for his part, didn’t believe it either, Niels Heinrich said. But it was not to be denied that there was a certain magic in the innocence of virgins. Perhaps they had hidden powers which they communicated to one. It seemed to him this way, that in the guilty there was an instinct that drew them to the guiltless. The thought, then, that underlay the story would be, wouldn’t it, that virginity did communicate some hidden powers? Was the gentleman prepared to deny that?
Christian, whose whole attention was given to these questions, answered that he did not deny it.
But the gentleman had asserted that there were none who are guilty? How did these things go together? If there were none who are guilty, then none are guiltless either.