“It is not to be understood in that fashion,” Christian answered, conscious of the difficulty, and conscious in every nerve of the strangeness of the place, the hour, and the circumstances. “Guilt and guiltlessness do not sustain the relation of effect and cause. One is not derived from the other. Guilt cannot become innocence nor innocence guilt. Light is light and darkness is darkness, but neither can be transformed into the other, neither can be created by the other. Light issues from some body—fire or the sun or a constellation. Whence does darkness issue? It exists. It has no source; none other than the absence of light.”
Niels Heinrich seemed to reflect. Still walking up and down, he flung his words into the air. Every one was made a fool of—every one from his childhood on. There had always been palavering about sin and wrong, and everything had been aimed at giving one an evil conscience. If once you had an evil conscience, no confession or penitence, no parson and no absolution did you any good. And at bottom one was but a wretched creature—a doomed creature, and condemned to damnation from the start. That had convinced him, what the gentleman had said—without looking at Christian, he stretched out his arm and index-finger toward him—oh, that had convinced him, that no one had the right to judge another. That was true. He hadn’t ever seen anyone either to whom one could say: you shall pass judgment. Every one bore the mark of shame and of theft and of blood, and was condemned to the same damnation from the beginning. But if there was to be no more judging, that meant the end of bourgeois society and the capitalistic order. For that was founded on courts and on the necessity of finding men to assume its guilt, and judges who were ignorant of mercy.
Christian said: “Won’t you stop walking up and down? Won’t you come and sit by me? Come here; sit by me.”
No, he said, he didn’t want to sit by him. He wanted all these matters explained just once. He didn’t want to be submissive with his mind like a boy at school. The gentleman was incomprehensible, and was making a fool of him with phrases. Let him give to him, Niels Heinrich, something certain, something by which he could be guided.
“What do you mean by that—something certain?” Christian asked, deeply moved. “I am a man like yourself; I know no more than yourself; like yourself I have sinned and am helpless and puzzled. What is it I shall give you—I?”
“But I?” Niels Heinrich was beside himself. “What shall I give? And you wanted me to give you something! What is it? What can I give you?”
“Don’t you feel it?” Christian asked. “Don’t you know it yet—not yet?”
Silently they looked into each other’s eyes, for Niels Heinrich had stopped walking. A shiver, an almost visible shiver ran down his limbs. His face seemed as though singed by the desire of one who rattles at an iron gate and would be free.
“Listen,” he said, suddenly, with a desperate and convulsive calmness, “I stole those pearls in your house. I simply put them into my pocket. One of them I pawned, and made those swine drunk with the money. You can have them back if you want them. Those I can give you. If that’s what you want, I can give it to you.”
Christian seemed surprised; but the passionate tensity of his face did not relax at all.