“I am asked to inform you,” Pastor Werner said, “that your father is of course ready to comply with your request. What else, after all, can he do? But I need not conceal from you the fact that his anxiety about you is very grave, and that he finds your actions wholly incomprehensible.”
Christian answered a little impatiently. “I told him months ago that there wasn’t the slightest ground for anxiety.”
“You must admit,” Werner objected gently, “that your latest plan does involve the question of your very existence. Have you taken up any occupation that secures you from need?”
Christian replied that, as his father was aware, he was definitely preparing himself for a profession. The measure of his talent and success was, of course, still in question.
“And until that profession begins to pay, what will you live on?” the pastor asked. “Let me repeat to you the words which your father cried out at our last interview: ‘Does he intend to beg? Or to accept gifts from the charitable? Or starve? Or trust to chance and false friends? Or take refuge in shady and dishonourable things, and yet be forced at last, a remorseful fool, to ask for that which he now casts aside?’ I have never in all these many years seen your father in such a state of mind, or heard him express such grief and such passion.”
“My father may calm himself,” Christian replied. “Nothing of what he fears is likely to happen; nor what, perhaps, he hopes, namely, that I shall ask my patrimony back again. It is as inconceivable as that the bird should return to the egg or the burning log to the tree whence it came.”
“Then you did not intend to renounce all pecuniary assistance at once?” the pastor asked, feeling his way carefully.
“No.” Christian hesitated. “I suppose not. I’m not equal to that; not yet. One has to learn that. It is a difficult thing and must be learned; and life in a great city would involve fatal and disturbing elements. Then, too, I have assumed certain obligations; there are several people who have definitely been counting on my help. I don’t know whether they could follow my own course. I haven’t in fact, any programme at all. What good would it do me? My great aim just now is to get into a situation that is clear and reasonable, and get rid of all sorts of stupid torments. I want to drop the burden of the superfluous; and everything is superfluous except what I and those few people absolutely need on the most stringent estimate. But every supposed need, I think, can be reduced, until such gradual renunciation produces a profit.”
“If I understand you correctly,” the pastor said, “it is your intention to retain such a portion of your fortune as will secure you against actual need.”