"I renounced every joy and delight, every triumph. I might have discovered an immense secret of science to reveal it to a stupid world. I might have signed with my name a truth still unknown and benefited with noble gifts the human race; I might have been illustrious and celebrated—but I renounced everything. I might have been loved, I might have loved and founded a family, had sons, and surrounded myself with beings who might have been blood of my blood—I renounced all that. I might have lived in a metropolis, run through the world, visited unknown countries, known far-off peoples. I renounced them; everything I renounced. What am I, forsooth? A doctor, a wretched doctor, a doctor of rich consumptives in a summer and winter station. I am paid handsomely, but I am nothing but a poor doctor who strives to prolong a life here and there as well as he can—nothing more. For twenty-five years I have not moved from here: I am alone, no one loves me, I love no one; I have neither glory nor love, no sons, no pleasures."
"And why all this, why?" cried Else von Landau, anxious and agitated.
"Because one must live as long as possible: because one must die as late as possible; because one must, you understand, combat death," he said solemnly.
"Did you not suffer from the renunciation? Did you not suffer from what you missed? Do you not suffer from what you are missing?" she asked, still discouraged, but already conquered.
"I suffered then," replied Karl Ehbehard. "I suffered greatly. These woods and rocks, once so solitary, have seen my tears. Afterwards I suffered no more. And now some sweetness comes into my life in this exercise of my art: if I manage to snatch some infirm creature from death—a rare sweetness. But nothing more. So even renunciation offers at last its compensations. Renounce, dear lady,"—and his voice grew a little tender—"these joys which are precipitating you towards death. Seek other things up here for a year or two amidst natural and pure beauties. Live here in peaceful contemplation of sky and clouds and air, of proud mountains and terrible glaciers; of slender streams, deep woods, and fragrant flowers. Live here with yourself, creating a more intense interior life. Do you not see? This land has been invaded by a horde of pleasure-seekers and vicious people, whereby the sick and ailing and lovers of the mountains are being overturned and disappear. The land has been far too much sown with villas, immense hotels and little hotels, and has been defiled by railways, electric trams, and funiculars; in every way the attempt has been made to destroy her beauty and secret of life. But they will never destroy them! Her beauty and purity are eternal and immortal. Ah, renounce the world, dear lady; later let the pleasure-seekers depart, and remain alone in the presence of all that is lofty, sincere, and vivifying. Seek no more the crowd that takes you and consumes your strength; mix no more with them, fly from their ardent, sterile pleasures, refuse their vain and dangerous gifts—renounce them, renounce them! If you want to live and be cured, renounce them. Here by yourself in solitude and silence, in contact with lofty things, now gentle, now terrible, the great treasure of health that the mountains guard and concede only to fervent worshippers will be granted to you. Make the renunciation or die. I am the apostle of life."
"I will obey you," she said, subdued.
He rose; and with a simple, friendly action took her hand.
"Your hard sacrifice will later have its reward," murmured Karl Ehbehard, in a subdued voice.
She questioned him with her beautiful, velvety eyes.
"If he who loves you and whom you love knows how to wait, he will have you," added Karl Ehbehard.