It falls about him, flake after flake. What will become of them? They will be driven by the wind, soiled by the earth, trampled upon by heavy feet.
He begins to feel as if that light down fell upon him with the heaviest weight. Who will be the wind; who will be the earth; who will be the shoe when it is a question of such defenceless little things?
And as a result of his extraordinary knowledge of Nösselt’s “Popular Stories,” an episode from one of them occurred to him like what he had just been thinking.
It was an early morning, not falling night as now. It was a rocky shore, and down by the sea sat a beautiful youth with a panther skin over his shoulder, with vine leaves in his hair, with thyrsus in his hand. Who was he? Oh, the god Bacchus himself.
And the rocky shore was Naxos. It was the seas of Greece the god saw. The ship with the black sails swiftly sailing towards the horizon was steered by Theseus and in the grotto, the entrance of which opened high up in a projection of the steep cliff, slept Ariadne.
During the night the young god had thought: “Is this mortal youth worthy of that divine girl!” And to test Theseus he had in a dream frightened him with the loss of his life, if he did not instantly forsake Ariadne. Then the latter had risen up, hastened to the ship, and fled away over the waves without even waking the girl to say good-bye.
Now the god Bacchus sat there smiling, rocked by the tenderest hopes, and waited for Ariadne.
The sun rose, the morning breeze freshened. He abandoned himself to smiling dreams. He would know well how to console the forsaken one; he, the god Bacchus himself.
Then she came. She walked out of the grotto with a beaming smile. Her eyes sought Theseus, they wandered farther away to the anchoring-place of the ship, to the sea—to the black sails.
And then with a piercing scream, without consideration, without hesitation, down into the waves, down to death and oblivion.