“Your words have wounded my soul,” she says; “but still I do not believe you. The gods of revenge and violence you may be able to kill, no others.”
But the old man takes her hand, lays it on the book, and swears in the fanaticism of unbelief.
“When you have read this, you must believe.”
“May it never come before my eyes,” she says, “for if I believe that, I cannot live.”
And she goes sadly from the philosopher. But he sits for a long time and thinks, when she has gone.
Those old manuscripts, scribbled over with heathenish confessions, have not yet been tested before the world. Uncle Eberhard’s name has not yet reached the heights of fame.
His great work lies hidden in a chest in the lumber-room under the gallery stairs in the Svartsjö church; it shall first see the light of day at the end of the century.
But why has he done this? Was he afraid not to have proved his point? Did he fear persecutions? You little know Uncle Eberhard.
Understand it now; he has loved the truth, not his own glory. So he has sacrificed the latter, not the former, in order that a deeply loved child might die in the belief in that she has most cared for.