“Why, on horseback.”
“How did you reach Munkholm?”
“By boat.”
“Poor fool! You think yourself free, and yet you only leave a horse for a boat. It is not your own limbs that carry out your wishes; it is a brute beast, it is material matter; and you call that free will!”
“I force animate beings to obey me.”
“To assume a right to the obedience of certain beings is to give others a right to command you. Independence exists only in isolation.”
“You do not love mankind, noble Count?”
The old man laughed sadly. “I weep that I am a man, and I laugh at him who would console me. You will yet learn, if you do not already know, that misfortune creates suspicion as prosperity does ingratitude. Tell me, since you come from Bergen, what favoring winds blow upon Captain Dispolsen. Some good fortune must have befallen him, that he forgets me.”
Ordener looked grave and embarrassed.
“Dispolsen, my lord Count? I come here to-day to talk to you of him. I know that he possessed your entire confidence.”