getting a bit denser every day, a bit murkier every month, a bit heavier
every year. As a new dress becomes old in time, loses its beautiful
colour in time, gets stains, gets wrinkles, gets worn off at the seams,
and starts to show threadbare spots here and there, thus Siddhartha's
new life, which he had started after his separation from Govinda, had
grown old, lost colour and splendour as the years passed by, was
gathering wrinkles and stains, and hidden at bottom, already showing its
ugliness here and there, disappointment and disgust were waiting.
Siddhartha did not notice it. He only noticed that this bright and
reliable voice inside of him, which had awoken in him at that time and
had ever guided him in his best times, had become silent.

He had been captured by the world, by lust, covetousness, sloth, and
finally also by that vice which he had used to despise and mock the
most as the most foolish one of all vices: greed. Property,
possessions, and riches also had finally captured him; they were no
longer a game and trifles to him, had become a shackle and a burden.
On a strange and devious way, Siddhartha had gotten into this final and
most base of all dependencies, by means of the game of dice. It was
since that time, when he had stopped being a Samana in his heart, that
Siddhartha began to play the game for money and precious things, which
he at other times only joined with a smile and casually as a custom of
the childlike people, with an increasing rage and passion. He was a
feared gambler, few dared to take him on, so high and audacious were his
stakes. He played the game due to a pain of his heart, losing and
wasting his wretched money in the game brought him an angry joy, in no
other way he could demonstrate his disdain for wealth, the merchants'
false god, more clearly and more mockingly. Thus he gambled with high
stakes and mercilessly, hating himself, mocking himself, won thousands,
threw away thousands, lost money, lost jewelry, lost a house in the