prepared mirror of our souls. I see grey, grey, and white, white, and
have accustomed myself in my yearning after knowledge, not to attribute
the smallest part to my own idiosyncrasy, if such indeed there be
existing in my empty breast. You look straight onwards as I do, but in
you each idea is transfigured, for in your soul invisible shaping powers
are at work, which set the crooked straight, clothe the commonplace with
charm, the repulsive with beauty. You are a poet, an artist; I only seek
for truth."

"Only?" said Pentaur, "it is just on account of that effort that I
esteem you so highly, and, as you already know, I also desire nothing but
the truth."

"I know, I know," said the physician nodding, "but our ways run side by
side without ever touching, and our final goal is the reading of a
riddle, of which there are many solutions. You believe yourself to have
found the right one, and perhaps none exists."

"Then let us content ourselves with the nearest and the most beautiful,"
said Pentaur.

"The most beautiful?" cried Nebsecht indignantly. "Is that monster,
whom you call God, beautiful--the giant who for ever regenerates himself
that he may devour himself again? God is the All, you say, who suffices
to himself. Eternal he is and shall be, because all that goes forth from
him is absorbed by him again, and the great niggard bestows no grain of
sand, no ray of light, no breath of wind, without reclaiming it for his
household, which is ruled by no design, no reason, no goodness, but by a
tyrannical necessity, whose slave he himself is. The coward hides behind
the cloud of incomprehensibility, and can be revealed only by himself--I