"Why do I feel so easy, so joyous and free? Yes, so free? I think of
the execution to-morrow-and I feel as though it is not there. I look
at the walls-and I feel as though they are not here, either. And I
feel so free, as though I were not in prison, but had just come out of
some prison where I had spent all my life. What does this mean?"

His hands began to tremble,-something Werner had not experienced
before. His thoughts fluttered ever more furiously. It was as if
tongues of fire had flashed up in his mind, and the fire wanted to
burst forth and illumine the distance which was still dark as night.
Now the light pierced through and the widely illuminated distance
began to shine.

The fatigue that had tormented Werner during the last two years had
disappeared; the dead, cold, heavy serpent with its closed eyes and
mouth clinched in death, had fallen away from his breast. Before the
face of death, beautiful Youth came back to him physically. Indeed, it
was more than beautiful Youth. With that wonderful clarity of the
spirit which in rare moments comes over man and lifts him to the
loftiest peaks of meditation, Werner suddenly perceived both life and
death, and he was awed by the splendor of the unprecedented spectacle.
It seemed to him that he was walking along the highest mountain-ridge,
which was narrow like the blade of a knife, and on one side he saw
Life, on the other side-Death,-like two sparkling, deep, beautiful
seas, blending in one boundless, broad surface at the horizon.

"What is this? What a divine spectacle!" he said slowly, rising
involuntarily and straightening himself, as if in the presence of a
supreme being. And destroying the walls, space and time with the