s in dreams? How true! But the moon
does, 'sexton of the planets,' as the crazy poet Lenau called it--the
moon which is the patron sky-saint of men with brains. Ah, brains! What
unhappiness they cause in this brainless world, a world rotten with
hypocrisy. A poet polishes words until they glitter with beauty,
charging them with fulminating meaning--straightway he is called mad by
men who sweat and toil on the stock exchange. Have you ever, my dear
Quell, watched those little, grotesque brokers on a busy day? No? Well,
you will say that no lunatic grimacing beneath the horns of the moon
ever made such ludicrous, such useless, gestures. And for what? Money!
Money to spend as idiotically as it is garnered. The world is crazy, I
tell you, crazy, to toil as it does. How much cleverer are the apes who
won't talk, because, if they did, they would be forced to abandon their
lovely free life, put on ugly garments, and work for a living. These
animals, for which we have such contempt, are freer than men; they are
the Supermen of Nietzsche--Nietzsche whose brain mirrored both a
Prometheus and a Napoleon." Quell listened to this speech with
indifference. Arved continued:--

"Nor was Nietzsche insane when he went to the asylum. His sanity was
blinding in its brilliancy; he voluntarily renounced the world of
foolish faces and had himself locked away where he would not hear its
foolish clacking. O Silence! gift of the gods, deified by Carlyle in
many volumes and praised by me in many silly words! My good fellow,
society, which is always hypocritical, has to build lunatic asylums in
self-defence. These polite jails keep the world in countenance; they
give it a standard. If _you_ are behind the bars--"

"Speak for yourself," growled Quell.

"Then the world knows that you are crazy and that _it_ is not. There is
no other way of telling the difference. So a conspiracy of fools,
lawyers, and doctors is formed. If you do not live the life of the
stupid: cheat, lie, steal, smirk, eat, dance, and drink--then you are
crazy! That fact agreed upon, the hypocrites, who are quite mad, but
cunning enough to dissemble, lock behind bolted doors those free souls,
the poets, painters, musicians--artistic folk in general. They brand our
gifts with fancy scientific names, such as Megalomania, Paranoia, _Folie
des grandeurs_. Show me a genius and I'll show you a madman--according
to the world's notion."

"There you go again," cried Quell, arising to h