nd was bending down to it, but before he had
moistened his lips he drew back: just because he was so thirsty he
resolved to deny himself drink. Hastily, almost vehemently, he turned his
back on the spring, and after this little victory over himself, his
storm-tossed heart seemed a little calmer. Far, far from hence and from
the wilderness and from the Sacred Mountain he felt impelled to fly, and
he would gladly have fled then and there to a distance. Whither should he
flee? It was all the same, for he was in search of suffering, and
suffering, like weeds, grows on every road. And from whom? This question
repeated itself again and again as if he had shouted it in the very home
of echo, and the answer was not hard to find: "It is from yourself that
you would flee. It is your own inmost self that is your enemy; bury
yourself in what desert you will, it will pursue you, and it would be
easier for you to cut off your shadow than to leave that behind?"

His whole consciousness was absorbed by this sense of impotency, and now,
after the stormy excitement of the last few hours, the deepest depression
took possession of his mind. Exhausted, unstrung, full of loathing of
himself and life, he sank down on a stone, and thought over the
occurrences of the last few days with perfect impartiality.

"Of all the fools that ever I met," thought he, "I have gone farthest in
folly, and have thereby led things into a state of confusion which I
myself could not make straight again, even if I were a sage--which I
certainly never shall be any more than a tortoise or a phoenix. I once
heard tell of a hermit who, because it is written that we ought to bury
the dead, and because he had no corpse, slew a traveller that he might
fulfil the commandment: I have acted in exactly the same way, for, in
order to spare another man suffering and to bear the sins of another, I
have plunged an innocent woman into misery, and made myself indeed a
sinner. As soon as it is light I will go down to the oasis and confess to
Petrus and Dorothea what I have done. They will punish me, and I will
honestly help them, so that nothing of the penance that they may lay upon
me may be remitted. The less mercy I show to myself, the more will the
Eternal judge show to me."

He rose, considered the position of the stars, and when he perceived that
morning was not far off, he prepared to return to Sirona, who was no
longer any more to him than an unhappy woman to whom he owed