BRANDER

It must seem strange to you beyond my power
Ever to quite unravel. But for me
All things are clear; and to my blinded sight
Morning has come--in this thing, as in all
The doubts that once enslaved me.

FAUST

Do you mean...

BRANDER

Come here aside before the service starts.
I owe it you to tell you. I have changed
In your long absence....

FAUST

These are curious words.
I do not understand.

BRANDER

To understand,
You must hear all. You know my life--how vain
Its occupations, how absorbed I moved
In this day's folly and to-morrow's lure--
How petty trifles made my whole small round
Of being--selfish trifles, nothing worth,
Stained with a cruelty that I would forget.
That night we talked together--you and I
And Oldham--in your rooms, I wandered home
Sorely distressed. For you had stirred in me
A gnawing doubt whether the whole of life
Was not mere child's play.

FAUST

I am sorry if--

BRANDER

It was the kindest act man ever did
In all my life! I peered into my heart:
I saw myself Judas to innocence,
Betraying lightly with a careless kiss
A mortal body and immortal soul;
I saw no thing in all my days to claim
A sane man's approbation; one by one
Each glittering bauble that I late had loved
Crumbled to dust beneath the parching fire
Of reason.... And that night, I walked in Hell.

FAUST

Poor Brander! And my mocking did all this?

BRANDER

Thank God for it! That night I saw my joys
Like some rank thicket of bright vanities
Masking a precipice. A sense of sin
And loathing overcame me, and the power
Of utter terror filled me. I beheld
The evil riot of gross earthy things
That had o'ergrown me. Like a burden lay
That sense upon me, and it pressed me down
To a despondence deep beyond all words,
Beyond all thought. And no escape I saw
Except the bullet....

FAUST

What a faith we pin
Upon that bullet!

BRANDER

Thus the doubtful days
Passed like a nightmare. Till, one Sabbath morn,
As restlessly I paced, some random mood
Led me to enter this cathedral's doors
At hour of service. As I knelt, with lips
Unknown to prayer, the mighty music rolled
Over my heart like an all-purging flood,
And a voice chanted: "He that loveth life
Shall lose it; he that hateth this world's life
Shall keep the life eternal." And a voice