he
two went after him into a silent house, where everybody slept. The light
that had burned for him all night was sick like a guilty thing in the eye
of day, and all that had been prepared for his repose was ghastly to him
in the hour of awaking, as if prepared not for sleep but for death. His
heart was sick like the watch-light, and life flickered within him with
disgust and disappointment. For why had he been born, if this were
all?--for all was vanity. The night and the day had been passed in
pleasure, and it was vanity; and now his soul loathed his pleasures, yet
he knew that was vanity too, and that next day he would resume them as
before. All was vain,--the morning and the evening, and the spirit of man
and the ways of human life. He looked himself in the face and loathed
this dream of existence, and knew that it was naught. So much as it had
cost to be born, to be fed, and guarded and taught and cared for, and all
for this! He said to himself that it was better to die than to live, and
never to have been than to be.

As these spectators stood by with much pity and tenderness looking into
the weariness and sickness of this soul, there began to be enacted before
them a scene such as no man could have seen, which no one was aware of
save he who was concerned, and which even to him was not clear in its
meanings, but rather like a phantasmagoria, a thing of the mists; yet
which was great and solemn as is the council of a king in which great
things are debated for the welfare of the nations. The air seemed in a
moment to be full of the sound of footsteps, and of something more
subtle, which the Sage and the Pilgrim knew to be wings; and as they
looked, there grew before them the semblance of a court of justice, with
accusers and defenders; but the judge and the criminal were one. Then was
put forth that indictment which he had been making up in his soul against
life and against the world; and again another indictment which was
against himself. And then the advocates began their pleadings. Voices
were there great and eloquent, such as are familiar in the courts above,
which sounded forth in the spectators' ears earnest as those who plead
for life and death. And these speakers declared that sin only is vanity,
that life is noble and love sweet, and every man made in the image of
God, to serve both God and man; and they set forth their reasons before
the judge and showed him mysteries of life and death; and they took up
t