"Yes," said Frederick, "because we are living in a world all the time
making a tremendous impression upon itself. As a result, it is getting
to be more and more fearfully bored. The man of the intellectual middle
class is gaining in prominence, while he is more mediocre than he has
been in any previous age. At the same time he is glutted and more blase.
No form of idealism, no sort of genuinely great belief can hold its
ground any longer."

"I admit," said Wilhelm, "that the great industrial corporation,
civilisation, is parsimonious of everything except human lives and the
best that is in the human being. It places no value upon them. It lets
them rot. But I think there is one comfort. I think civilisation
possesses this one good, that it breaks us away once for all with the
worst savageries of the past. No inquisition, for instance, can ever be
possible again."

"Are you sure of it?" asked Frederick. "Don't you think it is strange
that alongside the greatest achievements of science, alongside Galileo,
Kepler, Laplace; alongside the spectrum analysis and the law of the
conservation of energy; alongside Kirchoff and Bunsen; alongside steam,
gas, electricity, the blindest and most antiquated superstitions still
survive, powerful as ever? I am not so certain that backsliding into the
most horrible times of the _Malleus maleficarum_ is impossible."

Doctor Wilhelm had rung for a steward, who now entered. Max Pander
appeared at the same time.

"Doctor von Kammacher, I feel as if we must have some champagne. Adolph,"
turning to the steward, "a bottle of Pommery."

"They're making a big hole in the champagne cellar," said Adolph.

"Of course. The people are all celebrating their escape from drowning
yesterday and day before yesterday."

Pander had come at the captain's order for the stoker's death
certificate. The document was lying ready in the medicine closet. After
Pander had left, Wilhelm told Frederick some remarkable incidents of the
dead man.

"His name was Zickelmann. There was the beginning of a letter in his
pocket. It was something like this: 'Dear mother, I have not seen you for
sixteen years. I have forgotten how you look, dear mother. I am not doing
well, but I must go to America to see you once again. It is very sad when
a man has no relatives in the whole world. Dear mother, I just want to
look at you, and I really won't be a burden to you.'"

The champagne appeared. Before long, the first bottle