soul was well protected, well protected from the
very beginning. It was in a position similar to that created by a
swimmer who rubs his body with grease before plunging into the water.
You have suffered; the poison of the Nessus shirt you have worn has
burned your skin, and the pain you have thereby suffered has been
transformed into sweet sounds. So they all are, the creators,
invulnerable and inaccessible. That is the way you picture them to
yourself. Is it not true? Monsters who take up the cross of the world,
and yet, grief-laden though they be, grow beyond their own fate. Such is
your lot; and so do you look to-day in your forty-second year."

Daniel was not prepared for this tone of bitterness; he turned his face
to the corner where the Goose Man was sitting. "I do not understand
you," he said slowly. The pitiable crying of little Gottfried could be
heard from the room opening out on the court, and then Agnes's quieting
lullaby.

"If you only had not lived in the ivory tower!" cried the Goose Man. "If
you only had been more sensitive and not so well protected! If you had
only lived, lived, lived, really and truly, and near to life, like a
naked man in a thicket of thorns! Life would have got the best of you,
but your love would have been real, the hate you have experienced real,
your misfortunes real, the lies, ridicule, and betrayal all real, and
the shadows of those who have died from you would have taken on reality.
And the poison of the Nessus shirt would not merely have burned your
skin; it would have penetrated to your very blood, it would have found
its way to the deepest, most secret recesses of your heart. Your work
would have been carried on and out, not in a struggle against your
darkness and your limited torments of soul, a slave before men and
unblessed of God. Eliminate from your mind now, forever and completely,
the delusion that you have borne the sufferings of the world! You have
merely borne your own sufferings, loving-loveless, altruistic-egoist,
monster, man without a country that you are!"

"Who are you? What are you trying to say?" asked Daniel, automatically,
falteringly, with pale lips.

"Oh, don't you see who I am? I am the Goose Man," came the reply, spoken
with a loyal and devoted bow. "The Goose Man, lonesome there behind the
iron fence, lonesome there on the water at the fountain, and yet
situated in the middle of the Market. An insignificant being, tangible
and intelligible to eve