greedier with each passing
sun. Ah, so many good genii have fled from you! Many you have frightened
away, you, bewitched, you, enchanted! Well, what now? What next? Hell
has claimed its full booty; Heaven can now open again to your new-born
heart."

"There is no Heaven," groaned Daniel, "there is nothing but blackness
and darkness."

"You still breathe, your heart is still beating, you still have five
fingers on each hand," replied the Goose Man quietly. "He who has paid
his debts is a free man: you have paid yours."

"I am my own debt, my own guilt. If I continue to live, I will sin
again. Were I to live over the past, back into the past, I would
contract the same debts."

"But there is such a thing as a transformation, and through it one
receives absolution. Turn away from your phantom and become a human
being--and then you can become a creator. If you once become human,
really human, it may be that you will not need the work, symphony or
whatever else you choose to call it. It may be that power and glory will
radiate from you yourself. For are not all works merely the round-about
ways, the detours of the man himself, merely man's imperfect attempts to
reveal himself? Did you not love a mask of plaster more than the
countenances that shone upon you, the faces that wept about you? Did you
not allow another mask, a thing of the mirror, to get control over you,
and so to besmirch your soul and strike your spirit with paralysis? How
can a man be a creator if he deceives, stunts, and abbreviates the
humanity that is in him? It is not a question of ability, Daniel
Nothafft, it is a question of being, living, being."

Daniel tossed his head back and forth on his pillow, writhing in agony.
"Stop!" he gulped, "stop, stop!"

The Goose Man bent over him, and crouched up nearer to his body like an
animal trying to get warm. "Come out of the convulsion," something cried
and exhorted within him, "break your chains! Your music can give men
nothing so long as you yourself are held captive. Feel their distress!
Have pity on their unplumbed loneliness! Behold mankind! Behold it!"

"There is so much," replied Daniel in extreme torture, "a hundred
thousand faces bewilder me, a hundred thousand pictures hem me in. I
cannot differentiate; I must flee, flee!"

There was something inimitably tender, reassuring, and resigned in what
the Goose Man then said: "I speak to you as Christ: Rise and walk! Rise
and go in peace, Daniel! Go w