blow fell on me. I lost whatever one may value most on earth—my wife, my children—all. Then fate brought about my meeting with your grandfather. It was he who taught me to understand what our desires are, what waiting is, what expectation, what hope is; how they are interlocked with one another; how one may tear the mask off the faces of those ghostly vampires. We called them the Time-leeches; for like blood-suckers they drain from our hearts Time, the very sap of life. It was here in this room that he taught me the first step on the way towards the conquest of death and how to strangle the vipers of hope. And then. . ."—he hesitated for a moment. "And then I became like a block of wood that does not feel whether it be touched gently or split asunder, plunged into water or thrown into fire. Since then there has been, as it were, a certain void within me. No more have I looked for consolation; no more have I needed it. Wherefore should I seek it? I know I am. Since then only is it that I live. There is a fundamental difference between 'I live' and 'I live.'"
"You say that so simply; and yet it is terrible," I interrupted, deeply moved.
"It only seems to be so," he assured me smilingly. "Out of this heart-stableness there streams a sense of beatitude of which you can scarcely dream. It is like a sweet melody that never ceases—this 'I am.' Once born it cannot die—neither in sleep, nor when the outer world wakes our senses for us again, nor even in death.
"Shall I tell you why men now die so early and no longer live for a thousand years as it is written of the patriarchs in the scriptures? They are like the green watery shoots of a tree. They have forgotten
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