And he said in his heart, as one had said of old, that all was vanity; that it was vain to live, and evil to have been born; that the day of death was better than the day of birth, and all was delusion, and love but a word, and life a lie.  His footsteps on the road seemed to sound all through the sleeping world; and when he looked the morning in the face he was ashamed, and cursed the light.  The 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 the counter-indictment and proved to him how in all the world he had sought but himself, his own pleasure and profit, his own will,