And when ’Lora asked him why he had never cared to enter into the lists of argument and controversy with other learned philosophers and doctors of his time, and to make himself a name that should have been reverenced among men, he answered mildly, that he had no ambition, or if he had once had any, he had always felt the mysteries of existence too profoundly to make them stepping-stones to worldly honor.  “It is impossible,” he said, “that any man should be able, in this sphere of life, and under these conditions of being, to penetrate into the meaning of things,—­or to touch their inmost source with fingers of flesh.  All that we can attain to know is this, that we can know nothing; and the fairest answer we can give when we are questioned, is that we do not know.  If, then, we know so little about life, much less can we ever hope to discern the meaning of death.  And as for the lesser considerations of our daily being, what are they?  Long ago I ceased to desire; ambition and love are things of the past to me.”

I thought the shadows of the hanging vine outside the lattice darkened over the old man’s face as he spoke, and there seemed to come into his clear keen eyes a sudden mist as of tears that would not flow.  Whether or not the gentle woman beside him also saw these things, I cannot tell, but when he paused she asked him softly, if his life had not been a sorrowful one?  She feared he must have suffered deeply.

“To all of us,” he answered, “life is a sorrowful thing, because to all of us it is a mystery past finding out.  Have you found it sweet, Frau ’Lora? no? nor have I. But what I have lost, if indeed I lost anything, I lost not wilfully.  Well,—­I have realised my destiny; the meanest can do no less, the greatest can do no more.”

“But you withdrew yourself of your own accord from the world, dear Herr; you buried yourself in your own solitude, and kept yourself apart from the honor you might have earned by your learning in the world?  You chose to be silent?”

“Yes,” he echoed, mournfully, “I chose to be silent.  Why should I have wasted my breath in idle disputation, or to what end should I have laboured to get a string of empty letters tacked to my name, like the flypapers of a boy’s kite?  I do not seek to be dragged back to the ground, I prefer to mount without a string.  Everything we attempt to do falls short of its conception in its fulfilment.  All glory is disappointment,—­all success is failure; how acutely bitter, only the hero himself can know!”

“You lave no regrets, then, Herr Ritter?” said ’Lora, with her clear earnest gaze full upon his face.

“None,” he answered, simply.

“And will you always keep silence?”