He felt indignant, but he was also crushed. In vain did he struggle to throw off his depression, he had not been taught sufficient common-sense at school to use it as a weapon against this Jesuitical sophistry. It was true, his knowledge of psychology enabled him to modify the statement that dreams are thoughts; dreams are fancies, he mused, creations of the imagination; but God has no regard for words! Logic taught him that there was something unnatural in his premature desires. He could not marry at the age of sixteen, since he was unable to support a wife; but why he was unable to support a wife, although he felt himself to be a man, was a problem which he could not solve. However anxious he might be to get married, the laws of society which are made by the upper classes and protected by bayonets, would prevent him. Consequently nature must have been sinned against in some way, for a man was mature long before he was able to earn a living. It must be degeneracy. His imagination must be degenerate; it was for him to purify it by prayer and sacrifice.
When he arrived home, he found his father and sisters at supper. He was ashamed to sit down with them, for he felt degraded. His father asked him, as usual, whether the date of the confirmation had been fixed. Theodore did not know. He touched no food, pretending that he was not well; the truth was that he did not dare to eat any supper. He went into his bedroom and read an essay by Schartau which the minister had lent him. The subject was the vanity of reason. And here, just here, where all his hopes of arriving at a clear understanding were centred, the light failed. Reason which he had dared to hope would some day guide him out of the darkness into the light, reason, too, was sin; the greatest of all sins, for it questioned God’s very existence, tried to understand what was not meant to be understood. Why it was not meant to be understood, was not explained; probably it was because if it had been understood the fraud would have been discovered.
He rebelled no longer, but surrendered himself. Before going to bed he read two Morning Voices from Arndt, recited the Creed, the Lord’s Prayer and the Blessing. He felt very hungry; a fact which he realised with a certain spiteful pleasure, for it seemed to him that his enemy was suffering.
With these thoughts he fell asleep. He awoke in the middle of the night. He had dreamt of a champagne supper in the company of a girl. And the whole terrible evening arose fresh in his memory.
He leapt out of bed with a bound, threw his sheets and blankets on the floor and lay down to sleep on the bare mattress, covering himself with nothing but a thin coverlet. He was cold and hungry, but he must subdue the devil. Again he repeated the Lord’s Prayer, with additions of his own. By and by his thoughts grew confused, the strained expression of his features relaxed, a smile softened the expression of his mouth; lovely figures appeared before him, serene and smiling, he heard subdued voices, half-stifled laughter, a few bars from a waltz, saw sparkling glasses and frank and merry faces with candid eyes, which met his own unabashed; suddenly a curtain was parted in the middle; a charming little face peeped through the red silk draperies, with smiling lips and dancing eyes; the slender throat is bare, the beautiful sloping shoulders look as if they had been modelled by a caressing hand; she holds out her arms and he draws her to his thumping heart.
The clock was striking three. Again he had been worsted in the fight.
Determined to win, he picked up the mattress and threw it out of the bed. Then he knelt on the cold floor and fervently prayed to God for strength, for he felt that he was indeed wrestling with the devil. When he had finished his prayer he lay down on the bare frame, and with a feeling of satisfaction felt the ropes and belting cutting into his arms and shins.
He awoke in the morning in a high fever.
He was laid up for six weeks. When he arose from his bed of sickness, he felt better than he had ever felt before. The rest, the good food and the medicine had increased his strength, and the struggle was now twice as hard. But he continued to struggle.
His confirmation took place in the spring. The moving scene in which the lower classes promise on oath never to interfere with these things which the upper classes consider their privilege, made a lasting impression on him. It didn’t trouble him that the minister offered him wine bought from the wine-merchant Högstedt at sixty-five öre the pint, and wafers from Lettstroem, the baker, at one crown a pound, as the flesh and blood of the great agitator Jesus of Nazareth, who was done to death nineteen hundred years ago. He didn’t think about it, for one didn’t think in those days, one had emotions.
A year after his confirmation he passed his final examination. The smart little college cap was a source of great pleasure to him; without being actually conscious of it, he felt that he, as a member of the upper classes, had received a charter. They were not a little proud of their knowledge, too, these young men, for the masters had pronounced them “mature.” The conceited youths! If at least they had mastered all the nonsense of which they boasted! If anybody had listened to their conversation at the banquet given in their honour, it would have been a revelation to him. They declared openly that they had not acquired five per cent. of the knowledge which ought to have been in their possession; they assured everybody who had ears to listen that it was a miracle that they had passed; the uninitiated would not have believed a word of it. And some of the young masters, now that the barrier between pupil and teacher was removed, and simulation was no longer necessary, swore solemnly, with half-intoxicated gestures, that there was not a single master in the whole school who would not have been plucked. A sober person could not help drawing the conclusion that the examination was like a line which could be drawn at will between upper and lower classes; and then he saw in the miracle nothing but a gigantic fraud.
It was one of the masters who, sipping a glass of punch, maintained that only an idiot could imagine that a human brain could remember at the same time: the three thousand dates mentioned in history; the names of the five thousand towns situated in all parts of the world; the names of six hundred plants and seven hundred animals; the bones in the human body, the stones which form the crust of the earth, all theological disputes, one thousand French words, one thousand English, one thousand German, one thousand Latin, one thousand Greek, half a million rules and exceptions to the rules: five hundred mathematical, physical, geometrical, chemical formulas. He was willing to prove that in order to be capable of such a feat the brain would have to be as large as the cupola of the Observatory at Upsala. Humboldt, he went on to say, finally forgot his tables, and the professor of astronomy at Lund had been unable to divide two whole numbers of six figures each. The newly-fledged under-graduates imagined that they knew six languages, and yet they knew no more than five thousand words at most of the twenty thousand which composed their mother tongue. And hadn’t he seen how they cheated? Oh! he knew all their tricks! He had seen the dates written on their finger nails; he had watched them consulting books under cover of their desks, he had heard them whispering to one another! But, he concluded, what is one to do? Unless one closes an eye to these things, the supply of students is bound to come to an end. During the summer Theodore remained at home, spending much of his time in the garden. He brooded over the problem of his future; what profession was he to choose? He had gained so much insight into the methods of the huge Jesuitical community which, under the name of the upper classes, constituted society, that he felt dissatisfied with the world and decided to enter the Church to save himself from despair. And yet the world beckoned to him. It lay before him, fair and bright, and his young, fermenting blood yearned for life. He spent himself in the struggle and his idleness added to his torments.
Theodore’s increasing melancholy and waning health began to alarm his father. He had no doubt about the cause, but he could not bring himself to talk to his son on such a delicate subject.
One Sunday afternoon the Professor’s brother who was an officer in the Pioneers, called. They were sitting in the garden, sipping their coffee.
“Have you noticed the change in Theodore?” asked the Professor.
“Yes,