"Many thanks. It's very kind of you."
"You can return it to me by and by."
He went back to his room, fetched the overcoat and gave it to Struve, who was waiting in the entrance hall. After a brief good-night they parted.
Falk found the atmosphere in his room stifling; he opened the window. The rain was coming down in torrents, splashing on the tiles and running down into the dirty street. Tattoo sounded in the barracks opposite; vespers were being sung in the lodgment; fragments of the verses floated through the open window.
Falk felt lonely and tired. He had been longing to fight a battle with a representative of all he regarded as inimical to progress; but the enemy, after having to some extent beaten him, had fled. He tried to understand clearly what the quarrel was about, but failed in his effort; he was unable to say who was right. He asked himself whether the cause he served, namely, the cause of the oppressed, had any existence. But at the next moment he reproached himself with cowardice, and the steady fanaticism which glowed in him burst into fresh flames; he condemned the weakness which again and again had induced him to yield. Just now he had held the enemy in his hand, and not only had he not shown him his profound repugnance, but he had even treated him with kindness and sympathy; what would he think of him?
There was no merit in this good nature, as it prevented him from coming to a firm decision; it was nothing but moral laxity, making him incapable of taking up a fight which seemed more and more beyond him. He realized that he must extinguish the fire under the boilers; they would not be able to stand the pressure, as no steam was being used. He pondered over Struve's advice, and brooded until his mind was chaos in which truth and lies, right and wrong, danced together in complete harmony; his brain in which, owing to his academic training, all conceptions had been so neatly pigeon-holed, would soon resemble a pack of well-shuffled cards.
He succeeded beyond expectation in working himself into a state of complete indifference; he looked for fine motives in the actions of his enemies, and gradually it appeared to him that he had all along been in the wrong; he felt reconciled to the existing order of things, and ultimately came to the fine conclusion that it was quite immaterial whether the whole was black or white. Whatever was, had to be; he was not entitled to criticize it. He found this mood pleasant, it gave him a feeling of restfulness to which he had been a stranger all those years during which he had made the troubles of humanity his own.
He was enjoying this calm and a pipe of strong tobacco, when a maid servant brought him a letter just delivered by the postman. It was from Olle Montanus and very long. Parts of it seemed to impress Falk greatly.
My dear fellow, [it ran,]
Although Lundell and I have now finished our work and will soon be back in Stockholm, I yet feel the need of writing down my impressions, because they have been of great importance to myself and my spiritual development. I have come to a conclusion, and I am as full of amazement as a chicken which has just been hatched, and stares at the world with its newly opened eyes, trampling on the egg-shell which had shut out the light for so long. The conclusion, of course, is not a new one; Plato propounded it before Christianity was: the world, the visible world, is but a delusion, the reflexion of the ideas; that is to say, reality is something low, insignificant, secondary and accidental. Yes! but I will proceed synthetically, begin with the particular and pass on from it to the general.