bmits in quiet resignation.

The second part of _The Road to Damascus_ is dominated by the scenes of
the great alchemist banquet which, in all its fantastic oddity, is
one of the most suggestive ever created on the ancient theme of the
fickleness of fortune. It was suggested above that there were two
factors beyond all others binding Strindberg to the world and making him
hesitate before the monastery; one was woman, from whom he sets himself
free in Part II, after the birth of a child--precisely as in his
marriage to Frida Uhl--the other was scientific honour, in its highest
phase equivalent, to Strindberg, to the power to produce gold. Countless
were the experiments for this purpose made by Strindberg in his
primitive laboratories, and countless his failures. To the world-famous
author, literary honour meant little as opposed to the slightest
prospect of being acknowledged as a prominent scientist. Harriet Bosse
has told me that Strindberg seldom said anything about his literary
work, never was interested in what other people thought of them, or
troubled to read the reviews; but on the other hand he would often, with
sparkling eyes and childish pride, show her strips of paper, stained at
one end with some golden-brown substance. 'Look,' he said, 'this is
pure gold, and I have made it!' In face of the stubborn scepticism of
scientific experts Strindberg was, however, driven to despair as to his
ability, and felt his dreams of fortune shattered, as did THE STRANGER
at the macabre banquet given in his honour--a banquet which was, as a
matter of fact, planned by his Paris friends, not, as Strindberg would
have liked to believe, in honour of the great scientist, but to the
great author.

In Part I of _The Road to Damascus_, THE STRANGER replies with a
hesitating 'Perhaps' when THE LADY wants to lead him to the protecting
Church; and at the end of Part II he exclaims: 'Come, priest, before I
change my mind'; but in Part III his decision is final, he enters the
monastery. The reason is that not even THE LADY in her third incarnation
had shown herself capable of reconciling him to life. The wedding day
scenes just before, between Harriet Bosse and the ageing author, form,
however, the climax of Part III and are among the most poetically moving
that Strindberg has ever written.

Besides having his belief in the rapture of love shattered, THE
STRANGER also suffers disappointment at seeing his child fall short of
expectations