hs and spell
out the riddles of love?

CONFESSOR (coming in). What's this chatterer saying? He's talked away
his whole life; and never done anything.

TEMPTER. I wanted to be a priest, but had no vocation.

CONFESSOR. Whilst you're waiting for it, help me to find a drunkard
who's drowned himself in the bog. It must be near here, because I've
been following his tracks till now.

TEMPTER. Then it's the man lying beneath that brushwood there.

CONFESSOR (picking up some twigs, and disclosing a fully clothed corpse,
with a white, young face.) Yes, it is! (He grows pensive as he looks at
the dead man.)

TEMPTER. Who was he?

CONFESSOR. It's extraordinary!

TEMPTER. He must have been a good-looking man. And quite young.

CONFESSOR. Oh no. He was fifty-four. And when I saw him a week ago, he
looked like sixty-four. His eyes were as yellow as the slime of a garden
snail and bloodshot from drunkenness; but also because he'd shed tears
of blood over his vices and misery. His face was brown and swollen like
a piece of liver on a butcher's table, and he hid himself from men's
eyes out of shame--up to the end he seems to have been ashamed of the
broken mirror of his soul, for he covered his face with brushwood. I
saw him fighting his vices; I saw him praying to God on his knees for
deliverance, after he'd been dismissed from his post as a teacher....
But... Well, now he's been delivered. And look, now the evil's been
taken from him, the good and beautiful that was in him has again become
apparent; that's what he looked like when he was nineteen! (Pause.) This
is sin--imposed as a punishment. Why? That we don't know. 'He who
hateth the righteous, shall himself be guilty!' So it is written, as an
indication. I knew him when he was young! And now I remember... he
was always very angry with those who never drank. He criticised and
condemned, and always set his cult of the grape on the altar of earthly
joys! Now he's been set free. Free from sin, from shame, from ugliness.
Yes, in death he looks beautiful. Death is the deliverer! (To the
STRANGER.) Do you hear that, Deliverer, you who couldn't even free a
drunkard from his evil passions!

TEMPTER. Crime as punishment? That's not so bad. Most penetrating!

CONFESSOR. So I think. You'll have new matter for argument.

TEMPTER. Now I'll leave you gentlemen for a while. But soon we'll meet
again. (He goes out.)

CONFESSOR. I saw you just now with a woman! So there are still
t