sturbed the serenity of his virginal soul, which for
the first time opened to doubts as the bud of a young oak opens to the
fresh winds of spring.

Now that the master was dead, he could find peace neither at his own
hearth nor in the oppressive stillness of the streets nor among his
friends and fellow-disciples. The gods of hearth and home and the gods
of the people inspired him with repugnance.

"I know not," he said, "whether ye are the best of all the gods to
whom numerous generations have burned incense and brought offerings;
all I know is that for your sake the blind mob extinguished the clear
torch of truth, and for your sake sacrificed the greatest and best of
mortals!"

It almost seemed to Ctesippus as though the streets and market-places
still echoed with the shrieking of that unjust sentence. And he
remembered how it was here that the people clamoured for the execution
of the generals who had led them to victory against the Argunisae, and
how Socrates alone had opposed the savage sentence of the judges and
the blind rage of the mob. But when Socrates himself needed a
champion, no one had been found to defend him with equal strength.
Ctesippus blamed himself and his friends, and for that reason he
wanted to avoid everybody--even himself, if possible.

That evening he went to the sea. But his grief grew only the more
violent. It seemed to him that the mourning daughters of Nereus were
tossing hither and thither on the shore bewailing the death of the
best of the Athenians and the folly of the frenzied city. The waves
broke on the rocky coast with a growl of lament. Their booming sounded
like a funeral dirge.

He turned away, left, the shore, and went on further without looking
before him. He forgot time and space and his own ego, filled only with
the afflicting thought of Socrates!

"Yesterday he still was, yesterday his mild words still could be
heard. How is it possible that to-day he no longer is? O night, O
giant mountain shrouded in mist, O heaving sea moved by your own life,
O restless winds that carry the breath of an immeasurable world on
your wings, O starry vault flecked with flying clouds--take me to you,
disclose to me the mystery of this death, if it is revealed to you!
And if ye know not, then grant my ignorant soul your own lofty
indifference. Remove from me these torturing questions. I no longer
have strength to carry them in my bosom without an answer, without
even the hope of an answer