rees it dawned on me that there was still
something left. There was one little indomitable spark in me, that began
to glow all by itself--it was as if I were lifted back to the first day
of existence, and an eternal will rose up in me, and said: Let there be
light!

This will it was that by and by grew and grew in me, and made me strong.

I began to feel an unspeakable compassion for all men upon earth, and
yet in the last resort I was proud that I was one of them.

I understood how blind fate can strip and plunder us of all, and yet
something will remain in us at the last, that nothing in heaven or
earth can vanquish. Our bodies are doomed to die, and our spirit to
be extinguished, yet still we bear within us the spark, the germ of an
eternity of harmony and light both for the world and for God.

And I knew now that what I had hungered after in my best years was
neither knowledge, nor honour, nor riches; nor to be a priest or a great
creator in steel; no, friend, but to build temples; not chapels for
prayers or churches for wailing penitent sinners, but a temple for the
human spirit in its grandeur, where we could lift up our souls in an
anthem as a gift to heaven.

I could never do this now. Perhaps there was nothing that I could do any
more. And yet it seemed to me as I sat there that I had conquered.

What happened then? Well, there had been a terrible drought all that
spring--it is often so in this valley. The eternal north wind sent the
dry mould sweeping in clouds over the whole countryside, and we were
threatened with one of our worst years of scarcity if the rain didn't
come.

At last people ventured to sow their corn, but then the frosts set in,
and snow and sleet, and the seed froze in the earth. My neighbour the
brazier had his patch of ground sown with barley--but now he would have
to sow it again, and where was he to get the seed? He went from farm to
farm begging for some, but people hated the sight of him after what had
happened about Asta--no one would lend him any, and he had no money to
buy. The boys on the roads hooted after him, and some of the neighbours
talked of driving him out of the parish.

I wasn't able to sleep much the next night either, and when the clock
struck two I got up. "Where are you going?" asked Merle. "I want to see
if we haven't a half-bushel of barley left," I said. "Barley--what do
you want with barley in the middle of the night?" "I want to sow the
brazier's plot wit