never did he drink, yet forever was he drunk. But instead of the gay
reverie which wine brings with it, frightful dreams began to haunt him,
the sole food of his stricken spirit. Day and night he lived in the
poisonous vapors of his nightmares, and death itself was not more
frightful than her raving, monstrous forerunners.

And Lazarus came to a youth and his beloved, who loved each other and
were most beautiful in their passions. Proudly and strongly embracing
his love, the youth said with serene regret:

"Look at us, Lazarus, and share our joy. Is there anything stronger
than love?"

And Lazarus looked. And for the rest of their life they kept on loving
each other, but their passion grew gloomy and joyless, like those
funeral cypresses whose roots feed on the decay of the graves and whose
black summits in a still evening hour seek in vain to reach the sky.
Thrown by the unknown forces of life into each other's embraces, they
mingled tears with kisses, voluptuous pleasures with pain, and they felt
themselves doubly slaves, obedient slaves to life, and patient servants
of the silent Nothingness. Ever united, ever severed, they blazed like
sparks and like sparks lost themselves in the boundless Dark.

And Lazarus came to a haughty sage, and the sage said to him:

"I know all the horrors thou canst reveal to me. Is there anything thou
canst frighten me with?"

But before long the sage felt that the knowledge of horror was far from
being the horror itself, and that the vision of Death, was not Death.
And he felt that wisdom and folly are equal before the face of Infinity,
for Infinity knows them not. And it vanished, the dividing-line between
knowledge and ignorance, truth and falsehood, top and bottom, and the
shapeless thought hung suspended in the void. Then the sage clutched his
gray head and cried out frantically:

"I cannot think! I cannot think!"

Thus under the indifferent glance for him, who miraculously had risen
from the dead, perished everything that asserts life, its significance
and joys. And it was suggested that it was dangerous to let him see the
emperor, that it was better to kill him and, having buried him secretly,
to tell the emperor that he had disappeared no one knew whither. Already
swords were being whetted and youths devoted to the public welfare
prepared for the murder, when Augustus ordered Lazarus to be brought
before him next morning, thus destroying the cruel plans.

If there was no