And then, toward the end of that conversation, there had been one other special little conversation:

“We will live like hermits,” Agathe said with a happy smile, “but in matters of love we’re both free, of course. For you at least nothing stands in the way!” she assured him.

“Do you realize,” Ulrich said in reply, “that we will be moving into the Millennium?”

“What’s that?”

“We’ve talked so much about a love that’s not like a stream flowing toward a destination but is a state of being like the ocean. Now let’s be honest: When you were told in school that the angels in Paradise do nothing but praise the Lord and glory in His presence, were you able to imagine this blissful state of doing nothing and thinking nothing?”

“I always imagined it must be a little boring, which is surely due to my imperfection,” was Agathe’s answer.

“But after everything we’ve agreed on,” Ulrich explained, “you now have to imagine this ocean as a state of motionlessness and seclusion that is filled with everlasting crystal-clear events. In ancient times people tried to imagine such a life here on earth: that is the Millennium, the Kingdom of a Thousand Years, formed in our own image and yet not among any of the kingdoms that we know! And that is how we will live! We will cast off all self-interest, we will treasure neither goods nor knowledge, nor lovers, nor friends, nor principles, nor even ourselves. Accordingly, our spirit will open, dissolve its separation from man and beast, and thus disclose itself in such a manner that we can no longer continue as ‘we’ and will only maintain ourselves by being interwoven with all that is!”

This little interlude had been a joke. He had been sitting with paper and pencil, making notes and sporadically talking with his sister about what she could expect from the sale of the house and furniture. He was also still angry, and he himself didn’t know whether he was blaspheming or fantasizing. And due to all this they had not got around to grappling with the matter of the will in a responsible way.

It was probably due to this confluence of multiple currents that Ulrich, still on this day, had by no means arrived at active contrition. There was much about his sister’s coup de main that appealed to him, even though he himself was defeated by it. He had to admit to himself that the man living at ease “by the rule of free spirits,” to whom he had granted all too much comfort within himself, had thereby with a single blow been brought into dangerous conflict with the profoundly undefined person from whom real seriousness emanates. Nor did he want to dodge the consequences of such an act by redressing it quickly and in an ordinary way: But then there was no rule, and events had to be allowed to unfold as they would.

13

DIFFICULTIES OF A MORALIST IN WRITING A LETTER