“This used to be attributed to the unfathomable will of God,” Agathe answered, frowning, in the tone of one speaking from experience, and not in the most respectful way. Ulrich remembered that she had been educated in a convent. He was sitting at the foot of the divan where she lay in her long trousers gathered at the ankles, and the lamp shone on them both, casting a large leaf of light on the floor that had darkened around them. “Nowadays,” he said, “fate gives more the impression of the all-compelling movement of a mass. We are inside it and are rolled along with it, whether we want to or not.” He remembered having been struck once by the thought that in our time every truth comes into the world divided into its half-truths, and that nevertheless in this slippery, capricious way, a much greater overall achievement may result than if everyone earnestly strove to do their whole duty, each man by himself. He had once even made a presentation of this idea, which stuck like a barb in his self-esteem but was nonetheless not without the possibility of greatness, and had added the corollary, which he didn’t mean seriously, that therefore one could do whatever one liked! For nothing could have been further from his mind than this conclusion, and especially now that his fate seemed to have released him from duty, leaving him nothing further to do, at this moment of danger to his ambition, when he had been so oddly driven to finish this last, laggard work still binding him to his earlier days, precisely at this moment of utter personal blankness, what he felt instead of a waning was the new suspense that had developed since he had left home. It had no name; for the moment, one could say that a young person who was akin to him was seeking his advice, or one could say something different: But he saw with astonishing acuity the radiant mat of bright gold against the black-green of the room, and on it the delicate diamond checks of Agathe’s Pierrot costume, and himself, and, framed by an oddly sharp margin, lifted out of the dark, the accident of their being together.

“How did you put that?”

“What we still refer to as a personal fate is being displaced by a collective process that can ultimately be summed up in statistical terms,” Ulrich repeated.

Agathe reflected, and then she had to laugh. “Of course I don’t understand that, but wouldn’t it be wonderful if one could melt in statistics; it’s been ages since love could achieve that!” she said.