His mind seemed to be filled with great thoughts which would make him
famous. Over and over again he said to himself: "The rain pours and the
people down below chuckle as they move about each under his little
umbrella of self-conceit. They look up to the mountain, saying, 'The
fool! Why looks he so high? He is lost in the mists up there, and he
might be safe and dry with us.' But the mountain has over him the arch
of the universe, and sleeps calmly in the sun of truth. Little recks he
of the clouds below, and knows not at all the little self-satisfied
fools who pity him," and he thought this was the sum of all wisdom, and
that with it would come immortality.
Then a bell began to boom, a deep-toned bell, whose tolling was
inexpressibly solemn, and poured into his heart a sadness too deep for
sorrow. As though there dwelt an enchantment in the very sound itself,
the dark prairies shifted like a scene, and in their stead he saw, in a
cold gray twilight, a high doorway built of a cold gray stone,
rough-hewed and heavy. Through its arch passed then a file of
gray-cowled monks, their faces concealed. Each carried a torch, whose
flickering, wavering light cast weird cowled figures on the gray stone,
and in their midst was borne a bier, covered with white.
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