Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - Part IV - I
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244 THE CONFESSION OF A FOOL
on the sight of those blessed ones, who slept in cool
seclusion behind the large glass panes.
He plodded on to the other side of the church and
stopped at the principal entrance. He asked the dealer in
relics to keep an eye on his barroAv, and entered. He
stirred the holy water with his right hand and cooled lips
and broAv. Inside the church it was cool, for the sunbeams
were powerless to penetrate the stained-glass windows.
The pulpit Avas occupied by a little abbé, freshly shaved,
with traces of powder still visible on his bluish skin ; he
was speaking, and the old man listened.
" ’
Consider the lilies in the field,’ " said the abbé,
" ’
hoAv they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin,
and yet Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like any
one of these ! Consider the ravens : for they neither sow
nor reap ; which neither have store-houses nor barn ; and
God feedeth them : how much more are ye better than
the fowls !
’
"
"How much more are we better than the fowls!
"
sighed the old man.
" But rather seek ye the Kingdom of God," concluded
the abbé, "and all else will be added to you."
"All else," sighed the old man, "all else! First the
Kingdom of God, and then all else."
Leaning against a pillar in the side aisle, the wealthy
man, holding a Baedeker in his hand, tried to solve the
problem of the essence and origin of life by means of a
careful study of the architecture of the past. He did not
believe in the Kingdom of God, but he brooded over the
purpose of life, and could not understand why a man
should go to so much trouble to kill time until he was
seventy or at the most eighty years old. Had it not been
against all conventions, he would have gone to the old
man and said to him who had already passed his allotted
time
—
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