Your books have given me wisdom. All that the unresting thought of man has created in
the ages is compressed into a small compass in my brain. I know that I am wiser than all of
you.
"And I despise your books, I despise wisdom and the blessings of this world. It is all
worthless, fleeting, illusory, and deceptive, like a mirage. You may be proud, wise, and
fine, but death will wipe you off the face of the earth as though you were no more than mice
burrowing under the floor, and your posterity, your history, your immortal geniuses will
burn or freeze together with the earthly globe.
"You have lost your reason and taken the wrong path. You have taken lies for truth, and
hideousness for beauty. You would marvel if, owing to strange events of some sorts, frogs
and lizards suddenly grew on apple and orange trees instead of fruit, or if roses began to
smell like a sweating horse; so I marvel at you who exchange heaven for earth. I don't want
to understand you.
"To prove to you in action how I despise all that you live by, I renounce the two millions of
which I once dreamed as of paradise and which now I despise. To deprive myself of the
right to the money I shall go out from here five hours before the time fixed, and so break the
compact. . . ."
When the banker had read this he laid the page on the table, kissed the strange man on the
head, and went out of the lodge, weeping. At no other time, even when he had lost heavily
on the Stock Exchange, had he felt so great a contempt for himself. When he got home he
lay on his bed, but his tears and emotion kept him for hours from sleeping.
Next morning the watchmen ran in with pale faces, and told him they had seen the man who
lived in the lodge climb out of the window into the garden, go to the gate, and disappear.
The banker went at once with the servants to the lodge and made sure of the flight of his
prisoner. To avoid arousing unnecessary talk, he took from the table the writing in which
the millions were renounced, and when he got home locked it up in the fireproof safe.