During this speech the Judge, who had silently risen from his seat, approached his wife, laid his hand gently on her shoulder, and looked round upon his children with glistening eyes.
"Our time," continued the Assessor, with what was an extraordinary enthusiasm for him, "understands but very little this greatness. It praises itself loudly, and on that account it is the less worthy of praise. Everybody will be remarkable, or at least will appear so. Everybody steps forward and shouts I! I! Women even do not any longer understand the nobility of their incognito; they also come forth into notoriety, and shout out their _I!_ Scarcely anybody will say, from the feeling of their own hearts, _Thou!_--and yet it is this same _Thou_ which occasions man to forget that selfish _I_, and in which lies his purest part; his best happiness! To be sure it may seem grand, it may be quite ecstatic, even if it be only for a moment, to fill the world with one's name; but as, in long-past times, millions and millions of men united themselves to build a temple to the Supreme, and then themselves sank silently, namelessly, to the dust, having only inscribed His name and His glory; certainly that was greater, that was far worthier!"
"You talk like King Solomon himself, Uncle Munter!" exclaimed Petrea, quite enraptured. "Ah, you must be an author: you must write a book of----"
"Write!" interrupted he, "on what account should I write? Only to increase the miserable vanity of men? Write!--Bah!"
"Every age has its wise men to build up temples," said Henrik, with a beautiful expression of countenance.
"No!" continued the Assessor, with evident abhorrence, "I will not write! but I will live! I have dreamed sometimes that I could live----"
He ceased; a singular emotion was expressed in his countenance; he arose, and took up a book, into which he looked without reading, and soon after stepped quietly out of the house.
The entertainment in the family this evening was, spite of all that had gone before, very lively; and the result, which was expressed in jesting earnestness, was, that every one, in the spirit which the Assessor had praised, should secretly labour at the temple-building, every one with his own work-tool, and according to his own strength.