Christian replied, "Willingly, my father; and often I feel quite happy, and every thing succeeds well with me: for a long time, for years, I can forget the true form of my inward being, and lead, as it were, a strange life with cheerfulness: but then suddenly, like a new moon, the ruling star, which I myself am, arises on my heart, and vanquishes the foreign influence. I could be quite happy, but that once, on an extraordinary night, a mysterious sign was impressed through my hand deeply within my soul; often the magic figure sleeps and is at rest; I think it has passed away, when suddenly it springs forth again as a poison, and makes its way in all directions. Then I can think and feel nothing else; all around me is changed, or, rather, is by this form swallowed up. As the madman shudders at the water, and the infused poison within him becomes more venomous, so it happens to me with every cornered figure, every line, every beam; all will then unbind the form that dwells within me, and promote its birth; and my body and soul feel the anguish; as my spirit received it by a feeling from without, so into an outward feeling she desires, with agonising throes, to work it forth again, that she may be free from it and at rest."
"It was an unlucky star," said the old man, "that drew thee away from us. Thou wert born for a still life; thy mind tended to quietness and plants; then thy impatience led thee away into the society of savage stones; the rocks, the rent cliffs, with their rugged shapes, have overset thy spirit, and planted within thee the desolating hunger after metal. Thou oughtest ever to have been on thy guard, and kept thy view from the mountains. So I thought to bring thee up; but it was not so to be. Thy humility, thy calmness, thy childlike feelings, have been all overturned by obstinacy, wildness, and overbearing."
"No," said the son; "I remember quite distinctly that it was a plant which first made known to me the misery of the whole earth; only then I understood the sighs and lamentations which are every where perceptible in all nature, if only one will listen. In plants, herbs, flowers, and trees, there moves and stirs painfully only one general wound; they are the corpse of former glorious worlds of rock, they present to our eye the frightfullest corruption. Now I well understand that it was this which that root with its deep-fetched moaning wished to say to me; in its agony it forgot itself, and told me all. Therefore are all green plants so angry with me, and wait for my life; they desire to obliterate the loved figure in my heart; and every spring, with their distorted deathly looks, to win my soul. With unpermitted and malicious art have they deceived thee, old man; for they have gained complete possession of thy soul. Only ask the rocks, thou wilt be astonished when thou hearest them speak."