Everyone will think his share too small and they will be always envying, complaining and attacking one another.
You ask when it will come to pass; it will come to pass, but first we have to go though the period of isolation."
"What do you mean by isolation?" I asked him.
"Why, the isolation that prevails everywhere, above all in our age- it has not fully developed, it has not reached its limit yet.
For everyone strives to keep his individuality as apart as possible, wishes to secure the greatest possible fullness of life for himself; but meantime all his efforts result not in attaining fullness of life but self-destruction, for instead of self-realisation he ends by arriving at complete solitude.
All mankind in our age have split up into units, they all keep apart, each in his own groove; each one holds aloof, hides himself and hides what he has, from the rest, and he ends by being repelled by others and repelling them.
He heaps up riches by himself and thinks, 'How strong I am now and how secure,' and in his madness he does not understand that the more he heaps up, the more he sinks into self-destructive impotence.
For he is accustomed to rely upon himself alone and to cut himself off from the whole; he has trained himself not to believe in the help of others, in men and in humanity, and only trembles for fear he should lose his money and the privileges that he has won for himself.
Everywhere in these days men have, in their mockery, ceased to understand that the true security is to be found in social solidarity rather than in isolated individual effort.
But this terrible individualism must inevitably have an end, and all will suddenly understand how unnaturally they are separated from one another.
It will be the spirit of the time, and people will marvel that they have sat so long in darkness without seeing the light.
And then the sign of the Son of Man will be seen in the heavens.... But, until then, we must keep the banner flying. Sometimes even if he has to do it alone, and his conduct seems to be crazy, a man must set an example, and so draw men's souls out of their solitude, and spur them to some act of brotherly love, that the great idea may not die."
Our evenings, one after another, were spent in such stirring and fervent talk.
I gave up society and visited my neighbours much less frequently. Besides, my vogue was somewhat over.
I say this, not as blame, for they still loved me and treated me good-humouredly, but there's no denying that fashion is a great power in society.
I began to regard my mysterious visitor with admiration, for besides enjoying his intelligence, I began to perceive that he was brooding over some plan in his heart, and was preparing himself perhaps for a great deed.
Perhaps he liked my not showing curiosity about his secret, not seeking to discover it by direct question nor by insinuation.
But I noticed at last, that he seemed to show signs of wanting to tell me something.
This had become quite evident, indeed, about a month after he first began to visit me.
"Do you know," he said to me once, "that people are very inquisitive about us in the town and wonder why I come to see you so often. But let them wonder, for soon all will be explained."
Sometimes an extraordinary agitation would come over him, and almost always on such occasions he would get up and go away.
Sometimes he would fix a long piercing look upon me, and I thought,
"He will say something directly now." But he would suddenly begin talking of something ordinary and familiar.
He often complained of headache too.
One day, quite unexpectedly indeed, after he had been talking with great fervour a long time, I saw him suddenly turn pale, and his face worked convulsively, while he stared persistently at me.
"What's the matter?" I said; "do you feel ill?"- he had just been complaining of headache.
"I... do you know... I murdered someone."
He said this and smiled with a face as white as chalk.
"Why is it he is smiling?" The thought flashed through my mind before I realised anything else.
I too turned pale.
"What are you saying?" I cried.
"You see," he said, with a pale smile, "how much it has cost me to say the first word.
Now I have said it, I feel I've taken the first step and shall go on."
For a long while I could not believe him, and I did not believe him at that time, but only after he had been to see me three days running and told me all about it.
I thought he was mad, but ended by being convinced, to my great grief and amazement.
His crime was a great and terrible one. Fourteen years before, he had murdered the widow of a landowner, a wealthy and handsome young woman who had a house in our town.
He fell passionately in love with her, declared his feeling and tried to persuade her to marry him.
But she had already given her heart to another man, an officer of noble birth and high rank in the service, who was at that time away at the front, though she was expecting him soon to return.
She refused his offer and begged him not to come and see her.
After he had ceased to visit her, he took advantage of his knowledge of the house to enter at night through the garden by the roof, at great risk of discovery.
But, as often happens, a crime committed with extraordinary audacity is more successful than others.
Entering the garret through the skylight, he went down the ladder, knowing that the door at the bottom of it was sometimes, through the negligence of the servants, left unlocked.
He hoped to find it so, and so it was.
He made his way in the dark to her bedroom, where a light was burning.
As though on purpose, both her maids had gone off to a birthday party in the same street, without asking leave.
The other servants slept in the servants' quarters or in the kitchen on the ground floor.
His passion flamed up at the sight of her asleep, and then vindictive, jealous anger took possession of his heart, and like a drunken man, beside himself, he thrust a knife into her heart, so that she did not even cry out.
Then with devilish and criminal cunning he contrived that suspicion should fall on the servants. He was so base as to take her purse, to open her chest with keys from under her pillow, and to take some things from it, doing it all as it might have been done by an ignorant servant, leaving valuable papers and taking only money. He took some of the larger gold things, but left smaller articles that were ten times as valuable.
He took with him, too, some things for himself as remembrances, but of that later.
Having done this awful deed. he returned by the way he had come.