“Well,” Joseph Knecht said, laughing, “if we can make a person happier and more serene, we should do it in any case, whether or not he asks us to. And how could you not want that and not be seeking it? That’s why you are here, that’s why we are once again sitting face to face, that’s why you returned to us, after all. You hate Castalia, you despise it, you’re far too proud of your worldliness and your sadness to wish to find relief through the use of reason and meditation. And yet a secret, unquenchable longing for us and our serenity remained with you all through these years, luring you to return, to try us once more. And I must tell you that you have come at the right moment, when I too have been longing intensely for a call from your world, for an opening door. But we’ll talk about that next time. You’ve confided a great deal to me, friend, and I thank you for it. You will see that I too have some things to confess to you. It is late, you’re leaving tomorrow, and another day of official routines awaits me. We must go to bed. But please give me another fifteen minutes.”
He stood up, went to the window, and looked up at the starry, crystalline night sky overlaid by the scudding clouds. Since he did not return to his chair at once, his guest also stood up and came over to the window beside him. The Magister stood there, drinking in the cool, thin air of the autumnal night with rhythmic inhalations. He pointed toward the sky.
“Look,” he said. “This landscape of clouds and sky. At first glance you might think that the depths are there where it is darkest; but then you realize that the darkness and softness are only the clouds and that the depths of the universe begin only at the fringes and fjords of this mountain range of clouds — solemn and supreme symbols of clarity and orderliness. The depths and the mysteries of the universe lie not where the clouds and blackness are; the depths are to be found in the spaces of clarity and serenity. Please, just before going to sleep look up for a while at these bays and straits again, with all their stars, and don’t reject the ideas or dreams that come to you from them.”
A strange quiver went through Plinio’s heart — he could not tell whether it was of grief or happiness. An unimaginably long time ago, he recalled, in the lovely, serene beginnings of his life as a Waldzell student, he had been summoned in similar words to his first meditation exercises.
