Maro had been one of those highly talented pupils who in spite of their talent are always unpleasant and a grief to their teachers because their talent has not grown from below and from within. It is not founded on organic strength, the delicate, ennobling mark of a good endowment, of sound blood and a sound character, but is in a curious way something adventitious, accidental, perhaps even usurped or stolen. A pupil of meager character but high intelligence or sparkling imagination invariably embarrasses the teacher. He is obliged to transmit to this pupil the knowledge and methodology he himself has inherited, and to prepare him for the life of the mind — and yet he cannot help feeling that his real and higher duty should be to protect the arts and sciences against the intrusion of young men who have nothing but talent. For the teacher is not supposed to serve the pupil; rather, both are the servants of their culture. This is the reason teachers feel slightly repelled by certain glittering talents. A pupil of that type falsifies the whole meaning of pedagogy as service. All the help given to a pupil who can shine but cannot serve basically means doing harm to service and is, in a way, a betrayal of culture. We know of periods in the history of many nations in which profound upheavals in cultural processes led to a surge of the merely talented into leading positions in communities, schools, academies, and governments. Highly talented people sat in all sorts of posts, but they were people who wanted to rule without being able to serve. Certainly it is often very difficult to recognize such people in good time, before they have entrenched themselves in the intellectual professions. It is equally difficult to treat them with the necessary ruthlessness and send them back to other occupations. Knecht, too, had made mistakes; he had been patient far too long with his apprentice Maro. He had entrusted esoteric knowledge to a superficial climber. That was a pity, and the consequences for himself were far greater than he could ever have foreseen.
A year came — by then Knecht’s beard was already quite gray — in which the orderly relationships between heaven and earth seemed to have been distorted by demons of unusual strength and malevolence. These distortions began in the autumn with events of such fearful majesty that every soul in the village shook with terror. Shortly after the equinox, which the Rainmaker always observed with heightened attentiveness and celebrated with solemnity and reverent worship, there was a display in the heavens that had not occurred within the memory of man. An evening came that was dry, windy, and rather cool. The sky was crystal clear except for a few restless small clouds which floated at a very great height, holding the rosy light of the setting sun for an unusually long time. They looked like loose and foamy bundles of light drifting in cold, pale cosmic space. For several days past Knecht had sensed something that was stronger and more remarkable than the feeling he had every year at this time when the days began growing shorter: a seething of the powers in the sky, a sense of alarm in earth, plants and animals, a nervousness in the air, something inconstant, expectant, frightened, lowering in all of nature. The small clouds with their lingering, quivering flames formed part of the strangeness. Their fluttery movements did not correspond with the direction of the wind on the ground. After a long sad struggle against extinction, their piteous red light grew cold and faded, and suddenly they were invisible.
