“I know not,” he said, “whether ye are the best of all the gods to whom numerous generations have burned incense and brought offerings; all I know is that for your sake the blind mob extinguished the clear torch of truth, and for your sake sacrificed the greatest and best of mortals!”

It almost seemed to Ctesippus as though the streets and market-places still echoed with the shrieking of that unjust sentence.  And he remembered how it was here that the people clamoured for the execution of the generals who had led them to victory against the Argunisae, and how Socrates alone had opposed the savage sentence of the judges and the blind rage of the mob.  But when Socrates himself needed a champion, no one had been found to defend him with equal strength.  Ctesippus blamed himself and his friends, and for that reason he wanted to avoid everybody—­even himself, if possible.

That evening he went to the sea.  But his grief grew only the more violent.  It seemed to him that the mourning daughters of Nereus were tossing hither and thither on the shore bewailing the death of the best of the Athenians and the folly of the frenzied city.  The waves broke on the rocky coast with a growl of lament.  Their booming sounded like a funeral dirge.

He turned away, left, the shore, and went on further without looking before him.  He forgot time and space and his own ego, filled only with the afflicting thought of Socrates!

“Yesterday he still was, yesterday his mild words still could be heard.  How is it possible that to-day he no longer is?  O night, O giant mountain shrouded in mist, O heaving sea moved by your own life, O restless winds that carry the breath of an immeasurable world on your wings, O starry vault flecked with flying clouds—­take me to you, disclose to me the mystery of this death, if it is revealed to you!  And if ye know not, then grant my ignorant soul your own lofty indifference.  Remove from me these torturing questions.  I no longer have strength to carry them in my bosom without an answer, without even the hope of an answer.  For who shall answer them, now that the lips of Socrates are sealed in eternal silence, and eternal darkness is laid upon his lids?”

Thus Ctesippus cried out to the sea and the mountains, and to the dark night, which followed its invariable course, ceaselessly, invisibly, over the slumbering world.  Many hours passed before Ctesippus glanced up and saw whither his steps had unconsciously led him.  A dark horror seized his soul as he looked about him.

III