Or perhaps it was unnecessary that his life should end so tragically. When he thought it over more carefully, this seemed to him a trifle banal. He might just as well move to a small town, to Strengness or Grenna. There he could live alone with a parrot and a black cat. He might also have an aquarium with goldfish. Behind closed shutters he would dream away the day, but when night came he would light candles in all the rooms and pace back and forth, meditating on the vanity of life. And when the townfolk passed his house on the way home from their evening toddy at the rathskeller, they would stop to point at his window and say: “There lives Martin Birck. He has taught like a sage and lived like a fool, and he is very unhappy.”