armed with artificial, hidden and poisonous weapons — the armed against the defenceless.
   So now the lesson of this year was clear to him: life today was a colossal fraud by means of which one section of the people ceaselessly deceived and stole from the other.
   With this realization everything had collapsed around him and he could find no foothold. He had become a sceptic. He knew now that there were no moral laws which covered every circumstance but that people created laws arbitrarily, to suit themselves, to sustain and to further this great fraud.
   He knew that they misused these self-made laws to their own advantage and to the limits of their power.
   — He had become a sceptic and, like all sceptics, he was not happy.
   Upon his forehead had appeared the first fine lines drawn by restless and inconclusive thinking and his grey eyes looked upon the world, no longer trusting and filled with hope, but searching and filled with doubt.
   A wind from without had touched the fire in them, but it had not yet burst into a flame.
   It only smouldered.