questioningly and searchingly, some of them in evident expectation of
something unusual happening at once.

The movement became general--a wave that carried him resistlessly to the
front of the hall and up onto the platform. A great roar like the
breaking of surf arose on all sides of him and stupefied his sensitive
brain in which silence sat always putting together a fine new world
about which no one else knew. Suddenly everything was still, so still
that the solitude was again audible to his ear.

Pelle spoke quietly and with confidence. His words were a greeting to
them from a world they as yet did not know, the great solitude through
which man must move alone--without loud-voiced companions to encourage
him--and listen until he hears his own heart beat within it. He sits in
a cell again, like the first original germ of life, alone and forsaken;
and over him a spider skilfully spins its web. At first he is angry with
the busy insect, and tears down the web; but the insect begins again
patiently. And this suddenly becomes a consolatory lesson to him never
to give up; he becomes fond of the little vigilant creature that makes
its web as skilfully as if it had a great responsibility, and he asks
himself whether it is at all conscious of his existence. Is it sorry for
him in his forsaken condition, since it does not move to another place,
but patiently builds its web up again, finer and finer, as if it had
only been torn down because it was not made well enough? He bitterly
regrets his conduct, and would give much for a sign that the little
insect is not angry with him, for no one can afford to offend another;
the smallest creature is of vital importance to you. In the loneliness
of the prison cell you learn solidarity. And one day when he is sitting
reading, the spider, in its busy efforts to carry its thread past him,
drops down and uses his shoulder as a temporary attachment. Never before