If the Barbarians are destroyed, who will we then be able to blame for the bad things?

Moonlight, white satin, roses. A bride.

We must all make do with the rags of love we find flapping on the scarecrow of humanity.

The invisible is only another unexplored country, a brave new world.

His touch both consoles and devastates me; I feel my heart pulse, then wither, naked as a stone on the roaring mattress while the lovely, moony night slides through the window to dapple the flanks of this innocent who makes cages to keep the sweet birds in. Eat me, drink me; thirsty, cankered, goblin-ridden, I go back and back to him to have his fingers strip the tattered skin away and clothe me in his dress of water, this garment that drenches me, its slithering odour, its capacity for drowning.

And, conversely, she went on to herself, sneering at the Grand Duke's palace, poverty is wasted on the poor, who never know how to make the best of things, are only the rich without money, are just as useless at looking after themselves, can't handle their cash just like the rich can't, always squandering it on bright, pretty, useless things in just the same way.

Drosselmeier had unwittingly exposed himself to an overdose of reality, and it had destroyed his reason.