The Atom Station by Halldór Laxness

When I was on my way to the prison in Skolavordustig with my case and my bouquet I happened to pass by the cathedral, and before I knew it I had blundered into the middle of a funeral; the coffin was just being carried out of church. This was no small fry that was being buried, judging by all the ceremonial; as far as I could see it was the overlords of the country, whom I had learned to know by sight last year when I opened the door to them at night, who were now gathered again, dressed in black and white, with tile-hats, in their hands: the Prime Minister and the other Ministers, the sheep-plague director, some Members of Parliament, wholesalers and judges, the mournful lead-grey man who published the paper, the bishops, and the oil-processing plant director. This little group formed a circle round an exceedingly ornate coffin, which was carried by the pick of this corps d'elite, the Prime Minister leading on one side, and on the other side the mournful lead-grey man who had published the paper; next came a handsome, virile man with grey-flecked hair and aquiline nose, horn-rimmed glasses like a mask, snowy-white gloves and a tile-hat in his free hand, quite at ease in this company. Who was he? Could it be true? Was I seeing right? Or was I still dreaming-one of those dreams of uncertain joy?

"All that you ask for, you shall have. " Somehow I had never been able to place it until now, when an old Christian text which I had learned as a child flashed into my mind again: "All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down."