It is of hunger that I am going to speak in this good book of mine: what it means, what it desires, what it is able to do. I cannot, to be sure, show how, for the world as a whole, hunger is both Shiva and Vishnu, destroyer and preserver in one; it is for history to show that; but I can describe how it works in the individual as destroyer and preserver, and will continue so to work till the end of the world.

To hunger, to the sacred power of genuine, true hunger, I dedicate these pages, and, indeed, they belong to it by rights, as will, I hope, be perfectly clear by the time we have reached the end. With this latter assurance I am relieved of the necessity of writing a further introduction which, after all, would contribute only in the slightest degree to the reader's comfort, emotion, and excitement; and will begin my story with unlimited good will toward my fellow men, past, present and future, as well as toward myself and all those shadow-figures that will pass before me in the course of this tale—reflexes of the great cycle of birth, being, and passing away, of the infinite growth that is called the evolution of the world—slightly more interesting and richer than this book, it is true, but, unlike this book, not obliged to come to a satisfactory conclusion in three parts.

"Here we have the boy at last! We have him at last—at last!" cried the father of my hero, and drew a long breath of relief like a man who, after long, vain yearning, hard work, many troubles and cares, had finally reached his happy goal. He looked down with wise, shining eyes at the tiny, pitiable bit of humanity that the midwife had laid in his arms just as the evening bell had sounded. A tear stole over the man's haggard cheek and the sharp, pointed, wise fatherly nose sank ever lower and lower toward the insignificant, scarcely recognizable little nose of the new-born infant, till it suddenly rose up again with a jerk and turned with anxious inquiry toward the kind, capable woman who had contributed so much to his delight.

"Oh, Mrs. Tiebus—good Mrs. Tiebus, is it really a boy? Tell me again that you aren't mistaken—that it is really, really so!"

The midwife, who till now had watched the first tender greeting between father and son with self-assured, smiling nods of the head, now jerked her nose into the air, dispelled all the spirits and sprites of good will and contentment which had fluttered about her, with an inimitable gesture of both arms, placed them akimbo, and, with scorn, contempt, and insulted self-respect, began to speak:

"Master Unwirrsch, you are a fool! Have your picture painted on the wall!... Is it one? Did ever anybody hear the like from such a sensible old man and the head of a house?... Is it one? Master Unwirrsch, next, I believe, you'll forget how to tell a boot from a shoe. This just shows what a cross it is when God's gift comes so late. Isn't that a boy that you've got there in your arms? Isn't that really a boy, a fine, proper boy? Lord, if the old creature didn't have the poor little thing in his arms I'd like to give him a good box on the ears for putting such a silly, meddlesome question! Not a boy? Indeed it is a boy, Father Pitch-thread—not one of the heaviest, to be sure; but still a boy, and a proper boy at that! And how shouldn't it be a boy? Isn't Bonnyparty, isn't Napoleum on his way again across the water and won't there be war and tussling between today and tomorrow, and don't we need boys, and isn't it exactly for that reason that in these strange times of ours more boys than girls come into the world, and aren't there three boys to one girl? and you come to me, to an experienced and sensible person like me, and ask such outrageous questions? Have your picture painted on the wall, Father Unwirrsch, and have written underneath it what I think of you. Here, give the boy to me, you don't deserve to have him bother with you—go along with you to your wife—perhaps you'll ask her too, if it's—a—boy!"

Ungently the infant was snatched from the arms of the despised, crushed father and, after getting his breath, Master Anton Unwirrsch hobbled into the bedroom of his wife, and the evening bells still rang. But we will not disturb either the father and mother or the bells—let them give full utterance to their feelings with no one to interfere.

Poor people and rich people have different ways of life in this world; but when the sun of happiness shines into their huts, houses, or palaces, it gilds with the very same gold the wooden bench and the velvet chair, the whitewashed wall and the gilt one, and more than one sly dog of a philosopher says he has noticed that as far as joy and sorrow are concerned the difference between rich and poor people is not nearly as great as both classes often, very often, extremely often think. Be that as it may; it is enough for us that laughter is not a monopoly nor weeping an obligation on this spherical, fire-filled ball with its flattened poles, onto which we find our way without desiring it, and from which, without desiring it, we depart, after the interval between our coming and going has been made bitter enough for us.

The sun now shone into the house of poor people. Happiness, smiling, stooped to enter the low doorway, both her open hands extended in greeting. There was great joy over the birth of the son on the part of the parents, the shoemaker Unwirrsch and his wife, who had waited for him so long that they were almost on the point of giving up hope altogether.

And now he had come after all, come an hour before work ceased for the day! All KrÖppel Street already knew of the event, and the glad tidings had even reached Master Nikolaus GrÜnebaum, the brother of the woman who had just given birth to the child, though he lived almost at the opposite end of the town. A grinning shoemaker's apprentice, carrying his slippers under his arm so as to be able to run quicker, bore the news there and shouted it breathlessly into Master GrÜnebaum's less deaf ear with the result that for five minutes the good man looked much stupider than he really was. But now he was already on his way to KrÖppel Street, and as he, a citizen, householder and resident master of his trade, could not take his slippers under his arm, the consequence was that one of them deserted him faithlessly at a street corner, to begin life with nothing to depend on but its own hands, or rather its own sole.

When Uncle GrÜnebaum arrived at his brother-in-law's house he found so many good women of the neighborhood there, giving advice and expressing their opinions, that, in his lamentable capacity of old bachelor and pronounced woman-hater, he could but appear highly superfluous to himself. And he did see himself in this light and would almost have turned back if the thought of his brother-in-law and fellow-craftsman, left miserably alone in the midst of all this "racket" had not enabled him to master his feelings after all. Growling and grunting he pushed his way through the womenfolk and at last did find his brother-in-law in a not very enviable nor brilliant position and attitude.

The poor man had been pushed completely aside. Mrs. Tiebus had taken measures to exclude him from his wife's room; in the living room among the neighbors he was also entirely superfluous; Master GrÜnebaum finally discovered him sitting in a miserable heap on a stool in the corner where only the cat that was rubbing against his legs showed any sympathy for him. But his eyes were still shining with that radiance that seemed to come from another world; Master Unwirrsch heard nothing of the women's whispering and chattering, saw nothing of the confusion that reigned among them, nor did he see his brother-in-law till the latter seized him by the shoulder and, not very gently, shook him back to consciousness.

"Give a sign that you're still in the land of the living, Anton!" growled Master GrÜnebaum. "Be a man, and drive the womenfolk out, all of them except—except Auntie Schlotterbeck there. For although the devil takes them one and all, odd and even, still she is the only one among them that lets a man get in a word at least once an hour. Won't you? Can't you? Don't you dare to? Well, then catch hold of my coat behind till I get you out of this tumult in safety; come upstairs and let things go on as they will down here. So the boy is here? Well, praise be to God, I began to think we'd waited in vain again."

The two fellow-craftsmen pushed their way sideways through the women, got out into the passage with difficulty, and mounted the narrow creaking stairs that led to the upper story of the house. There Auntie Schlotterbeck had rented a small living room, bedroom and kitchen, which left only one room at the disposal of the Unwirrsch family, and that was stuffed so full of all kinds of articles that scarcely enough space remained for the two worthy guild-brothers to squat down and exchange the innermost thoughts of their souls. Boxes and chests, bunches of herbs, ears of corn, bundles of leather, strings of onions, hams, sausages, endless odds and ends had here been hung, or flung, stuffed or stuck below, above, before, beside and among one another with a skill that approached genius, and it was no wonder that Brother-in-law GrÜnebaum lost his second slipper there.

But through both the low windows the last rays of the sun shone into the room; the comrades were safe from Mrs. Tiebus and the neighbors.... They sat down opposite each other on two boxes and shook hands for five well-counted minutes.

"Congratulations, Anton!" said Nikolaus GrÜnebaum.

"I thank you, Nikolaus!" said Anton Unwirrsch.

"Hooray, he is here! Hooray, long may he live! And again, hoo—" shouted Master GrÜnebaum with the full power of his lungs, but broke off when his brother-in-law held his hand over his mouth.

"Not so loud, for mercy's sake, not so loud, Nik'las. The wife is right underneath us here and has trouble enough as it is with all those women."

The new-made uncle let his fist fall on his knee:

"You're right, Brother; the devil take them, one and all, odd and even. But now let her go, old man, and tell us how you feel. Not a bit the way you usually do? Oh ho! And how does the little tadpole look? Everything in the right place? Nose, mouth, arms, legs? Nothing wrong anywhere? Everything in order: straps and legs, upper, vamp, heel and sole? Well pitched, nailed, and neatly polished?"

"Everything as it should be, Brother," cried the happy father, rubbing his hands. "A prize boy! May God bless us in him! Oh, Nik'las, I wanted to say a thousand things to you, but I choke too much in my throat; everything about me goes round——"

"Let it go as it will; when the cat is thrown down from the roof she has to take time to collect herself," said Master GrÜnebaum. "The wife is doing well, I suppose?"

"Yes, thank God. She behaved like a heroine; an empress couldn't have done better."

"She is a GrÜnebaum," said Nikolaus with pride, "and in case of necessity the GrÜnebaums can clench their teeth. What name are you going to have the boy called by, Anton?"

The father of the new-born child passed his lean hand over his high, furrowed forehead and stared out of the window into space for a few moments. Then he said:

"He shall be christened after three fellow-craftsmen. He shall be called Johannes like the poet in Nuremberg, and Jakob like the highly honored philosopher of Goerlitz, and the two names shall be to him as two wings on which to rise from the earth to the blue sky and take his share of light. But as a third name I will give him Nikolaus so that he may always know that he has a true friend and protector on earth, one to whom he can turn when I am no longer here."

"I call that a sentence with a head full of sense and reason, and a clumsy, ridiculous tail. Give him the names and it will be an honor for all three of us, but keep away from me with those old foolish notions of death. You're not fat, to be sure, and you couldn't exactly knock an ox down with your bare fist either; but you can draw the pitch-thread through the leather for many a long year yet, you ruminating bookworm."

Master Unwirrsch shook his head and changed the subject, and the two brothers-in-law discussed this and that with each other till it had grown perfectly dark in the storeroom.

Somebody knocked at the door, and Master GrÜnebaum called:

"Who is there? No womenfolk will be admitted."

"It's I," called a voice outside.

"Who?"

"I!"

"It's Auntie Schlotterbeck," said Unwirrsch. "Push the bolt back; we've sat up here long enough; perhaps I may see the wife again now."

His brother-in-law obeyed, growling, and the light from Auntie Schlotterbeck's lamp shone into the room.

"Here they are, really. Well, come along, you heroes; the women have gone. Creep out. Your wife, Master Unwirrsch? Yes, she is well taken care of; she is sleeping and you mustn't disturb her; but I've a piece of news that you shall hear and thank God. At the house of the Jew, Freudenstein, across the street, the same thing happened today as in this house; but it wasn't quite the same. The child is alive—a boy, too, but BlÜmchen Freudenstein is dead, and there is great lamentation over there. Praise the Lord, Master Unwirrsch; and you, Master GrÜnebaum, go home. Come, come, Unwirrsch, don't stand there so dumbfounded; death enters, or passes by, according to God's command. I feel as if I'd been broken on the wheel, and am going to bed. Good night to you both."

Auntie Schlotterbeck disappeared behind her door, the two masters stole downstairs on tiptoe, and in the public-house which he frequented regularly, Uncle GrÜnebaum had far less to say that evening about politics, municipal and other affairs than usual. Master Unwirrsch lay all night without closing his eyes; the infant screamed mightily, and it was no wonder that these unaccustomed tones kept the father awake and stirred up a whirling throng of hopes and cares and drove it in a wild chase through his heart and head.

It is not easy to produce a good sermon; but neither is it easy to make a good boot. Skill, much skill is necessary to do either, and bunglers and botchers had better keep their hands off, if they have any regard for their fellow-men's welfare. I, for my part, have an uncommon partiality for shoemakers, in their totality when they march in holiday parades as well as for the individuals. As the people say, they are a "ruminating tribe," and no other trade produces such excellent and odd peculiarities in the members of its guild. The low work-table, the low stool, the glass globe filled with water which catches the light of the little oil lamp and reflects it with greater brilliance, the pungent odor of leather and of pitch must naturally exert a lasting effect on human nature, and that is just what they do, and powerfully too. What curious originals this admirable trade has produced! A whole library could be written about "remarkable shoemakers" without the materials being in the least exhausted! The light which falls through the hanging glass globe onto the work-table is the realm of fantastic spirits; during the meditative work it fills the imagination with strange figures and pictures and gives to thought a tinge that no other lamp, patented or unpatented, can lend it. It makes one think of all sorts of rhymes, queer legends, marvelous tales and merry and sad events of the world which, when they have once been put on paper by an unpractised hand, amaze the neighbors; at which the shoemaker's wife laughs or is afraid when her husband hums them in a low voice in the dusk. Or, perhaps, we begin to ponder still deeper, we feel the necessity of "unraveling life's beginning." Deeper and deeper we look into the glowing globe, and in the glass we see the universe in all its forms and natures: we pass freely through the portals of all the heavens and know them with all their stars and elements; intuitive perception opens our minds to sublime visions and we write them down while Pastor Richter, head clergyman of the parish, stirs up the mob against us from the pulpit and the constable of Goerlitz, who is to fetch us to prison, stands before the door.

"For this is eternity's right and eternal existence, that it has only one will. If it had two one would break the other and there would be strife. It is indeed great in strength and miraculousness; but its life is but love alone, from which light and majesty emanate. All creatures in Heaven have one will, and that is directed to God's own heart and lives in God's own spirit, in the centre of multiplicity, in growing and blooming; but God's spirit is life in all things, Centrum NaturÆ gives being, majesty and power, and the Holy Ghost is the leader."

Whoever has anything against shoemakers and does not know how to appreciate their excellence individually and generally, let him keep away from me. Whoever goes so far as to turn up his nose at them contemptuously because of their often curious appearance, their crooked legs, their hard, black paws, their crazy noses, their unkempt tufts of hair, is no good to me; if he is lost I shall offer no reward for his return. I treasure and love shoemakers, and above them all I value the worthy Master Anton Unwirrsch, the father of Hans Jakob Nikolaus Unwirrsch. Alas, it was not long after those vesper bells had given greeting to his first and only born that the evening bells of his own day on earth began to ring. Yet there are so many threads of his life that run on into his son's that we cannot omit a description of his personality and being. Physically, as we already know, he stood not very firmly on his feet, but mentally he was straight and strong enough and could cope with many a man who thought himself far superior. All the relics of his hidden life show that he did his utmost to make up for the defects of a neglected education, that he had a thirst for knowledge—a very keen thirst. And even though he never learnt to spell quite correctly he yet possessed a poetic soul, like his celebrated fellow-craftsman from the "Mouse-trap" in Nuremberg, and read as much as he possibly could. Moreover, what he read he usually understood too; and if in some things he did not find the meaning that the author had intended, he got another meaning out of it or read it into it which belonged entirely to him alone and with which the author might very often be well content. Although he loved his trade and did not neglect it in any way it was no gold mine to him, and he remained a poor man. Golden dreams, however, his occupation did bring him, and all occupations that can do that are good and make those who practise them happy. Anton Unwirrsch saw the world from his cobbler's stool almost exactly as Hans Sachs had once seen it, but he did not become so famous. He left a little book in close, fine handwriting which his widow first kept like a sacred relic in the depths of her chest, together with her hymn book, bridal wreath and a little black box of which we shall hear more later on. As she would have a sacred relic, the mother delivered the little book over to her son and he gave it the place of honor in his library between the Bible and Shakespeare, although in poetry and content it ranks a little below these two.

Auntie Schlotterbeck and Master GrÜnebaum had a vague suspicion of the existence of this manuscript, but only the poet's wife had definite knowledge of it. To her it was the most marvelous thing that could be imagined. For did it not rhyme "like the hymn book," and had not her husband written it? That was far beyond anything that the neighborhood could bring to light.

To the son these leaves, sewed together, were a dear legacy and a touching sign that even among the lowly there is an eternal striving upward out of the depths and darkness to the heights, to the light, to beauty.

The harmless, formless outpourings of shoemaker Unwirrsch's soul were naturally devoted to the phenomena of nature, to the home, his handicraft, and certain great facts of history, chiefly the deeds and heroes of the War of Liberation which had just thundered by. They testified to thought that, in all these directions, was sometimes charmingly simple-hearted, sometimes lofty. There was a little humor mixed up in it, but it was the pathetic that was most prominent and, indeed, most often brought forth the familiar smile. The worthy Master Anton had experienced so much thunder and lightning, so many hailstorms, fires and floods, had seen so many Frenchmen, Rhenish Confederates, Prussians, Austrians and Russians marching past his house that it was no wonder if now and then he, too, tried his hand a little at lightning and thunder and smiting dead. This did not cause any enmity between him and his neighbors, for he remained what he was, a "good fellow," and when he died he was mourned not alone by his wife, his brother-in-law GrÜnebaum and Auntie Schlotterbeck; no, all KrÖppel Street knew and said that a good man had passed away and that it was a pity.

He had waited long and yearningly for the birth of a son. He often pictured to himself what he could and would make of him. He transferred all his earnest striving for knowledge to him; the son should and must attain to what his father could not. The thousand insurmountable obstacles which life had thrown in the way of Master Anton should not halt the career of the future Unwirrsch. He should find his course clear, and no door of wisdom or of education should be closed to him by life's labors and hardships.

Thus did Anton dream, and one year after another of his married life passed. A daughter was born, but she died soon after; and then for a long time there came nothing, and then—then at last came Johannes Jakob Nikolaus Unwirrsch, whose entrance into the world has already given us the material for a number of the foregoing pages and whose later sufferings, joys, adventures, and travels—in short, whose destinies will form the greater part of this book.

We saw the brother-in-law and uncle, GrÜnebaum, lose his slipper, we saw and heard the tumult of the women, made the acquaintance of Mrs. Tiebus and Auntie Schlotterbeck;—we saw, finally, the two brothers-in-law sitting in the storeroom and saw the dusk creeping in after the eventful sunset. Master Anton lived one more year after the birth of his son and then died of pneumonia. Fate treated him as she does many another: she gave him his share of joy in his hopes, and refused him their fulfillment, which, indeed, never can catch up with fleet-winged hope itself.

Johannes screamed lustily in the hour of his father's death, but not for his father. But Mrs. Christine cried much for her husband and for a long time could not be quieted either by Auntie Schlotterbeck's words of consolation or by the philosophic admonitions of the wise Master Nikolaus GrÜnebaum. The latter promised his dying brother-in-law to do his best for those who were left and to stand by them in all the crises of life according to his best ability. Once more Anton Unwirrsch struggled for air, but the air for him was too full of flames of fire; he sighed and died. The doctor wrote his death certificate; Mrs. Kiebike, the layer-out, came and washed him, his coffin was ready at the right time, a goodly train of neighbors and friends accompanied him to the churchyard, and in the corner, beside the stove, sat Mrs. Christine, who held her child on her lap and gazed with fixed, red and swollen eyes at the low black work-stool and the low black work-table and who still could not believe that her Anton would never again sit on the one and in front of the other. Auntie Schlotterbeck cleared away the empty cake plates, bottles and glasses which had been placed, full, before the mourners, the pall-bearers and the condoling neighbors to give them strength in their sorrow. Hans Jakob Nikolaus Unwirrsch crowed with childish joy and stretched out his tiny hands longingly toward the shining glass globe above his father's table, on which the sun now fell and which had shed such a remarkable lustre on Anton Unwirrsch's world of thought. The influence of this globe was long to continue. The mother had become so accustomed to its light that she could not dispense with it even after her husband's death; it shone on far into the son's youth, Johannes heard many a tale of his father's worth and excellence by its light, and gradually in the son's mind the image of his father was joined inseparably to the brilliance of this globe.

Chapter II

The ancients thought that it was to be considered a great piece of good fortune if the gods allowed a man to be born in a famous town. But as this good fortune has not fallen to the share of many famous men, such towns as Bethlehem, Eisleben, Stratford, Kamenz, Marbach, not having formerly been particularly brilliant spots in the minds of men, it probably makes little difference to Hans Unwirrsch that he first saw the light of the world in a little town called Neustadt. There are not a few towns and townlets of the same name, but they have not quarreled with one another for the honor of counting our hero among their citizens. Johannes Jakob Nikolaus Unwirrsch did not make his birthplace more famous in the world.

In the year 1819 the place had ten thousand inhabitants; today it has a hundred and fifty more. It lay and lies in a wide valley, surrounded by hills and mountains from which forests extend down to the town limits. In spite of its name it is no longer new; with difficulty it has maintained its existence through wild centuries, and now enjoys a quiet, sleepy old age. It has gradually given up the hope of ever attaining to bigger things and does not feel less comfortable on that account. However, in the little State to which it belongs it is after all a factor, and the government is considerate of it. The sound of its church-bells made a pleasant impression on the wayfarer, as he came out of the woods on the nearest height; and when the sun just happened to shine in the windows of the two churches and of the houses the same wayfarer seldom thought that all is not gold that glitters and that the sound of bells, fertile fields, green meadows and a pretty little town in the valley are far from being enough to produce an idyl. Amyntas, Palaemon, Daphnis, Doris and Chloe were often able to make life down in the valley very unpleasant for one another. But lads courted and lasses consented and, taken all in all, they went through life quite comfortably, to which the fact that the necessaries of life were not unattainably dear, probably contributed. The devil take dear old Gessner with all his rustic idyls when fruit and must don't turn out well and milk and honey are rare in Arcadia!

But we shall have occasion again here and there to drop a few words about all this, and if not it is of no consequence. For the present we must turn back to the young Arcadian Hans Unwirrsch and see in what way he makes himself at home in life.

The shoemaker's widow was truly an uneducated woman. She could scarcely read and write, her philosophic education had been entirely neglected, she cried easily and willingly. Born in darkness, she remained in darkness, nursed her child, stood him on his feet, taught him to walk; put him on his feet for life and taught him to walk firmly for the rest of his life. That deserves great credit and the most educated mother cannot do more for her child.

In a low dark room, into which little fresh air and still less sun penetrated, Hans awakened to consciousness, and in one respect this was good; later he was not too much afraid of the caverns in which far the greater part of humanity that participates in the blessings of civilization, must spend its life. Throughout his life he took light and air for what they are, articles of luxury which fortune gives or refuses and which she seems better pleased to refuse than to give.

The living room which looked out on the street and which had also been Master Anton's workshop was kept unchanged in its former condition. With anxious care his widow watched over it to see that none of her blessed husband's tools was moved from its place. Uncle GrÜnebaum had indeed wanted to buy all the superfluous stock in trade for a very fair price, but Mrs. Christine could not make up her mind to part with any of it. In all her leisure hours she sat in her usual place beside the low cobbler's table and in the evening, as we know, she could knit or sew or spell out the words in her large hymn-book only by the light of the glass-globe.

The poor woman was now obliged to toil miserably in order to provide an honest living for herself and her child; in the little bedroom, the windows of which looked out on the yard, she lay awake many a night, worrying, while Hans Unwirrsch in his father's big bedstead dreamt of the large slices of bread and butter and the rolls enjoyed by happier neighbors' children. Wise Master GrÜnebaum did what he could for his relatives; but his trade did not yield to him such blessings as one might expect from copy-book maxims; he was much too fond of making much too long speeches at the "Red Ram" and his customers preferred to trust him with the cure of a pair of sick shoes rather than to order a new pair from him. He had hard work to keep his own head above water;—but he was not backward with advice, which he gave willingly and in large quantities and we regret to have to add that, as is not seldom the case, the quantity usually did not stand at all in the proper relation to the quality. Auntie Schlotterbeck, although far from being as wise as Master GrÜnebaum, was more practical and it was on her advice that Mrs. Christine became a washerwoman, who rose in the morning between two and three o'clock and in the evening at eight, dead tired and aching all over, came home to satisfy the first, the physical, hunger of her child and to translate his dreams into reality.

Hans Unwirrsch retained dark, vague, curious memories of this period in his life and later told his nearest friends about them. From his earliest childhood he slept lightly and so he was often wakened by the glimmer of the sulphur match with which his mother lit her lamp in the cold dark winter night, in order to get ready for her early walk to work. He lay warm among his pillows and did not move until his mother bent over him to see whether the click-clack of her slippers had not wakened the little sleeper. Then he twined his arms about her neck and laughed, received a kiss and the admonition to go to sleep again quick, as it wouldn't be day for a long time yet. He followed this advice either at once, or not until later. In the latter case he watched the burning lamp, his mother and the shadows on the wall through half-closed eyelids.

Curiously enough nearly all these early memories were of winter time. There was a ring of vapor round the flame of the lamp and the breath was drawn in a cloud toward the light; the frozen window-panes shimmered, it was bitterly cold, and with the comfort of his warm safe bed there was mixed for the little watcher the dread of the bitter cold from which he had to hide his little nose under the cover.

He could not understand why his mother got up so early while it was so dark and cold and while such mad black shadows passed by on the wall, nodded, straightened themselves up and bent down. His ideas of the places where his mother went were still less clearly defined; according to the mood in which he happened to be he imagined these places to be more or less pleasant and with his imaginings were mixed all sorts of details out of fairy-tales and fragments of conversation that he had heard from grown people and which, in these vague moments between sleeping and waking, took on more and more variegated colors and mixed with one another.

At last his mother had finished dressing and bent once more over the child's bed. Once more he received a kiss, all kinds of good admonitions and tempting promises so that he should lie still, should not cry, should go to sleep again soon. To these were added the assurance that morning and Auntie Schlotterbeck would come soon; the lamp was blown out, the room sank back into the deepest darkness, the door squeaked, his mother's steps grew fainter;—sleep took possession of him again quickly and when he woke the second time Auntie Schlotterbeck was generally sitting by his bed and the fire was crackling in the stove in the next room.

Although she was not older than Mrs. Christine Unwirrsch, Auntie Schlotterbeck had always been Auntie Schlotterbeck. No one in KrÖppel Street knew her by any other name and she was as well known in KrÖppel Street as "Old Fritz," emperor "Napoleum" and old BlÜcher, although she bore no other resemblance to these three famous heroes than that she took snuff like the great Prussian king, and had an aquiline nose like the "Corsican ravager." As to any resemblance to Marshal "Forward!" that would indeed have been difficult to find.

Auntie Schlotterbeck had formerly also been a washerwoman but she had long since been mustered out and managed to make a wretched living by spinning, knitting stockings and similar work. The city magistrates had granted her a scanty sum as poor-relief, and Master Anton, whose very distant relative she was, had, out of kindness, let her have the little room which she occupied in his house, for a very low price. In reality she would deserve to have a whole chapter in this book devoted to her, for she had a gift which not everybody can claim; to her those who had died had not passed away from the earth, she saw them walking through the streets, she met them in the marketplaces looking like living persons and unexpectedly ran into them at the street corners. There was not the slightest tinge of uncanniness connected with this to her; she spoke of it as of something perfectly natural, usual, and there was absolutely no difference to her between the mayor Eckerlein who had died in the year 1769 and who passed her in front of the "Lion" pharmacy in his wig and red velvet coat, and his grandchild to whom in 1820 this same "Lion" pharmacy belonged and who was just looking out of the window without being able to take any notice of his august grandfather.

At last even Auntie Schlotterbeck's acquaintances ceased to regard her gift with any feeling of "creepiness." The incredulous ones stopped smiling at it and the credulous—of whom there were a good number—no longer blessed themselves and clapped their hands together over their heads. This high distinction had no detrimental influence on the character of the good little woman herself. Auntie Schlotterbeck took no undue pride in her strange gift of sight; she looked upon it as an undeserved favor from God and remained humbler than many other people who did not see nearly as much as the elderly spinster in KrÖppel Street.

As regards appearance, Auntie Schlotterbeck was of medium height but she stooped very much when she walked and poked her head forward. Her clothes hung on her like things that were not in their right place, and her nose, as we have already heard, was very sharp and very hooked. This nose would have made a disagreeable impression if it had not been for her eyes. They made up for all the sins her nose committed. They were remarkable eyes and, as we know, saw remarkable things too. They remained clear and bright even when she was very, very old,—young, blue eyes in an old, old dried-up face. Hans Unwirrsch never forgot them although later he looked into eyes much more beautiful still.

In a naÏve way Auntie Schlotterbeck was devoted to learning. She had tremendous respect for scholarship and especially for theological learning; little Hans owed her his first introduction to all those branches of learning which he later mastered more or less. She could have told fairy-tales to the Grimm brothers and when the wicked queen drove the golden needle into her hated stepdaughter's head Hans Unwirrsch felt the point way down to his diaphragm.

Hans and Auntie Schlotterbeck were inseparable companions during the first years of the boy's life. From early in the morning till late in the evening the seer of spirits had to fill his mother's place; nothing that concerned him was done without her advice and assistance; she satisfied his hunger for many things, but it was through her that he learnt to know hunger for many other things. Uncle GrÜnebaum growled often enough when he came to visit them; nothing good could come of such companionship with women, he said, the devil take them, one and all, odd and even; crochets, whimseys and spirit-imaginings were of no use to any man and only made him an addle-pate and a muddlehead. "It's nonsense! That's what I say and I'll stick to it."

In answer to such attacks Auntie Schlotterbeck merely shrugged her shoulders and Hans crept closer to her side. Growling, as he had come, Uncle GrÜnebaum departed;—he considered himself exceedingly practical and clear-headed and snorted contempt through his nose without stopping to think that even the best pipe stem may become clogged.

Hans Unwirrsch was a precocious child and learnt to speak almost before he learnt to walk; reading came as easily to him as playing. Auntie Schlotterbeck understood the difficult art well and only stumbled over words that were all too long or all too foreign. She liked to read aloud and with a whining pathos which made the greatest impression on the child. Her library was composed mainly of the Bible, hymn book and a long series of popular almanacs which followed one another without a break from the year 1790 and each of which contained a touching, a comic or a thrilling story besides a treasury of home and secret remedies and a fine selection of humorous anecdotes. For the lively imagination of a child an infinitely rich world was hidden in these old numbers, and spirits of all sorts rose out of them, smiled and laughed, grinned, threatened and led the young soul alternately through thrills of awe and ecstasies. When the rain pelted against the panes, when the sun shone into the room, when thunderstorms reached across the roofs with black arms of cloud and hurled their red flashes above the town, when the thunder rolled and the hail pattered and bounded on the street pavement, in some way all these things came to be connected with the figures and scenes in the almanacs and the heroes and heroines of the stories strode through good and bad weather, perfectly clear, plain and distinct, past dreamy little Hans who had laid his head in the old spirit-seer's lap. The story of "good little Jasper and pretty little Annie" struck a chord in his heart which continued to ring through Hans' whole life; but the "book of books," the Bible, made a still greater impression on the boy. The simple grandeur of the first chapters of Genesis cannot but overwhelm children as well as grown people, the poor in spirit as well as the millionaires of intellect. Infinitely credible are these stories of the beginnings of things and credible they remain even though every day it is more clearly proven that the world was not created in seven days. At Auntie Schlotterbeck's feet Hans lost himself with shuddering delight in the dark abyss of chaos: and the earth was without form and void;—till God divided the light from the darkness and the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament. When sun, moon and stars began their dance and God let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years, then he breathed freely again; and when the earth brought forth grass and herb and the tree yielding fruit, when the water, the air and the earth brought forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life and every winged fowl after his kind, then he clapped his little hands and felt that he stood on firm ground once more. The manner in which God breathed the breath of life into Adam was perfectly clear to him and of incontrovertible truth, whereas the first critical doubt arose in the child's mind when the woman was created out of the man's rib, for "that must hurt."

But following the simple stories of Paradise, of Cain and Abel, of the flood, came the numbering of the tribes with the long difficult names. These names were real bushes of thorns for reader and listener; they were pitfalls into which they pitched heels over head, they were stones over which they stumbled and fell on their noses. Ever again they untangled themselves, rose to their feet and toiled on with reverential solemnity: but the sons of Gomer are these: Ashkenez, Riphath and Togarmah; and the sons of Javan are: Elishah, Tarshish, Kittim and Dodanim.

But the days did not pass entirely in reading and telling stories. Just as soon as Hans Unwirrsch ceased throwing his hands about in half involuntary movements or stuffing them into his mouth, his mother and Auntie Schlotterbeck introduced him to the great principle of work. Auntie Schlotterbeck was an ingenious woman who earned a little extra money by dressing dolls for a large toy factory, an occupation which lay near enough to a child's sphere of interest and in which, before long, Hans gladly assisted. Ladies and gentlemen, peasant lads and lasses, shepherds and shepherdesses and many other merry little men and women of all classes and ages took form under the hands of Auntie Schlotterbeck, who worked bravely with glue and needle, pieces of bright-colored fabrics, gold and silver tinsel, and gave to each his share of these according to the price. It was a philosophic occupation and the worker might indulge in many thoughts while engaged in it; Hans Unwirrsch took to it kindly even though his childish joy in these toys naturally soon disappeared. He who grows up in a shop full of jumping-jacks cares little for the individual jumping-jack however motley may be his garb and however funnily he may jerk his arms and legs.

After Martinmas, which famous day could unfortunately not be celebrated by the consumption of a roast goose, manufacturing began as an independent undertaking. Auntie Schlotterbeck was now able to make the greatest profit out of her talent for plastic art; she built little men of raisins for the Christmas trade and others of prunes for more easily satisfied souls. The first prune-man that Hans completed without assistance gave him just as much pleasure as the disciple of art takes in the piece of work that wins for him a stipend with which to go to Italy. The opening of the Christmas-fair was a great event for the little modeler. Epic poets describe many feelings by explaining why they cannot describe them; Hans' feelings on this occasion were of that kind, and with rapture he carried the lantern ahead while, on a little cart, Auntie Schlotterbeck dragged her bench, her basket, her fire-pan and a little table to the fair.

The opening of the business, in an angle of the buildings that was sheltered from the keenest wind, was in itself a marvelous event. To crouch down under the big old umbrella, to fan the glowing coals in the fire-pan by blowing on them, to arrange the articles of trade on the table, the first quiet and yet expectant glance at the bustle of the fair—all these things had a heart-thrilling charm. The first prune-man that was bargained about, sold and bought, raised a genuine storm of ecstacy in the breast of Schlotterbeck & Company. Dinner, which a good-natured child from KrÖppel Street brought in an earthenware pot, tasted entirely different out on the open market-place from what it did at home in the dark room; but best of all was the evening with its fog, its gleaming lights and lamps, and its redoubled crowding and pushing and shouting and bustling.

The child could not always sit quietly on the bench beside the old woman. Spellbound, in spite of cold, in spite of rain and snow, he went on expeditions over the whole market-place and, as a partner in the firm of Schlotterbeck & Company, he pushed his chin onto the table of every other firm, with self-assurance and critical attitude.

At eight o'clock his mother came and took the younger partner of the firm of Schlotterbeck home; but this was not done without opposition, crying and struggling, and only the assurance that "there would be another day tomorrow," could, at last, persuade the tiny merchant prince to leave the business to the care of Auntie till the hour of closing at eleven o'clock.

One thing that belongs to this period of our hero's life must be reported. With the money gained by the sale of a raisin-man that he had made himself, he bought—another raisin-man from a commercial house which had established itself at the opposite end of the market. This bore witness to a quality which was of great importance in the boy's future development. Hans Unwirrsch, who made these black fellows for others, wanted to know where the pleasure lay in buying such a fellow oneself. He wanted to get to the bottom of this pleasure and naturally found no joy in this much too early analysing. When the pennies had been swept into the drawer by the seller and the purchaser held the creature in his hand, the full measure of regret took possession of him. Crying loudly he stood in the middle of the street and finally threw his purchase far away from him and ran off as fast as he could, swallowing the bitterest tears as he went. Neither Auntie nor his mother ever found out where the groschen, for which one could have bought up the whole fair, had gone.

Winter brings many joys, but with it come also the greatest hardships. We have to do with very poor people and poor people usually don't begin to live again till spring and the may-beetles come. Hundreds of thousands, millions of people might well envy those happy creatures that sleep through the cold days in comfortable unconsciousness.

After Christmas Eve, which was kept as well as it could be, came New Year's Day and after that the Three Wise Men of the East approached. The shades of many of those who were dead passed Auntie Schlotterbeck in the streets at this time, or entered the church with her and walked round the altar. After Candlemas some people said that the days were growing longer but it wasn't very noticeable yet. By the time the Annunciation came, however, the fact could no longer be denied; the snowdrops had dared to come out, the snow could no longer keep the world buried, the buds swelled and burst open, Auntie Schlotterbeck's nose lost much of its redness; when Hans' mother got up early in the morning now the lamp no longer shone through a frosty circle of vapor. Hans Unwirrsch no longer yelled blue murder in front of the wash basin, and his feet did not now have to be forced into his shoes. The means of keeping warm was no longer carted into town by loutish wood-cutters and sold at a "wicked price." The days now arrived when the sun shone for nothing and did not even ask a word of thanks. Palm Sunday came before anyone realized it and Easter started the weaving of the wreath which the festival of joy, the verdant, blooming, jubilant Whitsuntide pressed on the young year's brow. Auntie Schlotterbeck now did her knitting on the bench in front of the door, and earnestly and shyly Hans Unwirrsch watched Freudenstein, the junk-dealer across the street, as he pushed his little Moses, a delicate, thin, miserable little piece of humanity, well packed up in cushions and covers, out into the sun on a wheelchair.

Summary of Chapters III, IV and V

[The boy, Hans Unwirrsch, was much admired and spoilt by his mother and Auntie Schlotterbeck and it was a good thing for him when he grew to be of school age. He was sent to the charity school. It stood in a dark, blind alley and was a damp, one-story building in which the teacher, Karl SilberlÖffel, had to fight equally against gout and tuberculosis and against the rude boys and girls he taught. Hans was no better than his school-fellows. Just as at home he gradually sought to free himself from the absolute dominion of the women and began to criticize fairy tales and almanac stories, so too at school he joined his comrades with word and deed in all their mischievous enterprises against the helpless old master.

Here, however, Uncle GrÜnebaum's beneficial influence stepped in. Hans often visited his uncle in the latter's untidy workshop where he only did enough work to earn a scanty living for himself and his birds and to pay for the Post Courier which provided him with political reading. It was particularly interesting just at that time because the Greek struggle for independence against the Turks was raging and our cobbler, like Auntie Schlotterbeck, was an enthusiastic Philhellenist. He called Hans to account and tried to make it clear to him that he and his school-fellows would drive their consumptive master into his grave by their behavior and that it was no laughing matter to have a murder on one's conscience. He advised Hans to be careful that the devil did not take him, together with the other rogues, because of his conduct.

Such conversation had its effect. Hans did not take part in the next conspiracy, and did not regret the pummeling he received from the other boys on that account, for the next morning the teacher did not appear at school in consequence of a hemorrhage. Not long after he died. Uncle GrÜnebaum and Auntie Schlotterbeck were kind to him during his last illness, and Hans with Auntie Schlotterbeck stood beside the bed of the dying man. The exhausted man spoke of the bitterness of his life, but Auntie Schlotterbeck understood little and Hans nothing of what he said. He talked of how he had been hungry for love and thirsty for knowledge and of how everything else had been as nothing; of how he had lived in the shade and yet had been born for the light; of how shining, golden fruit had fallen all around him, while his hands were bound. Nothing had fallen to his share but his yearning, and that too was coming to an end. He would be satisfied—in death.

Much as Hans had felt the solemn shudder of death, on the day after the funeral, which had been attended by the whole charity school, he was already playing again merrily in the street. Snow had fallen in the night and a mighty snowman was built in KrÖppel Street. When he was finished and the boys were playing together, Moses Freudenstein, the junk-dealer's son, happened to get into the crowd. They formed a ring about him and made him hold out his hand to each in turn and every young Christian spit into it with a shout of scorn. Up to that hour Hans had howled with the wolves in such things too, but now it flashed through him in an instant that something very low and cowardly was being done. He did not spit into Moses' hand, but struck it away and, turning protector, started to do battle for the Jewish boy. A fearful fight ensued, the end of which was that Hans and Moses, dizzy, bruised, with bleeding mouths and swollen eyes, rolled down into the shop of the junk-dealer, Samuel Freudenstein. This hour had an incalculable influence on Hans Unwirrsch's life, for he rolled out of the street battle into relations which were to be infinitely important for him.

Samuel Freudenstein had seen more of the world than all the other NeustÄdians together. After extensive commercial journeys, especially in Southeastern Europe, he had settled in Neustadt and begun to trade in second-hand goods and junk, as heavy losses in a speculation prevented his embarking on a greater enterprise. He got on, and married, but his wife died at the birth of their son in 1819, on the very day when Hans Unwirrsch, too, was born. Samuel Freudenstein brought up his son in his own way, which in many respects differed widely from the curriculum of the charity school.

Samuel thanked Hans for the protection he had given Moses, and Hans' mother and Uncle GrÜnebaum allowed him to continue his visits to the Jew's house. Hans now discovered so many wonders in the gloom of the junkshop that for the first time his life seemed to be filled with real substance. At the same time he mounted a rung higher on the ladder of knowledge by entering the lowest class of the grammar school. On this occasion Uncle GrÜnebaum did not fail to make one of his finest and longest speeches and to present Hans with his first pair of high boots.

Now, too, for the first time Hans entered into a more intimate relation with the other sex. He found his first love, Sophie, the daughter of an apple-woman. With her cat, Sophie sat in her mother's booth opposite the school, sold her fruit with seriousness and had difficulty, on her way home, in defending herself and her cat from the rough schoolboys. Hans lent her his protection and he and Moses kept up a friendly intercourse with her through the spring and summer. But in the course of the winter one of the diseases of childhood carried her off, and her companion, the cat, did not long outlive her. The death of little Sophie and the cat made a deep impression on Hans. He did not become friends with any other girl at present; but from now on the second-hand shop gained an ever greater influence over him.

In this enchanted cave Hans saw the father, Samuel, going about, like a magician, with brush and glue-pot, stuffing birds and quadrupeds, collecting curious goblets and tankards, buying up odd portraits of other people's ancestors. He listened attentively when father and son talked of the history of their race, he lost himself completely in old Dutch descriptions of travel, with their copperplates, one day he even saw a real ostrich-egg. Moses was far ahead of Hans in all branches of knowledge. Samuel Freudenstein had taught his son that knowledge and money were the two most effective means of power and now they were both indefatigable, the son in acquiring the former, the father in accumulating the latter. Things were well classified in Moses' head, he could find what he wanted there, any minute;—he had never been a child, a real, true, natural child.

Hans Unwirrsch, on the other hand, remained a real child. His imagination still retained its dominion over his reason; the circle in which he stood, like any other human child, now expanded and became filled with ever gayer, brighter, more enticing figures, scenes and dreams.

One evening Hans came meditatively out of the darkness of the junkshop, hurried across to his mother's house and there, in answer to Auntie Schlotterbeck's questions, blurted out that Moses was going to learn Latin and go to the "Gymnasium" while he should have to be a cobbler and stay a cobbler all his life. Unfortunately for Hans these words were overheard by Uncle GrÜnebaum, who happened to be present and whom Hans had not noticed. There followed a dangerous scene. First Auntie Schlotterbeck had to protect Hans so that his indignant relative, as uncle, godfather, guardian, and master of the laudable trade of shoemaking, did not half kill him but merely squeezed him between his knees and talked urgently to him till Hans, yielding to the double pressure, declared himself to be in thorough agreement with his uncle's views. Then Auntie Schlotterbeck changed from defence to attack. She read Uncle GrÜnebaum a lecture on his own conduct, reminding him that he was not looked up to anywhere but on the bench behind his mug of beer in the "Red Ram," that he neglected his house and trade and was indeed no shining example of what the trade of shoemaking turned out. When she finally threatened to call Frau Christine to her aid the doughty cobbler speedily took a flight.

In the evening, however, he appeared as a hero in the "Red Ram," where he conducted himself like a great politician, for which rÔle the news, which had just come, of the outbreak of a revolution in Paris, offered him a splendid opportunity. He finally went to bed rather tipsy and fully convinced of his greatness, and slept the sleep of the just, which Hans Unwirrsch did not do, nor his mother, nor Auntie Schlotterbeck either.]

Chapter VI

A lovely, fine night had followed the day; the moon shone above all Europe and its peoples. All the clouds had been driven away and now lay loweringly on the Atlantic Ocean: all who could sleep, slept; but not everyone could sleep.

Bridal night and night of death in one! Through the woods the brooks flashed their silver sparks; the great streams flowed on, calm and shining. The woods, meadows and fields, the lakes, rivers and brooks—they were all in full harmony with the moon, but the odd pygmy-folk, men, in their cities and villages, far from being in harmony with themselves, left much to be desired in that respect. If she had not been the "gentle" moon, if she had not had a good reputation to maintain, she would not have lighted mankind, in spite of all the poets and lovers. She was gentle, and shone;—moreover, perhaps, she was touched by the confidence of the municipal authorities, who depended on her, and on her account did not light the street lamps.

She shone with the same brilliance and calm on all Europe—on the poor, tumultuous city of Paris where so many dead still lay unburied and so many wounded wrestled with death, and on the tiny town of Neustadt in its wide, peaceful valley. She glanced softly into the over-crowded hospitals and morgues;—she glanced softly into the traveling-coach of Charles X. and not less softly into the low chamber in which lay Christine Unwirrsch with her boy.

The child slept, but the mother lay awake and could not sleep for thinking of what she had heard when she came home so tired after her hard work.

It had taken her a long time to understand the confused report that Hans and Auntie Schlotterbeck had given; she was a simple woman who needed time before she could grasp anything that lay beyond her daily work and her poor household. To be sure, when once she did understand a thing she could analyze it properly and intelligently and consider and weigh the pros and cons of every detail; but she could scarcely understand in its broadest outlines this, her child's, aspiration out of the darkness toward the light.

She only knew that in this child the same hunger had now made itself apparent, from which her Anton had suffered, that hunger which she did not understand and for which she nevertheless had such respect, that hunger which had so tormented her beloved, sainted husband, the hunger for books and for the marvelous things which lay hidden in them. The years which had passed since her husband had been carried to the grave had not blurred a single remembrance. In the heart and mind of the quiet woman the good man still lived with all his peculiarities, even the smallest and most insignificant of which death had transfigured and transformed into a good quality. How he paused in his work to gaze for minutes into the glass globe in front of his lamp in self-forgetfulness, how on his walks, on a beautiful holiday, he would suddenly stand still and look at the ground and at the blue dome above, how at night he woke and sat awake for hours in bed, murmuring unconnected words—all that was not, and never could be, forgotten. How the good man had toiled on at his trade between sighs and flushes of joy, cheerful and depressed moods,—how in his rare leisure hours he had studied so hard and, above all, what hopes he had set on his son and with what wonderful aspirations he had dreamt of this son's future—all lay clear before Christine Unwirrsch's soul.

The mother raised herself on her pillow and looked over at her child's bed. The moonlight played on the counterpane and the pillows and transfigured the face of the sleeping boy who had cried himself to sleep after telling his sorrowful tale, and on whose cheeks the traces of tears were still to be seen, although he now smiled again in his slumber and knew no more of the day's trouble. Round about the town of Neustadt the birds of night stirred in the bushes and along the edges of the streams and ponds; the night-watchman's hoarse voice sounded now near, now far; the clocks of the two churches quarreled about the right time and were of very different opinions; all the bats and owls of Neustadt were very lively, knowing their hours exactly and never making a mistake of a minute; mice squeaked in the wall of the bedroom and one mouse rustled under Mrs. Christine's bed; a bluebottle that could not sleep either flew about buzzing, now here, now there, now banging his head against the window, now against the wall and seeking in vain for some way out; in the next room the grandfather's chair behind the stove cracked and there was such a weird and ghostly pattering and creeping about in the attic that it was hard to adhere to the soothing belief in "cats." Mrs. Christine Unwirrsch, who, being gifted with a foreboding mind, usually had a keen and fearful ear for all the noises and sounds of the night and who did not in the least doubt the penetration of the spirit-world into her bedroom, had no time in this night to listen to these things and get goose-flesh in consequence. Her heart was too full of other matters and the ghosts that roam between earth and heaven and play at will on the nerves of men had no power over her. The mother felt her responsibility for the destiny of her child weigh heavy upon her and although she was a poor, ignorant woman she was not therefore less concerned; indeed, her concern was perhaps greater because her idea of her child's desire was incomplete and inadequate.

She looked long at sleeping Hans till the moon glided on in the firmament and the rays slipped from the bed and slowly retired toward the window. When at last complete darkness filled the room she sighed deeply and whispered:

"His father wished it, and no one shall set himself against his father's will. God will surely help me, poor, stupid woman that I am, to make it come out right. His father wished it and the child shall have his way according to his father's will."

She rose quietly from her couch and crept out of the room with bare feet, so as not to wake the sleeping boy. In the living room she lit the lamp. She sat down for a few moments on her husband's work-chair and wiped the tears from her eyes; and then she carried the light to that chest in the corner of which we have already told, knelt down and opened the ancient lock which offered obstinate resistance to the key as long as possible.

When the lid was laid back the room was filled with the scent of clean linen and dried herbs, rosemary and lavender. This chest contained everything precious and valuable that Mrs. Christine possessed and carefully she controlled herself so that no tear should fall into it. Carefully she laid back the white and colored linen, smoothing each fold as she did so; carefully she laid aside the little boxes with old, trivial knickknacks, broken, cheap jewelry, loose amber beads, bracelets of colored glass beads and similar treasures of the poor and of children, until, nearly at the bottom of the chest, she came to what she was seeking in the stillness of the night. With timid hand she first pulled out a little case with a glass cover; her head sank lower as she opened it. It contained Master Anton's book of songs and on the book lay a dried myrtle wreath. It was as if distant bells, the tones of an organ trembled through the night and through the soul of the kneeling woman; Auntie Schlotterbeck did not see the dead alive more clearly and distinctly than Christine Unwirrsch saw them at that moment. She folded her hands above the open case and her lips moved softly. No other prayer came to her mind but "Our Father" and that sufficed.

A second case stood beside the first, an old box made of oak, trimmed with iron, with a strong lock, an ingenious piece of work belonging to the seventeenth century, which had been in the possession of the Unwirrsches for generations. Mrs. Christine carried this box to the table and before she opened it she put everything back in its place in the chest; she loved order in all things and did nothing in haste even now.

It was a bright light that the little lamp and the hanging glass globe gave, but the box on the table, black with age as it was, outshone them both, its contents spoke louder of the preciousness of parents' love than if its price had been announced by a thousand trumpets in all the marketplaces of the world. The lock turned, the lid sprang open: money was in the box!—much, much money—silver coins of all kinds and even one gold piece wrapped in tissue paper. Rich people might well have smiled at the treasure but if they had had to pay the true value of every thaler and florin all their riches might not have sufficed to buy the contents of the black box. Hunger and sweat had been paid for every coin and a thousand noble thoughts and beautiful dreams clung to each. A thousand hopes lay in the dark box, Master Anton had hidden his purest self in it, and Christine Unwirrsch had added all her love and her faithfulness.

Who, just looking at the scanty heap of well-fingered pieces of money, could have imagined all this?

A little book, consisting of a few sheets of gray paper stitched together, lay beside the money; the father's hand had filled the first pages with letters and figures but then death had closed worthy Master Anton's account and for many years now the mother had done the bookkeeping, by faith, without letters and figures, and the account still balanced.

How often had Christine Unwirrsch gone hungry to bed, how often had she suffered all possible hardships without yielding to the temptation to reach out her hand for the black box! In every form distress had approached her in her miserable widowhood, but she had resisted with heroism. Even without letters and figures, she could render her account at any moment;—it was not her fault if the happy, honorable future which the dead man had dreamt of for his son did not rise out of the black box.

Mrs. Christine sat in front of the table for more than an hour that night, counting on her fingers and calculating, while across the street in a little back room of the junk-dealer's house a man also sat figuring and counting. Samuel Freudenstein, too, was sitting up for his sleeping boy's sake. More than a few rolls of gold pieces, more than a few rolls of silver pieces lay before him; he had more to throw into his child's scales of fortune than the poor widow.

"I will arm him with everything that is a weapon," he murmured. "They shall find him prepared in every way, and he shall laugh at them. He shall become a great man; he shall have everything that he wants. I was a slave, he shall be a master among a strange people, and I will live in his life. He has a good head, a sharp eye; he will make his way. He shall think of his father when he has reached the height; I will live in his life."

The widow divided her scanty day's wages into two parts. The greater part fell into the oak box and was added to the other savings of long years of toil, and the small coins gave a clear ring. Samuel Freudenstein added more than a hundred shining thalers to his son's fortune; no one in KrÖppel Street as much as suspected what a rich man the junk-dealer had again gradually grown to be.

The moonlight had entirely disappeared from the widow's bedroom when she crept shiveringly back from the living room. Hans Unwirrsch still slept soundly and not even the kiss that his mother pressed on his forehead waked him. The lamp too went out and Mrs. Christine soon slept as peacefully as her child. About the bed of King Solomon stood sixty strong men with swords in their hands, skilled in battle, "for the sake of the fear in the night;" but at the head of the widow and her child there stood a spirit that kept better watch than all the armed men in Israel.

Throughout nearly the whole summer the battle with Uncle GrÜnebaum went on. It was long since the world had seen such an obstinate cobbler. Tears, pleadings, and remonstrances did not soften, touch or convince him. A man who could hold his own with the Seven Wise Masters, in every respect, could not be moved from his standpoint so easily by two silly women and a stupid boy. He had resolved in his shaggy, manly breast that Hans Unwirrsch, like all the other Unwirrsches and GrÜnebaums, should become a shoemaker and with a mocking whistle he repulsed every attack on his understanding, his reason and his heart. Scarcely a day passed on which he did not with his piping rouse Auntie Schlotterbeck from her calm. The more irritated the women grew, the hotter in their arguments, the sharper in their words, the more melodious did Uncle GrÜnebaum become. He generally accompanied the beginning of every new discussion with a valiant, warlike tune and brought the conversation to a vain conclusion with the most melting, yearning melodies.

"Master GrÜnebaum, Master GrÜnebaum," cried Auntie, "if the child is unhappy later it will be your fault—your fault alone! I have never seen a man like you in all my born days."

Whether Prince Eugene's song was sung as an answer to these words was open to doubt: Master GrÜnebaum whistled it like "himself a Turk."

"Oh, Niklas," cried his sister, "what kind of a man are you? He is such a good child and his teachers are so satisfied with him and his father wanted him to learn everything that there is to learn. Think of Anton, Niklas, and do give in, please do, I beg you to."

Uncle GrÜnebaum did not give in for a long time yet. He expressed the thought that cobbling was also a fine, meditative, learned business and that "trade is the mother of money," very strikingly by means of the melody: "The linen-weavers have a fine old guild," but refused to say more.

"That's right, go on whistling!" screamed Auntie Schlotterbeck with her arms angrily akimbo. "Go on whistling, you fool! But I tell you, you may stand on your head, the child shall go to the great schools and the universities nevertheless. Sit there like a blind bullfinch and go on whistling. Cousin Christine, don't cry, don't show him you care, it only gives him a wicked pleasure. Such a tyrant! Such a barbarian! And after all, it's your child, not his! But the Lord will set things right, I know, so do take your apron from your eyes. Keep on whistling now, Master GrÜnebaum, but remember, you'll answer for it by and by; think what you will say to Master Anton up above when the time comes!"

It seemed as if when the time came Uncle GrÜnebaum intended to justify himself to his sainted brother-in-law by the beautiful song: "A squirrel sat on the thorny hedge"—at least he whistled it with pensive emotion, and twiddled his thumbs in accompaniment.

"Oh, Niklas, what a hard-hearted man you are!" sobbed his sister. "Auntie is right, you will never be able to justify yourself for what you are doing to your brother-in-law's child——"

"And it's better to be a rag-picker than such a shiftless cobbler who wastes the time God has given him at the beer table in the Red Ram. And a creature like that wants to balk and kick out behind if a poor child wants to get ahead! If he'd only wash his hands and comb his hair, the fellow! I'd like to see anybody that would want to take him for an example and a model. There isn't anybody else like him and a man like that wants to keep others from washing themselves and being an honor to their parents. But I build on God, Master GrÜnebaum. He'll show you what you really are. It's really absurd that a man wants to play the guardian who can't even guard himself."

The melody "Kindly moon, thou glidest softly" must have a very soothing effect indeed on human feelings; Uncle GrÜnebaum whistled it meltingly as long as Auntie Schlotterbeck continued to speak, and however great may have been the anger that boiled in his breast, the world saw nothing of it. When Hans Unwirrsch came home from school with his bag of books he found the two women in a very excited state with scarlet faces, and his uncle quite composed, even-tempered and calm;—he did indeed guess what they had been talking about again but he seldom learnt any of the details of the discussion.

Usually Uncle GrÜnebaum took his departure while whistling a hymn or some other solemn air and at the same time pinching poor Hans' ear with a grin; Mephistopheles might have envied him his smile and after he had gone the women generally dropped on the nearest chairs, exhausted and broken in spirit, and for several hours were incapable of believing in human and divine justice.

In the cornfields the scythes flashed and swished; Uncle GrÜnebaum had still not given in. Without the aid of any wind all kinds of fruit detached themselves from the branches and fell to the ground; Uncle GrÜnebaum held more obstinately to his opinion than ever. Silver threads spread over the earth and wavered through the air: Uncle GrÜnebaum did not waver with them but laughed scornfully from his low three-legged stool. The foliage in the woods changed daily to an ever gayer hue, but Uncle GrÜnebaum's view of the world and life did not change. Moses Freudenstein boasted more and more proudly in his triumph, and Hans Unwirrsch's expression grew more and more miserable and depressed. The song-birds chirped their last melodies and prepared for their flight to the South: Uncle GrÜnebaum joined in the chirping, but he put his trust in the psalmist's promise "so shalt thou dwell in the land and verily thou shalt be fed," for he was too thoroughly convinced that he was indispensable in Neustadt, in the "Red Ram" and in his family. No Deus ex machina descended to bring aid to poor Hans and so he finally had no alternative but to help himself. He carried out a plan which had required a long time to mature in his mind, thus throwing Auntie Schlotterbeck and his mother into giddy amazement and putting his stiff-necked Uncle GrÜnebaum entirely beside himself.

One Sunday morning at the beginning of September Professor Blasius Fackler, doctor of philosophy and one of the lights of the local "Gymnasium," ruled alone in his house and felt safe and comfortable, as he seldom did, in his study.

His wife with her two daughters was at church, in all probability praying to God to forgive her for the agitated hours which she occasionally caused the "good man," that is, her lord and master. The maid had absented herself on private business; the house was still, it was indeed a gray day that looked into the study filled with clouds of tobacco smoke, but the joyful soul of the professor roamed over a blue welkin with the song-book of Quintus Valerius Catullus and drank in the ecstatic moments of freedom,—

He strolled in the shade of the pomegranates and pines by the lake of Benakus on the blessed peninsula of Sirmio and the sparkling rhythmic waves of the Roman poet washed into nothingness all thoughts of the present and of that Lesbia who at that moment was singing sharply and shrilly in the church. He failed to hear the sound of the doorbell, did not catch the timidly soft tread that mounted the stairs; he was not roused till something scratched and tapped gently at his door. Quickly the Latin rogue Catullus hid himself under a heap of more serious scholarly equipment, and with dignity the professor and doctor of philosophy called:

"Come in!"

No one accepted the invitation and it was repeated more loudly, but this time too without success. Bewildered, the scholar rose from his chair, drew his long dressing-gown tight about him, and now with still greater amazement admitted a tiny laddie of about eleven years into his study, a laddie who trembled in every joint and over whose cheeks the tears ran down. No one was present at the interview that this visitor had with Professor Fackler and we cannot give the details of the conversation. Only this we can say, that when Lesbia returned from church with her two daughters, the charming pledges of the "thousands and thousands of kisses," she found her husband in a very pleased mood. He did not give her the attention which she expected from him but continued to straddle up and down the room and to murmur:

"I declare! A plucky little fellow! Puer tenax propositi! He shall have his way! By all the gods of Olympus he shall attain what he desires and may it be of benefit to him!"

"What shall be of benefit? Of benefit to whom, Blasius?" asked Lesbia, laying down her hymn-book.

"Someone shall be taken by the heel and dipped into the Styx, dearest, so that he may be proof against the afflictions of life and emerge victorious from the battle of men."

"This is one of your silly, incomprehensible days, Blasius," cried Mrs. Fackler, with vexation and looked as if she would have liked to give her husband a good shaking. Fortunately, however, at that moment Eugenia and Cornelia came running in and hung on their father's arms with all kinds of childish questions and requests. The latter pointed to their mother and quoted with hollow voice:

drew on his coat, put on his hat, took his stick, went out and—paid a visit to Uncle GrÜnebaum. Uncle Nikolaus GrÜnebaum, however, to his own "highest perplexity" made a long, beautiful speech that afternoon in KrÖppel Street to the accompaniment of some most excellent coffee which Auntie Schlotterbeck had brewed, and expressed himself more or less in the following expectoration:

"Inasmuch as a cobbler is a noble and honorable calling yet nevertheless all the children of men cannot be cobblers, but there must also be other people, tailors, bakers, carpenters, masons and such like, so that every feeling and sentiment may be provided for and no sense be left without its necessary protection. But also because there are other wants in the world and man needs much before and prior to the time when he needs nothing more, there are also advocates and doctors more than too many and in addition professors and pastors more than enough. But God lets things go on as they will and the devil takes one and all, odd and even, which is to say that a boy who wants to choose his occupation must look far ahead and consider carefully in which direction his bent lies, for it has happened more than once that an ass has thought that he could play the lute. But it isn't everyone who can make a boot either, it isn't as easy as it looks. Now there are present here Christine Unwirrsch, widow of the late Anton Unwirrsch, secondly the unmarried spinster Schlotterbeck, also a very good specimen of sound common sense and natural ability. Moreover, there is present, Master Nik'las GrÜnebaum, who am not up in the air, either, but without wanting to boast, stand squarely on my feet. Before these three there stands the individual whom the matter concerns, Hans Jakob Nik'las Unwirrsch, who at least has demonstrated himself to be a youth of courage and who has sought to trip up his dearest relatives behind their backs. Such a little bantam!"

Both women raised their hands to beseech the blessing of heaven on the youthful genius, Hans Unwirrsch; but his uncle continued.

"When the professor stood in front of me all of a sudden, I said to myself, 'Steady, GrÜnebaum, hold on to your chair!' Such a boy! But the professor is an estimable, reasonable, pleasant gentleman and so the long and short of the matter is this, that from half past eleven this morning on, I will have nothing more to do with it and will wash my hands."

"In which you do very well, Master GrÜnebaum," said Auntie Schlotterbeck.

"And so things may go as they like, the devil takes both odd and even!" concluded Uncle GrÜnebaum.

"Nik'las!" cried Mrs. Christine, irritated, "I hope that my son will never have to do with the devil either in an odd or even way, and as for letting things go as they like, I hope he won't do that either."

"Come, come, don't be sacrilegious and touchy," growled her brother. "Well then, what I and Professor Fackler wanted to say, as an over-learned individual is still a man after all, you shall have your way, my boy, as far as we are concerned. Enough, I have said it! And I don't suppose the highly laudable profession of cobbling will lose any miracle in you, scamp."

The mother's feelings found relief in a stream of tears, Auntie Schlotterbeck nearly melted away with joyful emotion; Hans Unwirrsch was never able afterwards to give an account of his feelings in that hour, either to himself or to others. But the person who remained entirely unmoved and calm, or seemed to, was Uncle GrÜnebaum. He complacently pressed the tobacco down in his short pipe with his cobbler's thumb, closed the lid carefully like a man who has done a good work and who at most will allow the credit that rightly belongs to him to be entered in the great ledger of heaven.

But however he might appear, he had lost his power over his nephew and could never regain it. From the moment when Hans Unwirrsch gave the rudder of his life such an effective jerk with his own small hand, he confronted the worthy master with a fully enfranchised will of his own and the latter's amazement and bewilderment were only the more boundless, the greater the equanimity that he displayed.

Destinies had to be fulfilled and Hans Unwirrsch started on the road that Anton Unwirrsch had not been allowed to travel. The following noon Auntie Schlotterbeck met the deceased master; he was bent and hung his head in his usual manner, but he smiled contentedly.

Summary of Chapter VII

[Hans and Moses now worked on from class to class through the "Gymnasium." But the way that led through the vocabulary, declinations and conjugations to the open and sunny clearness of classical antiquity was considerably more difficult for Hans than for Moses, for the former wanted to realize the beauty of the classic age in his imagination, while the latter contented himself with the effort to understand it and to master the languages in which it has come down to us. But in every act of mental work Moses' highest aim was to forge weapons with which to meet the world. He despised or smiled at everyone who did not, like himself, sacrifice all other qualities in order to forge and whet the keen-edged sword of reason, and excepted neither his "half-childish" father nor his good-natured friend. Hans Unwirrsch, on the contrary, did not forget what he owed to his parents' self-denial and heroism, and all the sacrifices that poverty demanded of him became for him precious duties, as is ever the case with noble natures. Professor Fackler remained his paternal friend and also put him in the way of making his first earnings by recommending him as a tutor for the two sons of the director of a government office named TrÜffler. At the same time this afforded Hans the opportunity to see something of so-called "higher social life." Although it was only with the deepest humility that he raised his eyes to the goddesses of this other world, the director's daughters, yet there were times when he was in danger of despising Uncle GrÜnebaum and underestimating Auntie Schlotterbeck. Against his will, however, the sardonic Moses rendered him valuable service in this respect. The latter analyzed Hans' feelings to him and explained that he was tormented by envy. Once having recognized this condition the value of his mother's home became clear to him again and he was irresistibly drawn back into its simple, heart-refreshing atmosphere.]

Chapter VIII

Uncle GrÜnebaum in holiday raiment was a dignified, substantial, self-assured and firm figure. Whoever took a fleeting glance at him at first was usually so pleasantly surprised that he followed the glance with steady observation lasting some minutes, observation which Uncle GrÜnebaum either permitted with admirable composure or put an end to by an inimitable: "Well?" according to the person who made it.

In his Sunday raiment Uncle Nik'las GrÜnebaum stood at the corner opposite the "Gymnasium" and resembled an angel in so far as he wore a long blue coat which, to be sure, as far as the cut was concerned, had little in common with the garments in saints' pictures. The waist of this coat had been placed by the manufacturer as near as possible to the back of the neck and two non plus ultra buttons marked its beginning. The pockets showed themselves plainly in the lower region of the coat-tails and a short pipe with gracefully dangling tassels looked curiously out of one of them. Uncle GrÜnebaum wore a yellow and brown striped waistcoat and trousers of a greenish blue color, somewhat too short but of agreeable construction, too tight above, too wide below. The watch charms which swung beneath the stomach of the worthy man would really deserve several pages of description, and we will say nothing of his hat, for fear that we should then be carried irresistibly beyond the limits of the space at our disposal.

Wherefore did Uncle GrÜnebaum, dressed in his Sunday clothes on an ordinary week-day, stand at the corner opposite the "Gymnasium"? Tell us, Oh Muse, the reason of this! You have observed Master Nik'las long enough, eloquent calliope, turn your divine eye toward the school-house and tell us, like a good girl who hasn't it in her heart to let anyone dangle long, what is going on in there!

Truly, there was reason enough for more than one of the persons who have been mentioned in these pages to be excited, for on this Wednesday before Maundy Thursday Hans Unwirrsch and Moses Freudenstein were taking their final examination and, if they should pass, would thus conclude their school life.

That was why Uncle GrÜnebaum had taken an unusual holiday and stood at the corner in festive attire, that was why he held his position in the market-day crowd with an obstinacy that deserved recognition, that was why he plucked so convulsively at the coat buttons of those acquaintances who incautiously inquired into the reason of his unusually elaborate get-up. It was most unwillingly that Master GrÜnebaum let go of any of the buttons that he took hold of that day. His soul was full of the important event. It might be regarded from almost too many points of view! If what was going on over there in the school-house should turn out as was expected and desired, whom would the world have to thank for it? None other than the honorable Master GrÜnebaum! When the confused neighbor or acquaintance had finally torn himself out of Master GrÜnebaum's grasp, he was far from being clear for some minutes as to who it was that was being examined by Professor Fackler, Uncle GrÜnebaum or Uncle GrÜnebaum's nephew, Hans Unwirrsch.

At twelve o'clock the examination was to be over and from moment to moment Uncle GrÜnebaum's nervous system vibrated more and more violently. He took off his hat and wiped his forehead with his handkerchief; he clapped it on again, pushed it back, pushed it forward, to the right and to the left. He took his long coat-tails under his arms and dropped them again; he blew his nose so that the report could be heard three streets off. He began to talk aloud to himself and gesticulated much at the same time, to the high edification of all the male and female gapers in the shop doors and behind the windows nearby. The market-women whose path he had blocked all the morning, often set down their baskets of eggs and vegetables and their cans of milk in order to make him budge, at least morally, but he was deaf to their pointed suggestions. On that day he would have let even a dog treat him contemptuously.

At a quarter to twelve he drank his sixth glass of bitters in the nearest grocer's shop and it was high time that he did so, for he felt so weak on his feet that he was nearly ready to fall. From now on he held his watch, an heirloom for which a collector of curiosities would have paid much money, convulsively in his trembling hand and when the clock of the town church struck twelve he nearly went home and to bed, "finished and done for."

He drank another glass of bitters; it was the seventh, and together with the others it had its effect, and its consequences were more noticeable than those of the previous ones.

Uncle GrÜnebaum now leant firmly against the wall; he smiled through tears. From time to time he made gestures of warding something off as if he would drive uninvited feelings back within bounds; it was fortunate for him that at this hour the younger portion of the population was abandoning itself to the pleasures of the dinner table—this spared him many affronts and ironical remarks. He began to attract the attention of the police and they, maternally concerned about him, gave him the advice not to wait any longer but to go home, the result of which was only that he leant still more firmly against the wall and with displeased grunts, snorts and hiccoughs gave utterance to his intention to wait at that corner for "the lad" till doomsday. Since as yet he did not seriously disturb the public peace, the police retired a little but kept a sharp eye upon him ready at any moment to spring forward and seize him.

Fortunately not only the laudable protectors of public safety watched over Master Nik'las but also his guardian angel, or rather, the latter just returned from attending to some private business, to resume his watch. He saw with horror how matters stood and it was most probably due to his mediation that over in the school-house a violent shock ran suddenly through the learned soul of Professor Fackler as he remembered his Lesbia waiting for him to come home to dinner. He glanced hastily at his watch and jumped from his seat; the other gentlemen rustled after him, secundum ordinem. The candidates, before whose eyes everything had gradually begun to swim, rose also, dizzy, sweating and exhausted. Uncle GrÜnebaum now had to keep his balance for only a short quarter of an hour more;—at a quarter to one he sank, he fell, he toppled into the arms of his pale, excited nephew—Victory! Hans Unwirrsch had triumphed, Master GrÜnebaum had triumphed; the one over the questions of seven examining instructors, the other over the seven glasses of bitters—Victory!

Professor Fackler wanted to go up to Hans' uncle to congratulate him but refrained in shocked surprise when he recognized the excellent man's upset condition; Moses Freudenstein, primus inter pares, laughed not a little at the helpless and piteous glances that Hans Unwirrsch threw in all directions; the happiness of the hour however had made his heart softer than usual, he offered to aid his friend, and between the two youths the jolly old boy Nik'las GrÜnebaum made for KrÖppel Street, smiling and babbling, staggering and sobbing.

What did it matter that as soon as he got into the low, dark room Uncle GrÜnebaum dropped onto the nearest chair, laid his arms on the table and his head on his arms? What did Mother Christine and Auntie Schlotterbeck care about Uncle GrÜnebaum in this hour? They left him entirely to himself and to his seven glasses of bitters! The two women were almost as bewildered and confused as the master; they sobbed and smiled at the same time, as he had sobbed and smiled and Hans was not behind them in emotion and jubilance.

The day was won by the two boys from KrÖppel Street; Moses Freudenstein of course had passed first among all the candidates; but Hans Unwirrsch had achieved the second place.

Everything in the room looked different from usual; a magic light had spread over everything. It was no wonder that the glass globe shone; it was too intimate with the sun not to sparkle on such a day as if it were a little sun itself. Anyone who looked at it carefully saw that more was reflected in it than he would have suspected: laughing and weeping faces, bits of the walls, a part of KrÖppel Street with a piece of blue sky, the royal Westphalian body-servant and the junk-dealer Samuel Freudenstein who pulled the said servant from his hook with strange haste and shut the shutters and door of his house.

Auntie Schlotterbeck saw this occurrence, which was reflected in the hanging globe, through the window and was just about to give vent to her wonder at it when Uncle GrÜnebaum raised his tired head from the table and began to survey his surroundings with more than astonished glances. He rubbed his eyes, ran his fingers through his hair and took his place once more in the family circle with the remark that any excess of joy and jubilance was very dangerous and might bring on attacks of something like apoplexy, as his "own bodily example" had just shown. With his senses he had regained in rich measure the gift of dulcet speech and as usual immediately made liberal use of it.

"So this young man here, our nephew and descendant, has been an honor to his beloved relatives and now it's certain that cobbling isn't the thing for him. He has now successfully put his head through the hole according to his desire, and thus with time and experience will probably be able to squeeze body and legs through also, and we may certainly be of good hope that he will not forget us on this side of the wall when he has drawn his feet after his head. There are indeed instances of examples to show that a genius will get his head wrenched in pushing himself through and that he consequently loses all memory of what is behind the wall and who is there and has helped to push with all his strength. But this Hans here present will remember his uncle, also his mother and, of course, don't let us forget, Auntie Schlotterbeck. He will ever recall what they have done for him and how he can never thank them enough for it. There he stands now, Christine Unwirrsch, nÉe GrÜnebaum; there he stands, Auntie Schlotterbeck, and his head is full of good things and the tears run over his cheeks, so that it is a joyful spectacle and a painful pleasure. We will not deny that he has learnt more than what's right and reasonable, and if Auntie questions him in Greek he will answer in Hebrew. So let us be thankful for the good gift and not trouble ourselves about the devil's taking one and all, odd and even. Come here, my boy, and even if you did once infamously despise the most honorable trade, and are at present nearer to a pastor than to the pitch-cobbler GrÜnebaum, yet come here and embrace me; from the bottom of his heart your uncle says 'here's to you' on this your day of honor!"

There was sense in the nonsense that Uncle GrÜnebaum delivered with such pathos; but even if it had been nothing but drivel Hans would have thrown himself into the worthy man's wide open arms notwithstanding. After hugging and squeezing his uncle for some minutes he kissed his mother over again, then once more went through the same process with Auntie Schlotterbeck, striving all the time to express his overflowing feelings in words.

"Oh, how shall I thank you all for what you have done for me!" he cried. "Oh Mother, if only my father were still alive!"

At this exclamation of her son's his mother naturally broke into loud sobs; but Auntie Schlotterbeck merely folded her hands in her lap, nodded her head and smiled without giving utterance to her thoughts. All at once however she rose quickly from her chair, seized Mrs. Christine by the skirt and pointed mysteriously to the window.

They all looked in the direction she indicated, but no one else saw anything. KrÖppel Street lay bathed in the noonday sunshine but none of its inhabitants was to be seen; the junk-dealer's house looked as if its inmates had deserted it half a century ago; only a cat made use of the quiet moment to cross the street cautiously.

"She is enough to give one the shivers in broad daylight," murmured Uncle GrÜnebaum with a timid sidelong glance at Auntie Schlotterbeck; the mother clasped her son's hand tighter and drew him nearer to her; whatever may have been Hans' opinion of Auntie Schlotterbeck's mysterious gifts he was not able at that moment to defend himself against the feeling that her behavior aroused in him.

What a waking was that on the morning after this difficult and happy day! A victor who has triumphantly pitched his tent on a conquered battlefield, a young girl who has become engaged the evening before at a ball, may perhaps wake with the same feelings as Hans Unwirrsch after his examination. The nerves have not yet grown calm but one is permeated by the blissful feeling that they have time to become calm. After-tremors of the great excitement still twitch through the soul but in spite of that, nay, just on that account, one has a sense of security approaching ecstasy. What remains of human happiness if we subtract from it the hope that goes before the struggle, before the attainment of the desire and these first confused, indistinct moments that follow it?

Summa cum laude! smiled the sun that played about the bed in which Hans Unwirrsch lay with half-closed eyelids. Summa cum laude! twittered the early sparrows and swallows in front of his window. Summa cum laude! cried the bells that rang in Maundy Thursday. Summa cum laude! said Hans Unwirrsch as he stood in the middle of his room and made a low bow—to himself.

He had not quite finished dressing when his mother slipped into the room. She had left her shoes below, near the stairs, so as not to wake Auntie Schlotterbeck, whose bedroom was next to that of Hans. She sat down on her son's bed and regarded him with simple pride and her glance did him good to the inmost recesses of his soul.

Downstairs the holiday coffee was waiting and Auntie Schlotterbeck sat at the table. She had left her shoes upstairs by her bedroom door so as not to wake the student and Mrs. Christine, and their consideration of one another gave rise to much laughter. There was a piece of jubilee cake too and although Maundy Thursday is only a half holiday, as every toiler knows, it was settled that it was to be kept as a whole one.

First, of course, they went to church after Hans had knocked again vainly at the junk-dealer's door. Since old Samuel had taken the body-servant of King Jerome from his hook and thus removed him forever from what to him in truth had been the swirl and swing of life, the door had not been opened again. What was going on behind it was a riddle to KrÖppel Street, but a still greater riddle to Hans who had not seen his friend since they had walked home together after the examination and who had returned unsuccessful from every attempt to penetrate into the house opposite. Murx, the retired town constable, who still kept watch on KrÖppel Street, from his armchair, in helpless fury and goutier than ever, had already drawn the attention of his successor in office to the "confoundedly suspicious case;" indeed, the burgomaster had already shaken his head over it. The silent house began to disturb the peace of the town more than the most drunken brawler could have done.

But the bells called people to church, and along came Uncle GrÜnebaum, in his blue coat, sea-green breeches and striped waistcoat, armed with the mightiest of all hymnbooks as a shield against all bitter and sweet temptations, an ornament to every street through which he marched, an adornment to every gathering of Christians, politicians and civilized men that he honored with his presence.

Hans and his mother walked hand in hand and at Auntie Schlotterbeck's side strode Uncle GrÜnebaum, who lost a little of his self-conscious respectability only when he turned the corner where the day before he had—where his feelings had overwhelmed him the day before. He drew out a very red handkerchief, blew his nose violently and thus passed successfully by the disastrous spot and landed his dignity without damage in the family pew. It is a pity that we cannot devote a chapter to his singing; no cobbler ever caroled with greater reverence and power through his nose.

Hans did not understand much of the sermon on that day and although it was rather long it seemed to him very short. Even the stone skeleton on the old monument beside the Unwirrsches' place in church, that monster which Hans, long after he had ceased to be a child, could never dissociate from the idea of church, grinned "Summa cum laude!" "Summa cum laude!" sang all the pipes of the organ and it was to this accompaniment that the family left the house of God. Above all there was "Summa cum laude!" in Professor Fackler's smile, who had also been at church with Cornelia and Eugenia, and who did not think it beneath his dignity to walk part of the way with his favorite's relatives, thus being enabled to offer Uncle GrÜnebaum the congratulations he had had ready the day before.

"Summa cum laude!" seemed to shine in the faces of everyone they met; it was really very curious.

Professor Fackler had taken his leave with good wishes and hand-shakings and Eugenia and Cornelia had returned dainty little courtesies to the shy and blushing student's awkward bow;—there was KrÖppel Street again and its inhabitants had already taken off their Sunday raiment and put on their workday clothes.

They were not working however; there was great excitement in KrÖppel Street; old and young ran hither and thither shouting and gesticulating.

"Hullo, what's the matter now?" exclaimed Uncle GrÜnebaum. "What's happened? What's the matter, Master Schwenckkettel?"

"He's got it! It's got him!" was the answer.

"The devil! Who's got it? What's got him?"

"The Jew! Freudenstein! He's lying on his back and gasping——"

The women clasped their hands. Hans Unwirrsch stood rigid, and turned pale, but Uncle GrÜnebaum said, phlegmatically:

"The devil takes one and all, odd and even! Don't hurry, Hans,—well, I declare, he's off already!"

Hans ran at full speed toward the junk-dealer's shop which, with its door wide open, was besieged by a dense throng of people. They looked over one another's shoulders and although no one saw anything extraordinary in the dark space yet no one would have moved from the spot where he stood; KrÖppel Street was too fond of excitements like this that cost nothing.

It was only with difficulty that Hans, in his bewilderment, was able to make a path for himself. At last he stood in the dusk of the shop, feeling as if he were shut out forever from the fresh, open air of spring. The faces of the people on the steps of the entrance stared down at him as through a mist; just as he was about to lay his trembling hand on the handle of the door that led to the back room it was opened.

The doctor came out and straightened his spectacles.

"Ah, it's you, Unwirrsch," he said. "He's in a bad way in there. Apoplexia spasmodica. Gastric, convulsive apoplexy. Everything possible has been done for the moment. I'll look in again in an hour. A pleasant day to you, sir!"

Hans Unwirrsch did not return the doctor's last greeting, which seemed a little out of keeping with the present circumstances. He summoned all his energy and stepped into the back room which was now transformed into a death chamber. A penetrating odor of spirits of ammonia met him, the sick man on his bed in the corner already had the rattle in his throat; the Rabbi had come, sat at the head of the bed and murmured Hebrew prayers in which, from time to time, the voice of old Esther on the other side of the bed, joined.

At the foot stood Moses, motionless. He was leaning on the bed-posts, looking at the patient. Not a muscle of his face twitched, his eyes showed no sign of tears, his lips were firmly closed.

He turned as Hans stepped up to him and laid his cold right hand in that of his friend; then he turned his face away again at once and gazed once more at his sick father. He seemed to have grown a head taller since his examination, the expression in his eyes was indescribable,—to use a dreadful simile, it was as if the angel of death were waiting for the last grain of sand to fall;—Moses Freudenstein had gradually grown to be a handsome youth.

"Oh, God, Moses, speak! How did it happen? How did it happen so all of a sudden?" whispered Hans.

"Who can tell!" said Moses, just as softly. "Two hours ago we were sitting here quietly together and—and—he showed me all sorts of papers that we were putting in order,—we have had various things to put in order since yesterday—suddenly he groaned and fell off his chair and now—there he lies. The doctor says he will never get up again."

"Oh, how dreadful! I knocked at your door so often yesterday; why didn't you want to let anyone in?"

"He didn't want to; he always was peculiar. He had made up his mind that on the day when I should have passed my examination successfully he would close his shop for ever. He did not want to have any witness, anyone to disturb us when he showed me his secret chests and drawers. He was a peculiar man and now his life will close with the shop,—who would have thought it, who, indeed?"

The voice in which these words were spoken was dull and mournful; but in Moses' eyes glittered something quite different from sorrow or mourning. A secret gratification lay in them, a concealed triumph, the certainty of a happiness which had suddenly revealed itself, which in such plenitude he had not even dared to hope for and which for the moment had still to be hidden under the dark cloak of decorous grief.

Let us see how the father and son had spent the time since the day before and we shall be able to explain this glance which Moses Freudenstein cast on his dying father.

In as great a state of excitement as the relatives of Hans Unwirrsch, Master Samuel had awaited his son's return. He wandered restlessly about the house and began to burrow among his effects, to open and shut chests, to rummage through the most forgotten corners, as if he wanted to hold a final review of his possessions and his thousand different articles of trade. At the same time he talked to himself unceasingly and although not a drop of spirituous liquor ever crossed his lips, yet at the time when Uncle GrÜnebaum was leaning firmly against the wall opposite the school-house, Samuel Freudenstein seemed to be more intoxicated than he. The great resolve which he had carried in his heart for so long and which was now about to be put into execution affected him like strong drink. Toward eleven o'clock he drove the housekeeper Esther out of the back room and bolted even that door. He now brought to light mysterious keys, opened mysterious drawers in his writing-table, creakingly unlocked a mysterious door in a mysterious closet. There was a jingling as of gold and silver, a rustling as of government bonds and other negotiable paper, and among the jingling and the rustling Father Samuel's voice murmured:

"He was born in a dark corner, he will long for the light; he has sat in a gloomy house, he will dwell in a palace. They have mocked him and beaten him, he will repay them according to the law; an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth! He is a good son and he has learnt what a man needs in order to rise. He has not been impatient, he has sat quietly over his books here at this table. He has done his work and I have done mine. He shall find me here at this table where he has sat quietly throughout his young life. Now he will go out into life, and I will stay here; but my eyes will follow him on his way and he will give me great joy. I have always followed him with my eyes, he is a good son. Now he has grown to be a man and his father will have nothing more in secret from him. Six hundred—seven hundred—two thousand—a good son—may the God of our fathers bless him and his children and his children's children."

The screaming, blessings and beseechings of Esther outside and a knocking at the door drove the old man from his calculations and thoughts onto his feet.

"God of Abraham, he is here!"

With a trembling hand he pushed back the bolt and clasped his son, who was just entering, in his arms.

"Here he is! Here he is! My son, the son of my wife! Well, Moses, speak, how did it go?"

Moses' face showed not a sign of change, he appeared cold, as always, and calmly he held out his certificate to his father.

"I knew that they would have to write what they have written. They probably made faces over it but they had to give me the first place. Come now! Don't be ridiculous, Father; don't go mad, Esther. Oh say, how they would like to have put that sentimental Hans over there ahead of me, but they couldn't manage it; I knew it. By all the silly gods, Father, what have you been doing this morning? Gold? Gold and no end of it? What's that? What does that mean? Great God, where——"

He broke off and bent over the table. That was a sight that entirely destroyed his accustomed self-control, at least for a time.

"Yours! Yours! It is all yours!" cried his father. "I told you that I would do my part if you did yours at the table there. That is not all! Here! Here!"

The old man had rushed to the closet again and threw a few more jingling bags on the black floor and a few more bundles of securities on the table. His eyes glowed as with fever.

"You are equipped and armed, now raise your head. Eat when you are hungry and reach out for everything that you desire. They will bring it to you if you are wise; you will become a great man among the strangers! Be wise on your way! Don't stand still, don't stand still, don't stand still!"

The hanging globe in the house opposite reflected Samuel Freudenstein as he hurried out, tore the Westphalian body-servant from his hook and buried him in the depths of the shop; thus he closed his business for ever,—the lackey had served as a sign for many things which had really nothing to do with junk-dealing; it was not to be regretted that he disappeared from KrÖppel Street.

If only the glass globe of Master Anton Unwirrsch could have reflected the figure of Moses Freudenstein as, during his father's short absence he stood with folded arms in front of the richly burdened table! He was pale and his lips twitched, he passed his finger tips over several of the rows of gold-pieces and at their touch a slight tremor ran through his body. A thousand thoughts chased one another through his brain with the rapidity of lightning, but not one of them rose from his heart; he did not think of the toil, the care, the—love that clung to this piled-up wealth. He thought only of what his own attitude must be to these riches which were suddenly thrust before him, of the changed existence that would begin from this moment—for him. His cold heart beat so violently that it almost caused him physical pain. It was an evil moment in which Samuel Freudenstein announced to his son that he was rich and that the latter would one day be so. From that moment a thousand dark threads stretched out into the future; whatever was dark in Moses' soul became still darker from this moment; nothing became lighter; egoism raised its head menacingly and stretched out hungry arms, like those of an octopus, to grasp the world.

In this headlong, wildly increasing tumult of thoughts his father's existence no longer counted for anything, it was rubbed out as if it had never been. Moses Freudenstein thought only of himself and when his father's step sounded again behind him he started and clenched his teeth.

Samuel Freudenstein had bolted the door; he had closed the shop and thus also locked out the wide, lovely spring world, the blue sky, the beautiful sun—woe to him!

He had nothing to do with the joyful sounds, the shining colors of life, they would only have been in his way; he wanted to celebrate a triumph in which he did not need them—woe to him! The gray dusk which fell through the dirty panes of the back room sufficed perfectly for him to lay his secret account book before his son and show him in what way the wealth that he had spread out before him had been acquired.

The sun went down, but before taking his farewell, he flooded the world with unequaled beauty; he smiled a parting greeting through every window that he could reach; but he could not say farewell to poor Samuel Freudenstein—woe to him!

Night came on and Esther carried the lighted lamp into the little back room. The children were put to bed, the night watchman came; the older people too disappeared from the benches before their front doors. Everyone carried his cares to bed; but Samuel and Moses Freudenstein counted and figured on, and it was not until the gray dawn that the latter sank into a restless, feverish slumber only to start up again almost as soon as he had closed his eyes. He did not wake like Hans Unwirrsch; he woke with a cry of fear, stretched his hands out and crooked his fingers as if something infinitely precious were being torn from him, as if he were striving in deadly fear to hold it tight. He sat upright in bed and stared about him, pressed his hands to his forehead and then jumped up. Hastily he drew on his clothes and went down into the back room where his father still lay asleep restlessly murmuring disconnected sentences. The son stood before his father's bed and his gaze wandered from his father's face to the empty table which had lately been so richly burdened.

Oh, the hunger, the terrible hunger, by which Moses Freudenstein was tormented, was consumed! Between the feast and the sufferer there stood a superfluous something, the life of an old man. The son of this old man gnashed his teeth—woe to you too, Moses Freudenstein!

How did the hour-glass from the pulpit of the Christian church come to be in the shop? It was there and it stood beside the bed of the old man on a shelf against the wall. In former years it had often served Moses and Hans as a plaything and they had watched the sand ran through with delight; it was long now since any hand had touched it, the spiders had spun their webs about it; it was a useless thing. What notion could suddenly have shot into the mind of the junk-dealer's son to make him turn the hour-glass over now? A frightened spider scuttled up the wall; the sand began to trickle down again and Samuel Freudenstein woke with a start. He drew the bed-clothes close about him and felt under his pillow for his bunch of keys; then he asked almost in a screech:

"What do you want, Moses? Is it you? What do you want? It's still night!"

"It's bright daylight. Have you forgotten, Father, that we did not finish yesterday? It is bright daylight; and you still have so much to say to me."

The father glanced at the son, and then looked at him again. Then his eye fell on the hour-glass.

"Why did you turn the glass over? Why do you wake me before it is day?"

"Oh come! You know, Father, that time is precious and runs away like sand. Will you get up?"

The old man turned uneasily in his bed several times, and glanced ever anew at his son, now searchingly, now fearfully, now angrily.

Moses had turned away and went to the writing table near the window; the old man sat upright and drew up his knees. The sand in the glass trickled down—down, and the old man's eyes became more and more fixed. Had he had a dream during his short sleep and was now considering whether this dream might not be truth; who could say? Had it become clear to him all of a sudden that in giving his child the treasure that he had concealed so long and so well he was giving him only darkness and ruin? What a life he had led in order to be able to celebrate that hour of triumph yesterday! Woe to him!

The son threw shifty glances over his shoulder at his father.

"What is the matter, Father? Are you not well?"

"Quite well, Moses, quite well. Be quiet, I will get up. Do not be angry. Be quiet—that your days may be long upon earth."

He rose and dressed. Esther came with breakfast but she almost let the tray fall when she looked into her old master's face.

"God of Israel! What is the matter, Freudenstein?"

"Nothing, nothing! Be quiet, Esther; it will pass."

He sat in his chair all morning without moving. His mouth alone moved, but only once did an audible word cross his lips; he wanted them to open the door and the shutters again.

"Why should Esther unlock the house?" asked Moses. "We want to finish our business of yesterday first, and don't need people gaping and listening."

"Be quiet, you are right, my son. It is well, Esther. Take the keys from under my pillow, Moses."

The sand in the hour-glass had run through again; Moses Freudenstein himself had unlocked the closet once more and was looking through the papers. The old man did not move, but he followed his son's every movement with his eyes and now and then started and shivered. Esther had put an old cover about his shoulders; he was like a child that must let everything be done for it.

Moses took out another bag of money; it slipped from his hands and fell ringing on the floor, scattering part of its contents over the room. With the ringing and jingling of the money a scream mingled that froze one's blood.

"Apoplexia spasmodica!" said the doctor fifteen minutes later. "Hm, hm—an unusual case in a man of his constitution!"

Summary of Chapters IX and X

[Three days after the first shock a second apoplectic attack occurred and Samuel Freudenstein died. On the way home from the cemetery Hans sought to comfort his friend—quite unnecessarily, as all that occupied the latter's mind was what his father had left. With the help of two guardians he was able, within a few days to find out exactly what this amounted to, and finally, after thoroughly rummaging through the shop, he sold it again to another Semite. He sought to banish all remembrance of his father; the hour-glass slipped from his hand and a kick sent the fragments into a corner.

In the meantime his mother, "Auntie," and Uncle GrÜnebaum had done their best to prepare Hans for his journey to the university. Hans bade farewell to everybody and everything in Neustadt that he loved and then, on a beautiful spring morning, started on his pilgrimage with Moses. As they passed the door of the second-hand shop, they found three old Jewish women there to whom Samuel had been charitable now and then, and the housekeeper, Esther. They were waiting to give Moses their blessings and good wishes, but he scorned them. They left the thaler that he threw to them lying on the ground and half the prayer that they sent after him was changed into a curse. Uncle GrÜnebaum, with his dignified person and his beautiful speeches, accompanied the two young people as far as the town gates.

On a height that afforded a last view of Neustadt the two wanderers paused for a short time. Hans thought of all that he had experienced up till then and of all the people that he had known, not excepting the dead, such as his master, SilberlÖffel, and little Sophie. Moses, on the other hand, refused to think of those who had died and thought of the living only with his superior, cynical smile. He hated the town of Neustadt and finally roused Hans from his dreams by a mocking remark. Similar scenes often recurred on their way, the last one when, on the morning of the third day, they came in sight of the university town lying at their feet. Hans would like to have taken off his shoes on the holy ground while Moses gave characteristic expression to his opinion by remarking that there must be many a bad egg or a blown one down there in the little town.

Hans rented a little room from a shoemaker in the most remote and cheapest corner of the town of the muses, while Moses established himself in a house that looked on a beautiful public square opposite the Gothic cathedral. His rooms were elegantly furnished and he showed no disinclination for any of the exquisite enjoyments of life; the humble cocoon from Neustadt brought forth a gay-colored, bright, Epicurean butterfly that spread its wings with assurance and skill.

Hans entered himself as a student of theology while Moses joined the philosophers. Hans entertained a humble veneration for the apostles of wisdom and on every occasion Moses diabolically sought to trip up this touching belief in authority. He acknowledged one professor's good points only so as to be able to throw a stronger light on his weaknesses; in the case of another he was pleased to find that at least his moral reputation was not above reproach. But although Moses was able to destroy much he was also able to give as much else. He got himself books on all branches of learning and constructed for himself a rather original system of objective logic; he diligently attended lectures on law and for recreation he gave Hans instruction in Hebrew. With subtle arguments he discussed with him God and the world, physics and metaphysics, and proved to him that the Jews were still the chosen people, for the successes that the other nations won they won for the Jews too, whereas the latter were not concerned in other people's defeats. Whenever the Jews did enter the struggle they did so of their own free will, with no anxiety for the weal or woe of a nation, but only to fight for spiritual values, for ideas.

Hans could meet such sophistry only with the greatest difficulty; his talent did not lie in that direction. Even his first semester showed him that he was better fitted for practical than theoretical theology; in fact, the professor of homiletics was not satisfied with his achievements even in that subject. His pupil's oratory contained too much "poesie," too much enthusiasm for nature, even an odor of pantheism. Hence Hans liked best to preach his sermons in the open air, under a tall oak, on a narrow meadow in the woods where the birds listened to him with more tolerance than did his professor.

Hans always went home in the holidays and each time he entered with a clearer head and a larger heart into the small circle of his dear ones. Moses, however, remained in the university town and each time, when lectures began again, he came out of his rooms more sarcastic and sceptical than before. Finally the last semester drew near. Hans was to take his examination at home as a candidate in theological science. Moses wrote a capital doctor's dissertation on "Matter as an Element of the Divine," and defended his views by gradually turning the thesis round and making of the Divine an element of matter. Quite carelessly one evening after he had taken his degree Moses told Hans that he was going to Paris the day after tomorrow, as he wanted to learn to swim there. He went on to say that Germany was nothing but a beach from which the tide had receded but he had not yet lost his feeling for the open sea and wanted to find more extensive waters in which to try his fins. To Hans' great astonishment and regret Moses really did go to Paris and left the friend of his youth alone behind him. A great void was made in Hans' life, but before the end of the semester he received a letter which showed him that even greater voids might appear in his life. This letter came from Uncle GrÜnebaum and announced that his mother was very ill. As soon as he had recovered from his first stupefaction Hans packed his certificates and few belongings and left the university to go to Neustadt, to the deathbed of his mother.]

Chapter XI

It was a melancholy way through the autumn weather. Throughout the journey the wind was the poor wanderer's companion, the cold, dreary, whining, groaning October wind. Mockingly it tore from the woods a good part of the adornment with which it had often dallied so winningly in spring and summer. It whipped up dense clouds of dust on the road and rushed across the stubble fields with a shrieking hiss which could not have been pleasant to any living creature except the crows. Only the thrashing of the flails in the neighboring and distant villages could be taken as a comforting sign that everything was not yet lost to the earth and that the triumph that the wind was celebrating on the empty fields was only a deceptive one.

But this comfort was lost on the lonely wanderer in the clouds of dust on the country road; he could pay little attention to it and, deeply depressed and forlorn, he dragged one foot after the other. He had traveled this way so often already that no object that sprang into view on either side of the road was unfamiliar to him. Trees and boulders, houses and huts, sign-posts, church steeples, old boundary stones which no longer marked anything but the transitoriness of even the widest possessions—all had already made various impressions on him in his various moods. He remembered how he had sat thinking on this spot, had slept through an afternoon under the bushes on that one. He thought most of those days when he had passed this way for the first time with his great hunger for knowledge, in the companionship of that comrade of his youth who was now gone. Now he was going back along this way for the last time;—he had learnt much, endured many things and enjoyed many pleasures! What was now the state of his soul?

He was depressed, he was sad and would have been so even without Uncle GrÜnebaum's letter of ill tidings. With all his strength he had striven to learn all that could be learnt of the high branch of knowledge to which he had devoted himself, and he was obliged to confess that this was little enough. He felt deeply the inadequacy of what the men on the lecture platform had taught him, but he felt something else besides and that was what Professor Vogelsang and most of the other members of the highly laudable, honorable faculty did not want to recognize because they could not teach it.

He was on his way to see one die whom he loved more than any other human being; he stepped out toward darkness and it was darkness that he left behind him. At one time he had preached to the trees and the birds because the world would hear nothing of his feelings, and he had never complained of that. Now, his hunger for knowledge seemed to be dead, but his feelings were still alive, rose insistently and crowded about his heart; they grew to be the bitterest pain that a man can endure. At that moment nothing was distinct in the surging tumult; sorrow about his mother, disappointment, worry and fear were mingled; and, curiously enough, mixed with all these there sounded sharply and cuttingly long forgotten words which Moses Freudenstein had once uttered. During this journey Hans Jakob Unwirrsch was in a similar mood to that of another John James who, long years before, had gone from Annecy to Vevay and had written of that road:

"Combien de fois, m'arrÊtant pour pleurer À mon aise, assis sur une grosse pierre, je me suis amusÉ À voir tomber mes larmes dans l'eau!"

It blew incessantly! All day long the wind drove dark clouds across the gray sky, yet not a drop of rain fell. It burrowed into the hedges about the neglected, untidy gardens where the withered sunflowers and hollyhocks hung their heads plaintively. It rattled the windows of the village inn where Hans ate his dinner, blustered about the house and waited grimly for the wanderer who had escaped it for a short moment. It played its game about the coach that stopped at the toll-gate and flapped the cape of the driver's coat so violently round his ears that he could scarcely get out the toll. Hans threw an indifferent glance at this carriage through the window; but the next moment he regarded it more keenly. The leather flap at the side of the carriage had been drawn back, a young girl looked out and peered down the dreary country road. The wind raised the black veil on her black mourning hat and had no more pity on the pale, sad, girlish face beneath it than on anything else that came in its way. But for that reason the little face only made the greater impression on Hans. Trouble greeted trouble, and the sorrow that went on foot along the country road bowed to the sorrow in the carriage that rolled through the clouds of dust. That childish, careworn face just fitted into the mood that possessed Hans; he would have liked to know more of its owner's life and fate.

But the girl's head drew back and in its place there appeared a gray moustache and an old military cap. A glass of brandy was handed into the carriage, full, and very quickly appeared again, empty; the driver too had found it possible, in spite of his violent struggle with his cape, to refresh himself with a drink that did not come directly from the spring. Get up! Forward! The horses started and, with a cloud of dust the old vehicle rattled off, the wind rushing after it like a bloodhound on the trail and it was more than remarkable that when Hans came out of the Golden Stag Inn it received him too with triumphant animosity and blew him after the carriage.

The people in the Golden Stag had not been able to say who the military old gentleman and the young lady in mourning were; they only knew the driver, the two lean nags and the tumble-down old vehicle, and said that this quartet was often hired by travelers as it was frequently the only means of transport in the neighborhood.

In addition to all his other thoughts Hans now carried with him on his way through the dark afternoon the image of the lovely little face he had seen. Ever anew it presented itself to his mental vision; he could not help it. Thus he went on and did not stop till the dusk had grown denser and he had reached the little town in which he was to spend the night.

To be sure, it had been dusk all day and the evening could make little change in the illumination of the world. But now night fell and made common cause with the wind and if the devil had joined the alliance he could not have made matters much worse.

It was not the wind's fault that the crooked old houses of the little country town which Hans now entered were still standing the next morning. The lights in the rooms, behind the windows, seemed to flicker and the few people who were still in the streets fought their way laboriously against the storm, bending forward or leaning back. Front doors slammed with thundering crashes, window shutters flew open with a rattle and the only glazier in the place listened with singular joy to every shrill clinking and clatter in the distance.

If, however, the wind was obliged to leave the little town as a whole still standing it could do even less to the keeper of the Post-horn Inn. To have blown him from his feet and thrown him to the earth would indeed have been a feat which Aeolus might well have set his subjects and rewarded with a prize. On his short, well-rounded legs the innkeeper stood firm and unmoved in front of his doorway under his creaking sign and gave orders regarding a carriage which was just being drawn under shelter by two servants. The lean theologian, Hans Unwirrsch, landed, in the most literal sense of the word, on the colossal mountain of flesh, the keeper of the Post-horn Inn; half smothered and half blinded Hans was blown into the doorway and hurled violently against the innkeeper's stomach, but even this collision did not disturb the balance of his huge bulk.

The keeper of the Post-horn Inn was fortunately a man who knew how to appreciate the compelling power of circumstances; the attack did not make him as rude as might have been expected. He did not invite the guest thus hurled against him to go to the devil, he even wheeled halfway round to afford him an entrance into his house and followed him merely snorting a few mild remarks.

"A confounded way to steer! Always go slow over the bridge! Don't turn too sharp a corner! Thunder, right on my full stomach!"

But when, in the dimly lit room, he recognized the stranger that the ill wind had blown into his house, the last shade of bad humor disappeared from his round face and with perfect cheerfulness he held out his broad paw to shake hands.

"Ah, it's you, my young student friend! Back once more in the holidays? I'm glad of that! As they say, it's an ill wind that blows nobody good."

Hans apologized as well as he could for his tumultuous greeting at the door; but now the innkeeper only looked at him smilingly and pityingly and blew across his hand as if he would say: "A feather! A feather! Nothing but a feather!"—But what he did say was: "That's all right, Mr. Unwirrsch, I'm well able to stand my ground. Take off your knapsack;—I suppose you've carried it on your back all day long as usual? It's a shame!"

There was the landlady, just as corpulent as the master of the house! There was "my hostess' daughter fair" but not "in a coffin black and bare" this time, thank God! nay, very much alive and also of pleasant amplitude. And they greeted poor, sad Hans whose good heart and tiny purse they had learnt to know in former vacations and treated with the respect due them. They questioned him about everything before he could get his breath and knew the sorrowful circumstance that now called him home before he had laid down his knapsack and heavy stick. And as they considered a good meal and a good draught the best panacea for all ills he, the landlord, went down into the cellar and the landlady with her daughter went into the kitchen and Hans was now able to take a first glance at the other guests.

There were only two there. There was a table laid for supper in the corner by the stove and they were sitting at it; an old gentleman with a moustache, in a long military coat buttoned up under his chin, and a pale, delicate looking young girl in mourning. The girl was looking down and continued to do so but the old gentleman stared at the theologian so steadily and openly that the latter felt quite uncomfortable and was very glad when the fat landlord reappeared in the room and interposed his solid form between the keen-eyed, moustached countenance and the table at which Hans had seated himself.

The landlord had a robust voice and did not put his questions as softly as Hans would have wished; the landlord was somewhat deaf and required Hans to answer as loudly as possible. And when "my hostess" came with dishes and plates and "my hostess's daughter fair" with knives and forks, they too had questions to ask. The old soldier did not need to play eavesdropper to hear everything worth knowing about the black-coat.

If a man who has had much trouble to bear has not heard any friendly, sympathetic voices about him for a long time, he becomes communicative when finally such voices do reach his ears and his heart with questions and expressions of pity, however reticent he may be as a rule. And, as we know, Hans Unwirrsch was not reticent; he did not keep his joys and sorrows out of sight and, as he had nothing to conceal, he unreservedly gave the good-natured family a full account of how he and the world had got along with one another.

The military looking old gentleman soon knew everything that might be of interest in such a hungry-looking, black-gowned, young theological student. He knew his name, he knew that he came from the famous town of Neustadt, he had heard that a certain Uncle GrÜnebaum was still in good health and that a no less certain Auntie Schlotterbeck still saw the dead wandering about in the streets. That the theologian had an old mother in Neustadt and that this mother was ill with a serious, painful disease and would perhaps have to die—all this the old gentleman with the gray moustache heard, and the young girl heard it too, moreover with sympathy, as it seemed, for she had raised her head and turned it towards where the young man was sitting. Her face was kind, but not beautiful; it was her eyes that were beautiful, with which, however, she could not see the theologian but only the broad back of the landlord of the Post-horn Inn. The landlord blocked her view as well as that of the young man whom he was questioning so eagerly.

How angry the wind was outside, and how unmistakably it showed its fury! It blustered round the house as if mad and shook every window at which its ally, the night, the dreary autumn night, the enemy of man, the enemy of light, looked in. Oh, how angry the wind and the night were with the travelers who were now so safe from them; how angry with the fat landlord of the Post-horn Inn and with the landlady and the landlady's rosy daughter! No pursuer whose victims had escaped into some inviolable sanctuary could be more angry.

But who was it who at this moment emphatically snapped out the words: "That impudent Jew!"....

Was it the wind or was it the night?

No, it was the elderly military gentleman with the moustache and if there had been any doubt that by this kindly designation he meant our friend Moses Freudenstein, whose name Hans Unwirrsch had just mentioned, he dissipated such doubt immediately by adding:

"A conceited, impudent Jewish brat, if it's the rogue to whom, lately, in Paris, I had to give a piece of my mind! Wasn't it so, FrÄnzchen? Moses Freudenstein, yes, that was the name. Won't you move nearer, sir; come over here to this table; it's an evening for people to gather close together and I shall be glad to make your nearer acquaintance and to hear something further about this Moses."

The landlord and his family, wondering much at this sudden interruption, had turned to the speaker, and Hans, much excited by this unsuspected attack on his friend, had risen.

With no trace of timidity he began Moses Freudenstein's defense from where he sat; but the old gentleman waved his hand soothingly.

"Come, come; always keep step! Right, left! Right—now the wind has the floor again. Just listen to its blustering outside! This is the sort of weather that takes away even a pastor's appetite for a dispute. Come over here, candidate, and have a glass of punch; and don't take it amiss if I've done it again and said something unsuitable;—I suppose I have, for here's my niece pulling my coat-tail."

Perhaps at that moment it would have been quite agreeable to the young lady if the landlord had still stood between her and the theological student; but the view was now perfectly open and nothing prevented our Hans from thanking with a glance the blushing child who had pulled the coat of the owner of the gray military moustache.

"Forward, candidate, forward! Carry arms,—march—halt! Move up, Franziska;—you're surely not afraid of a young black-coat. Landlord, what would you think of calling out a second levy of this pleasant and wholesome beverage?"

The landlord thought that the beverage was just suited to the weather and the hour and lost no time in filling the order. Before Hans Unwirrsch really knew how it had happened he was sitting beside the old soldier, opposite the pale young lady and in front of a steaming glass.

"That's right, young man," said the owner of the moustache. "I knew that you wouldn't fall out with a pensioned old soldier on account of just a word or two. Your health, sir; and now as I have by this time learnt your name, circumstances and so on, you shall not feel your way in the dark as regards us, either. I am a retired lieutenant, Rudolf GÖtz, and this child is my niece, Franziska GÖtz, whose father has lately died in Paris and whom I have fetched from there, to turn her over to my third brother who is a juristic big-wig—poor little thing!"

The lieutenant growled the last words very softly and immediately added, very loudly.

"And now then, as we each know who the other is, I hope that the evening will pass without any row in the quarters. Here's to you, sir, you've made a good march today and a good drink ought to follow it."

Hans drank to the lieutenant in return and soon found that the voice and the moustache bore no relation to the eyes, the good-natured nose and the joyous mouth. He found that there was no reason to fear that theology had here fallen into the power and under the tyranny of a bragging swashbuckler. And, indeed, he thought, that it would require great inward perversity to be outwardly rough in the presence of the girl Franziska.

It was a pleasant picture to see the old soldier sitting between the two sorrowful young people. He was certainly very much inclined to be quite jolly; but as that was hardly the thing he did his best to play the part of the comforter.

"So it goes in the world," he said over the edge of his glass, "people drive or trot past each other on the road and never think of each other and then, a few hours later, all at once they are sitting comfortably together and stretching out their legs under the same table. And so it goes with us too; you're just standing in a solid square and have your men on either side, your best friends and can depend on them. You watch calmly how the two twelve-pounders over there are planted and the game begins. Phwt, phwt—the balls make bad paths through the battalion; but they don't touch you, nor the men beside you either. Over there, they're thinking, now their time has come—there is the cavalry—trot—gallop—you see them coming on with a stamping and roaring, like a thunder storm,—Fire! There is a cracking about your ears and your mind is so confused that you couldn't even say "Bless you" if the devil should sneeze. But you stand fast, however black it may grow before your eyes—now the real jamming sets in, and you stumble over all sorts of things that squirm or lie still. There's squealing and howling and groaning between your feet; but it's all one, you stand as fast as possible, even if you can't help it. The dogs must be driven back, and they are. Through the smoke you see nothing but the tails of the horses and everyone trying to get back where he came from and the wind blows the smoke after them—but, the devil, where are the men beside you? There are strange faces all round and it's a strange hand that holds out the bottle to you; there, comrade, drink after that piece of work! The battalion goes forward three paces to get the dead and wounded out of the ranks. All around the fellows are steaming with sweat and here and there one of them has blood trickling out of his nose or somewhere. The ground is slippery and ploughed-up enough and there's a most infernal smell in the air; but your good friends are gone and you mustn't even turn round to look after them for the scoundrels over there at the edge of the woods aren't done yet by a long shot; they'll come again often enough before the sun sets so as to earn their supper and stamp the name of Waterloo on the history of the world. And now here is my niece Franziska; she too has lost the man next her from her sight, and here is the pastor with a face like the black tom-cat that fell into the pot of vinegar, and here am I—also a poor orphan. I can tell you, young people, when a man has had it rain a few times into his camp kettle, he learns to put on the lid and when a man has lost more than one good comrade from his side he learns to say goodby. The softest hearts have learnt just to swallow dry three times in their misery and still they have remained the best and most faithful souls. Hold up your head, FrÄnzel; do it for your old uncle's sake; hold up your head, Hans Unwirrsch! If such young people as you rub their noses in the dust what are we old fellows to do?"

Franziska pressed the hard, hairy hand that the soldier held out to her tenderly to her breast; she looked at him and although tears glittered in her eyes she smiled and said:

"Oh, my dear, good Uncle; I will do everything that you want me to. I know that it is wrong of me to show such sadness in return for your love; you must be indulgent with me,—you have spoilt me very much with your love."

The old man took up the weak little hand which he held in his broad paw and looked at it attentively.

"Poor child, poor child," he murmured. "As forsaken and blown about as a little bird that has fallen out of the nest:—and Theodor and his wife—and Kleophea—Oh, it's a shame! Poor little bird, poor little bird,—and I, old vagabond that I am, haven't even the most wretched corner to give it shelter."

He shook his head for a long time, growling and sighing; then he brought his hand down on the table:

"Let's be merry, Pastor. So you know that Moses Freudenstein who now, with eight hundred thousand other loafers, infests the Paris streets? That's a fine acquaintance and really suits you about as well as a howitzer suits dried peas."

"I should be very sorry if Moses, if it is really he, should really deserve your displeasure so much, Mr. GÖtz," answered Hans. "We grew up together, we were friends at school and at the university; and moreover he can scarcely have been six months in Paris. I hope it is a mistake; I hope so with all my heart!"

The lieutenant now asked Hans to describe the personality of poor, good Moses exactly, and at every detail that Hans mentioned he was unfortunately obliged to nod and look interrogatively at his niece.

"It's he. It's as sure as a gun. That's the rascal, isn't it, FrÄnzchen? I'll tell you the tale in a few words, to put an end to the matter. As my brother's death took place very suddenly my niece was left all alone for some time in that nest of Satan and I know what that means because I was there on a visit in 1814 and '15, but there were a good many others with me. Poor child, poor child! I know what it means to be left all alone in that turmoil—She's pulling my coat again, Pastor! Now please leave me alone, FrÄnzel; let me tell him."

"I'd rather you didn't, Uncle," whispered the young girl, "and you looked at the matter in a worse light than it was; that gentleman——"

"Was a scoundrel who had to be ground into a pulp;—no, don't pull me, FrÄnzel."

Franziska threw a beseeching glance at Hans Unwirrsch and he had seldom felt so uncomfortable on any seat, besides he did not now learn after all in what relation his friend had stood to the young lady and the old soldier. Although the uncertainty troubled him much and the doubt of his friend that had been aroused in him pierced his heart, he would not have increased the pale girl's grief by eager, prying questions, for anything in the world. Only one thing was clear to him: chance must have led the winsome Moses into the house in which Franziska had lived after her father's death, helpless, lonely and unprotected, and that his behavior could not have been of the most chivalrous kind. On one of the boulevards a violent scene had then taken place between Mr. GÖtz and Mr. Freudenstein, and the former had certainly brought home with him to the German fatherland a deeply rooted antipathy to poor Moses.

Before the windows of the "Post-horn" another horn now sounded discordantly. The night-watchman called the tenth hour and the little party separated. The lieutenant took leave of the theologian in cordial fashion and admonished him once more to keep his head above water and to break his neck, if it must be, only in the best of health. Franziska GÖtz too, at his command, had to shake hands with the young man in parting and did so quite naturally and without embarrassment. The lieutenant and his niece had to leave early the next morning to reach the railway which now ran to the capital in the north. Hans Unwirrsch was able to sleep longer; no line of railway went as yet to Neustadt and, indeed, the town felt no need at all of being made accessible to the rest of the world in such a way. Hence if Hans resolved to bid the two travelers Godspeed once more at the carriage door in the morning, it certainly showed his good intentions and if he overslept, that was the fault of fate, which prevented his good intentions from being carried out.

He really did oversleep after having tossed about sleeplessly half the night. His long tramp and the wind, which rushed over the roof and whistled round the corners, Uncle GrÜnebaum's letter and Lieutenant Rudolf GÖtz's strong punch, Mr. Moses Freudenstein in Paris and pale, sad Franziska would not let him sleep. He got up and lit the light, only to blow it out again; he could not get his ideas into any sort of order and if usually his imagination came to his aid when he was in a depressed mood to comfort him with all kinds of bright and lovely pictures of the past or to hold up before him the magic mirror of the future with smiles and teasing beckonings, it now only drove ghostly shadows round his head and concealed in the most threatening manner both what lay near and what lay distant.

In all his life Hans Unwirrsch had never felt so lacking in courage as in that night;—until then he had been too happy. Now, for the first time dark, merciless hands reached into his life from all directions; the narrow, secure circle which a kind fate had drawn about his youth had now been broken through; he was being dragged out into the great struggle of the world, of which the young girl who was spending the night at the Post-horn under the same roof as he, knew so much more than he did.

Vae victis!

Chapter XII

They were gone; but he knew neither who they were nor what they were to become to him. There, near the stove, stood the table at which they had sat, and the landlady put the coffee on it and pushed up a chair for Hans Unwirrsch. The landlord came back from his morning tour through the yard and garden and brought him a last greeting from the two travelers. They were gone.

Before Hans drank his coffee he looked once more through the window out upon the street. No sign of them there any more.

"That was a gallant old gentleman," said the landlord, and the landlady said: "Poor young lady! I should really like to know what is the matter with her; my Mary, who slept in the room next hers, heard her crying all night long. She must have known much sorrow in her young life."

Hans came back from the window, sat down on the chair on which he had sat the evening before and looked at the two empty chairs. He began to go over in his mind every word that had been spoken the day before.

"And he doesn't write to me—I don't know his address—I can't ask him what he did to hurt the young lady. It's like a dream. Oh Moses, Moses!"

They were gone, and the wind too had subsided. The sky was almost grayer than the day before but there was not a breath of air stirring now.

"It was a strange meeting after all! If I had only seen the lieutenant once more.... And the burden on my shoulders is so heavy without this! Oh, what wouldn't I give if I only knew Moses' address!"

The innkeeper, feeling obliged to cheer his guest up, told him all the remarkable, funny and sad occurrences of the little place, but Hans could only listen with half an ear;—they were gone, and finally he too could no longer endure the heavy atmosphere of the inn parlor. He felt that he must also get away, must breathe some fresh air. So he paid his bill and went, accompanied by the best wishes and blessings of the Post-horn. He strode through the sleepy place without looking to the right or to the left; not until he was out on the country road again did he look up and about him and almost wished for the wind of yesterday. Then there had at least been life, even though it had been weird; but today every bare furrow cried: the great Pan is dead!—and full of mourning the clouds hung low over the lifeless earth. It was fortunate for the wanderer that the way behind the next village led into an extensive forest of fir-trees. Even though it was still darker there than between the open fields, yet the fresh smell of the balsam strengthened him in mind and soul. In this wood Hans Unwirrsch at least left behind him his disquieting thoughts of the friend of his youth, for when he once more stepped forward out of the dusk of the forest the hills behind which his native town lay rose against the horizon and from now on everything had to recede before the vision of his sick mother, even the image of the lovely young lady who had sat opposite him the evening before.

Hans Unwirrsch wandered on without stopping; he would not allow himself another rest. An irresistible power within him drove him forward; by two o'clock in the afternoon he stood at the edge of the wood from which one can see Neustadt lying at one's feet.

"Oh Mother, Mother!" sighed Hans stretching out his hands toward the town. "I am coming, I am coming. I went forth with great hope and I am coming home in great pain and with many doubts. Oh dear, dear Mother, will you too forsake your child? You couldn't do that. Oh, why did I not stay down there, why did I let myself be lured away over this mountain and forest by a mistaken, false yearning! What am I bringing home that for you and me could take the place of that lost peace and happiness in which my father passed his days?"

And now the terrible thought came to him that his mother might be dying while he delayed there and he ran down the hill till he was out of breath and, while walking at a more moderate pace, he collected himself again.

Now he walked through the old gate and now through the streets of the town. From more than one window people looked after him, more than one acquaintance met and greeted him; but he could pay no attention to anyone. He was in KrÖppel Street; he stood before the paternal house; he knelt beside his mother's bed and did not know whether a moment, a minute or a century had passed since that second when he stood at the edge of the woods. Nor could he give any account of what was said in the first few moments of his homecoming. Perhaps nothing was said at all.

Now he read his mother's frightful sufferings in her face and worn features, and wept bitterly. Then he whispered to her that he was there, that he would never go away again, and that she must not leave him either. And then, in a faint voice, the sick woman tried to soothe him and he felt a hand on his shoulder and finally raised himself up.

Auntie Schlotterbeck stood behind him; she had not changed at all and gently she reminded him that he must control himself and must not excite his mother too much.

There was Uncle GrÜnebaum too, very gentle and reticent; Uncle GrÜnebaum who knew that there is a time for everything and that everything must be regarded and treated and discussed in the proper manner.

Hans now shook hands with Auntie Schlotterbeck and Uncle GrÜnebaum and they both talked to him comfortingly and soothingly. He looked round him again in the low, dark, shabby room and in spite of all his grief and all his pain he felt a calm, an assurance which, during his torturing journey, he thought he had lost forever.

And now Uncle GrÜnebaum prepared to express his feelings in a well considered speech; but Auntie Schlotterbeck interfered after his preliminary clearing of the throat and half persuasively, half forcibly led him out of the door so that all he could do was to call back over his shoulder:

"Don't excite her, Hans. Be humane with her; behave like a filial son and composed mind, the doctor has given us strict orders."

As soon as the mother and son were alone the mother said:

"You must forgive me, Hans, that I had you called away from your work; but I had such a great yearning for you I could not help it. You have always been my comfort; you must be it now too. I longed for you so much."

"Oh Mother, dear Mother," cried Hans Unwirrsch, "don't talk as if my happiness and welfare were more important than yours. Oh, if you only knew how gladly I would give everything that I have gained by my work while away if I could only spare you the smallest part of your pain! But you will grow better, you will soon be well again. Oh Mother, you don't know how much I need you; no wisdom that can be taught on earth can give what a mother's word and look gives us."

"Just hear the boy," cried Frau Christine. "Does he want to make fun of the old washerwoman. Such a learned gentleman! But never mind, Hans. Hans, do you know that you are growing more and more like your sainted father! He behaved just like that if the sun went behind the clouds for a little while. He was a scholar too, even if he hadn't been to the university and I often had to wonder at the man. One day he would be as high in the air as a lark and the next day he would creep along the earth like a snail. You will mount up into the blue sky again, Hans, don't worry about me; I have nothing to reproach God with, he has meant well with me; he has given me a happy life and he cannot help the burden that he now lays upon me; that is everyone's lot and no one can escape it."

Hans felt much humiliated at the bedside of this poor, simple woman who had to endure such tortures and yet could speak and comfort so heroically. Even though his grief at the loss which threatened him grew more violent, his weak despondency of the last few days disappeared. He felt sure on his feet again, his true, real sorrow gave him back his inner self-control; in his profession he separated the real, the content from the non-essential, and for the first time really applied it to life. These difficult days had a deeper effect upon him than all the days he had spent in lecture rooms or in only half fruitful study. He now stepped out of the unwholesome spell of flattering, enervating imaginings, and dull, heavy broodings into real life; he did not lose his hunger for the ideal, the transcendental, but to it was now added hunger for the real, and the fusing of both, which took place in such solemn hours, could not but produce a good cast.

He arranged a table for his work at his dying mother's bedside. There he sat and wrote and, at the same time, watched the sick woman's slumber. The consistory had given him his examination themes; he began to work at them with an eagerness which he had believed was quite dead in him. It was a strange, sadly happy time.

What a light Master Anton's glass globe cast across the table and through the room in the evening and at night! Never before and never afterwards did it shed such a lustre.

Frau Christine saw her whole life in its glow as in a magic mirror. She saw herself as a child, as a young girl, and felt as one. Her parents and her parents' parents came and went; she saw them as clearly and as vividly as Auntie Schlotterbeck herself might have seen them. She thought of the games she played as a child and of all her girl friends, and the light of the globe was like moonlight, sunrise and sunset, or like high noon. The sick woman had forgotten so much and now suddenly it all came back to her and no part of it was lost,—it was really amazing. She often had to close her eyes because the figures and varied scenes of that distant time passed before her in too great abundance;—now for the first time she realized how much, how infinitely much she had experienced in her life after all. Her Anton had often complained that he had to sit so quiet and so surrounded by dusk and that he couldn't bear to think of all the people who journeyed over hill and dale and across the wide ocean and of those who discovered strange countries and of all the tumult and bustle that there was in the world;—Frau Christine thought of these complaints as she lay on her bed of pain, nodded and shook her head and smiled. Foolish Anton, had he not had enough turmoil and excitement in his life? Had there not been plenty of happenings in it? There was their wedding day, for instance, when Christine had danced for the last time as a girl and Anton had looked so stately in his wedding clothes. Had that not been a bright bit of life and a greater thing than to sail across the seas to outlandish places? And what had they not lived through in the time of the French wars, when Anna, to whom Brother Nik'las had nearly become engaged, had gone off with the Hussars? That had been in 1806 and it really seemed queer to think of how troubled Anton had been about the hard times and of how nobody thought of the French now any more than Brother Nik'las thought of Anna. There was Auntie Schlotterbeck who had lived through all these things and who could see the dead; but still she could not command all the memories that Frau Christine could, for she had never borne a child and had no son to grow up and sit at the table, a learned man, and send glances to her across his books. Oh, how much, how much one could think of by the light of the magic globe; it made it really easy, even when the pain was at its worst, to lie quiet and to wait patiently for the last hour!

We described at the beginning how Hans, as a little child, lay in his bed in the winter night and watched his mother get ready for her early work. We spoke of the strange, mysterious pictures his fancy drew of the places to which she went, of how he saw the shadows dancing on the walls and watched carefully to see what became of them when the lamp was blown out. Now, as a grown man, he was compelled to give way to very similar and yet quite different feelings. He had had some experiences and had learnt much; it would have been no wonder if he had entered into these hours with more mature moods; but just as his mother was surprised at the return of the memories of her youth, so too he had reason to wonder at the return of these feelings.

While he turned over the pages of his books by the light of the glass globe and from time to time looked over at the sick woman's bed he thought of how his mother was now again preparing to go away and leave him alone in the dark. Just as then he had often begged her with tears to stay, so he would have liked to beg her now. Often the great fear came over him which he had felt such long years before when the lamp had been blown out, his mother's step had died away and sleep did not immediately close his eyes. He heard the snow trickling down the window as he had heard it then; the night watchman called the hours, the moonlight glimmered through the frozen panes, the old furniture cracked and creaked as it used to, the nocturnal world stirred in ghostly fashion as then.

If his mother was sleeping in such moments he could escape from the fearful throng of feelings only by working on as hard as possible at the most difficult parts of his task and even this did not always bring relief. But if his mother was awake he only needed to lay down his pen and to take her faithful hand in his: then the comfort he received was the best there could be for him. If there was anything that later influenced his acts, his plans, his views and his whole life it was the soft words that were whispered to him in such hours.

"See, dear child," said the old woman, "in my poor mind it has always seemed to me that the world would not amount to much if there were no hunger in it. But it must not be only the hunger for food and drink and a comfortable life, no, I mean a very different thing from that. There was your father, he had the kind of hunger that I mean and it is from him that you have inherited it. Your father too was not always satisfied with himself and with the world; not that he was envious because others lived in more beautiful houses, or drove in carriages, or anything like that; no, he was only troubled because there were so many things which he did not understand and which he would have liked so much to learn about. That is a man's hunger, and if a man has it and at the same time does not entirely forget those whom he ought to love, then he is a real man, whether he gets on well or not—that makes no difference. But woman's hunger lies in another direction. First of all it is for love. A man's heart must bleed for light, but a woman's heart must bleed for love. It is in this that she must find her joy. Oh child, I have been much better off than your father, for I have been able to give much love, and much, much love has fallen to my share. He was so good to me as long as he lived, and then, I have had you, and now when I am going to follow my Anton you sit beside me and what he wanted to have you have got and I have helped you to get it; isn't that enough to make me very happy? You must not grieve so about your foolish mother or you will make my heart heavy and I know you don't want to do that, you never have done it."

The son buried his face in the sick woman's pillows; he could not speak, he could only repeat the word, Mother! sobbingly, but all the emotion that moved him was expressed in it.

During his stay in Neustadt at that time Hans Unwirrsch seldom left the house. He greeted all the neighbors in Auntie Schlotterbeck's room, but he himself paid few visits. Wherever he did appear, however, he was gladly received and Professor Fackler held him so fast that he had finally to tear himself away with force.

Oddly enough the Professor was now greatly interested in Dr. Moses Freudenstein and questioned poor, disturbed Hans most closely about him.

"So the Talmudistic hair-splitter has gone to Paris? I can tell you, Unwirrsch, that boy gave me more embarrassment while he was at school than I cared to show. We can talk about it now: his objections and conclusions, the way he played with questions and answers often drove the sweat of fear out on my forehead. Truly one could not say: Credat JudÆus Apella,—that promising youth was not so credulous! With his appetite for all the good things of this world he'll make his way, there is no doubt about that, Unwirrsch. I can tell you, the greatest thing is the right kind of hunger; in monks' Latin—the gods of Latium protect us—we might say: Fames—famositas, Ha! Ha! Well, God bless you, Johannes, and give you strength to bear your sorrow at home. We have the greatest sympathy for you and if we can be useful to you in any way just come to me or to my wife. Eheu, after all, in spite of all good things, life is a vale of tears!"

To what this last sigh referred is not quite clear to us although it was so to Hans Unwirrsch, who firmly believed that it was occasioned by his mother's illness, and so, deeply touched, he took leave, for the time being, of the good professor.

During this time Uncle GrÜnebaum of course often found the opportunity to show himself in all his greatness. He came and went constantly and the house in KrÖppel Street was not safe from him for a minute. Now he appeared in the door so suddenly that the sick woman started in her bed, now his dignified head darkened the window beside Hans' writing table so suddenly that the young man jumped up startled from his seat to gaze at the apparition. If it had not been for Auntie Schlotterbeck Uncle GrÜnebaum would have become a nuisance, but the thoughtful soul finally organized a regular watch service and more than one child in KrÖppel Street received orders to give a warning sign when Master GrÜnebaum turned the corner. When the alarm sounded Auntie Schlotterbeck always went and stood at the door to intercept the uncle and send him home again by means of cunning, or sometimes to lead him into her own little room. And thither Hans was then ordered to receive his uncle's words of consolation and advice.

"So she is still no better? So sorry, it's too bad! But that's the way it goes in the world and if one man has to complain of his tobacco, the other has trouble with his pipe. We all have to come to this thing; but it has a curious way about it. Now, there sits Auntie Schlotterbeck, a worn-out, miserable person, nothing but bones in a leather sack and, if you won't take it amiss, my saying so, Mistress Schlotterbeck, for the last twenty years I have thought from day to day that you would go out like a tallow candle. But now, there lies my sister, who was a remarkably robust woman, near to death, and you, Auntie, you keep on glimmering as if it were a matter of course and after all, perhaps you'll outlive even me and see me running round in the streets as a spirit in a white shirt and with three pairs of old boots under each arm. I'm ready to believe anything of you now. Oh dear, dear, Hans, what is man? What does he not have to endure in his life? Such great hunger——"

"And such very great thirst," threw in Auntie Schlotterbeck.

"That too, Miss Schlotterbeck," continued Uncle GrÜnebaum with dignity, though not without showing some annoyance. "Such great hunger and—thirst, that no angel who has not tried it would believe. What does a man do when he has come to his years of discretion?"

"Sometimes he takes to drinking," grunted Auntie Schlotterbeck.

"He hungers and desires everything that hangs too high for him," snarled Uncle GrÜnebaum furiously. "Whoever asks too much deserves to get nothing; but whoever asks little certainly will get nothing at all. There was your father, boy; he had the most ludicrous kind of hunger and he asked too much as well; he wanted to be a cobbler and a scholar at the same time. What came of it? Nothing! Now, here is your dear Uncle Nik'las, who was gifted with too great modesty and asked nothing but his daily bread——"

"And the Red Ram and the political newspaper!" interposed Auntie Schlotterbeck again. "And as he liked to sit in the Red Ram better than on his work stool and as he liked better to whistle to his birds than to work and as he read the Post Courier in preference to the hymn-book, he comes here now and asks, what came of it and then actually wonders if the answer is again: nothing."

"Miss Schlotterbeck," replied Uncle GrÜnebaum, "you may impress some poor donkey that comes along, but can't impress me. I have enough of you for this time and I wish you good evening. It's enough to make me foreswear all KrÖppel Street! Go to your mother, Hans, give her my love and my excuses that I could not see her this time, on account of excitement and inadequate self-control. I thank you, Auntie Schlotterbeck, for your pleasant entertainment and wish you, if it is possible, a clear conscience and a good night's rest!"

During this sad time Auntie Schlotterbeck surrounded Hans with even more love and solicitous attention than usual, if that were possible. The supernatural element that was mixed with her consolation could not disturb him. These apparitions of the dead of which she spoke as of something real, had nothing fearful about them, nothing confusing;—Hans Unwirrsch could sit for hours and listen to Auntie Schlotterbeck telling his sick mother about her visions and see his mother nod at the mention of some detail and remember something long past and forgotten.

Auntie Schlotterbeck saw good Master Anton very frequently at that time, and the sick woman's worst pains were alleviated when Auntie Schlotterbeck told her about him.

It was a very severe winter. Neither Auntie Schlotterbeck nor Frau Christine, both of whom had lived through so many winters, remembered one like it. When Hans, half against his will, went out for a walk to get a breath of fresh air, he felt as though everything that lay round him would remain forever so cold and dead, so bleak and bare, as if it were impossible that in a few weeks the trees would grow green again. More than once he mechanically broke off a twig, carefully to unroll the brown leaves of the bud and to assure himself that spring was really only asleep and not dead.

But the snow melted in good time and the waters triumphantly broke their fetters. Hans Unwirrsch completed his work and one evening laid down his pen, stepped softly to his mother's bed and, bending down to kiss her, whispered:

"Dear Mother, I hope that I have succeeded."

At that his mother drew her son's head down to her with both her sick hands and kissed him too. Then she pushed him gently away and folded her hands. She moved her lips but Hans could not understand everything that she said. He heard only the last words.

"We have managed to do it, Anton! Now I can come to you!"

At the beginning of the new spring the Sunday came on which Hans was to preach his examination sermon. It was a day on which the sun shone again.

A glass of snowdrops stood beside the sick woman's bed and the church bells had never sounded more solemn than on that day. The son, in his black gown, bent over his mother and she laid her hand on his young head and looked at him with smiling, shining eyes. Johannes Unwirrsch looked deep, deep into those eyes which said more than a hundred thousand words would have said; then he went and Auntie Schlotterbeck and his Uncle followed him. His mother wished it to be so, she wanted to be alone.

There she lay still, and had no more pain. In thought she followed her child through the streets, across the market-place, across the old churchyard to the low door of the sacristy. She heard the organ and closed her eyes. Once more only did she open them wonderingly and look at the glass globe over the table; it seemed to her as if it had suddenly given forth a clear tone and as if she had been awakened by the sound. She smiled and closed her eyes again, and then—

And then? No one can say what followed then; but when Hans Unwirrsch came home from the church his mother was dead and all who saw her said that she must have had a happy death.

Summary of Chapters XIII, XIV, XV and XVI

[As she had desired, Frau Christine was buried beside her husband. Those of her belongings that Hans wanted to keep Auntie Schlotterbeck took into her care; some of the rest were given to Uncle GrÜnebaum and some were sold. Hans rented the little house to a mason on the condition that in every respect Auntie Schlotterbeck should be recognized as its keeper and his agent.

After having thus arranged his affairs Hans bade farewell to Neustadt for the second time and prepared to enter on the career of a tutor as he had failed to find an unoccupied parish. He accepted a position on the estate of a certain Mr. von Holoch, whose two children, a son and a daughter, he was to bring up and instruct. These children gave him no particular difficulty; he easily won, too, the regard of the jovial master of the house whose interests were limited to hunting and agriculture, and the plump, good-humored and industrious housewife took care that his outward person increased in size. He was also good friends with the vicar and the manager as well as with all the other inhabitants of the estate and the village. He was temporarily embarrassed only when the housekeeper fell violently in love with him and finally behaved in such a way that she was obliged to leave the estate. Against his will and for no fault of his own Hans too, found that he must go. A rich aunt from whom a legacy might some day be expected appeared on the scene and Hans displeased her as much as he had pleased the housekeeper. She declared the tutor to be an unpolished boor who had never been properly brought up himself, and promised to have her nephew, Erich, educated to become a man of real culture, in the little capital where she was one of the bigger fish in the social sea. Mr. von Holoch and his wife were very sorry to see Hans go and, in their own way, gave him a touching farewell.

By means of a newspaper advertisement Hans found a new position in the house of a well-to-do manufacturer who made some kind of evil-smelling stuff in Kohlenau near Magdeburg. When Hans arrived he found the region flat, the house, which stood near the factory, bleak and inartistic, its inhabitants industrious and matter-of-fact. The three boys who were entrusted to his care were destined to become good business men. Under these conditions life weighed heavily on the young man of God and, as once before in the government official's house, he longed for a freer, broader, more beautiful world which he believed he might be able to find in the metropolis. But his contract with his employer bound him for three long years and Hans would probably not have got away before the time was up if, in the autumn, an epidemic, resembling hunger-typhus, had not broken out among the workmen, and with it a strike. Hans expressed opinions in regard to this matter which his employer considered preposterous and disgraceful; in fact, he even openly took the part of the workmen and, in consequence, received notice to leave at Easter. Meanwhile his position in the house became more and more unbearable, his efforts to find a new situation were unsuccessful and one February afternoon our hero, sad and depressed, sat on a stone beside the road that led through a little clump of evergreens near the factory. He had no idea how near the turn in his fate was, which, at that very moment, was approaching at a trot in the shape of an elderly, somewhat red-nosed rider with a military moustache.

It was Lieutenant GÖtz, who greeted Hans characteristically and sought to explain his unexpected appearance by taking out of his pocket the newspaper in which Hans had advertised for a position. Then he asked Hans to tell him about his life since their meeting in the "Post-horn" in Windheim, and finally declared that he was delighted to find things going so abominably with the candidate. This made it possible for him to prove himself a rescuer in case of need. His brother, Privy Councillor GÖtz, was looking for a tutor and the lieutenant, after seeing Hans' advertisement while reading the paper in a restaurant, had immediately made his way to Kohlenau with the aid of the railway, his feet, and a horse. He now gave Hans his brother's address and asked him to write to the latter that he, the lieutenant, recommended Hans. He advised him moreover to write "official business" on the envelope so that it should not fall into the hands of his brother's wife. Then the old soldier bade him a short goodby.

Hans went home busy with his thoughts, wondering at the way the past had joined itself to the present and at the prospects that opened in the future. The same evening he wrote till two o'clock composing a letter to the Privy Councillor which the postman carried away the next morning. Two weeks of torturing waiting now passed. But on the twenty-eighth of February the postman handed him the longed-for registered letter as he was on his way home in the pouring rain from the church which lay an hour's walk away. The tutor was requested to present himself personally and punctually to the Privy Councillor at fifteen minutes to twelve on the eighth of March.

At the prospect of Hans' departure the attitude of the manufacturer and his family became more conciliatory and the parting did not take place without emotion. Hans left his trunk behind him, as the bookkeeper had promised to send it to him wherever he might be, and, armed only with a light traveling bag, he set forth to meet his new fate. Once more to his astonishment he found the lieutenant sitting on the same stone in the clump of evergreens on which he himself had been sitting when the lieutenant surprised him before, and together they continued their way on foot. Behind the wood, in the village of Plankenhausen, they stopped for breakfast, after which the lieutenant thought it advisable to take a carriage which brought them to the town of ——. From there they took the train for some distance but got out again at the last station before they reached the great metropolis, for the lieutenant maintained that it was better for Hans to enter his new life on foot because his mind would thus have the opportunity to calm itself and because he, the lieutenant, had another story which he could tell best on the march.

This story was the family history of the GÖtzes. Their father had been an officer of justice in the service of a count in the Harz Mountains—a conscientious, delicate man, and inhumanly learned. He would have liked to make of his sons just such gloomy reservoirs of knowledge but succeeded only in the case of his second son, Theodor. He studied law and with untiring industry and ever ready submission to the government finally became Privy Councillor after having married his pious wife, Aurelie, nÉe von Lichtenhahn. There were two children of the marriage; a daughter Kleophea, a girl who would fit into any description of the temptation of St. Anthony, and a son AimÉ, born seven years later. The eldest of the three GÖtz brothers was Lieutenant Rudolf, who was then over sixty. His father had sent him to a school of forestry and he had finally received an appointment in that branch in the count's service. In the unhappy year 1806 he had entered the Prussian army and later took part in the campaigns in Russia and France. The youngest of the three had been Felix who had died five years before, but who in his youth had been a hot-headed, splendid fellow unable to stand any discipline. When the volunteer corps against Napoleon was formed he fled in the night and joined the cavalry. During the war the two brothers met in 1813 on the Elbe, in 1814 in Paris; after the war Rudolf GÖtz continued to serve in a small garrison but Felix filled and killed his time with sins. Then he tried his luck in America. For years nothing was heard of him, but in 1830 when things began to grow lively in Europe again he turned up once more as a Peruvian or Colombian captain and sought out Rudolf. He had seen much and had come back from America with a wife and a daughter. He had left them in Paris while he himself was on his way to Poland, where he meant to take part in the revolution. He remained till the defeat of the Poles at Ostrolenka. Ill, tattered and bleeding, in 1832, he knocked again at Rudolf's door, thus compromising the Prussian officer—and that was the reason that Rudolf had retired himself so that he might not be retired. Felix went back to his wife and child in Paris, Rudolf made his way through the world as well as he could as a half-beggar and whole vagabond. In 1836 he too went to Paris, arriving just in time for his sister-in-law's funeral. The younger brother had gone even more to the dogs than the elder and the two now combined and gave fencing lessons. Rudolf left Paris as soon as he thought that he had again set his brother on his feet, but soon after his departure the same old story began again. Felix died in misery and Rudolf fetched his niece and brought her to his brother Theodor's house.

During this tale night had come on and, from a hill, the travelers suddenly saw the great city lying at their feet. Hans could not take it in in a moment. It seemed to him as if he were standing at the edge of the sea into which he was to plunge and learn to swim; an irresistible power impelled him and yet he was afraid. The lieutenant encouraged him and steered him, inexperienced, awkward, and often surprised as he was, through the bustle and crowd of the big city, without any mishap, to the "Green Tree" Inn. The landlord, LÄmmert, reported in military fashion that the "slayers of nine" were all assembled and at the lieutenant's command Hans had room 13, beside that of the old soldier, assigned to him.

After they had washed, the lieutenant introduced Hans to the company of the "slayers of nine." It was made up of men who had all at one time been connected with the military service and Colonel von Bullau, owner of the estate of Grunzenow and formerly the commander of Rudolf GÖtz's regiment, presided over it. Its purpose was first of all the promotion of sociability and good-fellowship and it took its name from the rule that, in his real or imaginary tales of war, no member might, in one evening, boast of more than nine victims of his valor. In the society of these good-humored, bluff, thoroughly seasoned old warriors Hans spent his first evening in the metropolis. The next day the lieutenant showed Hans somewhat more of it, that is, he dragged him not only through taverns and pastry cook's shops but also through collections of weapons and art museums. In the evening, after they had again supped in the "Green Tree," they went to the opera and heard "Don Giovanni." The theatre alone with its richly colored life intoxicated the theologian, who at certain moments was all but overcome by the painful feeling of having missed untold experience. But when the real play on the stage went forward he was so spellbound that he himself became the "stone guest" of that evening.

After the performance the two went to a popular wine tavern frequented especially by actors, singers and writers. Among them there also appeared a certain Dr. Stein, who was making a considerable stir just then. In him Hans recognized—the lieutenant was just greeting an acquaintance in the next room—Moses Freudenstein and, much affected, went to his table to greet him. The dapper, bearded gentleman, however, seemed most embarrassed, explained to Hans that he was now Dr. ThÉophile Stein and begged him not to attract attention to them. He promised to explain everything to him the next day. Hans complied with his boyhood friend's request and later did not respond to the lieutenant's remark that this literary fellow and journalist, Dr. Stein, did not please him particularly and that it seemed to him as if he had already seen his face somewhere. Moses took no further notice of the two men till they were about to leave when he succeeded, after the lieutenant was already outside, in slipping his visiting card, with his address, into Hans' hand. In his room in the "Green Tree" his friend gazed at this card long and thoughtfully before he could make up his mind to go to bed.]

Chapter XVII

Almost all night long Hans Unwirrsch had to listen to all the tower clocks the strokes of which reached his pillow. He heard voices of all kinds as he lay awake. The big city sounded every passing quarter of an hour in his ear with a twelve-fold stroke. The tones came from nearby and from far away;—first came the dull bell from quite close by, then the light, clear tone that rang in the distance and sounded much like the bell in a railway station. This fine, distant little voice was followed by the sonorous rumbling of the clock on St. Nicholas' tower; and so it went on and on, one clock and bell following close on another's heels.

It was a curious thing to lie thus in a strange house, in a strange town, in a strange world, counting the hours of night and recalling his past life in an effort in some way to connect it with the mad events of the present.

What was the relation of Dr. ThÉophile Stein to the Moses of KrÖppel Street, the Moses of the Gymnasium and of the university? Hans Unwirrsch gave up bothering his head about that. Inexplicable as this figure might be that had suddenly risen out of the ground, its outlines were yet too distinct and sharp to admit of any doubt as to its reality.

It is possible to think of many people while counting the hours in the night. We can think of living people and of dead, particularly of the latter, for the night is the time for spirits.

Hans thought of his dead,—of his mother, of her old black box where she kept her savings, of her kind, faithful eyes and of the morning on which he, returning from his sermon, had found those eyes closed. Hans thought of his father, of the shining glass globe, of his beautiful book of songs. Now, gradually all his narrow, hemmed-in childhood rose before him in the dark, and once the restless dreamer raised himself in bed believing that he heard the voices of Auntie Schlotterbeck and Uncle GrÜnebaum on the stairs outside. It was a closely circumscribed world, to be sure, that surrounded the candidate that night, but when morning dawned it had made him able to meet with assurance the wider world which now opened before him. Lieutenant GÖtz did not need to haul "his preceptor" out of bed that morning. He found him fully clothed and ready—as the lieutenant expressed it—"to offer a broad back for everything that might be laid upon it."

Thrice Lieutenant GÖtz walked round Unwirrsch, candidate for the ministry, and regarded him with favor.

"You look just as they do on the stage," he said as he finished his third circle. "What is theology without black trousers? What is a preceptor without a dress coat? My word!—You're capital! A little out of fashion, but very decent! My friend, if those two beautiful black coat-tails don't please my brother Theodor, it can only be the fault of the blue handkerchief which peeps out from between them perhaps a little too impertinently to suit my fastidious sister-in-law."

Hastily Hans stuffed the handkerchief as far down into the depths of the pocket as he could, but the lieutenant cried:

"Let it hang, let it hang out boldly! That's not why I remarked upon it, upon my word. What do you care for Theodor and Kleophea; if only——"

The old man broke off; Hans did not learn at that time what was to have followed the words "if only." At a quarter past eleven he was on his way with the lieutenant to the house of the Privy Councillor GÖtz.

Hans had firmly declined the old soldier's advice to strengthen himself for the expedition with a glass of cognac and the lieutenant had said:

"On the whole perhaps you are right; my brother has a pretty keen nose and it might engender unjustified suspicions. Forward!"

Hans had buttoned his clerical coat awry above his beating heart. With joking irony Colonel von Bullau had waved a white handkerchief from the window of the "Green Tree;" the sun looked down from the sky at the preceptor, smiling, but not ironically. The weather left less to be desired that day than the lieutenant's humor. He talked or growled to himself the whole way; he had pulled his cap well down over his forehead and seemed to have clenched his fists in his overcoat pockets. His shortness of temper was far from being delightful and the preceptor gave a positive start when his ill-humored guide suddenly exclaimed: "Confound it, here we are already!"

First they had left the busy, noisy business quarter of the town behind them, had wandered through a quieter, better quarter and now, by passing through a part of the park, they had reached the last row of houses in a still more elegant section which lay along the side of the park and was separated from it by driveways and riding paths. The houses in that street were approached through small gardens, well-kept even at that early season, and the lieutenant stopped before a fine iron garden gate and pointed grimly to the fine building beyond the round lawn and the empty fountain.

Grimly he pulled the bell of the garden gate, Sesame opened, and the two men walked round the lawn and the fountain. Three steps—an elaborately carved door which also seemed to open of itself—a dim, elegant hall—colored panes of glass—the sound of a grand piano—a screeching parrot somewhere in a room—a servant in green and gold on whose foot Hans Unwirrsch stepped in his confusion and who scorned to take any notice of the stammered apology—an opened door—a young lady in violet—a melodious ejaculation of pleased surprise and the young lady's clear laugh—a quarter to twelve!

"It's Uncle! Terrible Uncle! Uncle Petz! Oh what a joy! Uncle Grimbeard, above all things a kiss, mon vieux!"

The young lady in violet fell on the bearish old man's neck so suddenly that he had to endure the kiss and returned it, as it appeared, in a somewhat better humor. Then, however, he freed himself quickly from the beautiful arms, pushed the young lady in violet back and turned to his black-gowned Hans.

"This is my niece Kleophea; my niece with the pious name and the wicked heart. Beware of her, Candidate."

The candidate did not step on the beautiful young lady's foot; he bowed to her at a respectful distance and she returned his greeting not at all coldly. The changing, charming light in her eyes made a great impression on Hans in spite of his faithful Eckart's warning.

"Won't you also introduce the gentleman to me, Uncle Rudolf?" asked Kleophea, smiling. "You have given due publicity to my name and character; you know that you occupy the lightest and most comfortable corner in my wicked heart. Now be fair and——"

"Mr. Johannes Unwirrsch of Neustadt, candidate in theology—a young man well fitted to make spoilt young scamps of both sexes see reason,—a youth who possesses my entire approval."

"That bodes ill for you, Sir," said the young lady. "What my uncle approves of—Jean, please, for goodness sake, don't stare at us with such extraordinary intelligence, go; perhaps after all there may be some useful occupation for you somewhere or other!—is in this house often, exceedingly often, not recognized at its true worth. But you please me and I will take you under my most frivolous protection, Mr. Umquirl."

"Unwirrsch! Theological candidate Unwirrsch!" snapped the lieutenant.

"I beg your pardon. And so you are the patient gentleman whom we have so long sought in vain for our lovely, angelic AimÉ? How very interesting, Mr. Rumwisch!"

"Unwirrsch!! Confound it!" shouted the lieutenant. "Is your father at home, girl?"

Kleophea nodded. "March!" commanded the old man; as Kleophea, Hans and the lieutenant ascended the stairs, Jean's wide-open rabbit-like eyes and imposing whiskers appeared again in the hall where their indignant possessor was waiting impatiently for the carriage containing his mistress who would certainly be also much interested in the news that the tutor, accompanied by Lieutenant GÖtz, had arrived.

Kleophea mounted the stairs at Hans' side; her uncle followed them growling.

Twelve steps! At the thirteenth the stairs turned to the right and when, in the corridor above, Hans looked round for the lieutenant the latter had disappeared. The candidate stood alone with Kleophea and she was much amused at the confused tutor.

"Why, where is he? Where can he be?" she said laughing. "Don't you know that side of him yet? He has delivered you here and has disappeared like an old bearded magician. The magic coach has turned into an empty nut-shell, the horses are mice now and have run to their holes; you might as well give up looking about you, Mr. Unwirrsch. It is highly probable that my uncle has gone to find my cousin Franziska. So now you are left entirely to yourself and to me;—here is my Papa's room; I shall take much pleasure in introducing you. Without flattery, I am very well pleased with you and I hope that we shall not embitter each other's lives in this house."

As she looked at him while she spoke the last words Hans was quite unable to beware of her as the lieutenant had so emphatically advised him. Her brown eyes possessed a magic power of the first rank and if Circe's glance was at all like this it was no wonder that Gryllus would rather be a pig in her service than be a cook in the service of Odysseus.

But the door opened. Kleophea led the tutor through a sumptuous drawing room into another room full of books and cabinets for documents. Hans bowed three times toward an extensive table covered with green cloth on which lay still more books and documents. A gentleman sat behind the table and on being greeted rose from his chair, grew taller, taller, ever taller—thin, black, shadowy—and finally stood there behind his papers, long, thin and black, buttoned up to his white tie like a sign-post bearing the warning: no laughter here.

But Kleophea laughed nevertheless.

"Candidate Unwirrsch, Papa," said she; Hans bowed again and the Privy Councillor GÖtz cleared his throat, seemed to regret very much that he had risen, yet remained standing, now that he had once got up, and put his right arm rapidly behind his back, an action which in everyone except Hans would have aroused the suspicion that he was pressing a spring, or turning a screw, or pulling a string.

Whatever he was trying to do with the two buttons on the back of his coat, the result was a poor imitation of one of the six theological bows.

"Candidate Unwirrsch," said Kleophea repeating her introduction, while her father seemed to deliberate in privy council how he should receive the tutor. At last he made up his mind and said:

"I see the gentleman, have expected him indeed for the last ten minutes and now extend my welcome to him. Is my wife, your mother, at home, dear Kleophea?"

"No, Papa."

"Most regrettable! Mr. Unwirrsch, I hope that a longer and nearer acquaintance will bring us closer together. Kleophea, when will my wife, your mother, return?"

"I can't say, Papa. You know that it is seldom possible to say definitely as to that."

There was a sound of whirring in the Privy Councillor and he cleared his throat ponderously. Hans Unwirrsch thought the time appropriate to announce his firm desire to make himself as useful as possible and to perform his difficult, but at the same time grateful, duties to the best of his ability. He thanked the Councillor for the confidence which he placed in a stranger and voluntarily promised in no way to prove unworthy of it.

While he was speaking the Privy Councillor had again reached behind him, set his mechanism in motion and had sunk slowly down into his chair behind his heap of papers. It is doubtful whether he was meditating deeply on the new tutor's words or whether he had not heard them at all; but truly magical was the way in which he jumped up again when the golden green lackey suddenly appeared in the room and announced that his mistress had just returned and wished to see and speak to the new tutor at once.

"Go, Jean, and tell my wife that I will bring Mr. Unwirrsch to her immediately. My dear Kleophea, will you not precede us?"

Jean bowed and went; Kleophea shrugged her shoulders, smiled as she did so and also went. When they had both gone a miracle took place—the Privy Councillor took hold of the tutor by a coat button, drew him close to him and whispered:

"It is my wish that you should remain in this house; as far as I can judge after this preliminary acquaintance with your person and status, you please me very well. I wish that you might also please my wife. Do your part to that end, and now come."

The Privy Councillor now led the tutor across the drawing room through which he had entered to the room on the opposite side, at the door of which another noticeable change came over the man. The springs inside him seemed suddenly to lose their elasticity, the wheels and wires refused to work, his whole figure seemed to grow smaller,—the Privy Councillor knocked at his wife's door and seemed to feel a desire to peep through the keyhole first, or at least to listen at it. A moment later Hans Unwirrsch stood before the—Mistress of the House.

He saw a stately lady in black with an aquiline nose and a double chin—as solemn as a starless night; she sat on a dark divan behind a table covered with dark drapery! The whole apartment made a solemn impression—every chair and seat an altar of dignity. Serious, chaste, solemn and dignified were walls, ceiling and rugs, pictures and curtains—everything in stately order and regularity except the seven-year-old, coffee-colored, puffy little brat who at sight of the tutor raised a horrible, detestable, furious howl and attacked Hans Unwirrsch's legs with a toy whip.

"Oh, AimÉ, what a way to behave!" said the lady in black. "Come to me, my darling, don't excite yourself so. Kleophea, won't you take the little whip away from the child?"

Again Kleophea shrugged her shoulders.

"No thank you, Mama. AimÉ and I——"

"Be silent, now;" the Councillor's wife cried with a gesture. "I know very well what you want to say. Look here, my little lamb, see what I will give you for your whip."

The charming child could not resist the box of sweets; he put his instrument of torture into his mother's hands and she thus received the last touch that completed her imposing appearance.

With the whip in her hand the lady of the house now devoted herself entirely to the new tutor. She subjected him to a severe examination and asked for the most detailed information about the "conduct" of his life. The morals and dogmas of the young man to whom such a precious jewel was to be entrusted were very important to her and not all her questions could be answered without causing her to wrinkle her brow. On the whole, however, the examination ended favorably for the candidate and the conclusion was even very satisfactory.

"I am glad to be able to hope that your work in this house will be blessed. You will find that the Lord has led you under a strictly Christian roof. You will find that the seeds of faith have already been sown in the heart of this sensitive little angel. Under my special, maternal supervision you will be able to aid all the beautiful blossoms in this young heart to unfold and the Lord will bless your work. With a humble and simple heart you will work among us here and will not allow yourself to be led astray by any worldly laughter and mockery (at this point a glance and an imaginary blow with the whip struck her beautiful daughter Kleophea). AimÉ, my little rosebud, you may give your hand to Mr. Unwirrsch now and say 'how do you do?'"

The little rosebud must have misunderstood this permission. Instead of giving his tutor his hand he showed him something else and began again to howl and scream in the terrible manner we have described. When Hans dared to approach him he kicked him on the shins, so that with painful feelings he withdrew and at a safe distance expressed the hope that he and AimÉ might soon become more intimate with each other.

"I hope so too," said Mrs. GÖtz. "I hope that you will try your best to gain my boy's love and affection. It is easy to win a child's love by a simple and humble manner. Oh, what a treasure I am laying in your hands, Mr. Unwirrsch! Oh, my sensitive little lamb, my AimÉ!"

The Privy Councillor had not spoken a word throughout the proceedings. He stood there and apparently approved, at least externally, of everything. No sign betrayed what he may have felt within; in the presence of his wife the good man had learnt silently to possess his soul in patience.

Kleophea had disappeared altogether. What she was doing behind the window curtain where she had hidden herself remained as great a secret as her father's feelings. The tutor's feelings were not of the pleasantest. He looked into the future with apprehension and confessed to himself sighingly that even Kohlenau had had its charms. He felt himself surrounded by an atmosphere which furthered perspiration and at the same time checked it. With no immoderate sense of gratitude he thought of Lieutenant Rudolf GÖtz, who had procured for him the honor and pleasure of entering this house as an educator. The puzzling disappearance of the man at the most important moment and on the stairs also admitted of no favorable interpretation; Hans Unwirrsch began to think of him as a crafty character; the faithful Eckart was transformed into a deceptive will-o'-the-wisp which suddenly went out in the middle of the swamp. Beneath the gaze of the mistress of the house, Aurelia GÖtz, nÉe von Lichtenhahn, Hans Unwirrsch sank slowly but surely into the depths and neither from behind the window curtain nor from behind the Privy Councillor's back did a helping hand appear.

It was from another direction that a hand brought aid.

"Where is Franziska?" asked Mrs. GÖtz. Kleophea behind the curtain did not know; the Privy Councillor did not know either.

"Please, Mr. Unwirrsch, will you be kind enough to ring the bell?" asked Mrs. GÖtz and Hans' eyes sought it. But just at the moment when he had found it the door opened which led from the drawing room into Mrs. GÖtz's apartment and a small, insignificant figure in a gray, insignificant gown stepped into the room with downcast eyes;—Hans Unwirrsch did not ring. During the last half hour he had not thought of Franziska GÖtz.

"Oh, here you are, Franziska," cried Mrs. GÖtz. "My niece, Miss GÖtz, Mr. Unwirrsch!" she added briefly, at the same time looking, if possible, more stately and more like a glacier than before. "Have Mr. Unwirrsch shown to his room, my child; we have received him into our household."

Franziska GÖtz bowed in silence and, as she passed Hans inaudibly, she raised her eyes to him only to drop them again instantly.

"Won't you follow my niece, Mr. Unwirrsch," said Mrs. GÖtz laying down the whip. Hans made another bow of which this time no notice was taken; he also bowed to the Privy Councillor, whose mechanism moved at least a little bit and, as the window curtain now moved slightly, Hans bowed to it as well; then he followed Lieutenant Rudolf's FrÄnzchen and, once in the corridor, allowed himself to draw a deep, yet cautious, breath of relief.

There stood the majestic servant again, whose whiskers seemed to swell the longer you looked at him. He looked over his liveried shoulder at the "new tutor" with legitimate contempt and manifested only a doubtful inclination to show the ungenteel starveling his way.

But FrÄulein Franziska GÖtz too looked doubtfully at the man in green and gold, then turned to Hans and said softly:

"If you will be good enough to go with me I will show you your room."

Her voice was soft, gentle and low, "an excellent thing in woman" as old King Lear said, and at its sound Jean turned on his heels and walked away with unbent knees, quite superior and quite convinced that he knew how to maintain the dignity of his position.

"Oh, Miss GÖtz, how strangely fate has brought us together again and how thankful I am for that!" cried Hans; but the girl laid her finger on her lips and whispered:

"I have seen my Uncle Rudolf—have talked to him—he has told me about you. Oh, my poor, faithful, dear Uncle Rudolf!"

She stopped speaking but Hans Unwirrsch saw a tear on her lashes; he did not dare to address her again but followed her silently up to the second floor of the house. At the bottom of his soul he said: "God be praised!" He must have had some reason to say so.

"Here is your room," said Franziska, unlocking a door. "May you pass glad and happy hours in it. That is my sincere wish and my Uncle Rudolf's too, who seems to be very fond of you."

"How much I thank you, and how much I thank your uncle. All this that he has done for me is so undeserved. It is like a dream the way he has taken my fortunes into his hand and led me into this house."

"He has often spoken of you since the evening when we met at that inn. I was so troubled at that time, so unhappy. Oh, good Uncle Rudolf, he has guided my poor life too. Oh, if you only knew him through and through, Mr. Unwirrsch!"

"I hope to learn to know him and appreciate his full worth!" cried Hans. "If I stay long enough in this house——"

Franziska again laid her fingers on her lips as if frightened.

"You must not talk so much about Uncle Rudolf in this house," she said. "My Aunt does not like him. It is very sad."

"Oh!" sighed Hans Unwirrsch and a moment later the Lieutenant's FrÄnzchen had left him alone in his new quarters. He could look at them more closely and gaze out the window after he had examined the four walls and the furniture. There was nothing extraordinary about the blue-papered walls, the four chairs, the table, the hat-tree, the little sofa and the little round cast-iron stove; but the view from the window was not so easily forgotten.

In the middle of the lawn the fountain was now playing merrily with a shining brass ball. There was the ornamental iron fence which separated the Privy Councillor's property from the public street of the big city. There was something wonderful to Hans Unwirrsch in the view of this promenade with its throng of carriages, riders and pedestrians and he waited in vain for the variegated stream to come to an end. And there, beyond the driveway, riding and foot paths, was the wood-like park with its long straight avenues into which one looked as into a peep-show. And how beautiful that must all be when the trees were green! Truly, the hope of this green to come was in itself some consolation for the grayness of the present.

The porter from the "Green Tree" now came with a greeting from Lieutenant GÖtz and brought the tutor his traveling bag, thus tearing him away from his observations at the window. He would have to write to the manager in Kohlenau for the things he had left behind there. As Hans laid a Greek pocket edition of the New Testament on the table a card fell out of it on which could be read in fine steel engraving:

Dr. ThÉophile Stein,
25 Hedwig Street.

Hans Unwirrsch had no more time to dream; he had to think and deliberate as well as he could with his mind baffled by an entanglement of persons and mutual relationships. Moses Freudenstein and Franziska GÖtz, Franziska and the mistress of the house, the mistress of the house and Kleophea, the Privy Councillor, Jean in green and gold;—bellum omnium contra omnes, and Hans Unwirrsch, Candidatus theologiÆ and tutor in the midst of them all! That was a state of affairs in which a man was certainly justified in putting his hand to his forehead like some one who has been turned round many times in a circle blindfolded and after the bandage has been removed feels by no means steady on his feet and knows still less what to think of his surroundings.

Hans Unwirrsch, too, felt irresistibly the need of winding up some of the springs in his being and tightening some of the screws. He read a chapter in the New Testament and followed that with a page in a pocket edition of Epictetus. He was then able to meet the stately Jean's eyes with greater composure when the latter came to call him to dinner and let fall the remark that it was customary to wear white gloves to that function.

For the first time Hans partook of bread and salt with his new associates in life. Again he had to answer many questions in regard to his preËxistence and it appeared that in that preËxistence many of the things that came onto the table were unknown. Mrs. GÖtz still remained a born von Lichtenhahn, the Privy Councillor remained what he was; Kleophea smiled and shrugged her shoulders, AimÉ was very unamiable, and FrÄnzchen sat at the lower end of the table next to the candidate Hans Unwirrsch.

Summary of Chapters XVIII-XXI

[Hans soon learned how things went on in the Privy Councillor's house. The sovereign power lay in the hands of the mistress of the house. Aurelia GÖtz, nÉe von Lichtenhahn, swayed the sceptre with a strong hand. She ruled arbitrarily up to the boundaries of Kleophea's realm. To the tutor Kleophea herself appeared to be a wonder. Unusually beautiful and talented she drew and painted, played the piano, sang and read several languages, with preference French and whatever she should not have read. At five o'clock teas she loved to speak to pious ladies of Boccaccio and the Decameron, to the vexation of her Mamma. Kleophea hated her Mamma because of the name she had received from the latter at her baptism and against which she had always protested. Much in the development of her character was due to this name and her opposition to it. She declared her brother to be a "horrid toad" and he scarcely dared show himself in her presence. This did not improve her relations with her mother. She had hoped to find an ally in her cousin but soon pronounced her to be a "lamb." Still, she could not make an absolute slave of her. She treated her now as a confidant, now as the opposite, caressed her one day and pushed her brusquely aside the next. Franziska was not well treated by her aunt. The latter had not been friends either with "the despised, godless freebooter and Jacobite" Felix, or with "the careless beggar and ill-mannered vagabond" Rudolf. She had been glad, however, to take the orphan into her house; the town talked of it, and she, too, was able to make it the subject of conversation. The tutor was allowed to instruct the "sweet AimÉ" only under the eyes of his mother and this caused the teacher to sweat more than the pupil.

One day, when AimÉ was ill from overstudy, that is, from over-eating, Hans sought out Dr. ThÉophile Stein. In answer to his knock a pretty, laughing young lady with very black hair and a rather uptilted nose opened the door. Behind this merry girl ThÉophile appeared, somewhat annoyed and embarrassed, though he smiled when he recognized Hans and said: "Oh, it's you, come in." The lady put on her dainty, rosy little hat in front of the glass, threw the candidate a kiss and the words: "Bon jour, monsieur le curÉ" and slipped out as gracefully as a bird. Dr. Stein followed her into the passage and for some time after Hans heard her joyful laughter. Then her clear voice cried: "TraÎtre, va!" and Moses came back into the room. He explained that this little full-blooded Parisian was a poor orphan, a little maker of trimmings to whom he had shown many kindnesses in Paris and who had now come to town to try her luck in working for the ladies there. He questioned Hans about his life and listened attentively when he heard that he was tutor in the house of Privy Councillor GÖtz. He called Hans an enviable fellow to be able to live under the same roof as the beautiful Kleophea GÖtz and asked if he might come to see him there. He told of how he had had fencing lessons from Franziska GÖtz's father, a drunkard and rather a canaille, and that he had often protected the girl from hunger and perhaps other misfortune. After the old freebooter had died of delirium tremens he had taken care of the unhappy girl until the arrival of her uncle from Germany. Of course he was a Jew and received the usual reward. The young lady thought that he had exceeded his bounds. When he had tried to defend himself he had been insulted and scorned. It was the old story of the gratitude of the world. Thus in Hans' eyes he cleared himself of the lieutenant's accusations. He objected strongly to being called Moses, said that his name was now ThÉophile Stein, that he had forsworn the faith of his fathers and had become a Christian, a Roman Catholic, and that he might soon become a lecturer on the Semitic languages at the university. All these revelations gave Hans plenty to think about on his way home.

For some time after that everything remained as it was. The tutor did his duty as well as he could; Mrs. GÖtz became more and more convinced that unfortunately he too possessed a most obstinate and deceitful character. Kleophea discovered a new name for Franziska, called her l'eau dormante and drew caricatures of Hans. Franziska's step remained as inaudible as before and her kindly care-filled face seldom brightened into a smile; nothing whatever was heard of the lieutenant; he had disappeared and gave no sign of life. The person least spoken of in the Privy Councillor's house was the Privy Councillor.

During this time the soul of the theological candidate, Johannes Unwirrsch of KrÖppel Street, was in an extraordinary state. He stood in the centre of the life for which he had longed so much; he had stepped down and the great roar had dissolved into single voices and tones and the voices that he heard around him were more harsh and evil than loving. He felt less satisfied than ever and was obliged to confess to himself that he had not as yet acquired an understanding of this world. Once for all he belonged to those happily unhappy natures who have to solve every contradiction that meets them. It was simply that he had that hunger for the symmetry and harmony of all things which so few people understand, which is so hard to satisfy and is never completely satisfied except in death.

In addition to all his other troubles Hans had much ado to defend himself against the charm that Kleophea exercised over him.

Franziska was quieter than ever. In the meantime the signs of returning spring multiplied. Dr. ThÉophile Stein paid his first visit to the Privy Councillor's tutor and was very winning and very amiable. He listened to every noise in the house, asked all sorts of questions about the tutor's life there, asked about the architecture of the house; the position and furnishings of the rooms on the first floor, about the pictures on the walls and the service in the kitchen. He was not uninterested in the sympathies of the Privy Councillor's wife and still less so in her antipathies. He asked for detailed information about AimÉ as well as about the master of the house. At last he had finished, inwardly shut up his note-book and succeeded by a clever winding-up in convincing poor Hans that he had only asked all these questions out of interest in the fate and present life of the companion of his youth.

Mrs. GÖtz had of course heard of the visit and, at the dinner table, asked about this Dr. Stein, who was much talked of in town at the moment, and who was said to be very gifted and much traveled. At that Hans began to speak out of the fullness of his heart and told everything about Moses Freudenstein that he could tell. He praised his kind heart, clever head and scholarliness and unfortunately did not notice what a start the lieutenant's FrÄnzchen gave when she learnt who had that day been in the house in which she had sought protection.

Hans said nothing of the merry French orphan as, when he was on the point of leaving, Dr. Stein had modestly and laughingly begged him not to mention her. The following day Franziska did not appear at the table; she was not well. She was obliged to keep her bed for a whole week and, for the first time Hans had the opportunity of noticing what a gap her absence made. Suddenly the idea came into his mind that his speech at the table about Moses Freudenstein might be the cause of the poor child's illness and this thought sent all the blood rushing to his heart so violently that he was scarcely able to breathe. The same morning the mistress of the house sent for him to come to her room where he found his friend ThÉophile Stein, alias Moses Freudenstein, sitting beside Mrs. GÖtz, opposite Kleophea, with little AimÉ on his knee. Another older man was sitting there too.

"Oh, here he is—the hunger pastor!" exclaimed Dr. Stein, thus giving our Hans his title officially. "Wake up, Johannes, it is I in the flesh."

Dr. Stein spoke easily and with polish and Dr. BlÜthemÜller, lecturer on esthetics, made very fine, but quite academic speeches, about the art of living beautifully.

After he had emptied his horn of plenty the lady of the house opened hers. With sighing pathos she gave her views on the way to find Christian, esthetic peace in God. She raved about the way of the saints of God, and about old Italian pictures of virgins looking up to heaven, of martyrs and donors.

Full of perfidy Dr. Stein asked the friend of his youth whether he had seen the pictures of which Mrs. GÖtz spoke. Hans had seen them, but unfortunately he said what he thought about them, thereby incurring the displeasure of the lady of the house. Dr. Stein then entertained the little circle with an excellent discussion of the Pre-Raphaelites and showed his erudition, experience in art, and knowledge of the world to the most brilliant advantage. He illumined all sides of life with clever remarks; and in the great art of polishing up the mediocre, or even silly remarks of those from whom he wanted to obtain something and then giving them back their property with a bow, he was past-master. He knew how all kinds of fish were caught and began by catching Mrs. Privy Councillor GÖtz, nÉe von Lichtenhahn, but while he was pulling his catch ashore he did not lose sight of the golden scales and purple fins that still flashed about free in the water.

As Dr. ThÉophile Stein had expected, Hans knocked at his door several times, to call him to account, but received no answer or else was told that Dr. Stein was not at home.

When the lieutenant's FrÄnzchen came out of her little room again she had become even quieter than before and although her behavior to the rest of the household was as usual it made Hans feel the more deeply and painfully that she was not the same to him as she had been. He knew the reason well and yet was unable to ask whether what Moses Freudenstein had said about her father was true. He watched her with strained anxiety and never failed to hear her softest footstep nor a single tone of her sweet voice.

To the same degree that the brilliant Kleophea lost her influence over him Franziska won hers.

Dr. ThÉophile Stein repeated his visit without Professor BlÜthemÜller, and Hans was not invited again to be present in the drawing room. Dr. Stein did not blush when Franziska came into the room and, at the sight of him, suddenly started and turned pale. He retained his composure when he was introduced to her and merely spoke coolly of already having had the pleasure of meeting FrÄulein GÖtz in Paris. This declaration caused Mrs. GÖtz and her husband much surprise and astonishment.

After Franziska had left the room Mrs. GÖtz asked for an explanation of this curious circumstance and Dr. Stein expatiated on how sorry he was to have recalled to FrÄulein GÖtz such painful memories. He went on to tell his tale, and he was a good story-teller; and his sonorous voice was well-fitted tenderly to emphasize all tragic nuances. It was the same tale that Hans had heard but adapted to another audience. This time he took a most sympathetic interest in this family misfortune and was able thoroughly to understand what Mrs. GÖtz must have suffered on account of her brother-in-law's wretched life and death.

After a time Kleophea came skipping into the room. She brought sunshine with her and youthful spirits; her eyes shone, her red lips laughed, she scarcely touched the floor with her feet. She greeted Dr. Stein with enchanting irony; she was just in the mood to hurt the feelings of her fellowmen with small, perfidious insinuations and expressed a great thirst for knowledge in regard to certain Mosaic customs and laws. Dr. ThÉophile was more than equal to her. He talked about the Jews with dramatic pathos, he knew how to make the best use of the heroes and martyrs his race had produced. He even succeeded in making of Kleophea a close and attentive listener.

He was able to leave with a humbly proud bow and to be satisfied with the success of his visit. He was now what he wanted to be—a friend of the family. From now on, without suffering any detriment to his bodily or spiritual welfare, he could receive the visits of Candidate Hans Unwirrsch.

Spring had come in all its beauty, but it did not bring Hans Unwirrsch the consolation he had hoped. The lower he sank in the favor and esteem of the Privy Councillor's wife the less she left him to himself. And FrÄnzchen, FrÄnzchen GÖtz? What had she to do with his great hunger for knowledge, for the world and life? What had she to do with his disappointments? In everything she penetrated into the innermost recesses of his heart. It was impossible to think of Auntie Schlotterbeck, or even of Uncle GrÜnebaum without Franziska, Lieutenant Rudolf GÖtz's niece. She sat in the low, dark room in Neustadt and in the magically shining glass globe, she sat in the sunshine in the Neustadt cemetery beside his mother's and father's grave.

The great sea of the world had tried to roll between them but it did not separate them; they greeted each other in silence, in silence they took their places beside each other; the poisonous shade of the son of Samuel Freudenstein, the second-hand dealer of KrÖppel Street, lay between them.

Hans again sought out Dr. ThÉophile and for the second time he met the French orphan who owed so much to ThÉophile. This time she passed him with lowered head. She no longer skipped and laughed but leant heavily on the banister and her head was sunk very low. She looked very pale and had lost much of her former elegance.

ThÉophile answered all the questions that Hans put to him and allowed himself to be catechized but the manner in which he justified himself left much for an honest and pious nature to desire. Finally he confessed quite openly that it was his intention to become a councillor in the cabinet of his Majesty, the King, and to try to win the affection and later the little hand of Kleophea GÖtz.

From now on Dr. Stein came to the house of the Privy Councillor's wife daily, and daily she received him with a more cordial smile. He read with the ladies of the house, he drove with them, and there were many people in the city who envied Mrs. GÖtz this interesting acquaintance, for the doctor was a man whose reputation was growing mightily. It could be heard growing. He gave lectures before a select audience of both sexes on "The Rights and Duties of Human Society" and the exclusive, elegant fraction of humanity for whom these lectures were prepared was much pleased with them. They delighted Mrs. GÖtz, but the objections that Kleophea raised gave the doctor the desired opportunity to throw a hundred shining nooses about her rebellious self. He talked to her in a very different way from what he did to her mother. He spoke of things which might give him a claim to a "world of sighs." He used his descent and gloomy youth to good advantage and was elegiac. He was wisely silent as to how easy his father had made his way in the world; he had overcome all obstacles through the strength of his own manhood and courage. He wore his shirt collar À la Byron and insinuated that he—"lord of himself; that heritage of woe!"—had not always trodden the straight path, that there were depths, dark, unfathomable depths in his bosom into which he could not look without becoming giddy. It was night within him but he had not yet lost his hunger for the light and that was the only reason that he was still able to mix with the living without being crippled by the burden of existence.

Never in all her life had Kleophea been as silent as she became at this time.

No change had taken place in FrÄnzchen's relations with Hans. Lieutenant Rudolf still did not appear.

In order not to worry the old people at home Hans had always written them that he was well off, very well off. But he was not well off! He could not get out of the magic circle that fate had drawn around him. He felt that the time was not far distant when he would hate Moses Freudenstein, when he would love Franziska GÖtz and he was constantly fleeing from his own thoughts. Poor Hans Unwirrsch was far from being well off. Gradually he began to feel physically ill, suffered from dizziness and headache and became more melancholy from day to day. He no longer had any hunger for anything except to open his whole heart to FrÄnzchen.

One Saturday afternoon Candidate Unwirrsch received a package from Neustadt containing two presents and letters from Auntie Schlotterbeck and Uncle GrÜnebaum. His uncle complained that things were going miserably with him, that he was growing older every day, that his digestion refused to work, that his eyes had gone back on him and that he had sat down on his spectacles the day before yesterday. The "Red Ram" had changed hands and had lost its attractiveness and even politics were no longer what they used to be.

Auntie Schlotterbeck wrote full of solicitude for Hans' welfare and warned him again and again against Moses Freudenstein, who was a bad man, as old Esther and Professor Fackler too declared. When Hans had done reading these letters he had to hold his head with both hands; it seemed to him to be bursting. He wanted to open the window but could not;——he was ill, so ill that all his painful feelings dissolved into the nothingness of unconsciousness and then passed over into delirium.

Hans Unwirrsch had inflammation of the brain and for several days was near death; but he saw visions during this illness which were not bought too dear by all the pain that he suffered. Dr. ThÉophile Stein was among them.

It was on the second day after the fever had broken out. ThÉophile was alone with the sick man and believed himself unobserved. At Mrs. GÖtz's desire he had come to see "what the young man was doing." Hans' mind was all confusion but his delirious fantasies were interrupted by strange moments of clearness. ThÉophile was very curious, as we know, and liked to poke about in other people's things and affairs, nor did he think it indiscreet to look into drawers that stood open and at unsealed letters that lay there. He took Auntie Schlotterbeck's letter during the perusal of which the illness had overtaken Hans and read, first with pleasure and then with his teeth on his lower lip, what she had written about him. "Absurdly original!" he said, "but still the duffer might become an inconvenience; it will be best to get him out of the house. Look out for yourself, my dear Hans!" He went over to the sick man's bed. So utterly out of his mind did he believe poor Hans to be that he thought it quite unnecessary to lay any restraint upon himself. But he was mistaken: Hans saw clearly, quite clearly, horribly clearly. Between life and death, consciousness and unconsciousness, knowledge came to him in a flash. He saw ThÉophile's eyes shining like those of an evil spirit rejoicing in his misfortune. All the heartlessness of him whom he had once called his friend was revealed in those eyes, in that smile. For the first time in his life Hans felt what hatred is. He wanted to shriek aloud and jump up but he could only reach the other with his eyes. ThÉophile Stein started; he smiled no more; Hans sank again into the delirium of fever but he took with him the certainty that he had gained an irreconcilable enemy.

When he again came to himself many a day had passed. He saw two other figures beside his bed of pain. At the foot sat Privy Councillor GÖtz, tired and careworn, and beside him stood Franziska—FrÄnzchen, sympathetic and gentle and with tears in her eyes. And FrÄnzchen had no idea how distinctly the sick man saw at that moment. She took no pains whatever to control her features. And she started very much, did FrÄnzchen, and blushed hotly when she suddenly noticed that Hans was awake and could see. Hans closed his eyes and when he opened them again—he could not tell just how long after that was—these two figures also were no longer there.

But the sun had risen in Hans Unwirrsch's soul; he knew that he should not die, and knew something much more important than that. There was great rejoicing in his hungry soul and it did not matter a bit that his senses left him once more; everything was now right.

Eventually the day came when the tutor, very lean and somewhat dizzy, went downstairs into the drawing room to thank Mrs. GÖtz and Kleophea for all their kindness. On the following day the mistress of the house had a second interview with the candidate and expressed the desire that the arrangement between them should come to an end by Christmas Day. She gave it as her opinion that Mr. Unwirrsch's influence on her son could not be regarded as entirely beneficial.

Utterly confused and benumbed Hans staggered back to his room only able to murmur the name "Franziska."]

Chapter XXII

Much had changed for the worse during the illness of Candidate Unwirrsch. It was only slowly that he came to realize how the conditions in the house of the Privy Councillor GÖtz had shifted and become more complicated; but at the first glance he saw with a start that autumn had come. The lawn and the paths under the trees of the park were already covered with fallen leaves; the park itself began to look like a ragged rug with many moths in it; it might almost have been regarded as fortunate that Hans had no time to think about this.

Dr. ThÉophile Stein had won a complete victory over the beautiful and spirited girl, Kleophea. She loved this man with all the passion of which a nature like hers was capable. It required very delicate perception to discern the fire that glowed beneath a soil so gay with flowers, but it was there and for the moment it made the garden bloom with even greater brilliance;—it was very sad, it was a matter for tears!

Since Hans had been on his feet again the Privy Councillor had become as unapproachable to him as he had formerly been; his wife had spoken and he—submitted to this higher power. Hans realized that this man could not avert the danger that threatened his house and that no warning could help, perhaps might even do harm and make the matter worse. So cleverly had ThÉophile prepared his way with the Privy Councillor's wife that not the slightest assistance was to be looked for in that direction; and Kleophea, proud, magnificent Kleophea would have repulsed with the deepest scorn any attempt to interfere in these, her most private, intimate affairs. She had laughed too often with ThÉophile at the "Hunger Pastor" to allow herself to be warned by the latter. Duplicity and impudent egoism, lamentable weakness, obstinate stupidity and pharisaical arrogance, frivolity, conceit, exuberant wantonness, scorn and mockery on all sides;—it was indeed a world to make one hunger, hunger for innocence, for loyalty, for gentleness, for love.

Oh, FrÄnzchen, FrÄnzchen GÖtz, what a sweet, gentle light surrounded your chaste figure in the midst of this grimacing throng! Where else could peace, refuge and rest be found but with you? Oh, FrÄnzchen, FrÄnzchen, how could it be that you caused poor Hans such strange pain? How could it be that you had to bear such strange pain on his account? How could you both torment each other so and moreover entirely against the will and the good intentions of Lieutenant Rudolf GÖtz?

Alas, Lieutenant Rudolf had no place in the council of Providence either, he was often hard pressed enough himself; destiny takes its own course and every time of trial must come to an end in its own way in this hungry turmoil of life.

Since the tutor had recovered, FrÄnzchen no longer avoided him so shyly. The more power Dr. ThÉophile Stein acquired in the house, the more the poor niece realized that the relation between the doctor and the good Hans could not be altogether as she had at first imagined, and not without justification. On the day on which her aunt gave the candidate notice that his services as preceptor would not be much longer needed, FrÄnzchen sat in her room and wept tears of joy and murmured her mother's name as such poor, orphaned little things do when they meet with a great unexpected piece of happiness. And then she dried her tears and laughed in the midst of her last sob and into her damp handkerchief.

"Oh, thank you, thank you, my dear Uncle Rudolf! Do you see—no, yes—thank you, thank you!"

Then she came down to take her place at the luncheon table and although the mental atmosphere during this meal was even more oppressive than usual and her aunt made more maliciously pointed remarks than ever, still, FrÄnzchen's dear little heart had not beat so free and light for a long, long time. And Candidate Unwirrsch seemed to feel that in a moment. He too looked at the people about him with less embarrassment and more cheerfulness; their doings and sayings no longer had their former bad influence on him; FrÄnzchen GÖtz no longer avoided his eyes, and he could breathe freely.

It could not be otherwise;—what had dragged on so long in monotonous unpleasantness had at last to show itself in all its nakedness and disconsolateness. The crisis was near at hand, and if, for the present, the evil went on without tangible, outward manifestations, yet the electric shock which was to throw the quiet, elegant household of the Privy Councillor into the greatest possible confusion and to make it the topic of conversation all over the town, could not fail to come. The threatening fist was clenched and struck menacingly at the door to put an end not only to all delusions, but to peaceful sleep as well.

After the long, dreary rain, a few days followed at the beginning of October, when nature seemed to regret her bad humor and to endeavor to make up for it by being doubly amiable. The sun broke through the clouds, for thirty-six short hours the year showed itself in its matronly beauty and whoever could and would make use of the blessed moment had to hasten; for it is, after all, but seldom that such a change of heart is entirely to be trusted.

The lady of the house commanded her lord to get leave for one or two days and carried him and her precious AimÉ off to the not too distant country house of some friends who most probably rejoiced exceedingly over the long announced visit.

Kleophea had refused to be carried off; she thoroughly hated the country, and the agricultural family to whom her parents were going perhaps even more. And if she had little fondness for the beauties of nature she had just as little taste for the marriageable eldest son of that worthy family, who succeeded only in boring the beautiful girl to death with his shining, healthy, but unfortunately somewhat protruding eyes, and his unsuccessful attempts at conversation. Kleophea GÖtz, who was not accustomed to give any account of her whims and moods, of her comings and goings, stayed at home, saw her parents drive away with a sigh of satisfaction, suffered all the afternoon with a nervous headache, declined to see Dr. ThÉophile and in the evening, with a family of her acquaintance, went to the opera where she could not decline to see Dr. ThÉophile. She came home with a violent headache and locked herself in her room after having, strangely enough, given her cousin a kiss and called her a "poor, good child." She must really have passed a very restless night, for the next morning she appeared very late and very exhausted and nervous. When FrÄnzchen sympathetically called her attention to the sunshine she declared that she didn't care about it and called her cousin a "dull little thing who had no will of her own except to suffer." At the same time she began to cry, but a moment later sat down at the piano to lose herself in a succession of the most piercing arias. Toward noon she became almost recklessly cheerful and at lunch she challenged Hans to confess that at the beginning of their acquaintance he had been terribly in love with her but that his simple uprightness had gradually found a more suitable object of admiration and so had turned to "gentle FrÄnzchen." Her cheeks were very hot and she laughed very loudly at the confusion into which she threw her companions. She spoke of her mother with very unfilial shrugs of the shoulders, called her father a "poor worm" and her brother a "worm" without any qualifying adjective. She begged her cousin to confess that this house had been a "hell" to her and asked the tutor to say frankly that he knew of more comfortable places in which "to breathe." She was indescribably sharp to the butler and finally drove him out of the room only to confess that she was a very "naughty girl" and that Franziska was a "poor darling." She drank to Hans and FrÄnzchen and begged them to be indulgent with her. Then her indisposition came on once more and she bolted herself again into her room. Toward five o'clock, when it was already getting dusk, she went out.

All the afternoon Hans sat at his window unable to make up his mind to do anything sensible. He opened a book, laid it down again however, filled his pipe, which he had unearthed from the bottom of his trunk, with secret trembling, but it soon went out again as if it too knew that no smoking was allowed in that house. As usual he looked down on the throng of passing riders, pedestrians and carriages and tried to concentrate his attention on the old organ-grinder with the fierce moustache and the Waterloo medal; but he did not succeed well even in that. Everything drew him back again and again into the house itself and an irresistible power compelled him to listen to the faintest sounds in the corridors and on the stairs.

Her light footstep?... No, no, it was only a maid creeping by who, together with the much-belaced Jean, had received orders to keep a sharp eye on the tutor and on Miss Franziska so that they might later give a report of any incident that occurred.

Her sweet voice?... Foolishness; it was an old woman outside in the avenue offering smoked herrings to those who liked them.

Oh, if sighs could improve the world it would have become incapable of further improvement long since. Oh, how often and how deeply did Candidate Unwirrsch sigh on that unblessed afternoon! He gazed at the door of his room and thought of all those pleasant nursery tales in which the fairy, invoked or not invoked, always appears at the right moment. When she did not come and he had told himself a hundred times that he was a fool he went back to the window for the fiftieth time to gaze down again at the merry life below. He laid his forehead against the window pane and stood there long in that position; but suddenly he jumped back and looked out again more sharply. A shadow glided through the gay throng, a black, pale shadow. From underneath the trees a poorly clad, emaciated young woman came out and walked in front of the Privy Councillor's house, where she stopped, looking up at its windows. Hans recognized this woman, although he had only seen her twice and although she had changed very much since then.

It was the little French girl, once so merry, whom he had met in Dr. Stein's rooms and it was as if in sorrowful helplessness her eyes were seeking him, Hans Unwirrsch. A strange feeling of anxiety came over him;—he had taken his hat and was already on the stairs before he could explain these feelings to himself. He went out of the house, passed quickly round the fountain and the lawn and crossed the driveway to the trees of the park; but the black shadow had vanished and Hans looked about for it in vain. Had his imagination led him astray again? He stood a moment in doubt; but the sun was shining, the air was so refreshing,—he did not return to the house but went slowly on under the trees. Soon, of course, he forsook the broad promenades where most of the people were walking. He sought the lonely, winding paths among the bushes, the paths on which all those are most frequently found who walk with bent heads and have a way of standing still for no particular reason. But on that day scarcely any path was altogether deserted. Everyone was out of doors—everyone. There were the people who had dined and those who had dined too well and those who had not dined at all. There were the people who were able to drive and those who were obliged to go on crutches. There were the would-be-old children who thought it beneath their dignity any longer to jump through a hoop and the childish old men who would gladly have done so but could not and instead of that sent admiring glances after the young girls that passed. It was very difficult to find an unoccupied bench. In the seats which everyone could see sat people who had nothing to conceal, or perhaps even something to show, while the seats in the hidden nooks were occupied by loving couples or people who were ashamed of their shabby clothes; and when finally Hans did find an empty bench a badly spelt notice on the back of it frightened him away. Scribbled in pencil were the words:

"As I can't stand it no longer on account of Louise I am going to America and if Berger of Coblenz comes here and reeds this here notice it would be friendly of him if he would break the news to my folks in Bell Lane so they wont make no fuss about it and keep supper waiting for me."

Now there was indeed no real reason why Candidate Unwirrsch should take it to heart if the ne'er-do-weel ran off and Berger of Coblenz broke the news in Bell Lane;—but he did so nevertheless. After thinking for some time whether it was not his own duty to ask in Bell Lane whether Berger had been there and whether the old parents were not still waiting supper for their lost son, Hans jumped up to look for another seat. He could not endure it on that bench any longer.

A short path led him to those romantic expanses of water, those greasy green canals which adorn the more remote part of the park and which must fill with delight the hearts of all lovers of the microscope and infusoria; they certainly every spring provide whole Pharoanic armies of frogs with all they need for joyful and melodious existence.

There he found a place where no loving couples would sit down, a bench in front of a deep pool out of which more than one corpse had been dragged before this, a thoroughly hidden bench, in a thoroughly damp and dank place, a bench which was not so easy to find even at this season when so many trees and bushes were already losing their leaves. It suddenly came into view at a turn of the narrow path round a dense, thorny clump of shrubbery, just before it ended at the water's edge; and nothing was lacking to complete the miserable, melancholy impression but a black post with a black arm pointing into the stagnant, swampy pool.

With bent head Hans followed the narrow path and stepped out from behind the shrubbery to stand suddenly still, amazed and startled; close before him on the half-rotten bench sat the figure that he was seeking against his own will, the figure that had drawn him out of Councillor GÖtz's house,—the shadow of the little French girl who once, in ThÉophile's room, had laughed so merrily at his embarrassment.

It was she undoubtedly, and yet scarcely anything remained of her former appearance. She seemed to be ill, very ill, she still wore gloves but they were torn, as were her once so dainty little shoes. The shawl which she had wrapped round her shivering body was worn and faded;—alas, she was altogether the poor little cricket of her compatriot Monsieur Jean de la Fontaine!

And she recognized Hans Unwirrsch immediately, for she rose quickly, drew her shawl together and hastily reached for the handkerchief that lay on the bench beside her. With fearful, somewhat theatrical anger she looked at Candidate Unwirrsch.

"Ah, ce monsieur!"

She tried to pass him but he stepped in front of her and calmly met the contemptuous glance of her black eyes.

"Monsieur, your friend is a canaille!" she cried, clenching her fist. "Let me past—vill you?"

"I beg your pardon," said Hans Unwirrsch gently and sadly. "Dr. ThÉophile Stein is not my friend. Now won't you listen to me?"

"I vill not hear you more! I vill not see you more! I vill not see nozing of ze world more, but ma figure in zis water 'ere!"

This was spoken with such vehemence, such wildness, that Hans involuntarily caught her arm to prevent her jumping into the pool; but she tore herself away, laughed bitterly and then covered her face with both hands and began to cry as bitterly.

"Do let me tell you," exclaimed Hans, "you have spoken hard words to me, you have troubled me very much. I am not conscious of any guilty act toward you and I will help you if I can;—I repeat, I am not Dr. Stein's friend;—I am no longer his friend!"

Slowly she let her hands fall and looked again into Hans' eyes.

"You too accuse him whom you have just mentioned? Tell me what part of his guilt I must take upon myself!" said Hans, softly, and she—she looked him over from head to foot and then,—it was so strange—and then a slight smile crossed her sick, sorrowful features.

"You are not 'is friend?" she asked.

"Not any longer, and it is a great sorrow to me."

Now the French girl took the candidate's hand and her fingers were like iron.

"Monsieur le curÉ, I am a poor girl and all alone in a strange countree. I am ill, and I am not honnÊte. I 'ave 'ad a leetle child, but it is dead;—I am all left alone in a strange countree! Oh, Monsieur, 'e is a bad, vicked man and if you are not 'is friend forgive me vat I 'ave said—je n'ai plus rien À dire."

Hans could not understand her broken German well, nor her quick French at all, but her gestures and her expression enabled him to comprehend her. He led her back to the bench and she let him keep her hand when he sat down beside her and talked to her gently and soothingly. It was five o'clock, the sun sank behind the trees, a white mist rose from the ponds; it was cold and gray—it was the hour when the beautiful Kleophea GÖtz left her father's house.

Hans told the French girl as well as he could all that was necessary about his relation to Dr. Stein and then gradually he learnt the sad story of her life and the evil part that Moses Freudenstein of KrÖppel Street had played in it.

Henriette Trublet was not made to keep a perfectly straight course through life and in this respect it was probable that Dr. ThÉophile had altered her fate but little. She carried an adventurous little head on her shoulders and lived only in the present. She had been a dressmaker's apprentice in Paris and there ThÉophile had met and won her. She had not really loved him but he had pleased her, and his Parisian friends and the way in which he enjoyed life appealed to her. She was the scintillating streamer on a very gay, bright wreath and when, as usually happens, the latter broke and Dr. ThÉophile had gone back to Germany she soon began to long for him. She had heard all sorts of marvelous tales of poor good Allemagne. The people there were so honest and so musical and so blond;—to be sure, they probably were also a little backward in civilization and somewhat simple; but still they were much better than tall silly Englishmen. And they bought all their hats and caps and their artificial flowers and their champagne in Paris—those good Germans; and any pretty, clever child of Belle France must be able to make her fortune there among them in spite of the fog, ice and snow, in spite of all the wolves and polar bears, Erl kings, nixies and other monsters. One morning Henriette arrived at the Strassburg railway station with a leather trunk and a tremendous number of boxes of all shapes and sizes,—and she found pleasant traveling companions to the Rhine too—allons enfants de la patrie, onward to Homburg, Baden-Baden and so on—oÙ le drapeau, lÀ est la France, ubi bene, ibi patria! And one fine morning Dr. ThÉophile Stein heard a gentle tapping at his door and a soft giggle outside it; Henriette Trublet had found him again.

So far this was all very well and neither could reproach the other with anything; but from then on under other skies their relation was changed. Poor Henriette, deserted, helpless and not knowing what to do found herself entirely delivered over to ThÉophile; she became a despised, abused plaything and the light, gay bloom that had covered her frivolous butterfly wings was soon rubbed off and blown away. Dr. Stein had a reputation to sustain now and if he was weak enough not to be able to thrust the poor little Parisian away from him he had sufficient strength to hold her down low enough so that she was obliged to serve and obey him without being in any way able to interfere with his plans and hopes. It was his fault and owing to his intrigues that she was prevented from making use of her skilful hands. Only when she was entirely dependent on him could he exert complete tyranny over her. When he grew tired of her, he believed her much too broken to harm him, and so with no further thought he closed his door to her and left her to her fate. Her child was born in the hospital toward the middle of September and died on the second of October. It was an evil place, this bench beside the stagnant green pool, where, on the fourth of October Candidate Unwirrsch found poor Henriette Trublet sitting.

TraÎtre—va!

Chapter XXIII

Hans Unwirrsch grew hot and cold by turns as Henrietta Trublet told her story. It was his misfortune that even the most ordinary things excited him so and that it was so difficult for him to look upon any such incidents as ridiculous or insignificant. He sat there stupefied until the French girl suddenly jumped up, stamped her foot passionately and cried:

"Oh, he 'as treated me badly, but I vill revenge myself ven I can. I vill interfere, I vill, if it is ze last hour. And I vill go to her—I vill! I vill tell ze beautiful Mademoiselle who he is—le juif! le misÉrable! He shall not 'ave his vill——"

"Kleophea!" cried Hans. "Good God, yes, yes, to be sure! Oh, tell me, do you know about that? My head swims—I, we, you must go to her, she must know this. No, no, and again, no, she shall not fall into his hands; we must save her, even if it is against her own will."

"I did know zat he vas running after ze beautiful young lady, zere in ze house by ze park; I vas much jealous of her—pauvre petite. I 'ave stood before her vindow and laughed, O mon Dieu, and my heart 'as bled. It vas very bad, it vas very vicked—pauvre coeur, I vill save her from zis man! Venez, monsieur le curÉ."

The evening was cold and dark, the beautiful weather was all gone and the wind began to move the mists above the ponds and to shake the twigs. It began to groan and sigh as on the day when Hans had gone from the university to his mother's deathbed. It rustled in the distance and whistled nearby, far away the lights and lanterns among the trees seemed to be thrown back and forth like the boughs. The fiery reflection of the great city on the dark sky was like the breath of the terrible, final abyss.

Now, indeed, the pleasure-seeking throng had long since dispersed; rich and poor had crept out of sight; the shadow-like forms that still slunk about the paths of the park were not to be trusted; it was well to avoid them if possible. From a distant pleasure resort the wind brought the sound of dance music, in fragments. Henriette Trublet walked close to Hans' side and he gave her his arm as she, exhausted by his hasty step, fell behind. More and more frequently and brighter the gas lanterns shone through the trees—there was the street, and there Privy Councillor GÖtz's house.

The two wanderers halted a moment.

Only a single window was lighted.

"Zat is not her light! Zat is not her room!" said the French girl.

Hans Unwirrsch shook his head; he could not utter Franziska's name in this company. Oh that lighted window in the wild, restless, dark night! Peace and rest;—God's blessing on FrÄnzchen! The candidate gazed reverently at the dim glow above them and then gently took hold of the hand of the poor girl who had again stepped away from his side as they came out of the gloom of the trees.

"Come, pauvre enfant,—we are going on a good errand!" he said.

They walked through the little garden and Hans rang the doorbell. They had to wait some time before it pleased Jean to open the door. At last he came and was much amazed to see the tutor's companion, and still more so at the emphasis with which Hans put an end to his expressions of amazement.

"Is Miss GÖtz at home?"

Jean stared, stared and remained silent; but a moment later the candidate had seized him by the shoulder-strap.

"Why don't you answer me? Announce me at once to Miss GÖtz—Miss Kleophea!"

This unheard-of audacity caused the elegant youth to lose his usual insolent balance for a few moments; and when he regained it at last his indignation knew no bounds. And the housekeeper appeared and the ladies' maid; the little kitchen maid looked shyly round a corner in the background; poor Henriette drew back as far as possible from the light of the hall lamp into the darkness. Hans, almost ready to die with annoyance and excitement at all these impudent, doubtful glances, repeated his request for Kleophea in a raised voice. At that moment Franziska GÖtz leaned over the banisters. She carried her small lamp in her hand.

"Miss Kleophea is not at home," snapped Jean. "Moreover I protest——"

"Malheur À elle!" exclaimed the French girl.

"Oh Mr. Unwirrsch, what has happened? What has happened to my cousin?" cried FrÄnzchen coming down.

"Isn't she at home? We must speak to her;—Good God, where has she gone?"

"She did not say; she left the house at dusk."

"Then you must hear, you must tell us what to do. Perhaps it is even better so."

Franziska too looked wonderingly at the stranger, then she said:

"If I can be of use to you—to my cousin;—Oh, she is going to faint!"

The French girl shook her head.

"No, no, it vill pass quick—ce n'est rien!"

"Come up to my room. What has happened? What have you to tell me? Oh, how pale you are,—lean on my arm."

The French girl shook her head again, she retreated timidly before the quiet, gracious, innocent figure and turned to Hans.

"If ze ozer is not here, what 'ave I to do in zis house? You tell her, monsieur le curÉ. I vill not enter in zis house, I vill go."

"No, no—stay, Miss Henriette," cried Hans, but the stranger drew her shawl closer about her and held out her hand to Hans.

"Adieu, monsieur le curÉ, you are honest man." She turned toward FrÄnzchen, bowed her head and whispered slowly and softly, "Priez pour moi!—Vous!"

Franziska laid her hand on her shoulder.

"I do not want to let you go away like this. You are unhappy—and ill; and you bring evil tidings to this house. Come, lean on my arm; oh come, Mr. Unwirrsch;—Kleophea will certainly come back soon."

Gently FrÄnzchen led the poor little French girl upstairs and beckoned to Hans to follow, while the servants put their heads together, sneered and shrugged their shoulders.

For the first time Hans entered the room which Franziska occupied in her uncle's house and his heart trembled much as he crossed the threshold.

It was like a dream. The moaning wind outside the windows, the rustling and creaking of the trees, was not all this just as it had been when, at the Post-horn in Windheim, FrÄnzchen's sweet face first appeared out of the darkness, and, for the first time, Lieutenant Rudolf GÖtz called Dr. Moses Freudenstein a scoundrel?

What a long time lay between the present anxious evening and that one!

Who was the pale, haggard stranger in the cheap, shabby dress and shawl? How came she here, in this house? What had she to do with FrÄnzchen and what house was this?

Where was the friend of his youth? Where was Moses Freudenstein of KrÖppel Street?

It was, as if the weird, pitiless, cold wind outside gave an answer to all these questions.

"Woe to you, struggle as you may, ours is the triumph! Ours is the triumph over spring, over youth, over faithfulness and innocence. Transitoriness and egoism are your masters! Struggle as you may, it gives us joy to watch you struggle! The only faithfulness, innocence, eternity is in—us!"

And again darkness looked threateningly in at the window as if it had swallowed up every other light and as if, of all the brightness and brilliance in the world, FrÄnzchen's little lamp alone were left. Hans Unwirrsch stood in the narrow circle of light shed by this lamp with the feeling that here alone there was still refuge in every distress, satisfaction for all hunger, comfort for all pain. He scarcely dared to breathe.

An open book and some sewing lay on the table;—FrÄnzchen had just risen from that chair and now the strange, abandoned young woman sat there,—it could not be reality, it must be a delusion, one of the feverish delusions that had visited him lately.

No, no, that was FrÄnzchen's soft, sweet voice and FrÄnzchen had laid her hand on the shoulder of the poor girl who, with hidden face, was trembling and sobbing. FrÄnzchen GÖtz spoke in good, Parisian French to poor Henriette Trublet, but still Hans, who knew the language only from books, knew what she said. And the stranger raised her tearful eyes at the first sound of her mother tongue, listened with all her soul and then kissed FrÄnzchen's hand.

Speaking in her mother tongue she told her sad story for the second time.

As she went on Franziska looked more and more anxiously at Hans; she gripped the table against which she was leaning with a trembling hand and when the Parisian had finished she cried:

"Oh, Mr. Unwirrsch, and Kleophea? Kleophea! Where is Kleophea? If only she would come—now, now!"

She went to the window and opened it. The wind caught the sash and nearly tore it from her hand, the lamp flared with the wild gust; the gas flames at the edge of the park were blown about in their glass globes, throwing red, uncertain flickering lights on the street, but the street was empty and a carriage the sound of which seemed unbearably long in approaching, drove by without stopping.

"And her father, her mother! What is to be done, oh, what is to be done, Mr. Unwirrsch?"

Hans looked at his watch.

"It is nine," he said. "Calm yourself, Miss Franziska. She certainly will not stay out much longer; we must be patient and wait, that is all we can do."

FrÄnzchen had turned to the stranger; in spite of her anxiety and excitement she still had comfort enough for poor Henriette. She spoke to her softly and Henriette kissed her hand again and again. Hans stood at the window and listened to the soft words of the two women and to the loud voice of the gale. Now and then a figure passed through the flickering light of the gas lanterns, several more carriages drove by, but still Kleophea GÖtz did not come.

Franziska replenished the fire in the stove. She opened the door and asked the housekeeper, whose eye and ear had been taking turns at the keyhole for some time, to bring some tea and something to eat for the hungry, half fainting stranger. The farther the night advanced the greater did her anxiety become.

Henriette Trublet ate and drank eagerly, looked once more round the room with fixed, glassy eyes and then her head sank forward on her breast—she had fallen asleep.

It was the sleep of complete exhaustion.

"Poor, unfortunate girl!" sighed Franziska. "What a night! What a terrible night!"

She put her arm round the sleeping girl to keep her from falling; her locks touched the sinner's brow; and if Hans Unwirrsch had lived to be a thousand years old he would never have been able to forget the scene.

She looked across to him.

"Oh, please help me, let us lay her down on the divan! Listen—what is she saying?"

Henriette murmured in her sleep,—perhaps her mother's name—perhaps that of her patron saint. She did not feel it when Hans picked her up in his arms and carried her to the little sofa where FrÄnzchen arranged the cushions for her and covered her with a cloak and shawl.

It struck eleven o'clock; Kleophea GÖtz had not come home yet.

"What a night! What a night!" murmured FrÄnzchen. "What shall we do? What can we do?"

Suddenly she jumped up and put out both hands as if warding off something.

"What if she should have gone away, never to come home again? What if this evening she left her parents' house forever? Oh no, that is too terrible a thought!"

"She can't have been so bereft of all reason, that is impossible!" cried Hans. "That would be too terrible; it is impossible!"

"Oh, this deadly fear!" murmured Franziska. "Is that rain?"

It was rain. At first only a few scattered drops pattered against the panes; but soon came the familiar sound of a drenching, pelting downpour. The gale drove the rain in gusts across the country, the broad park and the great city.

"In spite of everything, her mother would never have consented to an alliance with this—this Dr. Stein," said Franziska. "It is true that she likes to have him in her drawing room; but she is a proud woman and thinks that she has already arranged quite a different future for Kleophea. Shortly before she went away she spoke in her usual manner of a brilliant match. Oh, it would indeed be the worst misfortune that could happen if my cousin, with her contradictory spirit, had taken such a step. Listen—there's another carriage—thank God, there she is!"

They listened again and a moment later Hans shook his head and FrÄnzchen sank brokenly onto a chair; Henriette Trublet slept a deep and sound sleep.

"She would be lost for her whole life!" said Hans to himself, but Franziska heard the murmured words; she started, shuddered and nodded.

"She would be lost."

"That man would kill her, soul and body. Alas, that it is so and that I should be the one to have to say it."

Again FrÄnzchen rose from her chair; she went up to Hans, she laid her trembling hand on his arm and whispered scarcely audibly:

"Dear Mr. Unwirrsch, I have done you a great wrong. Can you forgive me? Will you forgive me? I have done heavy, heavy penance for it. It has cost me many, many tears and wakeful nights. Oh, forgive me for this distress; forgive me for my uncle's sake."

Hans Unwirrsch staggered as he heard these words.

"Oh, Miss—Franziska," he stammered, "not you, it is not you who have done me a wrong. We both have been caught in the confused whirl of this world. Evil powers have played with us and we could not defend ourselves against them! Is not that the clear and simple truth?"

"It is," said FrÄnzchen. "We have not been able to defend ourselves."

The rain poured down in streams; the wind shook the window like a wild beast, but both wind and rain, and the darkness that added to their terror might do and threaten and say their worst: from then on, even on this night when Kleophea GÖtz did not return to her home, they scarcely seemed dreadful or uncanny any longer. From then on the wind and the rain and the night were blessings; no longer were they voices from the abyss, proclaiming destruction—death and the reign of egoism.

It was long after midnight and still Kleophea had not come. Hans and FrÄnzchen sat beside the sleeping stranger and talked to each other in low tones. Ah, they had so much to say!

They did not speak of love,—they did not think of it at all. They simply spoke of how they had lived; and everything that had seemed so confused was now so easily untangled; and often a single word made everything that had been so dark and threatening become light and simple and consoling.

Franziska GÖtz talked of her father, and what the daughter told Hans of him was very different from what Lieutenant Rudolf GÖtz had said and even more so from what Dr. ThÉophile Stein had related. The daughter's eyes shone as she told how proud and brave her father had been and how on more than one battlefield he had shed his blood for freedom. FrÄnzchen talked of her mother, how lovely and kind she had been, how much anxiety, unrest and distress she had suffered in her eventful life without ever complaining and how at last in the year 1836 she had died a lingering death of consumption. Good little FrÄnzchen told how deeply her mother's death had bowed her father and how he had really never raised his head again joyfully after the funeral. She told how her good Uncle Rudolf had come to that funeral, an old invalid soldier himself, with a little bundle and a heavy, knobbed stick. She knew much to tell of the curious household of the two brothers in Paris and of how so many old warriors of all nations, Germans, Frenchmen, Poles, Italians, and Americans came and went in the house and were all so kind to FrÄnzchen. She told of the fencing lessons that the two brothers gave and of how, in a yard outside the barrier, they had taught the young pupils of the polytechnic school and the students of the Latin Quarter how to shoot with pistols. She told of the gruff old retired soldiers of the Old Guard who came to be such good friends with the two Germans whom they had met at Katzbach, Leipzig and Waterloo, and sat with them in their attic room smoking and drinking and telling stories like all the rest.

Then with bent head she told how good Uncle Rudolf had at last grown homesick for Germany; how he had gone away and then how evil times followed; times full of misery and trouble, evil, evil days. In a scarcely audible voice Franziska GÖtz told how life went worse and worse with her father, how, one after another, the sources from which he had drawn aid failed, and how more and more frequently he had sought comfort in stupefying strong drink and of how, gradually, many bad, false people had drawn close to him.

Finally Franziska GÖtz spoke in a low voice of Dr. ThÉophile, of how he had lived in the same house with them and how he had tried in the most abominable way to take advantage of her unhappy father's weakness. She spoke of her unutterable loneliness, and Hans Unwirrsch bit his lips and in imagination gripped the throat of Moses Freudenstein of KrÖppel Street with his two good fists to squeeze his soul out of his body.

Franziska told of her father's death and how in her greatest distress Uncle Rudolf had come again to save her.

Franziska showed Hans a letter from Uncle Theodor and it was really most remarkable how differently Privy Councillor GÖtz could write from the way he looked and spoke.

Lieutenant Rudolf GÖtz was very poor and had no home to which he could take his brother's orphan child; and now for the first time Hans learnt how the good old man lived, how he roved about nomadically, actually omnia sua secum portans and settled down only in winter with some one of his comrades in war of the same age as himself, preferably with Colonel von Bullau in Grunzenow, far off on the shore of the Baltic.

Lieutenant Rudolf could only fetch the orphan from Paris, he could not offer her a protecting roof. Here now was the letter from Uncle Theodor which the Privy Councillor's wife had not dictated and which had not been written under her eyes but only under cover of one of his documents; and it was this letter which had led the lieutenant to bring his niece to his brother's house.

"And on the way I was fortunate enough to meet you in the Post-horn in Windheim," cried Hans. "I was going to my mother's deathbed and Mr. GÖtz called Moses a scoundrel, and the gale—and you, oh Miss Franziska ... Good God, and it is truth and reality that we are sitting here and waiting for Miss Kleophea!"

They both started at the mention of that name and looked toward the black windows on which the rain still poured down, which the wind still shook. They had given up hoping for the return of the unhappy girl.

Henriette Trublet stirred in her sleep and fearfully called the name of ThÉophile. Gently and with a merciful hand Franziska replaced the cloak over the forsaken girl's shoulders and then sat down again.

They went on talking of the evening when they had first met and FrÄnzchen told how much the candidate had pleased her Uncle Rudolf and of how often he had spoken of him during their journey. Hans told about his mother's death, of his Uncle GrÜnebaum and Auntie Schlotterbeck and took the latter's last letter out of his pocket-book to show it to FrÄnzchen. He told of how Dr. ThÉophile had read that letter while he, Hans Unwirrsch, lay ill with fever; he told how a dreadful glance and flash had shown him Dr. ThÉophile in all his malice and duplicity.

FrÄnzchen now unlocked a little box and showed the tutor a whole series of letters from Uncle Rudolf—all of them nearly as illegible as Uncle GrÜnebaum's epistles and the last few all written from Grunzenow on the Baltic. Since summer the lieutenant had been lying, in great pain with gout, in Colonel von Bullau's house in Grunzenow and FrÄnzchen confessed with tears in her eyes that she had written her poor uncle only joyful, cheerful and contented letters and that she could not have written differently for anything in the world. At that Hans would have liked to kiss her brave, soothing little hand again and again; but he did not dare to, and it was better so. Angry at himself, however, he deeply repented the doubtful blessings that at times he had called down on the absent lieutenant's head. He regretted them deeply, especially when he read the lieutenant's letters in which the old warrior confessed plaintively that he would rather run away with the devil's grandmother than ever again introduce and smuggle into his "gracious sister-in-law's" house a tutor after his, though not after the devil's, own heart.

"You won his whole heart that evening," said FrÄnzchen. "He talked of you so much on our journey, and I—I did not forget you altogether either in the years that followed. Oh, I had much time and great need to think of all those who had treated me with friendliness. Oh, Mr. Unwirrsch, we have neither of us been able to live happily in this house, but still my lot was the harder to bear. I have often been terribly, terribly hungry for a friendly face, a friendly word. I would gladly have gone away to earn my own bread, but my aunt would not hear of that. But you know all about it, Mr. Unwirrsch,—why should we say any more about it? It is wrong too, to think only of ourselves at this moment."

"It is not wrong," cried Hans with unaccustomed vehemence. "Oh, Miss Franziska, we may certainly talk of ourselves in this hour; the hard, cold world has thrust us back to the very core of our lives,—we may talk of ourselves, in order to save ourselves. This night will pass, a new day will come. What will it bring us? In all probability it will plunge us into an entirely new state of things. How will it be tomorrow in this house? I shall have to go; but you—you, Miss Franziska, what will you have to do and suffer? How gloomy, how drearily bleak and dead this house will be tomorrow! Any other existence would be blissful compared with life in this house! Oh, Franziska—Miss FrÄnzchen, write tomorrow to your uncle, to the lieutenant; or—or let me write to him! Don't stay here; don't stay in this house; its atmosphere is deadly—Oh, FrÄnzchen, FrÄnzchen, let me write to Lieutenant GÖtz!"

Franziska shook her head gently and said:

"I must stay. If I could not go before there is all the more reason why I may not go now. I have not been happy in this house but still it has given me shelter, and Uncle Theodor—Oh no, how could I leave poor Uncle Theodor now? My head swims now, to be sure; but I must stay—I am not mistaken, that is the right thing for me to do and I will not do anything wrong. Dear friend, I must not write to Uncle Rudolf to take me away from here, and you must not do so either. I know that that is right."

Hans Unwirrsch dared to do it—he kissed the gentle, loyal little hand that was stretched out to him so shyly and yet with such unconquerable power. Hot tears ran down his cheeks.

Yes, she was right. She was always right. Blessings on her! On this stormy night, this night of misery and ruin, she sat like a beautiful, lovely miracle beside the foreign girl and laid her pure, innocent hand on the latter's hot, feverish brow; yes, indeed, she was merciful and of great kindness and she would have to remain in this desolate house; that was certainly right!

It was long past two o'clock.

"Let us part now, dear friend," said FrÄnzchen. "She has not come home,—she has taken her destiny into her own hands; may God have mercy on her and protect her on her way. Let us part now, dear friend; I will watch over this poor girl here and tomorrow morning we will talk over the rest."

"Tomorrow morning," said Hans. "It seems to me as if this night would never come to an end. I am afraid of the morning for, in spite of all my doubts, I know that it will come. Oh, Miss FrÄnzchen, it has been a long and yet a short, short night. It has been terrible and yet full of sweetness. God bless you, Franziska. Oh, what shall I say to you,—how shall we be when the new day has come?"

Franziska lowered her head and gave Hans Unwirrsch her hand in silence. They parted from each other troubled and blissful. They could not yet quite grasp the blessing which this dark, weird night had brought them both. They parted, and their hearts beat loudly.

Summary of Chapters XXIV to XXXIII

[The morning came shrouded in gray mist. Hans and FrÄnzchen stepped to the windows shivering. They had not slept; they drew long breaths and greeted the gray light thankfully. They were no longer alone;—Hans and FrÄnzchen had gained a great, great deal in the night in which Kleophea GÖtz had left her home.

At seven o'clock the French girl waked from her deathlike slumber and began to cry violently. FrÄnzchen spoke to her soothingly and then began to talk earnestly and urgently of the future. Sobbingly Henriette replied that she wanted to go home to her own country and to be good and work hard and make her own living according to God's will. And FrÄnzchen GÖtz put all her worldly treasures into the girl's hands and then—monsieur le curÉ knocked at the door and added his father's venerable and curious watch to what Franziska had given, as well as a purse containing five hard thalers and a few small coins.

At eight o'clock Henriette Trublet stepped out again from the Privy Councillor's house accompanied by Hans and Franziska as far as the garden gate. At parting she raised her lowered head and said: "The good God vill reward you for vat you have done for me. I vill zink of you alvays and alvays. I vill go and I vill not tire. I vill seek zem and find. Malheur À lui!"

Then she disappeared in the thick fog. The postman came up hurriedly and handed Hans a letter from Kleophea addressed to her father.

Hans quietly beckoned to the man-servant: "We have a message to go immediately to your master. How long will you need to take a letter there?" Jean thought that with good horses he could get there by one o'clock. At nine he drove away with a package containing Kleophea's letter and another from Franziska;—by four o'clock the parents could be home. They came between three and four.

Hans Unwirrsch stood at the window and saw the Privy Councillor's mud-bespattered carriage driving up. In the house, doors were opened and slammed; the carriage stopped, and servants rushed out, Jean jumped down to open the door. Privy Councillor GÖtz stepped out first followed by his wife, deeply veiled; she led her boy by the hand and went into the house with a quick, noisy tread without paying any attention to her niece who had hurried up. As he stood in front of the door the Councillor swayed for a moment as if overcome by sudden dizziness; he pushed Jean's arm away and gripped Franziska's hand. Leaning on her he went slowly and unsteadily up the steps. Thus he met Hans, past whom his wife had also swept like a tempest. He gave the tutor his hand, which trembled as with fever. And as at that moment his wife's bell rang sharply through the house, he grasped FrÄnzchen's arm more tightly and whispered: "My poor child, poor Kleophea! It could not have ended differently—poor Kleophea!"

With tears in his eyes Hans Unwirrsch stood at the foot of the stairs and watched FrÄnzchen as she supported and led the broken man.

---

It was nine o'clock on the morning of the sixth of October and it was raining so hard that all the dogs let their ears droop and put their tails between their legs. At the corner of Grinse Street appeared the unhappy individual who was hunting for lodgings in such weather, Mr. Johannes Unwirrsch, candidate for the ministry, from KrÖppel Street in Neustadt. It was by no means pleasant to be turned out of doors in such weather but in Grinse Street he found what he was seeking—an attic room at a remarkably low price and he moved in on the spot without making use of his right to remain in the house of Mrs. Privy Councillor GÖtz till the end of the year. He fetched his belongings and settled himself in his new quarters. If the feeling of being his own master was not altogether without a tinge of melancholy it was still most refreshing. When Hans sank down on a chair in front of his table a feeling of comfort came over him such as he had not known since his student days.

The bell that rang so shrilly through the house as Kleophea's father staggered to his room gave the household very definite information as to the mother's mood. Paroxysms and faints had been the first consequence of Kleophea's letter; during the drive to town Mrs. GÖtz had sat in the corner of the carriage in a state of brooding apathy; on her arrival at home her passion had broken out into a wild fury. Mrs. Privy Councillor GÖtz raged; and it was dangerous to go near her. It was not her daughter's fate, but the Éclat which the dreadful event would make, doubtless was already making, that almost drove the mother mad. She shrieked at the tutor that it was his fault that the disgraceful traitor, Dr. Stein, the Jew, had ever come into the house. She gave him all the blame for the horrible scandal. Hans defended himself to the best of his ability but it was impossible to maintain any position of right where this woman was concerned. Utterly exhausted he went up to his room to pack his trunk: he was to leave the house the very next morning.

At eight o'clock the next day the Privy Councillor sent for him. Kleophea's father had become a weak, sick man. With surprising, heartfelt emotion he took the candidate's hand, expressed regret that he had to leave, thanked him for the faithful service that he had wanted to do his son, and for not having left before, as well as for the manner in which he had represented the house. He informed Hans that Kleophea had gone to Paris and that he had written to give her his blessing on her marriage. He had not been able to do otherwise. As soon as Dr. Stein should have explained his puzzling intentions more clearly he would have to treat with his wife, as all their property was hers.

FrÄnzchen slipped into the room, embraced her afflicted uncle with tears and promised to stay with him and to hold fast to him. She smiled through her tears and her uncle kissed the little hand that lay between his dry, cold fingers.

Then they talked of the candidate's plans, the Privy Councillor paid him the vast sum owing him for the last term and Hans was glad that FrÄnzchen was thus able to see that, in spite of his dismissal, he would not yet be exposed to a miserable death from starvation. He declared that he intended to spend the winter in the city as a free man and—to write a book.

Hans left the house gladly, but he parted from these two people with a very heavy heart.

After Hans had taken possession of his room and his trunk had received its place in the corner, he bolted the door and counted out on the table the fabulous sum of one hundred and twenty-five thalers. Every piece of silver turned into one of the stones with which he built his castle in the air and the notes did beautifully for the roof. It was an indescribable pleasure to go out in the rain and purchase a bottle of ink, half a ream of writing paper and the pens necessary for the literary work.

He soon recognized, however, that he could not sit down at once to begin the manuscript of the "Book of Hunger." Now that he was physically at rest the tumult in his soul began and the ghosts, once roused, made a mockery of all attempts to lay them. For three days Hans remained locked in his room, thought over the gain and the loss of the past year and arrived at the result that the gain exceeded the loss. On the evening of the third day the weather improved and he went out to get some fresh air. Naturally his way led him to Park Street past the house of the Privy Councillor. It looked unutterably dead and lifeless to Hans. Shivering, he hurried home and tried to begin his manuscript, but after a good hour he laid the first page of his "book" aside with no mark on it but three crosses that he had drawn. The next morning he wrote one page, but tore it up again in the evening. On the twentieth of October he tore up the first sheet of the manuscript and found himself in a mood which did not justify "high hopes for the future." He also counted his supply of money and gradually the conviction dawned in his mind that one of the main wings of his castle in the air was near collapse and that the foundation of the building was insecure.

On the twenty-first of October the postman brought him a letter which upset him completely and made the completion of the manuscript altogether questionable. For the second time Uncle Nik'las GrÜnebaum called him to a deathbed, this time to that of faithful Auntie Schlotterbeck. At five the next morning Hans was on his way to Neustadt, that is to say, at this early hour, some time before the departure of his train, he stood shivering in front of the iron garden gate in Park Street, taking dumb leave of the Privy Councillor's house. FrÄnzchen still slept and dreamt. In her dream she heard a noise like that of the sea and some one whom she did not recognize in her dream, said it was the sea.

The following morning Hans arrived in Neustadt. He had made the last part of the way on foot. Now he stood in front of the door of his house and stared into the hall and saw four candles burning round a coffin. Auntie Schlotterbeck was dead and had left greetings and many messages for him with Uncle GrÜnebaum. The coffin had been closed that morning and the funeral was to be at four in the afternoon. Everything had gone on as it should and still Hans could not comprehend that it must be so.

There was Uncle GrÜnebaum. At first he did not recognize his nephew; he had become a decrepit, half childish old man, sat in the corner and whined and asked for Auntie. It was only gradually that he came to a clearer consciousness of the events of the last few days.

Auntie Schlotterbeck had passed away gently and without pain after impressing on Uncle GrÜnebaum to tell Hans that she had loved him very, very much, that he had always been in her thoughts, that he could never leave her thoughts and that in her eternal life she would pray for him that it might go well with him in his life on earth. Moreover, she had said to tell him that the thing about which he was now worrying would end well though she could not say in what way.

A remarkable number of people accompanied Auntie Schlotterbeck to the grave and Hans led Uncle GrÜnebaum directly behind the hearse. After the funeral many came to shake hands with the mourners.

When Johannes and his uncle were once more at home Uncle GrÜnebaum sat down in Auntie Schlotterbeck's armchair and went to sleep with grief and fatigue.

For the first time Hans was left to himself and sat looking about in the room. His father's glass globe was in its place and the rays of the evening sun fell upon it. In the dusk Uncle GrÜnebaum suddenly rose up out of his chair, called all shoemakers together in a strangely uncanny voice, took farewell of Hans, greeted Auntie Schlotterbeck and collapsed as he spoke the words: "Amen, the boot is finished." He had followed Auntie Schlotterbeck.

And again Hans stood on God's acre, but this time he was quite alone. The few who had followed the hearse had dispersed. Beneath the mounds lay the guardians of his youth and he would have liked to go down after them into the depths.

But out of the gloom and the depression that surrounded him there came a gentle figure. This figure held him back and for her sake he said that his time was not yet come.

A schoolfellow who had studied law settled the matter of Hans' property for him. The house in KrÖppel Street was put up at auction, the movables were sold; he kept nothing but the glass globe. The day came when Hans Unwirrsch had nothing more to do in his native town. The attorney accompanied him to the post-house, saw him drive away and a quarter of an hour later thought of him no more.

Hans arrived in Grinse Street in the middle of the night and the next morning the landlady gave him Colonel von Bullau's card which he had left there for the candidate with a message asking him to go to the "Green Tree" where he would learn more.

Hans appeared at the "Green Tree" before breakfast, only to hear that Colonel von Bullau was no longer there, that the landlord knew nothing, and that he had better come again in the evening when the other gentlemen would be there. He did so and was greeted with a "Hullo!" by half a dozen "slayers of nine." From the captain he learned that he was ordered to Grunzenow, to Comrade GÖtz, that the colonel had wanted to take him with him at once and had been not a little put out at not finding him in his burrow. They were to send him on. He might do a good deed for Comrade GÖtz, who seemed to be tied to his chair and to be in great distress on account of the little girl, his niece, whom he had brought from Paris a few years before.

To Grunzenow, to Grunzenow! All Hans' exhaustion had disappeared. Yes, that was the right thing, to go to Grunzenow, to Lieutenant Rudolf. There advice and help were to be had; that was the starting point from which to untangle all these knots. The "Hunger Pastor" had not been so light-hearted for a long time as in this hour.

The same evening he told his landlady of his intended journey. He also made a vain attempt to see the Privy Councillor. Jean answered him insolently, his master was not at home. The card which he left did not reach its destination either.

This time the candidate's way was northeasterly and however fast the wheels of the cars went round they did not take hungry Hans forward quickly enough. He longed with too great a longing for Grunzenow and the gouty old "beggar lieutenant." Toward the end of the second day he reached a small town in a bleak, unfruitful, heather-covered region. Why it should have been called Freudenstadt was more than anyone had been able to discover. This was as far as the "Post" went with which Hans had traveled since the morning. Hans was able to get a carriage from the landlord of the "Polish Buck" where Colonel von Bullau sometimes came, but he walked the last part of the way, toward the sea. Louder and louder sounded the voice of the sea. He climbed one more hill and it lay before him spread out in the pale evening light and the fog swallowed up the horizon and rolled across the water to the bleak shore on which, farther down below to the right, the lights in the cottage windows of Grunzenow gleamed red.

Hans had not imagined the sea thus. In his dreams it had appeared to him in broad daylight, immeasurable, shining with the greatest brilliance known on earth;—and now this too was different, but still he was so overpowered that he had to press his hand to his heart and his breath choked him.

Hans was met at the big gate of the castle of Grunzenow, in which it looked barbarous enough, by Colonel von Bullau, who took him across a rather extensive court, up a broad stairway and with one push of his hand landed him in the middle of the apartment where Lieutenant GÖtz and an aged, clerical gentleman were sitting at a table covered with glasses and cards.

The lieutenant had changed very much, he had grown much older in the short time. His legs were packed up in cushions and covers and his left foot rested heavily on a low footstool. Impatiently he asked for news of his child, his FrÄnzchen. The colonel introduced the candidate to the vicar, Pastor Josias Tillenius. Old Josias' step was firm; his eyes were still keen and clear, his face was rather reddish to be sure, but his hair was the whiter on that account. He was a real seamen's pastor and well able to stand a good gale; he was in thorough keeping with the seasoned colonel and Lieutenant Rudolf. They were a curious trio and the housekeeping too was odd and mad enough.

The lieutenant reproached Hans bitterly for not having taken care of FrÄnzchen, for having let the wolf into the house and then, after the Jew had made off with Kleophea, for not having made a stand but allowing himself to be driven away, and for having shaken the dust off his feet. Hans defended himself like a man, declared that the lieutenant had thrown him into all the confusion and trouble, had expected him to play a part without telling him what it was, had never explained why he had spoken so harshly of Hans' boyhood companion. He went on to say that the lieutenant was wholly to blame and that his niece must have thought him, the tutor, as deceitful and hypocritical as Moses Freudenstein. The lieutenant had made Hans wretched and unhappy beyond measure and was not entitled to ask the latter for more justification than he himself was ready to give. In this speech Hans Unwirrsch of KrÖppel Street showed that he had not spent his years of apprenticeship in vain. The three had laid aside their clay pipes and stared at the speaker as if they were looking at something perfectly new.

The lieutenant gave a deep-drawn sigh, took Hans' hand and said that he would gladly ask his forgiveness if he had unknowingly done him wrong. He asked him to tell him the next day exactly how life had gone with him in his brother's house. Deeply touched Hans clasped the trembling hand. He had still so much to say to the old man. He had to tell him that he must thank him on his knees for all the trouble, care, all the discord, grief and pain that he had laid upon his soul. He had to tell him that he, the hungry Hans Unwirrsch, had to thank him, the faithful old Eckart, Rudolf GÖtz, for his finest, noblest hunger, his finest, noblest longing. He had so much to tell him about himself and FrÄnzchen, but it could not be done then; the right moment had not yet come.

Weeks now passed in which Candidate Unwirrsch became better acquainted with the sea, the village of Grunzenow, Colonel von Bullau and Pastor Josias Tillenius, and in which he had to answer hundreds and hundreds of questions put to him by Lieutenant Rudolf GÖtz. Colonel von Bullau showed him the scenery of the wild region; Pastor Tillenius taught him to know the people who inhabited this arid, unfruitful soil, who lived solely on what they could wrest from the grasp of the sea, and whom the constant, hard, dangerous struggle with the grim and changeable moods of that element had made so serious, silent, harsh and enduring. It almost seemed like a dream to the candidate that he had wanted to write a "Book of Hunger" surrounded by the atmosphere and brilliance of green meadows and hopeful cornfields. Now he stood in an entirely different world, where to be a pastor would indeed be to "preach in the wilderness" and the hard ground beneath his feet gave forth an entirely different tone from that of the sacred soil of Neustadt or the hardwood floors and the pavements of the great city.

Hans came to be a daily visitor in the pastor's house. He found old Josias closely veiled in tobacco smoke, well wrapped up in his dressing gown, eagerly looking through ancient folios for ancient theology so as to keep up with the current. The old man had seen and lived through much in his youth as he had gone out as an army chaplain against the French in 1793. Bullau and Tillenius had lain together in front of many a camp fire; later they sat with each other at an indoor fireside. The owner of the castle felt just as comfortable sitting by the stove in the pastor's house as the pastor felt at the castle fireside, and the nomadic Lieutenant GÖtz completed the trio and the comfort, and he was very much missed when his restless blood drove him abroad. In the course of the pastor's long life and ministry he had gradually built up, without suspecting it, his own theology, his own system as regarded views of the world and of God and there were things in it which caused the candidate to look up, often with emotion, often with astonishment, very often with amazement. It was as if he were looking into a mirror when Hans Unwirrsch looked into the life of this aged man whose colleagues farther back in the rich fertile country called him the "Hunger Pastor," thus giving him in earnest the same name that Dr. ThÉophile Stein, in Mrs. GÖtz's drawing room, had once bestowed in fun on the friend of his youth.

On the nineteenth of December Lieutenant GÖtz read in the paper that Privy Councillor GÖtz had died of a shock on the tenth. His excitement and agitation on FrÄnzchen's account were great. At Colonel von Bullau's urgent suggestion Hans was sent to bring the child to Grunzenow after he had confessed that he loved FrÄnzchen and would cling to her as to nothing else in the world.

At first Lieutenant Rudolf had not known whether to laugh or to cry, to bless or to curse. But the pastor had laid his hand on his shoulder and said: "I should simply let him go and fetch his FrÄnzchen; he shall be my assistant in the 'Hunger parish'; their children shall keep our graves green." At parting the old man drew Hans' attention to the peculiar conditions under which one had to labor in the parish of Grunzenow; he pointed out to him that he must be patient and stout of heart who on this dreary shore, where even one's sermons had to echo the voices of the sea, would be a true shepherd for the lonely fisherfolk, and that only the holiest hunger for love could make a man strong enough for that place on earth. And Hans, who had given his heart to FrÄnzchen GÖtz, now gave his soul to the hungry shores of Grunzenow.

On the evening of the second day of his journey Hans reached the city. He went first to the house in Park Street but not a single window was lighted. Full of agitation he sought the "slayers of nine" in the "Green Tree" and from them he learnt that Franziska GÖtz was no longer in her aunt's house; she had left it or had had to leave it on the day of her uncle's funeral. The widow with her little boy had retired to the house of a very old and very pious relative and there was a rumor that she was much dissatisfied with the world and not in the best of humor. We cannot describe how the candidate spent the rest of this night.

Nevertheless he rang the bell in Park Street early the next morning, but the house remained dumb and dead. Only the postman came with a letter from Kleophea which he dropped back into his leather bag with a shrug of the shoulders. It was addressed to Kleophea's father and bore the postmark, Paris.

At police headquarters Hans learnt that Franziska GÖtz now lived at 34 Annen Street, fourth floor, with a widow named Brandauer, a laundress.

A quarter of an hour later he was sitting in silence beside FrÄnzchen, with both of her hands in his and the most important thing had been said: he had even kissed the girl. They had so much to say to each other that could not be told in a day or a week or a month. FrÄnzchen related that on the third day after Kleophea's flight her mother had come out of her apartments again, had forbidden anyone to mention her daughter's name in her hearing and in full sight of the household had torn up the letter Kleophea had written just after she left. She had done with her child forever.

Kleophea had written to FrÄnzchen and parts of her letter sounded forced and embarrassed; she begged her to kiss Papa and to tell him that she thought of him "so much, so much." She did not speak of her mother once and there was no mention of Dr. Stein till just at the end.

Franziska too had written with a bleeding heart to Kleophea about her father and mother and asked her cousin never to forget in case of need that FrÄnzchen was still there to feel with her, to suffer with her, to comfort and if possible to help.

Then they talked of Uncle Theodor's death. On the ninth of December at eight o'clock in the morning Jean had found his master fully dressed in his black frock coat, with his white tie, sitting at his writing table, dead. On the table under his cold hand which in its cold grasp still held the pen lay a sheet of paper on which were the words: "I forgive——" Death had overtaken him before he could write whom and what he forgave.

It was a miracle of miracles to sit thus hand in hand high up in Annen Street at Mrs. Brandauer's, while it began to snow again. In spite of the fresh graves, in spite of poor Kleophea, Hans and FrÄnzchen became more and more permeated with the secure calm of happiness. Frau Brandauer asked Hans to stay to dinner and it turned out that there was nothing to prevent FrÄnzchen from following Hans to Grunzenow the next day on the noon train. And at that hour next day they were really sitting side by side in the train.

It was the twenty-fourth of December. That was the right day on which to be hurrying toward home. The post-coach and the way to Freudenstadt were, in truth, enchanted. There at the door of the old post-house stood Colonel von Bullau and welcomed with a hurrah the child of Lieutenant Rudolf's heart, his darling, his pet, FrÄnzchen GÖtz. An opulent lunch was waiting in the "Polish Buck" and then with a joyful hurrah off they went over the smooth course to Grunzenow. In the castle they had "let in the womenfolk" who had ruled for three days with torrents of water and broomsticks. Now everything was ready. A gigantic snowman stood in the court and kept watch in front of a portal of honor made of evergreens and bearing a transparency that bade FrÄnzchen and Candidate Unwirrsch welcome. The little room in the vicarage which the future assistant Hans Unwirrsch was to occupy had also been swept and scrubbed and arranged for him. Then came the hour when all the Christmas trees in Germany blazed with light—the right hour in which to move into a new life with joy-filled, grateful hearts. The gate of the castle of Grunzenow stood wide open. Grimly the lanterns burned in the eyes and mouth of the snowman—welcome! shouted the triumphal arch in fiery letters—welcome! roared the rough voices of the servants. The cannon crashed, the dogs barked—Lieutenant Rudolf GÖtz held his child in his arms and nearly crushed and smothered her.

There was the grand old hall of the house of Grunzenow! The tile stoves radiated heat,—an enormous Christmas tree shone in the light of a hundred wax candles—Christmas, Christmas! The house of Grunzenow had not seen such a Christmas for a hundred years.

FrÄnzchen GÖtz sat under the Christmas tree surrounded by the three old men, and it was a pretty scene; Hans Unwirrsch smiled, but he smiled through tears. If next morning he should not wake in Grinse Street the circle of his happiness would be complete.]

Chapter XXXIV

It was the sea and not the great city that roared beneath Hans Unwirrsch's windows next morning; but at first he would not believe it. Long before he awoke the sound of the sea penetrated his slumber and he dreamt curious things. All night long he had had to defend himself against the strange seething and roaring that rose in the distance and, swelling as it approached, threatened to suffocate him. All night long he fought against this mysterious something, this tumult of thousands and thousands of voices in which his own voice died away as feebly as the voice of a child crying for help in the midst of a wild tornado. It was like being set free when he finally awoke and could no longer doubt that he heard the sea and not the noise of the world through which the course of his life had led him.

After he fully realized that he was under the roof of the vicarage in Grunzenow and not in Grinse Street, or, indeed, in the house in Park Street, he lay for some time with half-closed eyes and gave himself up to the rapturous feeling of certain happiness and the sweetly melancholy thoughts and memories that are always so inseparably bound up with that feeling. The moment that shows a man what he has gained also teaches him to realize what he has lost most clearly. How many faithful hearts and warm hands we always miss in our happiest hours!

It was still quite dark when Hans awoke, only the snow brightened the night a little. Hans did not need to offer the shades of the dead a draught of blood to give them voices; he did not need to call them, they came voluntarily;—and he gave an account of himself to them on this Christmas morning.

A bent, lean man with a mild, earnestly cheerful face stood before his mental vision—Master Anton Unwirrsch, who had had such intense hunger for the light and who wanted to complete in his son his life, his wishes and hopes. "Oh Father," said Johannes, "I have traveled the path that you showed me and have labored hard to grasp the truth. I have erred much and despondency and faintheartedness have often taken hold of me—I have not been able to advance with steady steps. The world has been to me too great a wonder for me to be able to catch boldly and carelessly at its veils and coverings as others do;—it seemed to me too serious and solemn for me to be able to meet it with smiles as others do. Oh Father, any man that comes out of such a lowly house as ours cannot be blamed if he traverses the first part of his way with shyness and hesitation, if he is dazzled by trifles, if deceptive mirages confuse him, if a will o' the wisp leads him astray. Father, whoever comes out from under such a low roof as ours must have a strong heart in good and in evil so that, after the first few steps upward, he does not turn back and continue his dark life in the depths. Even the first knowledge and experience that he gains serve only to destroy the harmony of his being; they do not make him happy. In addition to all other doubts they awaken in him doubt of himself. Oh Father, Father, it is hard to be a true man and to give to everything its proper measure; but whoever is born in the depths with this yearning is more likely to attain it than those who awake to life halfway up the slope and to whom both height and depth remain equally unknown and indifferent. The liberators of mankind rise from the depths; and just as springs come from deep down in the earth to make the land fruitful so too the soil of humanity is eternally refreshed from the depths. Oh, Father, man has nothing better than this painful aspiration for the heights! Without it he remains forever of the earth, earthy; in this aspiration and by means of it he raises himself above all serfdom to the dust; in it he extends his hand to all heavenly powers, however little he may attain; in it he stands though it be on the tiniest spot of earth, in the narrowest circle, as the ruler of the most unlimited region, as the ruler of himself. Doubt too is gain in his life and pain is ennobling—often more ennobling than happiness, than joy. Father, I have gone my way in unrest; but I have found the truth, I have learnt to distinguish the sham from the genuine, the semblance from the reality. I no longer fear the things of the world; for love stands at my side;—Father, bless your son on his future way and ask for him that the hunger which has guided him till now may never leave him as long as he lives."

Hans talked to all his dead on that dark Christmas morning before the dawn came. They passed him in a long procession and he thanked each for whatever he had received from him on his life's way. It was no wonder that his mother, little Sophie, the charity school teacher Karl SilberlÖffel, Auntie Schlotterbeck and Uncle Nikolaus GrÜnebaum should pass by and nod to him smiling; but it was almost a wonder how many other people came forth out of the darkness to claim their part in his growth and development. It was a wonder how many places had contributed to the forming of his mind, how far back lay the point of departure of every emotion of his soul. In those moments Hans realized for the first time how rich his life had been, what wealth he was taking with him out of the sunken world of his youth, out of the sunken world of Neustadt which Auntie Schlotterbeck and Uncle GrÜnebaum had taken with them into their graves, out of the sunken world of his "years of wandering" into his new life in Grunzenow on the Baltic. Ever new, ever changing scenes and figures rose up and passed by until at last the church bell of Grunzenow began to ring.

The bell of Grunzenow, his new home! The bell for the Christmas service! Hans Unwirrsch sat upright in bed and listened;—his heart beat loud and all his pulses throbbed! All his blood rushed to his heart and brain—Oh FrÄnzchen, FrÄnzchen!

All the feelings of his childhood had wakened in the man's breast. Before he went downstairs he knelt and hid his face in his hands for some minutes; he did not hear the door open behind him.

In his long, black clerical gown old Josias entered the room and softly set down the light he carried beside the candidate's lamp. He stood motionless as long as the little bell rang, as long as Johannes Unwirrsch knelt beside his bed. When the bell ceased and his young companion raised his head again he laid his hand on his shoulder and said with feeling as he bent down to him:

"It is a happy sign to be awakened by such ringing to new work, new cares, new life. My dear, dear son, be welcome in this poor and yet so rich, so narrow and yet so limitless field of endeavor. God give you strength and His blessing on this shore, among these cabins, under this roof. God keep you in your happiness and bless you in your sorrow!"

The bell was ringing a second time as Hans, at the aged pastor's side, mounted the steps which behind the pastor's house led up to the churchyard of the village. The way to the church lay directly through this churchyard and the two clergymen stopped among the white graves and black crosses, which all wore caps of snow, to look back on the village. The sea sounded in the darkness but in the village nearly every window was lighted and many people were moving on the road leading to the church. The fisherfolk came out of their cottages, up to their church—the aged, men, women, and children. They came with lanterns and lights and if the grown people, the elders, in passing by greeted their pastor with cordial veneration, almost every child came up to give him its hand; and he knew them all by name, knew the short little stories of their lives and had a special word of endearment for nearly every one. From time to time one of the grown people loitered on the way or turned sidewise to set down his lantern and bend over one of the snow-covered graves; then the pastor of Grunzenow stood at the mourners' side and spoke softly to them, and the stars smiled in the black winter sky and it seemed as if the sea softened its roaring.

The sexton of Grunzenow was pulling the bell-rope for the third time when again a larger group of people entered the churchyard gate and it was Grips who carried the lantern ahead of them. Colonel von Bullau led FrÄnzchen at the head of his following in knightly fashion and, when Hans Unwirrsch stood before him and Grips raised his lantern to light the meeting, he said:

"This is the way a man looks who cannot say how happy he is. Here, my young friend, here you have your maiden; I wish you joyful holidays and much pleasure."

Hand in hand Hans and FrÄnzchen along with the other people of Grunzenow, went into the little church, where the sexton was already sitting in front of the organ. As they walked the short distance Franziska could not tell her betrothed nor Hans his future bride how they felt; but each knew it, nevertheless. Yet FrÄnzchen brought him a heartfelt greeting from Uncle Rudolf who sat at home under the Christmas tree with his pipe and had his Christmas thoughts as well as everyone else.

There were certainly a hundred lights illuminating the little church; no one had put out his little lamp on entering and the gathering of this community on the shore of the sea was wonderfully solemn.

Candidate Unwirrsch with his betrothed and Colonel von Bullau sat down on one of the front benches close to the altar and pulpit and, joining in the gruff chorus of fishermen's voices, sang the old Christmas hymn through to the end; until, as the last tones of the organ and the singing died away, the Reverend Josias Tillenius went up into his pulpit to preach his Christmas sermon; until all the sunburnt, weather-beaten and wind-seared faces of the men, all the women's earnest faces and the children's eyes were raised to their faithful and venerable adviser and comforter. And not one of the famous and popular speakers whom Hans had heard in the great city, not one of the celebrated professors who had given him such good precepts at the university could have spoken more fittingly than did the aged vicar of the hunger parish of Grunzenow, to whom the library of his predecessors had remained a perplexing maze, and the modern science of theology a book with seven seals.

His greeting to his congregation was that of the angels than which there is no more beautiful one in the world: "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men." Then he wished them all happiness on that holy festival, the young and the old, the aged and the children; and he was right when he once said to Hans Unwirrsch that it was a strange thing for a pastor if his sermons had to echo the voices of the sea. He spoke of the good and the evil that had come to pass since that day had been celebrated a year before; he spoke of what might come before the bells rang for another Christmas. He had a word for those who were mourning and for those to whom joy had been given. Unlike his brother pastors farther inland who, like him, were now standing in their pulpits, he could not draw his similes from the work of the tiller of the soil; he could not speak of sowing and blossoming, reaping and fading;—it was the sea that sounded in his words.

He spoke of those members of his parish who were now in foreign parts, of whom it was not known whether they were alive or dead: the earth, from the north pole to the south pole, had to find a place in his sermon. He spoke of those from whom nothing had been heard for a long time, whose places by the fireside had been vacant for years, called two weeping mothers by name and comforted them with the promise that no one, no one, could be lost, however wide the world, as it was written that God held the sea in the hollow of his hand. He spoke of the great Christmas tree of eternity under which all the people on earth would be gathered in days to come.

Hans Unwirrsch thought of the sermons of hunger which he had tried to write in Grinse Street, by the publication of which he had hoped to make a name for himself and to touch and uplift thousands. Now he bowed his head before this old man's discourse which was certainly not ready for publication and yet penetrated to the inmost hearts of his auditors. FrÄnzchen, at his side, wept, from time to time; Colonel von Bullau cleared his throat very noticeably and mumbled something in his gray beard; the fisher folk sighed and sobbed;—Candidate Unwirrsch had no more time to go on thinking about his manuscript and Grinse Street.

Reverend Josias Tillenius had drawn near to the Christmas tree of every cottage in his village; now he suddenly stood in the shade of the tree of universal history through the branches of which the star of the annunciation shone down on the manger in Bethlehem. In a simple, impressive manner he told his congregation what things on earth were like when the angels brought down their greeting from heaven. He told about the city of Rome and the Roman Emperor Augustus, about the proud temples, the proud sages, warriors and poets. He spoke of how at that time the sun, moon and stars went on their way as blessedly as on the day when he was speaking, how the earth bore its fruits and the sea gave up its treasures. He told how human affairs were then ordered very much as now: how tribute was asked and given, how the lakes, rivers and sea were covered with the ships, how the country roads were full of wanderers and the marketplaces were full of merchants. He spoke of how then, even as in their own day, the wealth of the nations was carried back and forth, and then—then he spoke of the great hunger of the world.

The beautiful figures of the gods in the magnificent temples were false images that had no life. The priests who served them laughed at them and at the people who knelt before them, but the sages and the wise were ashamed of both gods and priests. The world had become a chaos without strength and stay. Man could not find peace either in his heart or in his house or out in the market-place. In the Roman Empire humanity had become lost in itself, it lay in chains beneath the purple mantle that covered its bruised and bleeding limbs; the sky was dark above it and the radiance of its golden diadem was but the livid light of the night of death. In spite of life's magnificence and commotion, the earth had come to be without form and void as before the creation. Pastor Josias Tillenius said this in words which his people understood. No one dared stir; only the quicker breathing of the listeners was heard and when Margarethe JÖrenson, a great-grandmother of nearly a hundred years, the only person who slept in that assembly and who, according to a former order of the pastor's must not be awakened under any circumstances, let her big hymn-book slip from her lap and fall to the floor, a sudden shock passed through every heart and the hardened men of the sea started.

"Glory to God in the highest, on earth peace, good will toward men!" It was as if these words broke the spell that lay upon the people of Grunzenow as they had once broken the fetters of all mankind.

The star of redemption stood above the stable in Bethlehem; the Saviour had been born into the world of hunger; the man of sorrows, the son of man, the son of God who was to take the sin of man upon him, had appeared, and the poor shepherds came running from the field, not to be followed till later by the kings and the wise men, to greet the child in the manger, this child which came just in time to be included in the census of the population of the Roman Empire which the Emperor Augustus had ordered. Now the time was fulfilled and the kingdom of God had come. Hungry mankind stretched out its hands for the "bread that comes from heaven and gives life to the world." The heaven above which had been so dark and drear opened above the children of the earth: all the nations saw the great light,—humanity tore the crown from its humiliated head and threw the purple mantle from its shoulders. It was no longer ashamed of its bleeding wounds, its bruised and fettered limbs,—it knelt and listened. "Truth!" was the jubilant cry from the rising of the sun, and from the going down thereof the joyful answer was "Freedom!" "Love!" sang the angels about the hut in which Mary, she of the house of David, and Joseph, the carpenter of Nazareth, showed the shepherds the child that had been born in the night. And now Pastor Josias Tillenius showed it to the children of the village; for the festival of Christmas is the true festival for the young to whom the sublime Easter Day can bear no message until the first great grief has touched their souls. And as the old preacher was thus speaking of Christmas to the children the new day dawned. Its first pale light was seen through the windows of the little church and the lanterns and wax candles grew dim before the rosy glow that suffused the winter sky. Again the organ pealed, the congregation of Grunzenow sang the final verse of the Christmas hymn, the service was over.

Hans and FrÄnzchen stood in the churchyard beside the preacher and the old Colonel and all the people of Grunzenow who passed them on the way down again into the village nodded to them or came up to shake hands and welcome them to their midst. The sky grew redder and redder, the lights of the village disappeared in the dawn as had the lights in the church. The organ ceased, the sexton too came, smiling shyly, to congratulate Candidate Unwirrsch. The day came but the voice of the sea did not die away.

The last inhabitants of the village had gone; Pastor Josias Tillenius looked at the betrothed couple and then said:

"Come, Colonel, you will have to lend me your arm as usual. The young people will be able to find their way alone, I am sure."

Colonel von Bullau looked at Hans and FrÄnzchen and drew his old friend's hand through his arm.

And now the pastor and Colonel von Bullau had left the churchyard like the rest of the people. Hans and his betrothed stood alone among the snow-covered graves. They stood and held each other in a close embrace. The same thought occurred to them both at the same moment, that the time would come when they, too, should lie there in the little churchyard and sleep; but they smiled and did not wish themselves away.

Labor and love! this was the thought that thrilled their hearts and they knew that they had been given both. The day came up clear from the east; the fog parted above the sea,—the sea sang of freedom, the sun sang of truth; and the world did not belong to Dr. ThÉophile Stein, who had once been Moses Freudenstein: Johannes and Franziska stood over the graves of the poor little village of Grunzenow and in their love they feared neither life nor death.

Chapter XXXV

Autumn!

These rhymes, together with disconnected sentences in prose, fragments of thought of all kinds, bits of Greek and Hebrew script and other scribbled notes, were all on one and the same page. And this page lay on the writing table of Assistant Pastor Unwirrsch, and Assistant Pastor Unwirrsch sat in front of it, rested his forehead in his hand and looked through the open window at the sea which glistened beneath the veiled sunlight and on which little white dots—the sails of the fishing boats of Grunzenow—glided back and forth.

Autumn!

On Christmas morning of the year before Hans and FrÄnzchen had gone down from the mist-covered churchyard into a quiet, happy time of labor and love. Under the loving touch of the young girl life had changed very much for the better in the Grunzenow mansion and soon the uncouth people of the village would have gone through fire and water for their young lady. The old gentlemen in the picture frames did not turn their darkened visages to the wall; a little more and Grips would now have declared that they were laughing just as if their ladies were not hanging beside them. Grips had fallen under FrÄnzchen's spell as had every inhabitant of the village and castle; the spell was cast upon him, as he said, and to his praise we must say that he endured this sorcery with grim cheerfulness and that he never lost more of his martial gravity than when he heard the young lady's voice in pleading or thanks, or when her little hand beckoned.

If the servants had thus succumbed to the magic influence it can easily be imagined how easy "the child" made the existence of the Colonel and her uncle. Once more Colonel von Bullau had "not thought it would be like that;" he was happy and only a little jealous of the lieutenant who was more than happy. It was touching to see and to feel how tenderly the two old soldiers treated the girl, how one tried to surpass the other in consideration and attention and how the "pet" had to protest to prevent them from carrying the whole Grunzenow mansion to another place on her account. The Colonel's head hummed and buzzed with the most wonderful plans and suggestions for making the neglected place into a Paradise; every night something occurred to him and every morning he came out with something which was not always as highly practical, pleasant and easily carried out as he imagined. Grips, the ingenious man and factotum, had never stood as high in his master's esteem as now. Every few minutes demands were made upon his talent for painting, cabinet making, gardening and the art of decoration; Colonel von Bullau himself developed a sense of color and painted the most impossible things with the gayest colors possible. Never before had his castle been so much his home; it made him forget not only the Polish Buck in Freudenstadt, but even the "slayers of nine" in their corner.

Lieutenant Rudolf's fur boots were carried up to the smoke house so that they might be protected from moths, the wheel chair was trundled into the storeroom, the gout took its departure and went to stay with people who were more worthy of its visit. The lieutenant marched about as briskly as a youth and enjoyed his FrÄnzchen and enjoyed his life; the cheerful present made it easy for him to forget all the trouble of the past. He had mourned for his brother and at the same time rejoiced in his release; of Kleophea he seldom spoke but when he did so it was never with hatred but with pity and gentle excuses. Only when the names of his sister-in-law and ThÉophile were mentioned did he fly into a rage and snort with wrath, anger and contempt; but the widow of the Privy Councillor GÖtz, nÉe von Lichtenhahn, and Dr. Stein were not often spoken of in Grunzenow. The old gentleman's feelings and utterances in respect to his niece's fiancÉ were very changeable at first and it was not until the season of long days came that they became confirmed in equable good humor. If he was a little jealous of the Colonel he was very jealous indeed of poor Hans. The smiling god who had so splendidly followed suit when the sly old man had so subtly put his card into the game, certainly smiled once more at the psychic process through which Lieutenant Rudolf now passed. His unlimited amazement was followed by long-winded doubting astonishment at himself and the world; his wise recognition that what is done cannot be undone was followed by the usual philosophic attempts to see the matter in the right and best light possible. It was not until about the time of the vernal equinox that Uncle Rudolf reached the same point in his argumentations as Uncle GrÜnebaum in similar cases, namely that he did not hesitate boldly to maintain to himself and the world that he had brought Candidate Hans Unwirrsch from Kohlenau and introduced him into his brother's house for the very purpose that he might fall in love with FrÄnzchen and FrÄnzchen with him. While climbing in this way the ladder of victory over himself, his cheerfulness and contentment grew so much with the growing days of the young year that when the longest day came it would have been as impossible for them to increase further as it was for the days themselves.

Autumn!—In the verses which stand at the head of this chapter Hans has really said everything that he could say about his vita nuova on the shores of the Baltic; but even if he now no longer "departed from a narrow circle," still, it was not a narrow life. He had longed so much for real, thorough work; now he had his full share of it and did his duty as a true man should. After the most reverend chief consistory and the government had approved his appointment as assistant pastor, the aged Tillenius smilingly loaded a good part of his official burden upon Hans' back and the latter had never taken any load upon himself more readily. Although he came from inland the sea-faring folk were satisfied with his sermons and grew to love him. He baptized the first child, laid the first body in the earth and married the first couple and it was very seldom that Pastor Josias Tillenius had to tell him that neither he, himself, nor the people of Grunzenow had understood him, their Assistant Pastor.

He had never experienced such a spring and such a summer as in this first blessed year of his life in Grunzenow. All the glories of a dream did not equal the reality of those golden days of love and hope on the shore of the Baltic. He looked into life clearly and courageously; whatever indecision and instability nature and fate had laid in his character he sought to thrust away from him with a manly will. All he had to thank fortune for he sought to deserve and more than deserve by faithful endeavor and earnest striving. The indefinite hunger of his youth had now become the quiet, deliberate, steady endeavor that, active in millions, keeps mankind in its course and leads it on. Johannes Unwirrsch had learnt to know life, both its good and its evil side. Now all the circles through which he had wandered with all their figures, charming and terrible, had sunk into the past; he stood in the middle of a sphere which his activity was to fill. It was not indifferent to him that no tie bound him to his home town any longer, that he could bring nothing with him from KrÖppel Street into his new life but sweet, melancholy remembrance and the shining glass globe which had formerly hung above his father's table. This glass globe now threw its brilliance on the life which Master Anton Unwirrsch had built up in his dreams of the true life on earth; but no generation extends far enough into the coming generations to see fulfilled its ideals which by that time are seldom the only ones.

Autumn!

The days of spring and of summer were past; but the autumn sun shone as lovely as ever and land and sea rejoiced in it. Nevertheless the Assistant Pastor at the open window had the right to disregard it in spite of all its glory; it was the seventh of September and on the next day, the eighth, a Sunday, his wedding was to take place. He had not made those rhymes in the moment in which he scribbled them down among the other fragments of thought.

Pastor Tillenius had chosen and fixed the wedding day; with art and diplomacy Pastor Tillenius had cajoled Uncle Rudolf and Colonel von Bullau into giving their consent and had held them to their promise when the two old gentlemen had wanted to take it back and not give up "their girl." Pastor Tillenius, backed by the apostolic principle: a bishop must be the husband of one wife—had held the field against the two obstinate, stubborn old soldiers. It was settled that FrÄnzchen was to leave the Grunzenow mansion and move to the vicarage;—FrÄnzchen herself had also given her consent and after all that was the most important thing.

Autumn! What was all the rapture of spring and summer compared with the bliss that autumn promised to give? It seemed as if all the birds of passage must stay to join in the celebration of the wedding and the honeymoon.

After the Grunzenow household had once resigned itself to the inevitable, it took infinite pleasure in the necessity and threw itself into the preparations for the festive day with an eagerness that surpassed everything. The Colonel was in a mild fever day and night, the lieutenant in a similar condition; but great indeed was Grips, the man for everything.

Who can find praise enough for the man's dexterous hand? Now it boxed the ears of a too stupid stable-boy; now, with deliberation, it drove in a nail on which to hang a self-twined garland. Grips had learnt something during his campaigns.

The village was stirring too. Old and young wanted to do their part toward making the eighth of September a day to be remembered in the annals of Grunzenow. For weeks beforehand the women and girls were busy, for weeks the sexton, who was teaching the children the wedding cantata, slept badly with inward excitement and too vivid dreams of success and glory, of failure, disgrace and shame.

Pastor Josias Tillenius composed his wedding address and as he gave to it the most beautiful although the saddest memories of his own life, and all of his good, full, old heart, it turned out admirably without being written down or learnt by heart.

On the seventh of September all the preparations were ended: meat and drink were not lacking in the Grunzenow house; the columns and pillars were festooned, the doors stood open to let the wedding joy in and the bride out.

these were the words that the bridegroom had written on the bescribbled page in his study in the vicarage. Everything was ready and FrÄnzchen softly laid her hand on Hans' shoulder, glanced smilingly at the paper in front of him and led him out of the house to her favorite spot on the seashore.

It was a height where, between stones and the shifting sands of the dunes, low bushes and a few taller trees, curiously torn by the wind, struggled with laborious persistency to wring their existence from the hard soil, to defend it against the drifting sand and the storms. It was a lonely spot where one could hold communion with land and sea, with the clouds and gulls, with one's own thoughts. There Grips had built FrÄnzchen a simple seat and there, on the eve of the wedding, sat Hans Unwirrsch and Franziska GÖtz and spoke of their own fate and of Kleophea and watched the sun go down.

They spoke much of Kleophea while they looked at the sea above which the fog had closed in after the beautiful brilliant day. Poor Kleophea had entirely disappeared; no answer had come to any of the letters that FrÄnzchen had written in the course of the year. They knew nothing of her—it was so strange that just on this evening her image should keep ever rising before them anew, that their thoughts would not remain centred on their own happiness. Hans and Franziska did not know that the ship that bore Kleophea Stein was gliding along behind the gray fog that was rising on the waves. They did not know that Kleophea was at sea when, on the following day Pastor Josias Tillenius joined their hands for time and eternity!

On the eighth of September the sun would not come out from behind the clouds all day. On the evening before it had gone down, as the sea-folk say, "in a bag" and that meant dull weather for the next few days. It was a sultry day on which not a breath of air stirred, on which the same sad gray covered heaven and earth, on which one might have wished for a heavy shower if it had not been a wedding day.

It did not rain on FrÄnzchen's bridal wreath, it did not rain on Pastor Tillenius's excellent words, it did not rain on the grim emotion of Uncle Rudolf and Colonel von Bullau, it did not rain on the jubilance of the mansion and the village of Grunzenow. Johannes Unwirrsch and Franziska GÖtz gave each other their hands as they had already given each other their hearts; after the pastor's address Lieutenant GÖtz made a speech at the table and, following the peal of the organ and the sexton's cantata, came the musicians from Freudenstadt whom Colonel von Bullau had had fetched in a farm wagon to play merry dance music. The Colonel entertained the whole village in his castle and as Major domus and arbiter elegantiarum Grips did not show himself as he was but as what he could be: amiable, obliging, tender toward the fair, courteous toward the strong sex.

They danced in the great hall and there was endless applause when the Colonel opened the ball with the young bride. It was a pleasure to look into the Lieutenant's radiant eyes; it was a pleasure to watch Pastor Josias Tillenius talking to Mother JÖrenson; and it was a particular pleasure to see how the Assistant Pastor and bridegroom Hans Unwirrsch fell a victim to the dizzy goddess Terpsichore and to use an expression of the experienced seamen who were present, "lurched and pitched" through the room. The oldest people, even the great-grandmother Margarethe JÖrenson could not remember another such day; the enjoyment rose from moment to moment and carried old and young with it; half confused the bridal couple that with difficulty had found refuge in a quiet corner, looked at the tumult.

"Fire at sea!" Who shouted that? Where had that cry come from?

"Fire at sea! Fire at sea!"—the words went through the festive throng like an electric shock. The music broke off, the dancers stopped as if spellbound; those who were at the refreshment tables sprang from their chairs and the Malayan song that the old one-armed first boatswain Stephen Groote was singing to a small appreciative circle, was smothered in his throat.

Hans and FrÄnzchen too had jumped up although at first they did not grasp the reason of the panic-like fear. The Colonel pushed his way through the room towards the door followed by the majority of his male guests. Those who remained behind ran about excitedly or to the windows that looked out on the sea. Franziska seized Pastor Tillenius's arm.

"Oh, for God's sake, what is it? What has happened?"

"There, there! Truly! Oh God have mercy on them!" cried the old man who had thrown open the window and was pointing to the water. "A ship on fire—there, there!"

The young couple's eyes followed the trembling hand; their hearts stood still with terrible fear—

"There! There!"

It had grown to be half dusk and the transition from the gray light of the day had been so unnoticeable that not one of the joyful wedding guests had thought of it. There was still no breeze to stir the haze that hung above land and sea and completely veiled the horizon; only those who lived on the shore could know what the red glow out there meant; the hearts of the two children of the inland only beat the harder because of the unknown terror.

A burning ship! Hundreds of people in the most horrible danger of death! Their senses swam at the thought, at the hundred fearful scenes that passed through their minds.

The Grunzenow mansion was emptied of its guests; even the women rushed through the corridors and hurried down to the shore. When Pastor Josias Tillenius, Hans and FrÄnzchen arrived at the boat landing they found the fishermen as well as Colonel von Bullau, the Lieutenant and the farm hands hard at work getting ready to start, while the women ran hither and thither in feverish excitement pointing and gesticulating toward the glow in the northwest and screaming. Hans Unwirrsch took his place among the men and pulled and pushed with the others; the old pastor sought to bring the women to reason or at least to calm them, and his assistant's bride helped him to the best of her ability. In a happy moment the wind from the south, a true angel of God, unfolded its wings and filled the sails of the boats of Grunzenow; only the oldest men, the women and the children remained behind on the shore while the younger men sailed out to bring help. In the first boat to leave the shore were the Colonel and the Assistant Pastor; Lieutenant Rudolf GÖtz had sunk down completely exhausted and his niece knelt beside him and held his white head in her lap;—but the fearful brilliance in the distance grew more and more distinct.

"It's a steamer, or they couldn't make such headway against the wind," cried one of the old seamen who had had to stay behind.

"They are trying to run her ashore!" said another.

All sorts of guesses as to the course of the vessel were made. Some thought she was from Stettin on her way to Stockholm but there were many who were sure that was not so. Others thought it was the St. Petersburg packet on her trip from LÜbeck to Kronstadt. This view was shared by the majority, among them Pastor Tillenius.

The boats of Grunzenow had long disappeared in the increasing darkness. Fuel was gathered on the shore and a tremendous fire kindled and on the shore itself as well as in the cottages preparations were made in case the people from the burning ship should be brought home by the men of Grunzenow.

"God bless you, my child, courageous little heart," said Pastor Josias pressing FrÄnzchen's hand. "Your wedding day is having a bad end but you are just made for the wife of a pastor of fishermen. You are fulfilling your first duties with honor; God bless you and give you a long, helpful, brave life!"

Lieutenant GÖtz was sitting on a boat that was turned upside down; his old enemy was at him again, he held his foot in both hands and clenched his teeth with pain.

"Yes, yes, old chap," he cried. "Here we cripples sit in the sand and gape. Take me in your cloak, FrÄnzchen, carry me home and give me some bread and sop! Sapperment, and Bullau is two years older than I!"

A scream from the crowd interrupted the Lieutenant's lamentations. The reflection of the fire on the sea lost its brilliance rather rapidly and suddenly went out altogether. A deep silence followed the cry of fright; all remarks that were made now were spoken in the lowest whisper. It was as if no one dared to breathe aloud any more.

"They are saved or—lost!" said the old pastor at length, took off his cap and folded his hands. He repeated the prayer for the shipwrecked, and men, women and children prayed fervently with him; and yet the fathers of these old men who were now praying had claimed the right of salvage in all its abominableness and had practised it.

An hour of deathly anxiety passed, then lights appeared again in the darkness on the sea. They were the torches of the returning boats and now everyone who still had any voice left cried out again. After half an hour of the most painful expectation the first boat, filled to overflowing, slid up to the landing.

"Saved! Saved! SauvÉ! SauvÉ!" rang the shout in German and French. In half-mad ecstasy the first of those saved sank down and laughing and crying convulsively, they kissed the earth, embraced and kissed the people of Grunzenow who came up to them busily offering them all possible refreshment and help.

Colonel von Bullau and the Assistant Pastor were not in this first boat; but it was now learnt that the burnt vessel was the "Adelaide" from Havre de GrÂce bound for St. Petersburg with a cargo of French wines and a few passengers. The excitement was still too great, however, for details of the fire to be asked and given.

The men of Grunzenow had brought sixty-four unfortunate people ashore, some of them injured; only the last fishing boat was still to come with the Colonel and Hans Unwirrsch.

"They are bringing the captain and the women" was the answer FrÄnzchen received to her anxious questions. "They must be here soon now, nothing has happened to them."

Franziska Unwirrsch pressed her hand to her heart and turned back to her duties. She had to act as interpreter for the French crew and the village of Grunzenow. She moved about in the confused, wild tumult like an angel bringing help and comfort; Uncle Rudolf, who had also not quite forgotten his French, had lost his head to a much greater extent than had his niece.

She was just kneeling beside a bearded, half-naked ProvenÇal sailor who had broken both legs when renewed shouting announced the arrival of the last boat. In his pain the ProvenÇal held her hands so tightly that she could not have freed herself even if she had tried. She could not even turn round to look at her husband; but between the words of comfort that she was speaking to the poor injured man all her thoughts turned to the landing where it had suddenly grown perfectly quiet.

She was listening with all her soul when a stir went through the people. The high voice of a woman cried with a foreign accent:

"Where is she? O ciel, where is she?"

The ProvenÇal let go of the gentle, merciful hand that he had held so tightly till now; a woman threw herself on her knees beside FrÄnzchen, seized her wildly with her arms, kissed her gown, her hand, sobbed and screamed. The burning pile of wood and the torches threw their flickering light on the excited stranger; Hans, too, bent down to his wife,—it was a dream, only a dream! How did Henriette Trublet come to be on the shore of Grunzenow?

"It's she! It's she! Oh, all Saints! Oh, Mademoiselle! Oh, Madame! ma mignonne, blessings on your sweet face! Praise God! Oh, what a miracle! It is she!"

"Henriette! Henriette Trublet!" murmured FrÄnzchen, looking at the French girl with fixed, doubting eyes.

"Yes, yes, la pauvre Henriette! And the other! The other!"

Hans Unwirrsch held his wife in his arms and drew her head to his breast.

"Oh, love, love, whom do you think we have brought ashore out of the fire and the raging sea?"

He led her gently down to the shore; she trembled violently; speechless, she swayed between her husband and the French girl as she walked through the crowd of natives and foreigners who respectfully made way for her.

The captain of the "Adelaide" was sitting on a stone with his head in his hands. Beside him stood Colonel von Bullau as if he were again on one of his battlefields. Lieutenant Rudolf GÖtz was on his knees in the sand and in his lap he held the head of an unconscious woman—

"Kleophea! Kleophea!" cried Franziska, sinking down with folded hands beside the unconscious form.

"Yes, Kleophea!" said the Lieutenant, and gnashing his teeth he added: "And she is alone! Praise God!"

Chapter XXXVI

Thus destiny had been fulfilled and, incomprehensibly strange as it all seemed at first, it had yet been quite simple and natural. We do not understand, either, the fate of the little bird that suddenly drops out of the air dead at our feet until we have held the little body in our hand for a while;—and then we do understand it.

They carried poor Kleophea to the vicarage and first prepared a bed for her in a room that looked out on the sea; but she could not bear the sound of the water and, shudderingly, in the delirium of fever, demanded to be taken from that place and they had to put her in another room where the beat of the waves could not be heard so clearly.

There she lay for more than a week, stupefied and unconscious, without suspecting that the friends whom she called in her fever were so near to her. It was only very gradually that she came back to consciousness and for days Franziska, Lieutenant Rudolf and Hans Unwirrsch were only phantoms of her dream in whose reality she could not believe.

Franziska Unwirrsch did not leave the sick woman's bedside and she, she alone, succeeded in keeping alive for a time, though only a short one, the dying flame of life in the Kleophea who had once been so full of life, so beautiful and vivacious. The time of delusion had passed, the sand had run through, in her naked helplessness the once so proud being lay there, trembling and bleeding and, in expectation of the last dark hour, Kleophea Stein freed her heart as far as possible from all that was earthly. She had nothing more to conceal. All the gay-colored veils that she had formerly drawn over her graceful head, her laughing life, all the veils from under which she had formerly peeped out so teasingly, so light-heartedly, were torn and tattered; the merciless storm of life had whirled them about and away. Kleophea told of the year that had passed since she left her parents' house so dispiritedly, hopelessly, wearily, that it was terrible to hear. But her head lay on FrÄnzchen's breast while she spoke and she had given her hand to the Assistant Pastor;—it was only to Hans and his wife that she told everything.

"Oh, it was only the maddest longing that drove me out of my parents' house; I have no excuse whatever. My heart was so cold, so empty; it makes me shudder to remember in what a bad, wicked mood I followed that—that man. Oh, what have I been, and how shall I die! You are good, and you know what I was in my mother's house. Did I know anything of love? I did not go away for love's sake! You see, I was suited all too well to Dr. ThÉophile Stein—I can reproach him with nothing, nothing. It had to be so, I wanted it so. In his dismal hunger the demon that was in me sought for one like himself and when he found what he sought the two beasts seized each other with their teeth. Ah, poverina, it was I who got the worst of it after all!"

Hans and Franziska shuddered at this dreadful lament; but at the same moment it seemed as if some of her former vivacious grace came back to the poor sick girl. She raised herself smiling, took tighter hold of the Assistant's hand and said:

"How I did torment you! How I did laugh at you! Oh, FrÄnzchen, FrÄnzchen, it was only yesterday that we were sitting in Park Street together—l'eau dormante—the hunger pastor—poor little AimÉ. How I tormented you, how I sinned against you,—it was so funny, and everybody made such faces, it would have made a tombstone laugh."

Kleophea's smile faded, she hid her face in the pillows and sobbed softly. When Franziska bent over her with gentle, soothing words, she pushed her away and cried:

"Leave me alone, go away! Let me die alone, I have deserved love from no one, no one, and I have killed my father! Don't you know that I have killed my father? Why don't you leave me alone with my thoughts? They're enough to torment me to my dying hour——"

The next day Hans and FrÄnzchen learnt more about the unhappy woman's life in Paris. The more clearly Dr. ThÉophile Stein realized that he had erred in his calculations, the more miserably did he treat his wife. The certainty that Kleophea's mother would never forgive the step her daughter had taken relieved a character like Dr. Stein's from any obligation to keep up his smiling disguise. He had wanted money, much money and had received not it but only a burden that would make every step that he took through life, the way he looked upon life, infinitely more difficult. The ground that he had so cleverly won in the big German city, on which he might have built so firmly and well, he had lost entirely by this false move. He gnashed his teeth when he thought how his game had turned out. And yet he had considered all the probabilities so carefully, he knew how to calculer les chances so thoroughly. Nothing, nothing! There he sat in Paris and his wife had brought him nothing but a letter from her father telling her of his forgiveness. It was absurd, but it was also enough to drive one mad.

"He tore the letter up and threw the pieces at my feet," related Kleophea in the vicarage in Grunzenow, "and I—I had thought I was his master, I had the strength, I had the will, I had the brains! Because at home I went out unpunished, because no one at home had the power to control me, I thought the world was like my mother's house, to be moved by a laugh, a pout, a shrug of the shoulders. I had to try to move it by tears, and I tried my best, you may believe; but even that did not succeed and I often told myself that such a miserable, stupid, foolish little thing as I was had never yet sat five flights high in the quartier du Marais and looked at her misery in the glass. I learnt much, much, Mrs. FrÄnzchen Unwirrsch, but when I was in my mother's house I should never have believed that I should forget how to yawn. I was not bored in Paris, I had to make my black mourning dress for my dead father and to defend it against—against my husband. Oh, he had a large circle of acquaintance; many people came to the house and they all hated black. Oh, it was a mad life and if it had not been for my stupid, confused, aching head I think I might have played a very charming part. I think that we weren't any too particular about our honor, we needed money altogether too much to bother about ridiculous prejudices. We entered into correspondence with all sorts of curious persons of high position in Germany and wrote letters for which we were very well paid. I think that, at the request of different governments, we paid attention to the health of some of our countrymen who were not trusted at home. We made ourselves very useful for we were very hungry;—I had to be ashamed for two. We entertained too and played for high stakes and people liked to come to our house very much,—the disgrace threatened to drown us and it was a pity that I did not know how to swim as well as monsieur mon Époux.—Leave me alone, Oh, leave me alone!"

The crew of the burnt "Adelaide" had gradually left the village of Grunzenow and gone by land to the nearest port. The injured had recovered and the last to leave was the ProvenÇal who had broken his legs, and who parted from Colonel von Bullau with a thousand blessings. Grips drove him to Freudenstadt where he put him into the stage coach with a well-filled purse. Only the vicarage still kept its guests—for a short time and during that time Henriette Trublet had also a great deal to tell. She had kept her word, she had sought Dr. ThÉophile Stein and Kleophea and she had found them.

"Voyez," she said, "I vould 'ave go after zem to ze end of ze vorld; but zey vere only go to Paree. Oh, monsieur le curÉ, Oh, mademoi—madame, ze good God who bring me to you in zat night, he 'as also bring me in my distress to ze pauvre enfant and ze bad man, zat I might do my part for 'er and keep ma parole—voyez vous? And if I should be a tousand year old I vould not forget ze night in vhich you cover me viz your mantle and give me your 'and, and your 'art speak to mine. Viz your money I came to ma patrie and to Paree and zought I 'ave dreamt a dream of zat bad Allemagne,—vraiment un trÈs mauvais songe! Zere were my friends et le Palais royal et les Tuileries et Minette, et Loulou, et les Champs, et Arthur, Albert et les autres and I like a fish in ze water. But I have zought of ze cigale and ze fourmi and of ze Allemagne, of monsieur le curÉ and mademoiselle l'ange and I 'ave sit still like a mouse and 'ave made ze modes and looked only for ze villian monsieur ThÉophile and ze poor lady. Zat vas not difficult, to find zem. Zere vere Albert and Celestin, Armand, le Vicomte de la DÉraterie, zen mon petit agent de change, I can ask zem in ze street and soon I know vat I vish. O, mon Dieu, voilÀ la petite in ze black robe and so pale, so pale, and such eyes. My heart bleed; but I 'ave said, courage, and 'ave asked ze concierge and his vife and zen I know vat I must do. Me voilÀ en robe bleue viz Armand. Mon cher, I say, 'ere I am back from ze vilaine Allemagne. Vive Paris, mon petit coeur, 'ow are you? Vat shall ve do? Comment vont les plaisirs? ThÉophile is back also, and viz a vife. You know how ve 'ave stood to each ozer, he and I, je m'en vengerai; I am one of you just like before, take me to him! Armand laughs like a enragÉ and ve shake 'ands. On ze following evening I come like ze Commandeur in ze Festin de Pierre and Armand does not know certainly how my poor 'eart beat on ze stairs. Monsieur Armand! Mademoiselle Henriette Trublet!—VoilÀ les autres and ze little pale lady en deuil and—ThÉophile! Ah, monsieur le curÉ, j'ai fait une scÈne À cet homme! I 'ave put zis man vell in ze scene."

FrÄnzchen and Hans looked at Kleophea frightened; but she only nodded, smiled faintly and said:

"It was well done. God bless her for her kind heart. She came at the right time,—but it was really a very funny scene and the people laughed at us very much. I cannot deny, to be sure, that at the beginning I lost my head a little and doubted very much whether I should keep my reason over night; but when I woke from my stupefaction and found myself in Henriette's arms and she called to me that FrÄnzchen had sent her;—when she called me her poor dear lamb and flew at my husband with her finger nails, I soon knew where I was. Oh, it was merry, so merry. Wasn't it, Henriette?"

Henriette was crying too much to be able to answer the question. She only shook her head and, passionately excited, threw herself down on her knees beside the sick woman's couch to kiss her lips and hands again and again.

Now, Kleophea told in her fashion how from that evening on ThÉophile had made her life more of a hell than ever, how she had spent her days in idle, unoccupied torment, how, trembling, she had counted the minutes in the night and listened for the step that she feared on the stairs. She told of her secret, timid meetings with Henriette, of senseless plans to free herself from that unendurable, terrible existence, of thoughts of death and hopes of death and finally how the idea of flight had occurred to her, had stuck in her mind and become a resolution. It so happened that at that time a very badly composed and spelt letter came from Mademoiselle Euphrosine Lechargeon, a girl friend of Henriette's, then in St. Petersburg. This friend wrote of the good fortune that the Parisian demoiselles who understood the art of finery had among the "Mongolians" and reported that she, Euphrosine Lechargeon, was the mistress of a magnificent establishment and enfant gÂtÉe of all sorts of ladies and gentlemen ending in -off, -ow, -sky, -eff, -iev, etc., and that Eulalie, Veronique, Valerie and Georgette were also getting on well and that Philippine had made a brilliant match and had married Colonel Timotheus Trichinowitsch Resonovsky.

"Partons pour la Tartarie!" Henriette had cried. "Madame Kleophea has 'er jewels, I 'ave saved zirty-five francs. Allons au bout du monde! Let us save ourselves from zis traitor, filou and vicked juif. It is better to beg among messieurs les Esquimaux zan to breaze ze same air viz zis 'orror. Ve vill go as two sisters, ve vill open a business en compagnie, ve will trow ze polar bears into amazement, ve vill build a chÂteau d'Espagne en Russie. Allons, allons vive l'aventure!"

Kleophea had carried the idea of flight about with her for long, miserable weeks; she had sought in vain to fight against it, it returned again and again and the chains that bound the unhappy woman to that man became more and more unendurable. The day came on which Dr. ThÉophile of KrÖppel Street raised his hand against his wife and struck her; the following night Kleophea fled and hid herself in Henriette's attic room till the preparations for the distant journey were completed.

"They probably did not look for me anywhere except in the morgue," said Moses Freudenstein's wife in the vicarage in Grunzenow.

From Paris to Havre de GrÂce, then the sea, the ship, the journey! Everything was indefinite, blurred, intangible and incomprehensible!

"Les cÔtes de l'Allemagne!"

The shout pierced Kleophea to the marrow. Poor, homeless, wandering soul! Oh, to lie still in the grave, there, where the dark, hazy strip, the German coast, lies on the horizon. It is as if she had once heard a song of firm, green ground, green trees, of a quiet, peaceful churchyard among the green, and could not remember it exactly and yet was obliged to keep on trying to find it again. The ship went its way, groaning and panting; again the evening came and the coast of her native country disappeared in the dusk;—she has not yet found the sad old song and the ship groaned and panted all night long and on into the next day, the gray, hazy day.

Kleophea leant immovable against the rail of the ship and looked into the haze above the water and sought to remember the old song. She had been told that the German coast was quite near again and that without the fog they would long since have seen it.

Henriette Trublet told how a quarter of an hour before the fire broke out she had found Kleophea leaning against the side of the ship, unconscious, and that during all the horrors that followed she remained in the same condition. She was not awake until she had reached the vicarage in Grunzenow and lay in FrÄnzchen's arms!...

---

How the waves roll up toward the vicarage that looks out from its hill on the expanse of the Baltic! The waves of the sea do not reach the poor little building; neither can they do it any harm however fierce they may at times appear. They may swallow up islands, villages, towns, light-houses, churches and churchyards. They may wash out the mouldering coffins of long-buried generations and throw them before the feet of the shuddering present, wound about with sea-weed, covered with slime. The waves of the great sea can be wrathful, very wrathful; but the little house on the hill where stands the church of the poor village of Grunzenow is secure, it stands on safe ground and whoever takes refuge beneath its low roof is well protected. But best protected of all was Kleophea's poor, erring heart; it, above all, might rest.

Until the middle of the winter Moses Freudenstein's wife lay still and peaceful and was no longer afraid. The cruel scenes of the near past faded, God gave poor, beautiful Kleophea a happy death.

When you have become accustomed to the voice of the sea it lulls you very gently to sleep. It seems to you as if to eternity had been given a tongue with which to sing the children of earth to sleep.

It was touching to see how old Uncle Rudolf would not leave his niece's bedside, how he held her head on his breast, how he talked to her—how he cried outside her door. They all wept about poor, beautiful Kleophea: Pastor Tillenius, his assistant Hans Unwirrsch, FrÄnzchen Unwirrsch, Henriette Trublet, Colonel von Bullau—all of them.

Once more Kleophea wrote to her mother but this letter too was returned unopened; that was the last hurt that her poor, harassed heart received. Hans Unwirrsch had written to Dr. ThÉophile Stein and even though his letter was not returned no answer came to it. Nothing more was heard in Grunzenow of Dr. ThÉophile Stein who in KrÖppel Street had been Moses Freudenstein, until in the year 1852 when he, despised by those who had made use of him, despised by those against whom he had been used, received the title of "Privy Councillor." To all decent men he was an outcast, a pariah.

In the little churchyard in Grunzenow there was a half-sunken mound beneath which there slept an unknown woman whose body had been washed ashore there by the waves many, many years before. Beside that mound Kleophea was buried, who had been cast ashore by a still wilder sea than the Baltic. FrÄnzchen had picked out the spot for the poor, shipwrecked girl and a more suitable one could hardly have been found in the whole world. Johannes Unwirrsch preached the funeral sermon; but much as he had to say, just as little could he put it in words; still those who stood nearest to the coffin and to the open grave all understood him.

Franziska Unwirrsch was a good guardian and gardener for Kleophea's grave and many a flower that usually would not live on that bleak shore, of the existence of which the village of Grunzenow had known nothing until then, throve under the care of her blessed hand behind the churchyard wall that protected the mound from the sea wind.

Franziska's hand was blessed, indeed, everything throve under its care—the vicarage, the castle, the village.

Lieutenant Rudolf GÖtz recovered but slowly from the heavy shock which the death of his niece gave him. For a long time he was again tied to his armchair and FrÄnzchen could not kiss away from his lips every curse that he sent after Dr. ThÉophile Stein. The Colonel became more and more gallant, his castle more and more homelike, more and more he came to realize that "without the womenfolk the world was not worth a round of powder." For him as well as for Uncle Rudolf fate had still many a good year in store.

Henriette Trublet could bring herself to remain in Grunzenow only until the following spring. When the first swallows came her Parisian blood stirred. She would have drooped miserably if they had not given her the means of gratifying her longing for "the world." She wept bitterly at parting and thought she should never get over it; fluttered merrily away however, arrived safely, by land, at Mademoiselle Euphrosine's in St. Petersburg and the following year married a very rich German baker there, whom she made as happy as she could.

In the spring of the following year old Josias Tillenius passed away quietly without any illness after a long, beautiful and blessed life, and if the hard, weather-seasoned, sea-faring people shall, when the time comes, cry over Pastor Unwirrsch's coffin as they did over the coffin of this aged man, he will have well fulfilled his office on the shore of the sea.

Above the Hunger Pastor's writing table hangs the glass globe through which such a wonderful light fell on Master Anton Unwirrsch's work table, and by whose light the poor craftsman in KrÖppel Street, like his fellow craftsman Jakob BÖhme, thought out the beginning and the end of life. Johannes has laid down the pen with which he has described his life and his hunger not for publication and for the world but for his son; he is listening deep in thought to the lullaby which his wife is singing to her baby boy. The radiance of the shining globe falls also upon the child's head; he looks up at it with great wondering eyes; he is wondering about the light!

Outside in the night the sea roars angrily and fiercely and from time to time father and mother listen anxiously. There are evil spirits about out there in the dark, spirits that have no place within the shining globe's circle of light. Father and mother think of the time when their child too must go out into the battle with the demons. Soon the voice of the sea will drown the mother's song,—then the beginning of the struggle will have come.

How the child's eyes are fascinated by the shining ball! Is the hunger that destroys the world and builds it up again stirring already?

One generation of men passes away after another, one generation passes on its weapons of life to the next; not until the cry "Come again, children of men," has sounded for the last time will there be born for the last time that hunger that led the two boys from KrÖppel Street through the world.

Pass on your weapons, Hans Unwirrsch!