Apollonius heard the councilman’s voice in the hall, asking for him; he went out quickly so that the councilman should not come in and be a witness to the scene.  His brother heard them going away together.  He was far from being reassured yet.  When he went out Apollonius’ face had shown that he was still struggling with the thought that had dawned on him.

Two passions were fighting against each other in Fritz Nettenmair’s soul.  The dissolute habit of forgetting himself in drink drew him out of the house by a hundred chains; jealous fear held him at home with a thousand talons.  If his brother had not yet thought of what he might have if he liked, he himself had now introduced the thought into his mind.  All day long he turned his fear over and over and did not let his wife out of his sight.  Not until it had all grown quiet around him, till his wife had put the children to bed and laid herself to rest, till he no longer saw any light in Apollonius’ windows, did the talons relax their hold and the chains draw the stronger.  He locked the back door which separated Apollonius from the rest of the house, he even bolted it as well, and locked the door of the stairs leading to the piazza and finally the door at which he went out.  He had cause for haste without knowing it.  The disagreeable-looking workman could not stay much longer.  Fritz Nettenmair did not yet know that Apollonius had been to the quarry owner and succeeded in having the workman dismissed, had talked to the police and brought it about that the workman might no longer let himself be seen in the neighborhood on the morrow.  The workman was ready for his departure; from the public house he was going straight out into the wide world.  He only wanted to take leave of his former master and tell him something more before he went.

There was little left in the world to which Fritz Nettenmair was attached.  The road that he had been traveling led farther and farther down from what he loved most; it was irretrievably lost to him.  He would never again be the centre of admiration and flattery.  All that still bound him to his wife was the searing chain of jealousy.  He never had been fond of his father; he hated his brother.  He knew himself to be hated or, in his madness, believed himself to be hated.  Little Annie would have clung to him with all the strength of a child’s heart longing to be loved, but he drove her away from him with hatred; to him she was “the spy.”  To one man alone did his heart cling, to the one who least deserved it.  He knew that the man had cheated him, had helped to ruin him, and still he clung to him.  The man hated Apollonius, he was the only person besides himself who hated Apollonius and therefore Apollonius’ brother clung to him!