“Valentine!” cried the young wife, seizing him by the shoulders, half as if she wanted to compel him to tell the truth, half as if to support herself, “he did not take it with him?  Valentine, tell me!”

“No, not that one,” said Valentine.  “But the other seat that was there, and the tackle belonging to it.”

“And was that cut too?” she asked with ever increasing fear.  He replied:  “I do not know.  But the man who did it had no idea which one Master Apollonius would take with him.”

The woman trembled so violently that the old man forgot his fears concerning Apollonius in his fear concerning her.  He had to support her to prevent her from falling.  She pushed him away and half imploringly, half threateningly, cried:  “Oh, save him, Valentine, save him.  Oh God, it is I who have done it!” She prayed to God to save him, and then moaned that he was dead and that it was her fault.  She called Apollonius by the tenderest names and entreated him not to die.  Valentine, in his distress, sought for words to comfort her and in so doing found comfort for himself; or if there were no real comfort, at least there was the hope that Apollonius was already on his way home.  He had certainly examined the tackle again.  If he had met with an accident they would have heard of it by now.  He had to repeat this a dozen times before she understood what he meant.  And now she began to expect the bearer of the terrible tidings, and started at every sound.  She even imagined her own sobbing to be his voice.  Finally Valentine, infected by her desperate terror and not knowing what else to do, ran to fetch the old gentleman, thinking that he might know how to save Apollonius, if it were still possible.

The old gentleman sat in his little room.  As he withdrew deeper and deeper into the clouds that separated him from the outer world, even his little garden finally became strange to him.  Especially the eternal question:  “How are you, Herr Nettenmair?” had driven him to the house.  He felt that people no longer believed his:  “I am somewhat troubled with my eyes, but it is a matter of no consequence,” and in every question he heard only a mockery.  Much as Apollonius suffered with him, his father’s isolation and increasing unsociability were not altogether unwelcome to him; for the deeper his brother sank, the more difficult it had become to conceal from the old gentleman the condition of the house; and to exclude busybodies from the garden was impossible.  Apollonius did not know that his father suffered tortures in his room equal to those from which he wanted to protect him.  Here the old gentleman sat the livelong day, crouched down in his leather chair behind the table, and brooded over all the possibilities of dishonor that might come to his house; or he strode up and down with hasty step, the flush in his sunken cheeks and the vehement gestures of his arms betraying all too plainly how in his thoughts he did his utmost to avert impending calamity.  His was a condition which would eventually lead to complete insanity, if the external world did not throw a bridge across to him and force him to leave his isolation.