This was what happened on that day.  Force of habit compelled old Valentine, without his being conscious of the fact, to open the door gently, and gently to step in; but the old gentleman, with his morbidly acute perception, discerned at once the unusual.  His anticipation naturally took the same course which all his thoughts pursued.  Some disgrace must be threatening the house so to alter Valentine’s usual manner; and it must be a terrible one indeed thus to upset the old fellow and break through his assumed composure.  The old gentleman trembled as he arose from his chair.  He struggled with himself as to whether he should ask.  It was not necessary.  The old fellow confessed, unasked.  With nervous haste he related his fears and his reasons for them.  The old gentleman was startled, in spite of the fact that his imagination had prepared him for the truth; but Valentine observed none of this in his exterior, he listened to him as always, as if he were relating matters of the utmost indifference.  When Valentine had finished, the sharpest eye could no longer have perceived the slightest tremor in the tall, stately figure.  The old gentleman had the firm ground of reality under his feet once more; he was again the old gentleman in the blue coat.  He stood as austere as of yore before his servant; so austere and so quiet was he that his bearing inspired Valentine with courage.  “Imagination!” he exclaimed in his old grim manner.  “Are none of the journeymen around?” Valentine called one who was just about to fetch slate.  The old gentleman despatched him to Brambach to bid Apollonius return home at once.  “If you think he won’t go quickly enough for you, you fussy old woman, tell him to hurry so that you may soon learn that you’ve worked yourself into a state about nothing.  But no word of this to anybody and lock up the wife so that she can’t do anything silly.”  Valentine obeyed.  The old gentleman’s assurance, and the fact that something had really been done, had a more powerful effect upon him than a hundred good arguments.  He imparted his encouragement to Christiane.  He was in too great haste to tell her upon what grounds it was based.  If he had had time for that he would probably have left her less reassured.  Nothing was further from himself than the suspicion that the old gentleman, while characterizing his fears as idle fancies, and pretending to send the messenger only to reassure him and the young wife, was inwardly convinced of the guilt of his elder son and of the danger, if not actual death, of his younger son.

“Now,” said Herr Nettenmair, when Valentine had returned to him, “the old fool has of course told our neighbor the fairy-tale that he spun out of thin air, and the young wife has confided it to all the gossips in town!”

Valentine noticed nothing of the feverish suspense with which the old gentleman awaited an answer to the question which he had disguised as an exclamation.  “I’ve done nothing of the kind,” he replied earnestly.  The old gentleman’s supposition had wounded him.  “In the first place I didn’t really think myself that anything was very wrong yet; and Frau Nettenmair has not spoken to a soul since then.”