a moment’s notice, be let into any part of the town by means of subterranean channels, were both frozen.  Some hoped the danger would pass by.  But each time they looked up at the sky they saw that the dark cloud-mass had not changed its position.  Two hours after midday it had stood there; toward midnight it still stood there unmoved.  Only it seemed to have become heavier and had sunk lower.  How could it move when there was not a breath of air in motion, and to scatter and dispel such a mass as this a hurricane would have been required!

It struck twelve from St. George’s tower.  The last stroke seemed unable to die away.  But the deep trembling murmur that hung on so long was no longer the dying tone of the bell.  For now it began to grow; as if on a thousand wings it came rushing and surging and pushed angrily against the houses that would retard it; whistling and shrieking, it drove through every crevice that it met, and blustered about the house until it found another rift to drive out of again; it tore shutters open and slammed them furiously, it squeezed its way groaningly between adjacent walls, whistled madly round street corners, lost itself in a thousand currents, found itself again and rushed headlong into a raging stream, careered up and down with savage joy, jolted everything that stood fast, trilled with wild-playing fingers on the rusty vanes and weather-cocks and laughed shrilly at their groans; it blew the snow from one roof to another, swept it from the street, chased it onto steep walls where it crouched with fear in all the window chinks, and whirled great, dancing fir-trees of snow before it in its mad course.

Seeing that a storm was imminent, no one had taken off his clothes.  The town and county storm night-watch, as well as the fire company, had been gathered together for hours.  Herr Nettenmair had sent his son to the main guard-room in the town hall to represent him there as the master-slater of the town.  The two journeymen sat with the tower watchman, one at St. George’s, one at St. Nicholas’.  The other municipal workmen entertained one another in the guard-room as well as they could.  The building inspector looked anxiously at Apollonius, who, feeling his friend’s eye fixed upon him, rose, to conceal from him if possible his brooding state of mind.  At this very moment the storm broke forth with renewed violence.  From the town-hall tower it struck one.  The sound of the bell whimpered in the grip of the storm which dragged it along in its wild chase.  Apollonius stepped to the window as if to see what was happening outside.  A gigantic, sulphur-blue tongue leaped into the room, sprang twice trembling upon stove, wall and people, and then, leaving no trace, was swallowed up in itself again.  The tempest raged on:  but, even as the storm had seemed born out of the last sound of St. George’s bell, there now arose a something out of the raging which exceeded it in force as far as the raging had exceeded the sound of the bell.  An invisible world seemed to tear it to pieces in the air.  The storm raged and panted with the fury of the tiger which cannot destroy what it holds in its grasp; the deep, majestic rolling that outsounded it was the roar of the lion which has his foot on the enemy—­the triumphant expression of struggle satisfied by action.