"Now I hope you understand!" again shouted Balduin's rude companions. "Such a father is not found every day on the street, neither such a smart young peasant girl."
Balduin trembled with passion. "You must have escaped from Bedlam!" he cried; "away with you! You will get nothing from me!"
The old man could scarcely believe his ears. "No, it is impossible," he said to himself, "that within the short space of one year an angel could be thus changed into a demon. Christlieb!" he continued, "dissemble no longer; you are breaking my heart with your jokes. I have not deserved this treatment; but I need not speak of what I have done for you, as you have always gratefully acknowledged it."
Instead of answering, Balduin paid the reckoning, and left the inn with his noisy companions, leaving Kummas and Malchen behind, who both stood as if rooted to the spot.
A long pause ensued. "Is he really gone?" asked Kummas, scarcely able to speak.
"Quite gone!" Malchen was only able to answer by a sorrowful shake of the head.
"He has denied us, Malchen!" said the old man. "He is in prosperity, as you may see by his dress and well-filled purse. He has been ashamed of us before the other scholars. Alas! alas! I was not ashamed, for his sake, to become like an old nurse." Kummas laid down his head and wept bitterly. "See," he continued after a time, "how soon our soap bubbles have burst! Now we may return the way we came to our old home in the village. You will be able to get something to do; perhaps to herd the cows or the geese; and I---- will find a grave. The ingratitude of my child will be my winding-sheet! What could I now do with a violin? Never again shall I handle the bow, and I will burn the instrument as I did the violincello in which---- Christlieb was cradled." He again laid his grey head on the table, which became wet with his burning tears.
Malchen sprang up in haste. "Father! father!" she cried, "look at the starling." The poor bird lay with its breast bruised flat, close to the table where the young men had been drinking. His supposed master had accidentally put his foot on it when he had jumped up in rage at the old man.
"Father!" said Malchen, weeping, and holding the poor little thing by its legs, "the starling is dead!"
Kummas looked up. "It has been treated like me," he said with indifference. "The starling is only a senseless bird; but me has my child killed. Oh! that I, too, were dead!"