CONSUL. But tell me: why do you stay in the city when you could be in the country?
MASTER. I don't know. I have lost my power of motion. My memory has tied me for ever to these rooms. Only within them can I find peace and protection. In there—yes! It is interesting to look at your own home from the outside. Then I imagine that some other man is pacing back and forth in there—Just think: for ten years I have been pacing back and forth in there!
CONSUL. Is it ten years now?
MASTER. Yes, time goes quickly—once it is gone. But when it is still going it seems slow enough.—That time the house was new. I watched them putting down the hard-wood floor in the dining-room and painting the doors; and she was permitted to pick out the wall-paper, which is still there—Yes, that was then! The confectioner and I are the oldest tenants in the place, and he, too, has had a few experiences of his own—he is one of those people who never succeed but are always in some kind of trouble. In a way, I have been living his life also, and bearing his burdens besides my own.
CONSUL. Does he drink, then?
MASTER. No-o—nothing of that kind, but there is no go to him. Well, he and I know the history of this house: how they have arrived in bridal coaches and left in hearses, while the mail-box at the corner became the recipient of all their confidences.
CONSUL. There was a death here in the middle of the summer, wasn't there?
MASTER. Yes, a case of typhoid—the man was manager of a bank—and then the flat stood vacant for a month. The coffin came out first, then the widow and the children, and last of all the furniture.
CONSUL. That was on the second floor?
MASTER. Yes, up there, where you see the light—where those new people are, about whom I know nothing at all.