Still the old woman would not let go of Lenz's hand, and kept saying: "There was something else I wanted to say to you; it has been on my tongue, but now I cannot think what it was. As soon as you are gone I shall certainly remember it. I was to remind you of something; don't you know what it was?"
Lenz did not know what it was, and at last almost reluctantly took his departure.
He entered a wayside inn, where a noisy welcome awaited him. "Hurrah, hurrah! that is jolly to have you here too," cried a voice in greeting; and there at a table, on which stood a great flagon of beer, sat Pröbler with two of his associates. One of his pot companions was the blind musician from Fuchsberg, whose instrument Lenz was in the habit of putting in order every year. An expression of embarrassment and mortification overspread the blind man's face at the sound of Lenz's voice, but he assumed a braggadocio air, and, flourishing his glass above his head, cried out, "Come, Lenz, pledge me out of my glass!" Lenz courteously declined. Old Pröbler tried to get up and advance to meet him, but his legs soon admonished him that he was safer sitting, and he contented himself with calling out: "Take a seat with us, Lenz, and let the bankrupt world without snow itself away as it will. There is no good left in it. Here we will sit till the day of judgment. I want nothing more; when I have spent my last farthing I shall sell my coat for drink, and then lay me down in the snow and save you the cost of burying me. Here you have a proof, comrades, of what a worthless world it is, that can thus bring its best and noblest to ruin. Have a drink, Lenz! That is well. Look at him, the best and bravest fellow in all the world; and how has the world used him? When his mother died, and the whole town was talking of nothing but Lenz's marriage,--why, the sparrows could not be madder after a sack of corn than the girls were for Lenz."
"Enough of that," interposed Lenz.
"No, no; you need not be ashamed to hear the truth. The doctor's daughters, and the paper-miller's only daughter, who was so rich and handsome and married Baron Thingummy,--every one of them would have jumped at him. The paper-miller said to me the day after the betrothal: 'Lenz of the Morgenhalde might have had my daughter and welcome.' And now--Peace, Lenz; I have done--only the Lord or the Devil knows who will get the upperhand. Look at that man! His own father-in-law has robbed him, has sold the very hair off his head, and left his house bare in the middle of winter. I was honest too once, Lenz; but I have had enough of it, and you will see the folly of it presently. Go about the world, if you are in want, and ask of the good and charitable. Take a pinch; take a pinch! their snuff-boxes are open to you, and that is all. Take a pinch!" Pröbler pressed his snuff-box upon him and laughed immoderately.
Lenz shuddered at hearing himself thus held up to view as the most striking example of failure and ruin. Such a notoriety he had never thought to attain. He tried to convince Pröbler that a man had no right to ruin himself, and then cry out against the world for having ruined him. His arguments in favor of every man's helping himself instead of expecting the world to help him greatly strengthened his own confidence, but failed to affect his hearer, who drew a knife from his pocket, and forcing it into Lenz's hand, together with the knife that lay on the table, cried out: "There, you have all the knives; I can do you no hurt. Now tell me honestly, am I a good-for-nothing fellow, or might I have been the foremost man in the world, if the world had helped me? Your father-in-law, whose soul the Devil must weigh out like so much lead, smeared his creaking boots with the marrow of my bones; and capital blacking he found it. Tell me honestly, am I a good-for-nothing fellow, or what am I?"
Of course Lenz had to acknowledge that Pröbler would have been a master in his art, if he had remained in the right road; at which the old man shouted and beat upon the table, and was with difficulty prevented from throwing his arms about Lenz's neck and kissing him.
"I want no other funeral oration. Lenz has pronounced my eulogy. Drink, drink! empty your glasses!"
Lenz had to drink with the rest, and Pröbler, filling the glasses again, cried out exultingly: "The doctor wants to take me into his hospital, his manufactory. It is too late. The time for doctoring and manufacturing is past. There is Lenz of the Morgenhalde, whom all respect to-day and to-morrow, and how much longer? I was once like him, and now when I go through the town men point their fingers at me and shrug their shoulders and cry, 'Pah, there is that scamp of a Pröbler!' Follow my advice, Lenz. Don't wait till you are as old as I, but make your bow in good season. Hark to me, brother, I have something to tell you. Do you remember our setting up those standard regulators? Do you know what we were then? A couple of pattern fools. Did you want to unite the clockmakers in an association? You might as well try to make them join hands with the Devil. Hark to me, brother! Don't tear yourself away; stay here, stay here! I have something to tell you. I make you my heir. There is a way to buy jollity in the world, and forgetfulness, and good cheer. I know your heart is heavy; I know where the shoe pinches. Old Pröbler knows more than other men; he knows everything. Pour wine on the worm in your heart; wine or brandy. Whatever drowns it is good. Then we shall have no more clocks, no more hours, no day and no night, no more time, but all eternity."
The old man fell into the most frenzied ravings. At times a spark of intelligence shone through his wild utterances, and then again all was delirium. It was impossible to tell whether it was a fact, or only his fancy, that the landlord's failure had robbed him of all provision for his old age, or whether it was the sale of his mysterious work that had reduced him to this state of despair. The burden of his cry was ever "Lenz, drink your life out while you are young, and don't be so long killing yourself as I have been." Lenz turned sick with horror at this living proof of what a man may come to who has lost his self-respect, and whose only refuge is self-forgetfulness.