"I reached home.
"The mountains seemed to be rising and running to meet me, as I entered the valley.
"I drove through the different villages. There was where such and such a one lived; I could not think of the names till I had passed. The road was broader and more convenient than it used to be, and followed the valley instead of going over the Woltending mountain. I was in a strange land and yet at home. Mountains that used to be thickly wooded were now as bare as a Turk's head. There had been a terrible sacrifice of trees. I entered the village on a beautiful summer evening at haying-time, just as the bells were ringing. They seemed voices not of this world. I had heard many bells in the forty-two years I was abroad, but none like these. Involuntarily I took off my hat; it was so good, so heavenly to feel my native air blowing about my head! I know not what echo it woke within me. The gray hairs on my head seemed growing young again. Most of the persons I met on the way were strangers to me. You, doctor, I recognized from your resemblance to your father. No one knew me. I drew up at the 'Golden Lion' and inquired if Lorenz Lenz of the Morgenhalde was at home. At home? He had been dead these seven years. A thunderbolt falling at my feet could not have more confounded me. Fortunately I recovered myself before my agitation was observed.
"I went up to my room, and late at night walked through the village, meeting many familiar objects that convinced me I was once more at home. All was still about my parents' house. The pine trees at the back of it, that were hardly twice as tall as I when I left home, were now giants, ready to be cut down. I half resolved to depart before day. What should I do here? It would be easy to go, for no one had recognized me.
"But I did not depart.
"Persons came to me from all quarters, and offered me their hands--to be filled. But, doctor, I once to kill time fed the sparrows on my window-sill, and from that day the importunate beggars are possessed to come here every morning, and distract me with their noise; there is no frightening them away. It is easy to acquire habits, but hard to break them up. I stopped asking about anybody, for I heard of nothing but death and disaster, and a hundred times a day got a stab at my heart. Whoever came in my way was very well; who did not, was gone. All came to see me except my sister-in-law and her prince. 'My brother-in-law knows where his parents' house is,' she said. 'It is not for us to run after him.' The very first time I saw young Lenz, I conceived a dislike to him. He looked like none of us, but took after his mother's family. When I look round upon the village now, and the whole district, in fact, I am ready to tear my old hair out for having come home. Everything is stunted and lazy and spoiled. Where is the old light-heartedness, the old high spirit? Gone. The youths are good for nothing. Don't I have to pick the cherries before they are ripe to prevent the young trees from being broken? My musical nephew there cossets himself up in his room, while I, at his age, was out making my way in the world. I mind nothing; but he turns pale and sick at every rough wind and every rough word. There was a time when I hoped something from him, and thought he might still make my life happy. If he had married your daughter Amanda, the young people should have come to me, or I would have gone to them. My property would have come into your family, as it is right it should; for I am indebted to your father for the beginning of my good fortune, if good fortune it is. That cursed Pilgrim guessed my thoughts, and tried to make me a go-between. I would have nothing to do with it. I never give advice nor take it. Every man must work out his life in his own way. And this is the point I want to come at: that I won't give a red cent; rather would I throw my money into the fire. Now I have talked enough. I have made myself quite hot."
"How did the water of the spring by the church taste, that you had longed for so much?" asked the doctor.
"Bad; very bad. It is too cold and too hard. I cannot bear it."
With this for a text, the doctor undertook to reason Petrovitsch into a better way of thinking. He tried to convince him that the world had not changed for the worse any more than the spring of water; only his eyes and thoughts, as well as his palate, had lost their youth. He explained to him, that while he was perfectly right in strengthening his mental and bodily powers by contact with the outside world, yet domestic industry and economy required that many should stay at home, and be screwed, like their own vice, to the work-bench. He laid special stress on the delicacy, amounting almost to morbid sensitiveness, that accompanies a talent for music; at the same time pointing out to the old man the same soft-heartedness in himself that he censured in his nephew. He strongly urged upon him the necessity of extending a helping hand. But Petrovitsch had relapsed into his old obstinacy, and silenced the doctor by saying: "I keep to what I said before. I neither give advice nor take it. I shall take no steps in the matter. If you say another word, doctor, I will not answer for the consequences."
It was clear there was nothing further to be hoped for, and, as a message arrived at this moment from Ibrahim, Petrovitsch and the doctor left the house together. The doctor was obliged to draw his cloak close about him as he went up the Morgenhalde. It was blowing fiercely, though the wind was strangely warm.