"A man has a good right to play at either, if he only returns with fresh vigour to his work; at all events that is better than to play with his work."
The pendulums were getting further apart than ever. Lenz sold the greater part of his store of clocks at good prices. The only work that made no great progress, was the one he had undertaken at the request of his father-in-law, and when Lenz could not resist sometimes complaining to his wife, that he failed in this or that, she tried to persuade him that he did not think enough of making money; people like to have their orders quickly attended to, so you ought to lose no time in getting the work out of hand, but you are so over particular. "You are a dreamer, but a dreamer in broad daylight. Wake up, for Heaven's sake, wake up!"
"God knows! I live anything but a peaceful life; my sleep can be no longer called sleep! Oh! if I could only sleep well and soundly for one single night again! I always feel nervous and excited now; it seems to me as if I were incessantly awake, and as if I never took off my clothes day or night."
Instead of bestowing sympathy on Lenz, and striving in his depressed mood to inspire him with fresh self-confidence, Annele endeavoured to prove to Lenz, that though he failed, she could show him how to succeed. If he accomplished a thing and could not resist calling out to her, "Do you hear what a pure bell-like tone that is?" she would reply: "I must tell you fairly, once for all, that I detest every kind of musical clock. I heard that piece played in Baden-Baden, it sounded very different there."
Lenz knew this already, and had even told Pilgrim so, but he felt much hurt at the way in which Annele said it, for in this manner she paralyzed all his powers for his business.
Annele, however, had a private fixed plan of her own in her head, and she considered herself quite justified in trying to carry it through. She felt that her best faculties were lying dormant, for she could not employ them in her small household. She wanted to earn something, and an Inn of her own was best adapted for that purpose.
She had formerly endeavoured to estrange Lenz from Pilgrim. Now she made Pilgrim her confederate; he had said it was a pity that she was not a landlady, for she would give a fresh impulse to the Lion, and every one thought the same. Her object was, that Pilgrim should assist in persuading Lenz to undertake the Lion inn; he might still pursue his art—when she wished to be amiable she called it an art, but when in bad humour a trade—either in the Lion, or on the Morgenhalde; indeed the latter would be best, for he would be quieter there, and many a one had his workshop further from his home, than the Morgenhalde was from the Lion.
When Pilgrim came now, Annele said to him, graciously:—"Pray light your pipe, I rather like the smell; I seem at home when people are smoking around me."
"You are certainly not at home here," thought Pilgrim, but he took care not to say so. Though Annele attacked Pilgrim on every side, she could not obtain his co-operation, and Lenz was obstinate and impervious to all flattery, and proof even against bursts of rage, in a way she never could have expected from him.
"You first wished to make me a pedlar, to sell watches," said he; "and then a manufacturer, and now landlord of the Lion; if I am to become so entirely different from my former self, what did you see in me to induce you to marry me?"