"What have you done? Soon, very soon, God will tell you. My words are of no avail in awakening your conscience."
Lenz was silent, and Annele also, though she felt she must say something, and yet she could not utter.
"Good heavens!" began Lenz at last; "here are we two doomed to die, and yet what are our mutual feelings? Misery and despair! and, even if by any unforeseen good fortune we are rescued, all the former tortures and discord will be renewed. My parents were, as I told you, three times snowed up. My mother took every possible precaution every winter in case of such an event, and laid in a great provision of salt and oil. I know nothing of the first two times, but I perfectly well remember the last. I never saw my father and mother kiss each other in my life, and yet they loved each other truly and faithfully in their hearts. And on that occasion, when my father said, 'Marie, now we are once more in the world, and separated from all other living creatures,' then, for the first time, I saw my mother kiss my father; and the three days that it lasted, the harmony in which they lived was like paradise. In the morning, at midday, and at night, my father and mother sung together from their hymnbook, and every word they spoke was calm and holy. My mother said, 'Oh, that we may one day die thus together, and be translated from peace here, to peace everlasting hereafter! I hope I shall die at the same moment with you, that one may not be left to grieve for the other.' It was then my father spoke of my uncle, and said, 'If I must die now, I have not a single enemy in the world. I owe no man anything. My brother Peter alone dislikes me, and that distresses me deeply.'"
Lenz suddenly stopped in the midst of his narration.
"Something is scratching at the front door, and now I hear whining and barking. What is it? I must see what it is," said Lenz.
"Don't, for God's sake!" screamed Annele, laying her hand on his shoulder.
Her touch was like an electric shock to him.
"Don't go, Lenz. It is a fox, or perhaps a wolf; they bark just like that I heard one once."
Encouraged by voices in the house, the voice outside became more clamorous, and the scratching and barking more vigorous.
"That is no wolf!" cried Lenz; "it is a dog. Hark! it is Büble! Good God! it is my uncle's dog, and my uncle is not far off; he is also buried under the snow."