I never look at the clock. With me, life is no longer divided into hours. I hear the bell in the valley at morning, noon and evening, and regulate my actions accordingly. The clock is in the church tower. The church tells us the time of day.
Old Jochem is ill. The physician who attends him is quite a jovial character, and maintains that Jochem would live many years longer if he had only been able to feed his anger and keep his lawsuits, for these furnished him with excitement and amusement, at the same time. As long as he had these, there was still something left to fight for in the world and some one to abuse, and it was this that had kept him up. Now that his life was a peaceful one, he would, in all likelihood, die of ennui.
"You smile," said the physician to me. "Believe me, I am quite serious. An infant in the cradle that does not cry, and a chained dog that does not bark, have neither life nor energy and will surely die."
He may be right, to a certain extent.
I feel under restraint when with the physician; for he regards me with such a strange, scrutinizing air.
"Oh, Thou good God! The grass is coming up! But they'll bury me in the earth and I'll never come up again!" was Jochem's lament.
The old man is dead. This very night he passed away in his sleep. No one was with him at the time.
He died like a forest tree which has lost its power of absorbing nourishment.