"You knew nothing of all this at that time, did you, mother?—not until later?"
"No; if I had known it, I believe I should have gone straight up to him, taken him by the hand, and greeted him with all my heart."
"I should too, mother!"
"Since my life with him I have thought a great deal. Do you know, I believe geniuses have this characteristic of confiding impulsiveness, and therefore the people and conditions that surround them are of all the greater importance. But most important of all is it that they should have a woman's help. And, according to the nature of that help, so things go with them. Karl Mander had got into the habit of speaking in monologues. He got on best among peasants. They disturbed him least. Books, meditations, farming, bathing, and now and then an orgie, a speech, or, for preference, one on top of the other—that had been his life up to then."
"But he didn't drink, mother? There was no need for him to drink, was there?"
"No more need than for you or for me. It was simply an outburst of mere high spirits, or repressed longing for happiness. So the last time——"
"Yes, that time! Oh, why were you not there?"
"You had come to us then, my child, and I could not; I was nursing you at my breast. The whole thing would have gone off happily, if some one at the banquet after the meeting had not been so imprudent as to propose my health! Then he let himself go! There was the theme of themes, and he had never unbosomed himself about it to any one! The toast applied the match to his inward fire; his exultant joy blazed up. He made a speech in praise of at least twenty of my characteristics, of marriage, of fatherhood. He——"
She could not go on. She sat down, her daughter by her; they were both in tears. The roar of the river swept pitilessly past them, and yet it seemed to bring them a kind of comfort. All the tears we may shed avail nothing. It goes on its way, and nothing arrests its determined course to the sea.
Through the voice of nature the whispers of memory brought back his tragic end. It came over them both again how, after the banquet, he wanted to refresh himself with a bath. How every one tried to dissuade him, but it was no use. How he sprang in from a great height, took longer and longer strokes out, as though each one of them were taking him home, was seized by cramp and sank.