One evening, grandfather Jörg was arrested in his bookshop. He was led, surrounded by bayonets, through the town. Many people were taken like that in those times. Those who remained free spoke in whispers of these things. Anne heard something about grandfather Jörg printing some proclamation; that was why he had to go to prison. But nobody seemed to know exactly what happened. The printing press was closed down by the soldiers; the apple tree at the corner of Snake Street was cut down and in the bookshop young Jörg had to place the bookshelf in such a way that one could see from the street into the deepest recess of the shop.
It was many months before Ulrich Jörg was released. Meanwhile he had turned quite old and tiny.
The town too looked as if it had aged. People got accustomed to that. People will get accustomed to anything. The streets were full of Imperial officers and quiet women in mourning.... Slowly the traces of the bombardment disappeared. On Ulwing’s house, however, the mutilated pillar-man remained untouched.
John Hubert disliked this untidiness.
“It has to stay like that!” growled the builder. He never told them why.
One day two students passed under the open window of the office. One of the boys said: “This old house has got a national guardsman; look at him, he has been to the war.”
The pen of Christopher Ulwing stopped abruptly. What? People had already come to call his house old?
Where were those who shook their heads when he began to build here on the deserted shore, on the shifting sands? Since then a town had sprung up around him. How many years ago was it? How old was he himself? He did not reckon it up; the thought of his age was to him like an object one picks up by chance and throws away without taking the trouble to examine. Annihilation disgusted him. He rebelled against it. He avoided everything that might remind him of it. To build! To build! One could kill death with that. To build a house was like building up life. To draw plans; homes for life. To work for posterity. That rejuvenates man.
But the town had come to a standstill.
Ulwing the builder called his grandchildren into his room, and—a thing he had never done before—he listened to their talk attentively. He was painfully impressed by the discovery that among themselves they spoke a language differing from that which they used with him. So the difference between generations was great enough to give the very words a different meaning! Were all efforts to draw them together vain?