"I will come at once," I said.
The man hastened off; I went back to my room, put on my overcoat and hat, took a pair of dark gloves instead of the light ones I had worn the previous evening--all quite mechanically, as if I were going out about some ordinary business. "The commerzienrath has been found dead in his bed," I repeated, as I would have repeated a report brought to the office that a belt had broken in such and such a shop.
Then suddenly a pang darted through me as if a dagger had been thrust into my breast.
"Poor child!" I muttered, "poor child, how will she bear it? But there is so much misfortune in the world; so much misfortune, and he was an old man."
Thus I left the house, in which the inmates already began to be stirring.
"You are going out early this morning," said the porter, coming out of his lodge. "Anything happened at the works?"
I did not answer: not until I had reached the street did I comprehend the meaning of the man's words. It was now near seven o'clock, and already clear daylight. The wind had hauled to westward, and was blowing hard. It was raining: streams of water poured from the roofs, and the heavy snow that had fallen in the night was mostly changed into gray slush, through which the bakers' and milkmens' carts were toiling heavily. I was shivering, and said to myself that it was a very disagreeable morning; but no other feeling awakened in me. At a corner I met a hearse with no following of carriages; the driver upon his high seat had pulled his cocked hat down over his face; the broken-down horses were going at a half-trot; the hearse slipped about in the slush, and the threadbare black pall that was hung over the hearse flapped to and fro in the wind.
"That cannot be the commerzienrath," I said, looking after the hearse with a vacant mind.
Thus I reached the hotel.
"Number eleven: first door to the right at the top of the stairs," said the porter.