He would also be condemned to fast, for the remains of food upon the table he could not touch. One does not eat where a leper has fed, or an unclean beast.
He had his pipe with him, however, and plenty of tobacco.
Time wore on and dusk fell, gradually the room grew darker and the silence of the house more oppressive.
Nothing could be more nerve-straining than a vigil like this in the cold, in the darkness, in the silence; sitting with every sense alert, waiting for the coming of a being far more terrible than a ghost.
Passing Freyberger in the street, you would not have looked at him twice. You would never have fancied him a man of more than ordinary strength. But, were you to have seen him stripped of his clothes, you would have recognized the proportions of a trained athlete.
He had the physical basis of courage, that is to say, a great chest measurement.
He had also the mental basis of courage, that is to say, an almost total disregard for danger.
Danger blindness.
This same mental basis of courage is not always a desirable asset, for it is often the basis, also, of a low intelligence. It nearly always bespeaks want of imagination and ideality.
In Freyberger’s case, however, it was by no means the basis of a low intelligence, and as for imagination and ideality, he had quite sufficient for a man engaged in his profession.