That wild night of the fire stood before his eyes with awful clearness, and in the midst of his fear at having to stand and speak before strange people he was overcome with a feeling of happiness when he remembered how he had stood high on the steep roof, surrounded by smoke and flames, acting and ruling as the leading spirit whom all obeyed—the only one who in all the tumult had kept his head clear. “Perhaps I could still be as courageous as any man if it should be necessary,” he said to himself, consolingly; but he afterwards sank into still deeper despondency as he contemplated his sad, oppressed, worthless existence. “It will never be otherwise; it can only become worse from year to year,” he said. Then he heard his mother sighing behind him, and what he had just been thinking appeared to him as base, heartless selfishness.
“It is no question of myself,” he murmured, and the cart passed through the gate of the town.
Before the red brick law-courts with the high stone staircase and arched windows the vehicle stopped. Not far from it stood a well-known carriage, and the coachman on the box still wore the same tassel which had made such an impression on Paul at the time when he was to be confirmed.
When his father was raised up it caught his eye also.
“Ah, so the vagabond is there, too!” he cried. “I’ll just see if he can stand a look from me.”
Then Paul, with the help of a policeman, carried him up the steps to the room for the witnesses. His mother and sisters came after them, and the people stopped and looked at the melancholy procession.
The waiting-room for the witnesses was full of people, mostly inmates from Helenenthal. In one corner stood a small party of beggars, a woman with a bloated face, a gay red shawl tied round her waist, in which a little baby slept. A little troop of ragged children were clinging to the folds of her dress. They scratched their heads or secretly pinched each other. This was the family of the accused, who wished to state that their father had been at home that night.
Meyerhofer stretched himself out in his chair and threw defiant glances all around. He thought himself a greater man than ever to-day—a hero and a martyr at the same time.
The door opened, and Douglas appeared with Elsbeth on the threshold. Meyerhofer cast a poisonous glance at him and laughed scornfully to himself. Douglas did not heed him, but sat down in the opposite corner, drawing Elsbeth to him. She looked pale and worn, and had a shy, timid manner, that might arise from her strange, unaccustomed surroundings.
She nodded with a slight smile to Paul’s mother and sisters, and looked at him with a meditative glance, which seemed to ask something.