She goes up to the door and with a shake of her head compares the keyhole and the shape of the key--but,--then, with a sudden jerk, she pushes the key into the lock.
"It fits, after all," she says, and looks with apparent disappointment back over her shoulder at Johannes, who is standing behind her, anxiously watching the movements of her hands.
"Turn it!" she says in jest, and steps back from the door.
A tremor passes through his body. Ah, Eve, thou temptress!
"Turn it and let me put my head in," she laughs, "you needn't look at anything yourself."
Then a sudden rage takes hold of him; he lets the key fly back with a jerk and pushes the door wide open, so that a bright stream of light from the window floods towards them. Trude makes a disappointed face. All they see is a plain, business-like room with bare, whitewashed wooden walls. In the middle stands a large, roughly painted writing-table on which lie samples of grain and ledgers. On one wall hangs a bundle of old clothes, and on the opposite one a wooden shelf with some blue exercise-books and a few plainly bound volumes upon it. Johannes casts a few timid glances around, then steps up to the book-shelf and begins turning over the title-pages. What an uncanny collection! There are medical works on brain diseases, fractures of the skull and the like, philosophical treatises on the heredity of passion, a "History of Passion and its Terrible Consequences." "Method for Self-Restraint," and Kant's "Art of Overcoming Morbid Feeling by Pure Force of Will." There are literary works, too, but they nearly all treat of fratricide as their subject. Side by side with such thrilling romances as "The Tragic Fate of a Whole Family at Elsterwerda," are Schiller's "Bride of Messina," and Leisowitz's "Julius of Tarent." Even theology is represented by a number of little tracts on the deadly sins and their remission. Besides these, the blue exercise-books contain carefully made extracts and dissertations and morbid reflections upon things experienced and mused over.
Johannes lets his hands drop. "My poor, poor brother!" he murmurs with a deep sigh. Then he feels Trude's hand on his shoulder. She points to a tablet hanging above the door, and asks in an anxious whisper: "What does that signify?"
In large gold letters these words are there inscribed:
Think of Fritz!
Johannes does not answer. He throws himself into a chair, buries his face in his hands and weeps bitterly.