The moon was high in the heavens. Daniel went over to the fountain just as the night watchman came along, blew his trumpet and sang: “Listen, all men, I wish to tell that it has struck two from the town-hall bell.” The watchman noticed the lonely man standing by the fountain, was startled at first, but then continued on his rounds, repeating from time to time the words of his official song.
Often as a child Daniel had read the inscription on the base of the Wolfram figure. Now he read the words, irradiated by the light of the moon, and they had a totally different meaning:
Water gives to the trees their life,
And makes with fertile vigour rife
All creatures of the world.
By water all our eyes are purled;
It washes clean man’s very soul
And makes it like an angel, whole.
Simple words, but Daniel read them in the light of a full experience, dipped his hands in the basin, and rubbed them over his eyes drunk with sleep; then casting one more glance at his mother’s house, he turned in the direction of the road leading away from the town.
Out in the fields it was too damp for him to lie down to rest. Near an isolated farm house he found a hay rick, went up to it, and lay down.
VI
Every time Eleanore looked at Daniel her heart was filled with the same anxiety. She did not understand him; she could not comprehend a single one of his movements. Such joy as she had arose from meditation on the past.
He did not seem to be able to recall her. One word, any word, from him would have relieved her of her anguish; but he spoke to her precisely as he spoke to Philippina or to Frau Kütt, the woman who came in to do the housework.
It was bad enough to live with Philippina, to feel the incessant hatred of this secretive person; to suspect that she knew things that would not stand the light of day. But to see the child handed over to her, treated by her as though it were her own and guarded by her with a jealousy that made her face wrinkle with rage if Eleanore presumed to stay with it for as much as five minutes, this was infinitely worse.