Jason Philip had no other choice: he had to go back to bookbinding; he had to return to pasting, cutting, and folding. He returned in the evening of his life, downcast, impoverished, and embittered, to the position from which he had started as an ambitious, resourceful, stout-hearted, and self-assured man years ago. His eloquence had proved of no avail, his cunning had not helped him, nor his change of political conviction, nor his familiarity with the favourable turns of the market, nor his speculations. He had never believed that the order of things in the world about him was just and righteous, neither as a Socialist nor as a Liberal. And now he was convinced that it was impossible to write a motto on the basis of business principles that would be fit material for a copy book in a kindergarten.
Willibald was still the same efficient clerk. Markus had got a job in a furniture store, where he spent his leisure hours studying Volapük, convinced as he was that all the nations of the earth would soon be using this great fraternal tongue.
Theresa moved into the house on the Corn Market with as much peace and placidity as if she had been anticipating such a change for years. There was a bay window in the house, and by this she sat when her work in the kitchen was done, knitting socks for her sons. At times she would scratch her grey head with her knitting needle, at times she would reach over and take a sip of cold, unsugared coffee, a small pot of which she always kept by her side. Hers was the most depressed face then known to the human family; hers were the horniest, wrinkliest peasant hands that formed part of any citizen of the City of Nuremberg.
She thought without ceasing of all that nice money that had passed through her hands during the two decades she had stood behind the counter of the establishment in the Plobenhof Street.
She tried to imagine where all the money had gone, who was using it now, and who was being tormented by it. For she was rid of it, and in the bottom of her heart she was glad that she no longer had it.
One day Jason Philip came rushing from his workshop into her room. He had a newspaper in his hand; his face was radiant with joy. “At last, my dear, at last! I have been avenged. Jason Philip Schimmelweis was after all a good prophet. Well, what do you say?” he continued, as Theresa looked at him without any noticeable display of curiosity, “what do you say? I’ll bet you can’t guess. No, you will never be able to guess what’s happened; it’s too much for a woman’s brain.” He mounted a chair, held the paper in his hand as if it were the flag of his country, waved it, and shouted: “Bismarck is done for! He’s got to go. The Kaiser hates him! Now let come what may, I have not lived in vain.”
Jason Philip had the feeling that it was due to his efforts that the reins of government had been snatched from the hands of the Iron Chancellor. His satisfaction found expression in blatancy and in actions that were thoroughly at odds with a man of his age. He held up his acquaintances on the street, and demanded that they offer him their congratulations. He went to his favourite café, and ordered a barrel of beer for the rejuvenation of his friends. He delivered an oration, spiced with all the forms of sarcasm known to the art of cheap politics and embellished with innumerable popular phrases, explaining why he regarded this as the happiest day of his eventful life.
He said: “If fate were to do me the favour of allowing me to stand face to face with this menace to public institutions, this unscrupulous tyrant, I would not, believe me, mince matters in the slightest: I would tell him things no mortal man has thus far dared say to him.”
Several months passed by. Bismarck, then staying at his country place in Sachsenwald and quarrelling with his lot, decided to visit Munich. There was tremendous excitement in Nuremberg when it was learned that he would pass through the city at such and such an hour.