As he did so, Ernst's expression changed; his eyes lost their look of intense melancholy and became hard, staring hard and black from their sockets, like two black marbles. He had turned his head in a stiff quarter-circle towards Gerrit; and the hard gleam of those black marbles bored into Gerrit's blue Norse eyes with such strange fierceness that Gerrit started. And, under his brother's big hand, which still lay on his shoulder, Ernst's limp body seemed to be turned to stone, to become rigid, hard as a rock. He stiffened his lips, his arms, his legs and feet and remained like that, motionless, evidently suffering physical and moral torture, shrinking under the pressure of Gerrit's hand, without knowing how to get rid of that pressure. He remained motionless, stark; every muscle was tense, every nerve quivered; Ernst seemed to shrink and harden under Gerrit's touch just as a caterpillar shrinks and becomes hard when it feels itself touched. As soon as Gerrit removed his hand, the tension relaxed and Ernst's body huddled together again, as though something had given way in the spinal system.
"Ernst," said Paul, "wouldn't you do well to get some sleep?"
"No," he said, "I won't go to bed again. There are three of them under the bed."
"Three what?"
"Three. They're chained up."
"Chained up? Who's chained up?"
"Three. Three souls."
"Three souls?"
"Yes. The room's full of them. They are all fastened to my soul. They are all riveted to my soul. With chains. Sometimes they break loose. But I was dragging two of them with me for ever so long yesterday, in the street, over the cobble-stones. They were in pain, they were crying. I can hear them now in my ears, crying, crying.... There are three under the bed. They're asleep. When I go to bed, they wake up and rattle their chains. Let them sleep. They are tired, they are unhappy. As long as they're asleep, they don't know about it.... I ... I can't sleep. I haven't slept for weeks. They only sleep when I'm awake. They're fastened to me.... Don't you hear them? The room is full of them. They belong to every age and period. I've gathered them around me, collected them from every age and period. They were hiding in the jars, in the old books, in the old charts. I have some belonging to the fourteenth century. They used to hide in the family-papers. The first moment I saw them, they rose up, the poor souls ... with all their sins upon them, all their past. They are suffering ... they are in purgatory. They chained themselves on to me, because they know that I shall be kind to them ... and now they refuse to leave me. I drag them with me wherever I go, wherever I stand, wherever I sit. Their chains pull at my body. They hurt me sometimes, but they can't help it.... Last night ... last night, the room was so full of souls that there was a cloud of them all round me; and I was suffocating. I wanted to go out, but the landlady and her brother prevented me. They are a miserable pair: they would have let me die of suffocation. They are a pair of brutes too: they tread on the poor souls. Do you hear ... on the stairs? Do you hear their feet? They are treading on the souls...."
Paul's face was white; and he said, nervously trying to change the subject: