Christian often arose in the night to waken the servants to their labour, and himself to look after every thing. The father was anxious lest, through excessive diligence, he should injure his youth and health; therefore, one night, he arose in order to admonish him on the subject, when, to his astonishment, he saw him sitting at a table, and with the greatest eagerness counting over the gold.
"My son," said the old man, in sadness, "shall it come to this with thee? has this cursed metal been brought under the roof only to our unhappiness? Bethink thyself, my son, or the wicked fiend will consume thy blood and life."
"Yes," said Christian, "I no longer comprehend myself; neither by night nor by day have I any rest; see now how it looks at me, till the ruddy glow goes deep into my heart. Listen how it clinks, this golden blood; it calls me when asleep; I hear it when music sounds, when the wind blows, when people are talking in the street. If the sun shines, I see only these yellow eyes, with which it blinks at me, and wishes to whisper secretly a word of love into my ear: so I am obliged nightly to get up, though only to satisfy its strong desire, and then I feel it inwardly exulting and rejoicing; when I touch it with my fingers, it grows ruddier and more glorious in its joy. Only look yourself now at the glow of its rapture!"
The grey-haired man, shuddering and weeping, took his son in his arms, prayed, and then said, "Christel, thou must turn again to the word of God; thou must more diligently and devoutly go to church: otherwise thou wilt languish, and in the saddest misery pine thyself away."
The money was again locked up. Christian promised to betake himself to other subjects; and the old man was composed. A year and more had already passed, and no tidings heard of the stranger: the old man at last yielded to the entreaties of his son; and the relinquished money was laid out in lands and other ways. The young farmer's wealth was soon talked of in the village; and Christian seemed extremely contented and joyful, so that his father thought himself happy at seeing him so well and cheerful; all fear had now vanished from his soul. What, then, must have been his astonishment when, one evening, Elizabeth took him aside, and told him, with tears, that she could no longer understand her husband; he spoke so wildly, especially at night; he had perplexing dreams; would often in his sleep for a long time walk about the room without knowing it, and tell of wondrous things which oft made her shudder. But most frightful to her was his merriment in the daytime; his laugh was wild and boisterous, his look strange and wandering. The father stood terror-struck; and the troubled wife continued: "He is always speaking of the stranger, and maintains that otherwise he has long known him, for that this stranger-man is really none other than a woman of wondrous beauty; he also will no longer go out into the field, nor work in the garden, for he says that he hears underground a fearful groaning when he only pulls up a root; he starts and seems terrified at the plant and herbs, as if they were spectres."
"Merciful God!" exclaimed the father, "is the frightful hunger so fast grown within him that it has come to this? Then is his enchanted heart no longer human, but of cold metal; he who loves not flowers, has lost all love and fear of God."
The following day the father went for a walk with his son, and repeated to him much of what he had heard from Elizabeth; he exhorted him to piety, and to devote his spirit to holy contemplations.
Christian replied, "Willingly, my father; and often I feel quite happy, and every thing succeeds well with me: for a long time, for years, I can forget the true form of my inward being, and lead, as it were, a strange life with cheerfulness: but then suddenly, like a new moon, the ruling star, which I myself am, arises on my heart, and vanquishes the foreign influence. I could be quite happy, but that once, on an extraordinary night, a mysterious sign was impressed through my hand deeply within my soul; often the magic figure sleeps and is at rest; I think it has passed away, when suddenly it springs forth again as a poison, and makes its way in all directions. Then I can think and feel nothing else; all around me is changed, or, rather, is by this form swallowed up. As the madman shudders at the water, and the infused poison within him becomes more venomous, so it happens to me with every cornered figure, every line, every beam; all will then unbind the form that dwells within me, and promote its birth; and my body and soul feel the anguish; as my spirit received it by a feeling from without, so into an outward feeling she desires, with agonising throes, to work it forth again, that she may be free from it and at rest."
"It was an unlucky star," said the old man, "that drew thee away from us. Thou wert born for a still life; thy mind tended to quietness and plants; then thy impatience led thee away into the society of savage stones; the rocks, the rent cliffs, with their rugged shapes, have overset thy spirit, and planted within thee the desolating hunger after metal. Thou oughtest ever to have been on thy guard, and kept thy view from the mountains. So I thought to bring thee up; but it was not so to be. Thy humility, thy calmness, thy childlike feelings, have been all overturned by obstinacy, wildness, and overbearing."
"No," said the son; "I remember quite distinctly that it was a plant which first made known to me the misery of the whole earth; only then I understood the sighs and lamentations which are every where perceptible in all nature, if only one will listen. In plants, herbs, flowers, and trees, there moves and stirs painfully only one general wound; they are the corpse of former glorious worlds of rock, they present to our eye the frightfullest corruption. Now I well understand that it was this which that root with its deep-fetched moaning wished to say to me; in its agony it forgot itself, and told me all. Therefore are all green plants so angry with me, and wait for my life; they desire to obliterate the loved figure in my heart; and every spring, with their distorted deathly looks, to win my soul. With unpermitted and malicious art have they deceived thee, old man; for they have gained complete possession of thy soul. Only ask the rocks, thou wilt be astonished when thou hearest them speak."