He got up on his feet. That was very difficult. He must have been lying as a corpse for a good long time. It was night, too. A fire was raging out there, and it was all very noisy.... Shrieking of human beings....
Hm....
He had hoped to have been rid of them. But, apparently the Almighty Creator could not get along without them. Now—but one purpose. He just wanted his Hel. When he had found Hel, he would—he promised himself this!—never again quarrel with the father of all things, about anything at all....
So now he went.... The door leading to the street was open and hanging crookedly on its hinges. Strange. He stepped in front of the house and looked deliberatingly around. What he saw seemed to be a kind of Metropolis; but a rather insane kind of Metropolis. The houses seemed as though struck still in St. Vitus’ dance. And an uncommonly rough and impolite sort of people was ramping around a flaming bonfire, upon which a creature of rare beauty was standing, seeming, to Rotwang, to be wondrously at ease.
Ah—it was that, ah yes—that, in the existence which, thank the Lord, lay far behind him, he had tried to create, to replace his lost Hel—just to make the handiwork of the Creator of the world look rather silly.... Not bad for a beginning ... hm ... but, good God, compared with Hel; what an object; what a bungle....
The shrieking individuals down there were quite right to burn the thing. Though it appeared to him to be rather a show of idiocy to destroy his test-work. But perhaps that was the custom of the people in this existence, and he certainly did not want to argue with them. He wanted to find Hel—his Hel—and nothing else....
He knew exactly where to look for her. She loved the cathedral so dearly, did his pious Hel. And, if the flickering light of the bonfire did not deceive him,—for the greenish sky gave no glimmer—Hel was standing, like a frightened child in the blackness of the cathedral door, her slender hands clasped firmly upon her breast, looking more saint-like than ever.
Past those who were raving around the bonfire—always politely avoiding getting in their way—Rotwang quietly groped his way to the cathedral.
Yes, it was his Hel.... She receded into the cathedral. He groped his way up the steps. How high the door looked.... Coolness and hovering incense received him.... All the saints in the pillar niches had pious and lovely faces, smiling gently, as though they rejoiced with him that he was now, at last, to find Hel, his Hel, again.
She was standing at the foot of the belfry steps. She seemed to him to be very pale and indescribably pathetic. Through a narrow window the first pale light of the morning fell upon her hair and brow.