Before the windows of the "Post-horn" another horn now sounded discordantly. The night-watchman called the tenth hour and the little party separated. The lieutenant took leave of the theologian in cordial fashion and admonished him once more to keep his head above water and to break his neck, if it must be, only in the best of health. Franziska Götz too, at his command, had to shake hands with the young man in parting and did so quite naturally and without embarrassment. The lieutenant and his niece had to leave early the next morning to reach the railway which now ran to the capital in the north. Hans Unwirrsch was able to sleep longer; no line of railway went as yet to Neustadt and, indeed, the town felt no need at all of being made accessible to the rest of the world in such a way. Hence if Hans resolved to bid the two travelers Godspeed once more at the carriage door in the morning, it certainly showed his good intentions and if he overslept, that was the fault of fate, which prevented his good intentions from being carried out.
He really did oversleep after having tossed about sleeplessly half the night. His long tramp and the wind, which rushed over the roof and whistled round the corners, Uncle Grünebaum's letter and Lieutenant Rudolf Götz's strong punch, Mr. Moses Freudenstein in Paris and pale, sad Franziska would not let him sleep. He got up and lit the light, only to blow it out again; he could not get his ideas into any sort of order and if usually his imagination came to his aid when he was in a depressed mood to comfort him with all kinds of bright and lovely pictures of the past or to hold up before him the magic mirror of the future with smiles and teasing beckonings, it now only drove ghostly shadows round his head and concealed in the most threatening manner both what lay near and what lay distant.
In all his life Hans Unwirrsch had never felt so lacking in courage as in that night;—until then he had been too happy. Now, for the first time dark, merciless hands reached into his life from all directions; the narrow, secure circle which a kind fate had drawn about his youth had now been broken through; he was being dragged out into the great struggle of the world, of which the young girl who was spending the night at the Post-horn under the same roof as he, knew so much more than he did.
Vae victis!
Chapter XII
They were gone; but he knew neither who they were nor what they were to become to him. There, near the stove, stood the table at which they had sat, and the landlady put the coffee on it and pushed up a chair for Hans Unwirrsch. The landlord came back from his morning tour through the yard and garden and brought him a last greeting from the two travelers. They were gone.
Before Hans drank his coffee he looked once more through the window out upon the street. No sign of them there any more.
"That was a gallant old gentleman," said the landlord, and the landlady said: "Poor young lady! I should really like to know what is the matter with her; my Mary, who slept in the room next hers, heard her crying all night long. She must have known much sorrow in her young life."
Hans came back from the window, sat down on the chair on which he had sat the evening before and looked at the two empty chairs. He began to go over in his mind every word that had been spoken the day before.
"And he doesn't write to me—I don't know his address—I can't ask him what he did to hurt the young lady. It's like a dream. Oh Moses, Moses!"