What a light Master Anton's glass globe cast across the table and through the room in the evening and at night! Never before and never afterwards did it shed such a lustre.
Frau Christine saw her whole life in its glow as in a magic mirror. She saw herself as a child, as a young girl, and felt as one. Her parents and her parents' parents came and went; she saw them as clearly and as vividly as Auntie Schlotterbeck herself might have seen them. She thought of the games she played as a child and of all her girl friends, and the light of the globe was like moonlight, sunrise and sunset, or like high noon. The sick woman had forgotten so much and now suddenly it all came back to her and no part of it was lost,—it was really amazing. She often had to close her eyes because the figures and varied scenes of that distant time passed before her in too great abundance;—now for the first time she realized how much, how infinitely much she had experienced in her life after all. Her Anton had often complained that he had to sit so quiet and so surrounded by dusk and that he couldn't bear to think of all the people who journeyed over hill and dale and across the wide ocean and of those who discovered strange countries and of all the tumult and bustle that there was in the world;—Frau Christine thought of these complaints as she lay on her bed of pain, nodded and shook her head and smiled. Foolish Anton, had he not had enough turmoil and excitement in his life? Had there not been plenty of happenings in it? There was their wedding day, for instance, when Christine had danced for the last time as a girl and Anton had looked so stately in his wedding clothes. Had that not been a bright bit of life and a greater thing than to sail across the seas to outlandish places? And what had they not lived through in the time of the French wars, when Anna, to whom Brother Nik'las had nearly become engaged, had gone off with the Hussars? That had been in 1806 and it really seemed queer to think of how troubled Anton had been about the hard times and of how nobody thought of the French now any more than Brother Nik'las thought of Anna. There was Auntie Schlotterbeck who had lived through all these things and who could see the dead; but still she could not command all the memories that Frau Christine could, for she had never borne a child and had no son to grow up and sit at the table, a learned man, and send glances to her across his books. Oh, how much, how much one could think of by the light of the magic globe; it made it really easy, even when the pain was at its worst, to lie quiet and to wait patiently for the last hour!
We described at the beginning how Hans, as a little child, lay in his bed in the winter night and watched his mother get ready for her early work. We spoke of the strange, mysterious pictures his fancy drew of the places to which she went, of how he saw the shadows dancing on the walls and watched carefully to see what became of them when the lamp was blown out. Now, as a grown man, he was compelled to give way to very similar and yet quite different feelings. He had had some experiences and had learnt much; it would have been no wonder if he had entered into these hours with more mature moods; but just as his mother was surprised at the return of the memories of her youth, so too he had reason to wonder at the return of these feelings.
While he turned over the pages of his books by the light of the glass globe and from time to time looked over at the sick woman's bed he thought of how his mother was now again preparing to go away and leave him alone in the dark. Just as then he had often begged her with tears to stay, so he would have liked to beg her now. Often the great fear came over him which he had felt such long years before when the lamp had been blown out, his mother's step had died away and sleep did not immediately close his eyes. He heard the snow trickling down the window as he had heard it then; the night watchman called the hours, the moonlight glimmered through the frozen panes, the old furniture cracked and creaked as it used to, the nocturnal world stirred in ghostly fashion as then.
If his mother was sleeping in such moments he could escape from the fearful throng of feelings only by working on as hard as possible at the most difficult parts of his task and even this did not always bring relief. But if his mother was awake he only needed to lay down his pen and to take her faithful hand in his: then the comfort he received was the best there could be for him. If there was anything that later influenced his acts, his plans, his views and his whole life it was the soft words that were whispered to him in such hours.
"See, dear child," said the old woman, "in my poor mind it has always seemed to me that the world would not amount to much if there were no hunger in it. But it must not be only the hunger for food and drink and a comfortable life, no, I mean a very different thing from that. There was your father, he had the kind of hunger that I mean and it is from him that you have inherited it. Your father too was not always satisfied with himself and with the world; not that he was envious because others lived in more beautiful houses, or drove in carriages, or anything like that; no, he was only troubled because there were so many things which he did not understand and which he would have liked so much to learn about. That is a man's hunger, and if a man has it and at the same time does not entirely forget those whom he ought to love, then he is a real man, whether he gets on well or not—that makes no difference. But woman's hunger lies in another direction. First of all it is for love. A man's heart must bleed for light, but a woman's heart must bleed for love. It is in this that she must find her joy. Oh child, I have been much better off than your father, for I have been able to give much love, and much, much love has fallen to my share. He was so good to me as long as he lived, and then, I have had you, and now when I am going to follow my Anton you sit beside me and what he wanted to have you have got and I have helped you to get it; isn't that enough to make me very happy? You must not grieve so about your foolish mother or you will make my heart heavy and I know you don't want to do that, you never have done it."
The son buried his face in the sick woman's pillows; he could not speak, he could only repeat the word, Mother! sobbingly, but all the emotion that moved him was expressed in it.
During his stay in Neustadt at that time Hans Unwirrsch seldom left the house. He greeted all the neighbors in Auntie Schlotterbeck's room, but he himself paid few visits. Wherever he did appear, however, he was gladly received and Professor Fackler held him so fast that he had finally to tear himself away with force.
Oddly enough the Professor was now greatly interested in Dr. Moses Freudenstein and questioned poor, disturbed Hans most closely about him.
"So the Talmudistic hair-splitter has gone to Paris? I can tell you, Unwirrsch, that boy gave me more embarrassment while he was at school than I cared to show. We can talk about it now: his objections and conclusions, the way he played with questions and answers often drove the sweat of fear out on my forehead. Truly one could not say: Credat Judæus Apella,—that promising youth was not so credulous! With his appetite for all the good things of this world he'll make his way, there is no doubt about that, Unwirrsch. I can tell you, the greatest thing is the right kind of hunger; in monks' Latin—the gods of Latium protect us—we might say: Fames—famositas, Ha! Ha! Well, God bless you, Johannes, and give you strength to bear your sorrow at home. We have the greatest sympathy for you and if we can be useful to you in any way just come to me or to my wife. Eheu, after all, in spite of all good things, life is a vale of tears!"