body that wandered about like a troubled spirit.

Jurgen remained in merchant Bronne's house. "He was hurt while
endeavouring to save our child," said the old man, "and now he is
our son." People called Jurgen insane, but that was not exactly the
correct term. He was like an instrument in which the strings are loose
and will give no sound; only occasionally they regained their power
for a few minutes, and then they sounded as they used to do. He
would sing snatches of songs or old melodies, pictures of the past
would rise before him, and then disappear in the mist, as it were, but
as a general rule he sat staring into vacancy, without a thought. We
may conjecture that he did not suffer, but his dark eyes lost their
brightness, and looked like clouded glass.

"Poor mad Jurgen," said the people. And this was the end of a life
whose infancy was to have been surrounded with wealth and splendour
had his parents lived! All his great mental abilities had been lost,
nothing but hardship, sorrow, and disappointment had been his fate. He
was like a rare plant, torn from its native soil, and tossed upon
the beach to wither there. And was this one of God's creatures,
fashioned in His own likeness, to have no better fate? Was he to be
only the plaything of fortune? No! the all-loving Creator would
certainly repay him in the life to come for what he had suffered and
lost here. "The Lord is good to all; and His mercy is over all His
works." The pious old wife of the merchant repeated these words from
the Psalms of David in patience and hope, and the prayer of her
heart was that Jurgen might soon be called away to enter into
eternal life.

In the churchyard where the walls were surrounded with sand
Clara lay buried. Jurgen did not seem to know this; it did not enter
his mind, which could only retain fragments of the past. Every
Sunday he went to church with the old people, and sat there
silently, staring vacantly before him. One day, when the Psalms were
being sung, he sighed deeply, and his eyes became bright; they were
fixed upon a place near the altar where he had knelt with his friend
who was dead. He murmured her name, and became deadly pale, and
tears rolled down his cheeks. They led him out of church; he told
those standing round him that he was well, and had never been ill; he,
who had been so grievously afflicted, the outcast, thrown upon the
world, could not remember his sufferings. The Lord our Creator is wise
and full