ery
walls might crumble down on your head without moving you; you pour the
most deadly poison into your husband's heart, enough to drive him mad,
and then you call yourself--a weak woman!"

"I could speak falsely," continued Annele, "and make you all sorts of
promises in this hour of extremity, but I will not; I would rather be
torn to bits, than give up a single atom of my rights. All that I said
to him was true, and that I said it venomously, is also true."

"Then it was all true," cried Lenz, as white as a sheet. "Only remember
one thing; you said my good deeds were only a cloak for my indolence,
and also that I had behaved ill to my mother. My mother! what will you
feel when we meet you, perhaps an hour hence?"

Annele said nothing. Petrowitsch, too, paused for a time, and then
said:--

"Annele, if he had strangled you for that speech, he would have been
beheaded, but God would have pronounced him innocent. Yes! as a
landlord's daughter, you are sharp enough, and no doubt you have heard
of rascally, worthless waggoners, who, when their horses don't go along
fast enough, put burning tow in their ears, till the wretched animals
are driven mad with pain. Your words towards Lenz were quite as cruel;
they were the burning tow in his ears by which you drove him wild.
There is my hand Lenz, you are too soft hearted, and go about, asking
every one:--'Give me a kind glance, or a kind word,'--that is pitiable
work. But you did not deserve such a punishment. You did not deserve
that a she-devil should drive you out of your senses. Give me the child
instantly! you are not worthy to carry an innocent child in your arms."
So saying, he snatched the child from her; the child screamed, but Lenz
interposed, saying:--

"Not so, uncle: Annele, listen to me, don't close your heart against
me, I mean to speak kindly to you. Annele, we are both standing on the
brink of our open grave."

"Heavens!" screamed Annele, covering her face with her hands, and Lenz
continued:--

"You, too, are on the brink of the grave,"

Annele no longer answered, for she had sunk down in a state of
insensibility on the floor.

CHAPTER XXXVI.
VOICES FROM THE DEAD.

As Annele fell, she upset the lamp on the table, which came down with a
crash, and was extinguished, leaving them in entire darkness. Lenz
rubbed Annele's temples with the brandy that he luckily got hold of;
she breathed at la