l
noise. She became now more composed, and was gentle and loveable, and
Lenz felt truly grateful for his happiness, both as a husband and a
father. Annele was so unusually amiable that she even said:--

"We promised Pilgrim that he should be godfather to our child, and this
is a promise we must keep."

It was strange to see how variable her moods were. Lenz wished
Petrowitsch to be the other godfather, but he refused.

Pilgrim brought the infant a large parchment, with a great many
signatures and flourishes, painted by himself, which he laid on the
cradle: it was a diploma from the Choral Society, in which the newly
born child, on account of the fine voice he had no doubt inherited, was
named an honorary member of the society.

"Do you know," said Lenz, "what is the sweetest sound in the world? The
first cry of your child. Do you see how he can clutch a thing already?"
and he gave the infant his father's file into his little hand. Annele
flung it away, exclaiming:--

"The child might kill himself with the sharp point," but in flinging it
on the floor the point was broken.

"My father's honourable tool, consecrated by his memory, is now
destroyed," said Lenz, distressed.

Pilgrim tried to console him by laughingly saying, that there must
always be new men, and new tools, in the world.

Annele did not say a syllable.

CHAPTER XXV.
THE PENDULUMS SWING TOGETHER, BUT THE
STRESS ON THE MAINSPRING IS SEVERE.

"Annele, come here, I have something to show you."

"I have no time."

"Only look, for it will please you. See, I set agoing two pendulums, on
both these clocks, the one from right to left, and the other the
reverse way. If you will observe, you will see that in the course of a
few days they will both swing in the same direction, from right to
left, or both the reverse way. That is owing to the power of attraction
they mutually exercise; they approximate to each other by degrees."

"I don't believe that."

"You can see it with your own eyes; and so it will be with us. The one
starts from the right, and the other from the left, and we must
gradually balance each other. To be sure the pendulums never tick quite
together, so as to make but one sound; a Spanish king tried to
accomplish this, and it fairly turned his brain."

"Such nonsense only plagues me; you seem to have time for it, however,
but I have not."

In the course of a f