something new.
The excitement was growing perceptibly. Bitter words were tossed about.
Something novel and stirring was wafted from all quarters; every
proclamation evoked lively discussions in the market place, in the
shops, among servants, among workingmen. Every arrest aroused a timid,
uncomprehending, and sometimes unconscious sympathy when judgment
regarding the causes of the arrest was expressed. She heard the words
that had once frightened her--riot, socialism, politics--uttered more
and more frequently among the simple folk, though accompanied by
derision. However, behind their ridicule it was impossible to conceal
an eagerness to understand, mingled with fear and hope, with hatred of
the masters and threats against them.

Agitation disturbed the settled, dark life of the people in slow but
wide circles. Dormant thoughts awoke, and men were shaken from their
usual forced calm attitude toward daily events. All this the mother
saw more clearly than others, because she, better than they, knew the
dismal, dead face of existence; she stood nearer to it, and now saw
upon it the wrinkles of hesitation and turmoil, the vague hunger for
the new. She both rejoiced over the change and feared it. She
rejoiced because she regarded this as the cause of her son; she feared
because she knew that if he emerged from prison he would stand at the
head of all, in the most dangerous place, and--he would perish.

She often felt great thoughts needful to everybody stirring in her
bosom, but scarcely ever was able to make them live in words; and they
oppressed her heart with a dumb, heavy sadness. Sometimes the image of
her son grew before her until it assumed the proportions of a giant in
the old fairy tales. He united within himself all the honest thoughts
she had heard spoken, all the people that she liked, everything heroic
of which she knew. Then, moved with delight in him, she exulted in
quiet rapture. An indistinct hope filled her. "Everything will be
well--everything!" Her love, the love of a mother, was fanned into a
flame, a veritable pain to her heart. Then the motherly affection
hindered the growth of the broader human feeling, burned it; and in
place of a great sentiment a small, dismal thought beat faint-heartedly
in the gray ashes of alarm: "He will perish; he will fall!"

Late that night the mother sank into a heavy sleep, but rose early, her
bones stiff, her head aching. At mid-day she was sitting in the p