the front door as was physically possible. He imagined he could
hear his mother and the child she had in her care breathing.

It seemed so strange to him that his mother knew nothing of his
presence. If she had known he was there, she would have unlocked the
door and looked at him in astonishment. And if he had not felt like
talking, he would have been obliged to lay his head in her lap and weep.
Nothing else was possible; he could not speak. And yet the fear lest he
talk, lest he be forced to tell everything, took such firm hold on him
that he decided to start back home without letting his mother know that
he had been there and without having seen either her or the child. The
peculiar restlessness that had driven him away from his home and
impelled him to go on this unusual journey was silenced as soon as he
sat in the shadow of his mother's little house.

But he was so tired that he soon fell asleep. He dreamed that the child
and the old lady were standing before him, that the former had a great
bunch of grapes in her hand and the latter a shovel and was shovelling
up the earth, her face revealing a soul of sorrows. Eva seemed to him to
be much more beautiful than she had been a year ago; he felt drawn to
the child by an uncontrollable power and a painful love that stood in a
most unusual relation to what his mother was doing. The longer his
mother shovelled in the earth the heavier his heart became, but he could
not say anything; he felt as if a glorious song were pouring forth from
his soul, a song such as he had never heard in his life. Enraptured by
its beauty, he woke up. At first he thought he could still hear it, but
it was only the splashing of the water in the Wolfram fountain.

The moon was high in the heavens. Daniel went over to the fountain just
as the night watchman came along, blew his trumpet and sang: "Listen,
all men, I wish to tell that it has struck two from the town-hall bell."
The watchman noticed the lonely man standing by the fountain, was
startled at first, but then continued on his rounds, repeating from time
to time the words of his official song.

Often as a child Daniel had read the inscription on the base of the
Wolfram figure. Now he read the words, irradiated by the light of the
moon, and they had a totally different meaning:

Water gives to the trees their life,
And makes with fertile vigour rife
All creatures of the world.
By water all our eyes are purled;
I