felt as if a cord in his soul had been made taut and were
vibrating without making a sound. The steps of the eight people, as
they died away in the distance, developed gradually into a rhythmical,
musical movement. What had been confused became ordered; what had been
dark shone forth in light. Weighed down with heaviness of soul, he went
on, his eyes fixed on the ground as if he were looking for something. He
no longer saw, nor could he hear. Nor did he know what time it was.

After a year and a half of congealed torpidity, the March wind once more
began to blow in his soul.

But it was like a disease; he was being consumed with impatience. His
immediate goal was the cloister of Oesede at Osnabrueck, and from there he
wanted to go to Berlin. He could not bear to sit in the railway
carriages: in Wesel he placed his trunk on a freight train, and went
from there on foot, his top-coat hung over his arm, his knapsack
strapped across his back. Despite the inclement weather he walked from
eight to ten hours every day. It was towards the end of October, the
mornings and evenings were chilly, the roads were muddy, the inns were
wretched. This did not deter him from going on: he walked and walked,
sought and sought, often until late at night, passionately absorbed in
himself.

When he came to the coal and iron district, he raised his head more and
more frequently. The houses were black, the earth and the air were
black, blackened men met him on the road. Copper wires hummed in the fog
and mist, hammers clinked, wheels hummed, chimneys smoked, whistles
blew--it was like a dream vision, like the landscape of an unknown and
accursed star.

One evening he left a little inn which he had entered to get something
to eat and drink. It was eight miles to Dortmund, where he planned to
stay over night. He had left the main road, when all of a sudden the
fire from the blast-furnaces leaped up, giving the mist the appearance
of a blood-red sea. Miners were coming in to the village; in the light
of the furnaces their tired, blackened faces looked like so many
demoniac caricatures. Far or near, it was impossible to say, a horse
could be seen drawing a car over shining rails. On it stood a man
flourishing his whip. Beast, man, and car all seemed to be of colossal
size; the "gee" and "haw" of the driver sounded like the mad cries of a
spectre; the iron sounds from the forges resembled the bellowing of
tormented creatures.

Daniel had found