e none of him.

For some time he found actual difficulty in earning his daily bread. He
had resigned his position with the Prudentia Insurance Company long ago.
Ever since a certain interpellation in the Reichstag and a long lawsuit
in which the Prudentia became involved, and which was decided in favour
of its opponents, the standing of the company had suffered irreparably.

Jason Philip had no other choice: he had to go back to bookbinding; he
had to return to pasting, cutting, and folding. He returned in the
evening of his life, downcast, impoverished, and embittered, to the
position from which he had started as an ambitious, resourceful,
stout-hearted, and self-assured man years ago. His eloquence had proved
of no avail, his cunning had not helped him, nor his change of political
conviction, nor his familiarity with the favourable turns of the market,
nor his speculations. He had never believed that the order of things in
the world about him was just and righteous, neither as a Socialist nor
as a Liberal. And now he was convinced that it was impossible to write a
motto on the basis of business principles that would be fit material for
a copy book in a kindergarten.

Willibald was still the same efficient clerk. Markus had got a job in a
furniture store, where he spent his leisure hours studying Volapuek,
convinced as he was that all the nations of the earth would soon be
using this great fraternal tongue.

Theresa moved into the house on the Corn Market with as much peace and
placidity as if she had been anticipating such a change for years. There
was a bay window in the house, and by this she sat when her work in the
kitchen was done, knitting socks for her sons. At times she would
scratch her grey head with her knitting needle, at times she would reach
over and take a sip of cold, unsugared coffee, a small pot of which she
always kept by her side. Hers was the most depressed face then known to
the human family; hers were the horniest, wrinkliest peasant hands that
formed part of any citizen of the City of Nuremberg.

She thought without ceasing of all that nice money that had passed
through her hands during the two decades she had stood behind the
counter of the establishment in the Plobenhof Street.

She tried to imagine where all the money had gone, who was using it now,
and who was being tormented by it. For she was rid of it, and in the
bottom of her heart she was glad that she no longer had it.

One day