ed, was doubly bombastic and
raised his shoulders as high again toward his black head. The wrath
and decision of his former coughing and spitting was child's play to
those he displayed now. But the workmen soon knew that this went on
only in Apollonius' absence; and his chance appearance, like the
rising full moon, disconcerted the heaviest thunder-storms.

Fritz Nettenmair was obliged to despair of reestablishing his lost
importance on the scene of the repairs. Naturally he added also the
result of his mistaken measures to Apollonius' ever-growing account.
The feeling that he was superfluous seized him as it had his father,
but not with quite the same effect. What the little garden was to the
old gentleman the slate-shed now became to the elder son; at least as
long as he saw Apollonius on the hanging-seat or on the church roof.
But now he also brought the blue coat with him into the living room.
His children--and this was easy as he himself did not trouble himself
about them--had also been won over by his brother, by reprehensible
means, of course. The reprehensible means were just those which he
himself never applied: unintentional kindness and love that was wise
in its severity. But even in his wife he began to see more and more
one who was to some extent his brother's ally in the latter's
conspiracy against him. He saw this long before he had the slightest
real cause to do so, and that was the shadow that his guilt threw
across the future of his imagination. Its old law was to compel him,
by reason of the wrongness of his means of defense, to make of this
shadow a real, living form and to place it in his life as a
retributive force.

Vague, premonitory fear that fluttered by in momentary clear
intervals, seemed to tell him that his changed behavior toward his
wife must hasten this change. At such times he suddenly became doubly
pleasant and jovial with her; but even this joviality bore something
of the nature of the sultry soil from which it grew.

One cure for such a disease is highly praised; that is diversion,
self-forgetfulness. As if the navigator should forget himself at sight
of the threatening reef, as if every one should forget himself
wherever double foresight is necessary! Fritz Nettenmair took the
cure.

From now on he was never missing at a ball or any public amusement;
he felt himself to have fled the danger forever if he were absent only
for an hour from the place where he saw it threatening. He