urreptitious
glance that asked Fritz Nettenmair, without intending to be heard,
whether he was ready for something which the workman did not name.
Then he said, in a hoarse voice which would have struck the other but
that Fritz Nettenmair was accustomed to it: "What was it I wanted to
say? Oh, yes, you will soon be in mourning. I saw him the other day."
He did not need to mention any name, Fritz Nettenmair knew whom he
meant. "There are people who see more than others," the workman
continued, "there are people who can see in a slater's face if he is
doomed to fall that year, who see him being carried home, and see him
lying there, only he is not there any more. An old slater told me the
secret of how to see with the 'second sight.' I have it. And now
farewell. Meet it with resignation when they carry him home."

The workman had left him; his steps were already growing faint in the
distance. Fritz Nettenmair still stood and gazed into the white-gray
fog into which the workman had disappeared. The layers of fog hung
horizontally above the meadows by the street spread out like a cloth.
They rose and melted together, forming strange shapes, they curled,
floated apart and sank down again only to rear themselves once more.
They hung on the branches of the willows by the way, now veiling them,
now leaving them free, till it seemed uncertain whether the fog was
dissolving into trees or the trees into fog. It was a dreamlike
activity, untiring movement without aim or purpose. It was a picture
of what was going on in Fritz Nettenmair's soul, such a true picture
that he did not know whether he was looking at something outside or
something within himself. There came a hazy bending down and wringing
of hands about a pale figure on the ground, then a slowly moving
funeral procession, and now it was his enemy, his brother who lay
there, whom they carried. Now malicious joy flamed up sharply, died
down and pity took its place, now both were mixed and one tried to
hide the other. The figure lying there, whom they carried, Fritz
forgave everything. He wept over him; for in the intervals of the
funeral song the merry dance-tune sounded softly which the future
struck up: "There he comes! Now the fun will begin!" And beside the
dead lay a second corpse, invisible, his fear of what must come if his
poor brother did not lie dead. And in the coffin, Fritz Nettenmair's
old jovial happiness put forth new buds. Fritz Nettenmair felt himself
to b