nk many a glass of wine and
play the leading part in a conversation in the tavern or on the street.
It was only the poorhouse that had really brought him to his knees.
When he had rejoiced at his installation there, he had not realized
that he was cutting off the best threads of his life. For he had no
talent for living without projects and prospects and all sorts of
movement and bustle; and it was when he had given in to weariness and
hunger and abandoned himself to rest that his real bankruptcy took
place. Now there was nothing left for him but to wait a little while
until his life went out.

The fact was that Huerlin had been too long accustomed to tavern life. A
gray-haired man cannot break off old habits, even when they are
vicious, without damage. His loneliness and his breach with Heller had
helped to make him increasingly silent; and when a great talker grows
silent, it means that he is well on the road toward the churchyard.

It is a depressing sight when an artist in life, even on a small scale,
who has grown old in elegant trifles and ostentation and self-seeking,
instead of coming to a sudden end in a fight or as he goes home at
night from the tavern, must live on to grow melancholy and end as a
dabbler in the sentimental reflections which have always been foreign
to him. But since life is incontestably a powerful composer, and thus
cannot be accused of senseless caprices, there is nothing for it but to
listen to the strains it produces, to admire, and to think the best of
it. And after all there is a certain tragic beauty in the thing when
such a spirit, that has been spoiled and left raw and then beaten down,
rebels at the very end and clamors for its rights, when it flutters its
awkward wings and, since nothing else is left, insists on having its
fill of bitterness and complaint.

There was much now that came to rub and gnaw at this rude, ill-trained
soul; and it became evident that its earlier stubbornness and
self-control had rested upon insecure foundations. The manager was the
first to realize his condition. To the pastor, on one of his visits, he
said with a shrug of his shoulders: "One can't really help being sorry
for Huerlin. Since he's been looking so down in the mouth, I don't make
him work; but it's no use--that's not what's troubling him. He thinks
and studies too much. If I didn't know his sort too well, I should say
it was just his bad conscience, and serve him right. But that's not all
o