cuted by law. The Magistrate is
_ab officio_ suspended, and punishment will be meted out to the other
wretches for their misdeeds."

"Would that Paul could only get the use of his limbs again by this
means," said Felix sighing.

"Remain with us, Master Laurenzano," said Belier, "and watch over your
brother. You can have a room near the beloved patient, and there work
at the plans of my new house. That is a quiet, serious occupation which
cannot disturb the sick man, and on the other hand the stillness of the
sick-room will be agreeable to your Muse. Design there the facade, and
therein strive to emulate that of the building of the deceased Count
Palatine, that is naturally, in so far as the house of a private
citizen can vie with that of a prince."

"Take now the hand of reconciliation," said Frau Belier. "There shall
no longer be any blood between us, I forgive you the death of the poor
parrot."

The architect seized the hand with a look of comical contrition. "I
cannot order masses to be read for the rest of the soul of one nipped
in the flower of his youth," he said, "but I will immortalise him on
the facade, and erect a monument to him in spite of many Counts."

While they were all thus joking together and forming plans for the
future, Klytia slipped quietly away. This merriment after the dreadful
visitations of the previous days grieved the kind-hearted child, and
she went upstairs to sit with the nurse, so as to be able to listen to
Paul's heavy breathing and feverish fantasies, in the room next to his.
His eyes gleamed like those of a prophet, his cheeks were tinged with a
feverish glow and an unearthly beauty had come over his idealised
features. His lips moved unceasingly, and it seemed as if the fever had
caused the long suppressed desire for companionship of this reserved
man to burst all sluices. Earliest impressions of youth were by this
revolution of his mental and physical life once more called to life. He
spoke oftenest with his mother calling her by pet names. "I shall
certainly never lie again," he said in the convinced tone of a small
child, calling tears to Lydia's eyes. Klytia herself was ever prominent
in his fantasies as a sister. "I really did not intend to do Lydia any
harm, Mother," he said. "I only wished to kiss her. Is that wrong?" and
so saying he tossed about. "If I were only not obliged to return to
that horrid school. But I will pretend to be as stupid as Bernardo the
hunch-back, t