hen they will certainly expel me and say they do not
require me any longer." After a while he would cry out: "But mother
says I ought never to pretend." The terrors of the last days curiously
enough seemed to have made hardly any impression on his mind. He only
once said: "It is very well, that they beat me in this manner, now it
is all over and no one can again reproach me for anything." In general
all his worst impressions were connected with the school at Venice.
Pigavetta was a wicked teacher, Ulrich the executioner was the "brother
corrector," the Church counsellors represented the collegium of
professors, the remembrance of the present seemed on the other hand to
be entirely wiped away from his memory. But once only, as Felix sat at
his bed-side, did it seem to recur to him. With an expression of the
most intense moral fear he called out: "Save the parsons." Felix then
stooped over him and whispered in his ear: "I have freed Neuser, and
the others have been pardoned." "Oh!" sighed the sick man as if
relieved of a heavy burden and casting a piteously grateful look at his
brother. From that time his restlessness seemed to lessen gradually.
His strained expression disappeared. It was replaced by excessive
weakness. So soon as he awoke his nurse brought him some nourishment,
his wounds were dressed afresh, after which he immediately sank into
his somnolent state.

Felix had arranged his atelier near to Paul's bedroom and worked
quietly and diligently at his plans for Belier's new house. Klytia took
her place as nurse in the room between them so often as her duties
towards her father allowed her, and Frau Belier repeatedly put the
searching question to her towards which of the two rooms did her heart
most incline. Paul's presence had in fact the same influence on
Klytia's tender heart as formerly, without however detracting from her
feelings of gratitude and tender friendship towards Felix. In nursing
Paul she often met Felix and they neither seemed ever to consider the
question as to what should take place after Paul's recovery. Felix
however felt more and more distinctly that he loved the maiden in
reality only from an artistic point of view. His fiery nature required
a counterfoil, which would oppose a greater vivacity and capacity of
contradiction than was to be met with in Erastus' tender hearted
daughter. The daily scrimmages which he had with Frau Belier, in which
like two children with locked hands they endeavo