at him, ready to shoot an arrow
through his heart? The silence terrified him. This deep silence was
awful. True, the blows of the chopper resounded, he could hear the echo
across the lake, and nothing deterred Cilia from doing her work--he
admired the girl's calmness--but the menace that lay in the silence did
not grow any less.

The distracted man shuddered again and again: no, he knew it
now--oh, how distinctly he felt it--nobody could do anything against
that invisible power. Everything was in vain.

He was filled with a great grief. He seized hold of the pieces of
ice the girl had chopped off with both hands, and put them into the
pail; he tore his clothes, he cut himself on the jagged edges that were
as sharp as glass, but he did not feel any physical pain. The blood
dripped down from his fingers.

And now something began to flow from his eyes, to drip down his
cheeks, heavy and clammy--slow, almost reluctant tears. But still the
hot tears of a father who is weeping for his child.

CHAPTER XI

"Dear me, how big you've grown!" said Frau Laemke. "I suppose we shall
soon have to treat you as a grown-up gentleman and say 'sir' to
you?"

"Never!" Wolfgang threw his arms round her neck.

The woman was quite taken aback: was that Wolfgang? He was hardly to
be recognised after his illness so approachable. And although he had
always been a good boy, he had never been so affectionate as he was
now. And how merry he was, he laughed, his eyes positively sparkled as
if they had been polished.

Wolfgang was full of animal spirits and a never-ending, indomitable
joyousness. He did not know what to do with himself. He could not sit
still for a moment, his arms twitched, his feet scraped the ground.

His master stood in terror of him. He alone, the one boy, made the
whole of the fourth form that had always been so exemplary run wild.
And still one could not really be downright angry with him. When the
tired man, who had had to give the same lessons year after year, sit at
the same desk, give the same dictations, set the same tasks, hear the
same pieces read, repeat the same things, had to reprove the boy,
something like a gentle sadness was mingled with the reproof, which
softened it: yes, that was delight in existence, health, liveliness,
unconsumed force--that was youth.

Wolfgang did not mind the scoldings he got, he had no ambition to
become head of his form. He laughed at the master, and could not even
ge