hat's right." She almost broke down under his
weight but she kept him on his feet. He was so drunk that he did not
know what he was doing, he actually wanted to lie down in front of the
door, at full length on the stone steps. But she snatched him up.

"You must--you must," she said, and he followed her like a child.
Like a dog, she thought.

Now she had got him into the hall--the front door was again
locked--but now came the fear that the servants would see him.
They were not up yet, but it would not be long before Friedrich would
walk over from the gardener's lodge in his leather slippers, and the
girls come down from their attics, and then the sweeping and tidying up
would commence, the opening of the windows, the drawing up of the
blinds, so that the bright light--the cruel light--might force its way
into every crevice. She must get him up the stairs, into his room
without anybody guessing anything, without asking anyone for help.

She had thought of her husband for one moment--but no, not him
either, nobody must see him like that. She helped him upstairs with a
strength for which she had never given herself credit; she positively
carried him. And all the time she kept on entreating him to go quietly,
whispering the words softly but persistently. She had to coax him, or
he would not go on: "Quietly, Woelfchen. Go on, go on, Woelfchen--that's
splendid, Woelfchen."

She suffered the torments of hell. He stumbled and was noisy; she
gave a start every time he knocked his foot against the stairs, every
time the banisters creaked when he fell against them helplessly, and a
terrible fear almost paralysed her. If anybody should hear it, oh, if
anybody should hear it. But let them get on, on.

"Quietly, Woelfchen, quite quietly." It sounded like an entreaty, and
still it was a command. As he had conquered her before by means of his
heavy arm, so she conquered him now by means of her will.

Everybody in the house must be deaf, that they did not hear the
noise. To the woman every step sounded like a clap of thunder that
continues to roll and roll through the wide space and resounds in the
furthermost corner. Paul must be deaf as well. They passed his door.
The intoxicated lad remained standing just outside his parents'
bedroom, he would not on any account go further--in there--not a step
further. She had to entice him, as she had enticed the child in bygone
days, the sweet little child with the eyes like sloes that was t