Paul, with his mother and sisters, received a summons to the assizes; it was only to his father that the choice was left whether he would be examined on oath at home for the last time, but he declared he would prefer to fall down dead in the court than to sit at home while the destroyer of his property was allowed to escaped scot-free. Whom he meant by this phrase he left unexplained--only that it was not the accused servant, he gave one plainly enough to understand. The day of the trial came. Paul had made a portable chair for his father, which saved him walking a step. In this he was lifted into the cart and softly put down on a layer of hay. It was a miserable rickety cart which brought the Meyerhofer family to the town, for the better vehicles had all been burned. Paul had made it as comfortable as he could. Over the truss of straw, which served for a seat, he had spread an old horse-cloth, which in the course of years had become torn and discolored. With poverty all around him, the master of the house lay in the cart, groaning and scolding; his wife was enthroned above him, pale and wretched and harassed, as if she were the genius of this ruin. The ever-blooming youth, which even thrives on rubbish, laughed from two roguish pairs of eyes in between, and in front, as driver of this wretched vehicle, sat Paul, and looked sadly before him, for he was ashamed that he could offer no better conveyance to his dear ones, whom for the first time he took out for a long drive all together. The faint beams of the November sun were lying on the yellow heath; the heather extended among thin yellow grass; here and there glistened pools of rain-water; and single leaves were hanging down from the crippled willows at the road-side like dead summer birds. “Do you remember how, twenty-one years ago, we were driving along this same road?” Frau Elsbeth asked her husband, and threw a glance at Paul, whom she had at that time clasped to her breast. Meyerhofer muttered something to himself, for he was no friend to memories--to such memories. But Frau Elsbeth folded her hands and thought of many things: it could be of nothing sad, for she smiled. The nearer the cart approached the end of the journey, the more depressed Paul felt. He stretched himself on his seat and a shiver kept passing through his frame.