"If you had taken my advice, and bought the Lion, we should have been provided for, and the house would not have passed into strange hands. Don't tell me a word about the money. Exactly where you are sitting now you were sitting that day, and I here, and there stood the glass close to the edge of the table,--so close that I pushed it further in. Do you remember? I said to you then plainly and honestly, a business man never gives his money in that careless way, even to his own father." "Did you know as long ago as that how matters stood?" "I knew nothing, nothing at all; I only know what is business-like. Now let me alone." "Will you not go to your mother? She is grieving sorely." "Why should I go to her? to have her set out crying again at sight of me? Do you suppose I am going down there to be stared at and commiserated by everybody? to hear the doctor's charming daughters sing and laugh as I go by? I am sufficient for myself here in my solitude: I need no one." "Perhaps it is all for the best," said Lenz, consolingly; "perhaps from this day you will be happier and better alone here with me. Such days may, must come again as those when you said, 'Up here we are in heaven, and may leave the world to drive and bustle as it will.' Let us hold to that. We were happy once, and shall be again. If you will be but kind and loving, I will do the work of three. Have no fear; I did not marry you for your money." "Neither did I marry you for your money; it would not have been worth the trouble. If riches had been my object, I might have chosen a very different husband." "We have lived together too long to be talking of marrying," interposed Lenz. "Let us have dinner." At table he related the affair of the wood. "Do you know what the result will be?" asked Annele. "What?" "Nothing but your having to pay the wood-cutters' wages." "That remains to be proved," said Lenz, and immediately after dinner went again in search of the mayor, whom he had failed to find earlier in the day. On the way he was joined by poor Faller, pale as death, and crying: "Oh, this is horrible, horrible! A thunder-bolt from a clear sky!" Lenz tried to reassure him. Two and a half thousand florins was something of a loss, to be sure, but he hoped to stand under it. He thanked his faithful comrade for his sympathy. "What!" cried Faller, stopping short on the road, "are you involved too? He owes me thirty-one florins. He had that amount of mine in good clocks, that I left with him as I should have left them in the bank, meaning to pay off an instalment upon my house. Now I am put back at least two years." Lenz hurried on. He could not stop with his friend, but must be off to the mayor's. Faller looked sadly after him, almost forgetting his own misfortune in that of his friend.