"Oh, Mr. Schiller, great Mr. Schiller," murmured Leonhard, hastening forward to open the door, "you are not the only one whom she has deceived. She has deceived me also; I, too, am a wretched victim of her cunning. But only wait, sublime poet, only wait; I will not only avenge myself, but you also, Mr. Schiller. I will cut the pieces still larger, and the turkey shall not go half around, not half around! I will avenge both myself and Schiller!" He did not hear a word of what Leonhard had said, for he hurried past him, down the steps, and out into the street. There he stood still for a moment gazing at the lighted windows, until a veil of unbidden tears darkened his vision. The burning tears trickling down his cheeks aroused him. He shook his head angrily, and pressed his clinched hands against his eyes to drive them back; not another tear would, he shed. Away! Away from this house! Away! CHAPTER IV. SOULS IN PURGATORY. As if pursued by the Furies, with uncovered head, his yellow locks fluttering in the wind, he rushed onward through the streets, over the long Elbe bridge, past the golden crucifix, which towered in the moonlight, and now along the river bank beneath the Brühl Terrace, following the river, and listening to the rippling waves, that murmur of peace and eternal rest. The moon threw golden streaks of light on the river, and a long shadow on its bank, the shadow of the poet, who was hurrying on in grief and agony. Where? He did not know, he was not conscious that he was walking on the verge of an open grave; he was only instinctively seeking a solitude, a retreat where the ear of man could not hear, nor the eye of man see him. He wished to be alone with his grief, alone in the trying hour when he would be compelled to tear the fair blossom from his heart, and tread it under foot as though it were a poisonous weed. He wished to be alone with the tears which were gushing from his soul, with the cries of agony that escaped his quivering lips--alone in the great and solemn hour when the poet was once more to receive the baptism of tears, that his poetic children, his poems, might be nourished with the blood that flowed from his wounded breast. He had now entered the little wood which at that time skirted the river bank a few hundred yards below the terrace. Its darkness and silence was what he had sought, and what he needed. Alone! Alone with his God and his grief! A loud cry of anguish escaped his breast and must have awakened the slumbering birds. The foliage of the trees was agitated by a plaintive whispering and murmuring, as though the birds were saying to the moonbeams: "Here is a man who is suffering, who is wrestling with his agony! Console him with your golden rays, good moon; give him of your peace, starry summer eve!"