The weather had cleared, and a warm though pale winter sun shone down upon the streets, covered with a thin layer of snow. The long walk did Julie good. When she finally reached the house, her cheeks were glowing, her blood was quickened, and her spirits had recovered their former confidence. She was, therefore, all the more alarmed to find four well-known figures in the courtyard, all of whom greeted her with a look of profound distress--Angelica, Rosenbusch, Kohle, and Fridolin, the janitor. They were standing in a group, and appeared to be eagerly discussing something, when Julie's sudden arrival frightened them apart. "What has happened?" she cried to them. "Has he returned? For God's sake, what has happened?" "Dear Fraeulein," said Rosenbusch, who was the first to stammer out an answer, "we know as little as you what has happened; but he has returned, and last night too, and not very late either; he gave back his horse to the stable-keeper himself; or, at all events, when I inquired about it early this morning, the two animals stood in the stalls, but the hostlers knew nothing of their riders. 'Well,' thought I to myself, 'that affair passed off better than we had a right to expect,' and hurried over here. But when I asked Fridolin, he knew nothing except that the 'professor' must have returned, for he had not been able to open the door of the studio; the key was inside, and he had received no answer to his knocking. In the mean time, as the sun rose quite high, I thought he certainly must have slept enough, and I also knocked and gave him good-morning through the keyhole. No answer. The marble-cutters, who wanted to get into the saints' studio, found the door locked likewise; and after waiting for a time, they went away again. As time went on I began to think there was something very odd about it all. So I climbed up to the window on the garden side, and looked into the ateliers--first into his own. Everything there was in the best of order, only there was no trace of him. So I climbed down again, and then up to the other window--well, in there things looked oddly enough. Just picture it, Fraeulein: all his worthy saints, with the exception of the models which he had made himself, were smashed into fragments; and what was worse than all, in the midst of all this wreck I saw him--our poor friend--stretched out on the floor as if he were lying on the softest mattress; don't be frightened, Fraeulein, he is alive and conscious, but so tired apparently that he cannot even rouse himself enough to go into the other studio and lie down on the sofa. For, upon my beating a most devilish reveille upon the closed window and shouting out his name, he raised himself half up, made a motion with his hand for me to leave him in peace, and then sank back again on the heap of fragments, with nothing under his head but a corner of his cloak."