Lenz said nothing. The usual routine must be resumed. The world does not stand still because a heart has ceased to beat for ever, or because a mourner would fain be still for ever, too. Lenz continued to work assiduously. The journeyman mentioned that a young artificer in Freiberg had come home from his travels, and that it was his intention to erect a manufactory of clocks at his own expense, and to settle in this vicinity. "I might sell my whole stock to him," thought Lenz, "and then I could see with my own eyes, at last, how the world looks." But this idea of leaving home only recurred to his mind as a remembrance of something that he had wished once on a time, but long ago. He no longer felt any inward impulse in the matter; and precisely because his uncle had spread a report of his intention to travel, in order to constrain him to do so, he felt perverse and unwilling to go. He once more took up his father's file and looked at it intently, as if to say--"During his whole life, the man who guided this file, with the exception of a short absence in his early youth, remained stationary on this spot, and lived happily. To be sure---- he married young, which is a different thing." Usually Lenz sent his apprentice to the Foundry on the other side of the hill, but to-day he went himself. When he returned, he did not sit long at his work. It would be very wrong not to go to see Pilgrim. Before noon he went down the hill, through the village, and across the meadow to Pilgrim. His worthy comrade was seated at his easel, painting. He rose--run his two hands through his long straight sandy hair, and gave Lenz his right hand; who now told him what joy the portrait had caused him, and how kind and thoughtful he considered his friend in giving him so agreeable a surprise.