Now there was no end to the worry, and complaints, and lamentations, that they must live so sparingly at home, Lenz was often in despair, and sometimes so incensed, that he seemed to have become quite another man. Then he was seized with a fit of repentance, and he took up a different position, and said he was ashamed of all this discord before his workmen and apprentices, and if Annele allowed him no peace, he was resolved to send them away. Annele laughed in his face. He proved to her, however, that he was in earnest, for he dismissed the young men. So long as Lenz had preserved his calm, unmoved nature, he possessed a kind of power over Annele, but now, by constantly upbraiding him, and deploring his certain ruin, Annele mastered him entirely; daily telling him he was good for nothing, that he had sent away his workmen from idleness, and that his good nature was only idleness in disguise. Instead of laughing at such nonsense--for who had worked harder than Lenz from his childhood, or who could be less disposed to boast of it?--Lenz could not resist brooding over these reproaches for days, when he was at his work; and then one thought followed another, till a regular edifice was formed, while Annele had long forgotten all she had said. This kind of life, so entirely isolated, seemed to her like a rainy summer Sunday; when you have a right to anticipate that you are to amuse yourself, and enjoy the society of your neighbours; you are dressed in your Sunday clothes, but the roads are deep, the rain incessant, and staying in the house is like being in prison; but this state Annele resolved should not continue; changed it must and shall be, said she inwardly, and she became more irritable, and easily provoked by every trivial occurrence, though she never admitted to Lenz, or even to herself, the real cause of her ill-tempers. Lenz sought peace out of the house, but she was not so displeased and impatient at his absence, as at the mode in which he effected it. He loitered about, and even when he was fairly out of the house, he would often return to the door two or three times, as if he had forgotten something. He could not say what pain it caused him, to go away in a mood which made him entirely a changed man. He hoped that Annele might detain him, or say some kind words, that he might be once more his former self. In former days, when he went on any expedition, his mother always gave him some bread out of her cupboard, for bread is a great safeguard from unseen dangers, especially if you chance to step upon trefoil; and a better safeguard than the bread, was his mother's kind words. Now he went on his way, as if the house were not his own, nor himself either. This was the reason that he lounged about and wasted so much time, and yet could not say what he wanted.