Thus it is when a man goes along lost in thought; if his hands were loose, he would drop them by the way. Collect your thoughts, Lenz! He made a violent effort, and walked on briskly. The sun was now shining warm and bright, the icicles hanging from the rocks, glittered and dropped; the gay song, "Wandern, wandern," that he had sung so often with his friends, recurred to his mind, but he dismissed it at once; the man who once sung that in gaiety of heart, must have been a very different man then. The relations whom he went to visit were rejoiced to see him on his arrival, and he recounted the adventure of his hat repeatedly, in order to account for the shabby appearance it gave him, but when he saw that his hat never seemed to have been remarked, he made no further allusion to the subject; and yet precisely where they said nothing they inwardly thought--"He must be sunk low indeed, to wear such a hat!" In some houses they were civil, in others rude: "How can you expect us to help you? you are connected with so grand a family, such rich connexions through your father-in-law, and an uncle wallowing in wealth: they are the people who ought to assist you!" Where people wished to be more kind, they said: "Unluckily we stand in need of all our money ourselves--we must build, and we have just bought some land;" or again: "If you had only come to us eight days ago, we had money, but now we have lent it out on mortgage." Lenz went on his way with a heavy heart, and when he thought of returning home, a voice said within him: "Oh! if I might only never see the Morgenhalde more! To lie down and die in a ditch, or in the wood,--there are plenty of places to die in,--that would be best for me!" An irresistible impulse, however, urged him onwards. "There is Knuslingen, where Franzl lives with her brother; there is still one person in the world who will rejoice to see me." No one in the world could, indeed, be more rejoiced than Franzl when she saw Lenz. She was sitting at the window, spinning coarse yarn, but when Lenz came in, she flung the spindle into the air. She carefully dusted the chair twice over, on which she invited Lenz to sit down, and kept lamenting that things did not look tidier; she only now remarked how dull and smoky her room was. She wished to hear all Lenz's news, and yet she never let him open his lips, she was so busy talking herself, and saying:--