“Each in his turn, son of Joh Fredersen! First you shall see how your beloved dies a beautiful, hot magnificent death!” A woman—Grot’s woman—tore a strip off her skirt and bound Freder’s hands. He was bound fast to the parapet with cords. He struggled like a wild beast, shouting that the veins of this throat were in danger of bursting. Bound, impotent, he threw back his head and saw the sky over Metropolis, pure, tender, greenish-blue, for morning would soon follow after this night. “God—!” he shouted, trying to throw himself on his knees, in his bonds. “God—! Where art thou—?” A wild, red gleam caught his eyes. The pyre flamed up in long flames. The men, the women, seized hands and tore around the bonfire, faster, faster and faster, in rings growing ever wider and wider, laughing, screaming with stamping feet, “Witch—! Witch!” Freder’s bonds broke. He fell over on his face among the feet of the dancers. And the last he saw of the girl, while her gown and hair stood blazing around her as a mantle of fire, was the loving smile and the wonder of her eyes—and her mouth of deadly sin, which lured among the flames: “Dance with me, my dearest! Dance with me—!” CHAPTER XXI Rotwang awoke; but he knew quite well he was dead. And this consciousness filled him with the deepest satisfaction. His aching body no longer had anything to do with him. That was perhaps the last remains of life. But something worried him deeply, as he raised himself up and looked around in all directions: Hel was not there. Hel must be found.... An existence without Hel was over at last. A second one?—No! Better than to stay dead. He got up on his feet. That was very difficult. He must have been lying as a corpse for a good long time. It was night, too. A fire was raging out there, and it was all very noisy.... Shrieking of human beings.... Hm.... He had hoped to have been rid of them. But, apparently the Almighty Creator could not get along without them. Now—but one purpose. He just wanted his Hel. When he had found Hel, he would—he promised himself this!—never again quarrel with the father of all things, about anything at all.... So now he went.... The door leading to the street was open and hanging crookedly on its hinges. Strange. He stepped in front of the house and looked deliberatingly around. What he saw seemed to be a kind of Metropolis; but a rather insane kind of Metropolis. The houses seemed as though struck still in St. Vitus’ dance. And an uncommonly rough and impolite sort of people was ramping around a flaming bonfire, upon which a creature of rare beauty was standing, seeming, to Rotwang, to be wondrously at ease.