they really are, - - - into the public, before parliament! Here lies the point where my task has to begin. There have already been several who have written down their experiences as "released prisoners"; but what could be gathered from these reports was so insignificant that it could not be of any benefit for the general public. Here, it is not enough to show the small lot of some people, but rather heavy, weighty fates of people, which are also real fates in the classical sense. _And_my_fate_is_ _like_this._ I feel obliged, and it is my task, to put it into the service of humaneness. What I mean by this will, so I hope, be be evident from my second volume. It was a part of this task of mine, that the public did not only take an interest in Karl May the novelist, but also in the person May, and that everything which could be held against the latter had to be scooped up, down to the last drop. One thing was justified criticism; the other was the work of executioners, flayers, and knackers, I had to put up with without freeing myself from this agony and torture by paying the money they demanded from me. This was the spirits' furnace of my fable, where they were bashing away at me, so that the sparks were spewing through every newspaper. They even still spew today. But soon, this will quiet down. The time of the hammer is over; only the file is still to come, and then, it will be done. It goes entirely without saying that all that pain, which came upon me, also had to influence my other task, my task as a novelist. There also was dross, and even more than enough. It also had to be removed. Thus flew the soot, the filth, the dust, the hammer's blows. All of this is still lying all around me, but now, it will be cleared away, so that the clean, noble work shall begin. It was quite generally a large, a hard, and a most painful process of clearing up and out; not just inside of me, but also externally, in my work, my profession, my house, my marriage. Everything which had driven me to the furnace and the pain had to go. It was replaced with what was clean and honest and what was striving upwards with me, from Ardistan to Jinnistan, the land of the nobly spirited people. This resulted in a separation of good from evil, which could only be brought about by means of struggles and sacrifices. Now it has been completed. The storms have passed. Though there a still a few murky waters, murmuring here and there, some lawsuit for gross insult, a complaint with the public prosecutor's office, but this will also pass quickly, and then, there will be calm and peace around me, so that I will finally, finally obtain the time and space and state of mind, to approach my real, my only and last "work".