"You mustn't take it too much to heart, dearest Boleslav. At home in the village they all say that your father showed the French the path by the Cats' Bridge in the middle of the night, so that they might surprise the Prussians; and that gipsy-looking Regina, the carpenter's daughter--you remember the little curly-headed thing who was at school with you and me--she confessed it, because it was she who really led the way. And now the people call your father the betrayer of his country, and refuse to work for him any more, and have burnt down his house." Ah! so that was it. Now he knew all. In that hour his life's budding joys and hopes were withered like the blossoms of a tree struck by lightning in May. How intolerable were these memories of darkest hours of silent torture-hours in which he was oppressed with a sense of crime, and when shame literally consumed him! It was some time before the news of the betrayal was openly spoken about in Königsberg. Months passed before the first signs that it had become known manifested themselves, and during these months his whole character underwent a complete change. His glance became shifty and uneasy, his colour often forsook him. Shy and awkward he withdrew himself more and more from society, and frequented none of his old haunts. He would start and tremble at every word unexpectedly addressed to him. Then came days when the masters at the gymnasium began to look askance at him, and the pupils to shun him--days in which his aunt kept her room to escape his morning greeting, and the family sat in conclave behind closed doors, when the servants began to set his orders at defiance, and from time to time spat on the ground as they passed his door. So he watched it creeping on, nearer and nearer, the cold, clammy monster, that, snake-like, was to bind his limbs and freeze the blood in his veins. He watched its wriggling progress, heard the gloating hiss of its approach, and defenceless, paralysed, he stared it stonily in the face, lacking the courage to cry out, or even to moan. He had lost Helene too. Not through any fault of hers. She had still allowed him to go on pulling the institution bell on Fridays as if nothing had happened, and had been friendly as ever, and had even tried to distract his thoughts from the painful subject on which they incessantly brooded, with mild little jokes. But was it because he was himself so altered that he could only see the rest of the world through a distorting mist of shame, or had she really, since that day of the revelation, adopted a tone of pitying compassion towards him? Anyhow, he became more and more embarrassed in her presence, and dared not meet her eye.