The forced sale took place, and at its close, Marti being penniless and bereft of sense, by the action of the village council, it was decided to make him an inmate of the community asylum that had been founded many years before for the precise benefit of just such poor devils as himself. This asylum was located in the cantonal capital. Before he started for his destination he was well fed for a day or two, to the eminent satisfaction of the idiot, who had developed an enormous appetite of late, and then was put on a cart drawn by a phlegmatic ox and driven by a poor peasant who besides attending to this community errand wanted to sell also a sack of potatoes at the town. Vreni sat down on the same vehicle alongside of her father in order to accompany him on this day of his being buried alive, so to speak. It was a sad and bitter drive, but Vreni watched lovingly over her father, and let him want for nothing; neither did she grow impatient when passers-by, attracted by the ridiculous behavior of the old man, would follow the cart and make all sorts of audible remarks on its inmates. Finally they did reach the asylum, a complex of buildings connected by courts and corridors, and where a big garden was seen alive with similarly unfortunate beings as Marti himself, all dressed in a sort of uniform consisting of white coarse linen blouses and vests, with stiff caps of leather on their foolish old heads. Marti, too, was put into such a uniform, even before Vreni's departure, and her father evinced a childish joy at his new clothes, dancing about in them and singing snatches of wicked drinking songs. "God be with you, my lords and honored fellow-inmates," he harangued a knot of them, "you surely have a palace-like home here. Go away, Vreni, and tell mother that I won't come home any more. I like it here splendidly. Goodness me, what a palace! There runs a spider across the road, and I have heard him barking! Oh, maiden mine, oh, maiden mine, don't kiss the old, kiss but the young! All the waters in the world are running into the Rhine! She with the darkest eye, she is not mine. Already going, little Vreni? Why, thou lookest as though death were in thy pot. And yet things are looking up with me. I am doing fine. Am getting wealthy in my old days. The she-fox cries with him: Halloo! Halloo! Her heart pains her. Why--oh, why? Halloo! Halloo!"