Half dead with shame, exhaustion and anger, Jobst and Fridolin meanwhile lay in the inn to which they had been taken when picked up limp and spent in the open field. To separate the two rivals, thirsting for each other's blood and maddened from the whole crazy adventure, had been no light task. The whole of Seldwyla now, having in their peculiar reckless way already forgotten the immediate cause of the whole turmoil, was now celebrating and making a night of it. In many houses there was dancing, and in the taverns there was much drinking and singing and noise, just as on the greatest Seldwyla holidays. For the people of Seldwyla never required much urging to enjoy themselves to the top of their bent. When the two poor devils saw how their own superior cunning with which they had counted on making a good haul had, on the contrary, only served these careless people in all their folly to make a feast of it, how they themselves had been the immediate cause of their own downfall, and had made a laughingstock of themselves for all the world, they thought their hearts would break. For they had managed not only to defeat the wise and patient plans of so many years, but had also lost forever the reputation of being shrewd men themselves. Jobst as the oldest of the three and having spent in Seldwyla full seven years, was wholly overwhelmed and dazed by the collapse of all his secret hopes, and quite unable to reconstruct a new world after having lost the one of his dreams. Utterly dejected he left his sleepless pillow before daybreak, wandered away from town and crept to the very spot where the day before they and Zues had sat under the linden tree, and there he hanged himself to one of the lowest branches. When the Bavarian, but an hour later, passed there on his way into strange parts, such a fit of fright seized him that he ran off like a lunatic, altered completely his whole ways, and later on was heard to have become a dissolute spendthrift, who never saved a penny, and who was in the habit of cursing God and men, being no one's friend any more. Dietrich the Suabian alone remained one of the Decent and Just, and stayed on in the little town. But he had little good of it, for Zues left him nothing to say, and ruled him strictly, never allowing him to have his way in anything. On the contrary, she continued to consider herself the sole source of all wisdom and success. DIETEGEN DIETEGEN