"I do not know, Herr Kreisphysikus, how to tell you--when I found it out, I felt a pain as though a piece of my body were being torn away. It hurt! My, how it hurt! I cried aloud! I made a rent in my coat; I threw myself on the ground, and I sat _Shiveh_. My son was dead, my only child! Madame Eichelkatz said nothing. She remained immovable. Not a sound passed her lips; and to this day I do not know what she thought or felt when the news came that our only child had been--baptized! He had had himself _baptized_, Herr Kreisphysikusleben. Converted! Stepped from one religion into another as lightly as though stepping from the middle of the street over the gutter onto the pavement! From the painful, dusty road to the elegant, smoothly-paved street! "'What have you to say to this?' I screamed at my wife. But she said nothing. And she raised no objections when after the Shiveh I declared my intention of giving up the business, because, not having a child any more, I did not know for whom to work. She quietly let me do whatever I decided on in my pain and anger. She seemed entirely broken. But no one learned whether from surprise, grief, or repentance. She faded away, and two years after the terrible event she died from no special sickness. 'As a punishment,' the people said, 'of a broken heart'--who knows what goes on in the soul of such a woman! "I did not know. And that's where I was wrong in the matter. I know it now. And it's a pity, Herr Kreisphysikus, that you never know at the right time. You are never clever, you never understand, you never do the right thing at the right time. It always comes when it's too late." He paused in his confidences, somewhat hastily uttered, and looked gloomily into space. Then, as though he had suddenly gathered together his inner forces, he added: "And yet, when I think it over carefully, it's probably not such a pity. It must be so and can't be different, because to err is human. And it's only by way of error that you arrive at knowledge. In man error is life. When he knows everything, more than he likes to know, then comes death." Error is life, and knowledge is death! The soul of this old man comprehends everything. Philosophers and poets--he never read a line of their works, scarcely a name of theirs reaches his ear, and yet their finest thoughts are crystallized in his observations. And again, for after a little pause he said: