The matter can be followed still further. The walking by moonlight itself did not begin, in spite of every predisposing cause, until Poldl was connected with the new parish and no longer shared the same locality with his beloved. It is not revealed whether the pulpit of the Weissenhofen church looked perhaps in the direction of Rodenstein or not. It seems to me significant that the pastor's daughter crept after Poldl all night long, not perhaps merely the first time, as if she suspected his hidden erotic or feared even that he might go out toward Rodenstein. He must also every midnight establish the fact that, in spite of his sins of the flesh, he considered himself still worthy to be a priest. For the same reason he himself read the mass every day until near the end. Indeed he read this not merely in the daytime but also at midnight when other priests sought rest. And by his behavior in sleep walking it was as if he wished each time anew to justify himself before his Rodenstein parish, and especially before his beloved. The Luther attitude referred to the former, "Though you slay me, I cannot do otherwise!" the outspoken infantile expression, the only words which he actually speaks, "I know of nothing!" is for the latter. Thus a small boy protests his innocence when any one faces him with a misdeed. It was as if he wanted to go back to his beloved, to Marie-Liese, as if to his own mother. Again we find libidinous and infantile causes as the starting point of moonlight walking and sleep walking. Only the erotic no longer appears so openly as with the other poets but receives a certain disguise. Yet brother Martin, the philosopher of life, recognizes clearly the kernel of the matter: "So I had also to witness the end with him, as with so many of my brothers and sisters. But I still think today this need not have happened, if the mother had permitted him his life as it would have been lived out freely by himself. First she should not have counted it so great as sin, for otherwise there would have been no pitch worker Poldl in the world. Although she thought of it within herself that it was a sin, she should have so looked upon it that she could have settled it with the Lord God. Ah yes! he had to go about in the cowl, which had become a greater sack than a farmer's jumper and there all the sins of others enter, but if no one shall commit one in his own right, how would one find shelter for all these? If I had only at that time been obstinate about the planning of this thing, I would have foreseen the wrong of it and have known that the mother was an old woman, and with many conscience grows when reason is going to sleep. Faith, honor and peace he would never have squandered, for the farmer's position does not play with so high a stake. Still today the little fellow runs gaily about the yard under my eyes.... Ah, you poor sin child, how wantonly was the joy of living destroyed for you!" "MACBETH," by Shakespeare.