Reinhold had some difficulty in taking in the words which a workman shouted in his ear, so loud was the screeching, overpowering noise of the immense saws as the steam power drove them backwards and forwards with inconceivable rapidity through great blocks of marble as high as a man; eight, ten, and twelve saws working at once through the same block and cutting it into as many inch-thick slabs. And between each two blocks was a man upon a small platform incessantly busied in throwing water, mixed with sand from a pail, upon the sparks caused by the saws; and the one who had got down to answer Reinhold sprang hurriedly back to his place to extinguish the sparks which now came from his block in trails almost a yard in length. In the next room which Reinhold entered a less awful noise was going on. Though here, too, was heard the rattle of the driving bands as they stretched like interminable snakes from a wheel in one corner of the ceiling to another at the other end, and so descended to a second at a medium height, and once more went up and down in bewildering quivering lines; and here again wheels rattled and clattered, and the iron strained and screeched and creaked as it cut through the marble, boring holes, cutting with chisels, filing, shaving, scraping, and in every possible way converting it into skilful and sometimes even artistic forms. Entablatures with sharp plinths, slender fluted columns, elegant pedestals for candelabra or vases, even vases themselves which, rapidly revolving, were polished by busy hands with pumice stone. Herr Schmidt had been here a few minutes ago--was perhaps now upstairs in the workshops where the fine work was done before it came here to be polished. Those workshops lay on the opposite side of the yard, so that Reinhold now first obtained a true idea of the dimensions of the establishment as well as of the enormous extent of the business. He had already been into three workshops, and had glanced into as many more in passing. What an amount of capital must be sunk in these massive buildings, and in the ground alone which was taken up by them and the yard, and in these complicated ingenious machines, and in the already completed goods, and again in these masses of rough marble which lay about all over the yard, and between which ran the paved road for the strongly-built waggons, upon which the powerful horses dragged these enormous weights backwards and forwards. And all this was done by the man of whom Aunt Rikchen had rightly said that he ought to understand the feelings of a person who has learnt nothing in his youth! This man who as a boy and youth had with his father gone up and down the Havel and the Spree in the great boat which was the only property of the family, till after the old man's death he had started a business in bricks and sandstone in the lonely spot above the town, in the modest little house where Reinhold had visited him ten years ago.