Produced by Markus Brenner and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net The GOOSE MAN by JACOB WASSERMANN Author of “THE WORLD’S ILLUSION” _Authorized translation by_ ALLEN W. PORTERFIELD [Illustration: Das Gänsemännchen] GROSSET & DUNLAP ~ _Publishers_ _by arrangement with_ HARCOURT, BRACE & COMPANY NOTE _The first chapter, “A Mother Seeks Her Son,” and sections I and II of the second chapter, “Foes, Brothers, a Friend, and a Mask,” were translated by Ludwig Lewisohn. The rest of the book has been translated by Allen W. Porterfield. The title, “The Goose Man” (“Das Gänsemännchen”), refers to the famous statue of that name in Nuremberg._ COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY, INC. PRINTED IN THE U. S. A. CONTENTS PAGE A Mother Seeks Her Son 1 Foes, Brothers, A Friend and a Mask 23 The Nero of To-day 44 Inspector Jordan and His Children 65 Voices from Without and Voices from Within 97 In Memory of a Dream Figure 123 Daniel and Gertrude 153 The Glass Case Breaks 178 Tres Faciunt Collegium 204 Philippina Starts a Fire 239 Eleanore 277 The Room with the Withered Flowers 323 The Promethean Symphony 352 Dorothea 405 The Devil Leaves the House in Flames 435 But Aside, Who Is It? 455 THE GOOSE MAN A MOTHER SEEKS HER SON I The landscape shows many shades of green; deep forests, mostly coniferous, extend from the valley of the Rednitz to that of the Tauber. Yet the villages lie in the midst of great circles of cultivated land, for the tillage of man is immemorial here. Around the many weirs the grass grows higher, so high often that you can see only the beaks of the droves of geese, and were it not for their cackle you might take these beaks to be strangely mobile flowers.