“A German life, and a German death,” he exclaimed. “He stretched out his hand to give, and the people spat in it. He gives and gives and gives, and they take and take and take, without gratitude, yea, rather with, scorn. The only thing they study is their consanguinity table. They make the microscope and the catechism copulate; their philosophy and their police systems live in _mésalliance_. Good demeanour they know not; of human agreements they have never heard. They decide to do something, and they do it. That is all. There is no longer a place for me in Germany. I am leaving.” “You are going to leave? Where are you going?” asked Daniel, in faithful amazement. Benda bit his lips, and was silent. “Do you see these big white spots here? They have neither mountains nor rivers on them. Those are places that have never been trod upon by European feet. There is where I am going.” He smiled a gentle smile. “Really? When?” asked Daniel, filled with dismay at the thought of losing his friend. “I have not decided when, but it will be soon. I have work to do over there. I need air, room, sky, the free animal and the free plant.” Benda’s mother came in. She was rather tall, walked with the difficulties of age, had sharp features and deep-set eyes. She looked first at her son and then at Daniel. Then her eyes fell on the atlas and remained fixed upon it, filled with an expression of horror and anxiety. Daniel did not know what to say. Benda, still smiling to himself, began to talk about other things. XIII At the death of her mother, Gertrude Jordan was nine years old. She had crept into the death chamber and sat by the bier for three hours. Perhaps her seclusion from the world and association with people dated from that hour. As she was leaving the death room, the clock on the wall struck, and a cock crowed in the distance. “Why do you tick, clock?” she asked in a loud voice, “why do you crow, cock?” And again: “Who makes you tick, clock, who makes you crow, cock?” She had grown up, and no one knew anything about her. It was even difficult for her own father to approach her; how she was constituted, mentally and spiritually, he did not know. She never associated with girls of her own age. Her dark eyes glowed with wrath when she heard the senseless, sensuous laughter of other girls. The first time she partook of the holy communion she swooned and had to be carried out. Jordan then took her to Pommersfelden to his sister, the widow of the district physician Kupferschmied. At the end of one week she returned alone, completely broken in spirit. She had seen a calf slaughtered; the sight had made her almost insane. From the time she was fifteen years old she had insisted on having her own bed room. When she was sixteen she demanded that the maid be discharged; she herself did all the cooking and kept house. As soon as she had finished her work, she would take her seat by the quilting frame.