Every brick of his house, every clod of his land, was encumbered--on every ear of corn ripening in his fields his mother's suspicious gaze was fixed, for she kept strict watch lest the interests should come in a minute late. And was she not justified in so doing? Had he a right to claim more love from her than she gave to her other children? There were brothers who wanted to make their way in the world; sisters who had only been married for the sake of their dowry: they all looked anxiously and eagerly towards him as the promoter and preserver of their happiness. The interests! That was the dreadful word that henceforth hour by hour droned in his ears, that by night startled him from his sleep and filled his dreams with wild visions. The interests! How often on their account he had beaten his brow with clenched fists! How often he had run without sense or feeling through the loamy fields, to escape from this host of glinting, gleaming devils! How often in a blind fit of rage he had smashed to pieces some tool, a ploughshare, a waggon-pole, with his fist, as if he did not mind with what weapon he fought them! But they did not leave him. All the more tenaciously did they fasten themselves on to his heels; all the more thirstily did they suck the marrow from his young bones. What good was it that he sometimes succeeded in mastering them? This hydra everlastingly brought forth new heads; from quarter to quarter it stood there before his terrified gaze, more and more monstrous, more and more gigantic, growing and swelling, ready to pounce upon him and crush him with the weight of its body. Thus from one reprieve to the next his life had dragged along since that day which was so merrily celebrated at the "Black Eagle" with drinking of claret and champagne. If only his mother had exercised some leniency! But she did not even exempt him from the stipulated asparagus in spring, nor even from the loan of the carriage for drives during harvest-time when the horses were so badly wanted in the fields. "He that will not hearken to advice must suffer," she was wont to say, and he would not hearken; no, indeed not! With one short, simple "yes" he might have put a stop to all his misery, might have lived in the lap of luxury to the end of his days; and because he would not do it, out of sheer, inconceivable stubbornness, because all her wife-hunting had been to no purpose--that was why his mother could not forgive him. Thus two years passed away. Then he began to feel that such a life must sooner or later make a wreck of him. This anxiety and worry was exhausting him more and more; he decided to put an end to it all and to demand of fate that modest share of happiness which was pledged and promised to him by a pair of faithful blue eyes, and a pale, gentle mouth. Then came a day when he brought home, as wife to his hearth, the love of his youth, who had shortly become orphaned and homeless.