Weikhardt arose to approach the bed. But Imhof beckoned him passionately away. “Thus do I expiate,” he moaned. “Thus is the great devourer being devoured. Thus Time hurls me from its bosom. Look upon me writhing here and crying for pardon, and go out and tell the others about it. Give them my love! And give my love to all dear boys and girls! Good-bye, my friend, good-bye!” Weikhardt took his leave without a word. X Karen’s body had been given back to the earth. Many of the people from the house had accompanied it to the grave. Christian thought he had also observed Johanna and Voss. On the way home Dr. Voltolini walked beside him. For a while they did not speak. Then Christian with the perception of something unpleasant at his back, suddenly turned around. Ten paces behind he saw Niels Heinrich Engelschall. As Christian stopped, the other stopped too, and pretended to look at a shop window. In the cemetery Christian had escaped from the friends who had accompanied him. Now, too, he would have preferred loneliness; but he did not want to wound the physician. Continuing a conversation which they had started before the funeral, Dr. Voltolini said: “Stübbe ought to be separated from his family and placed in an institution. At any time delirium tremens might break out and he might kill the whole crowd. And even as it is, the poor woman can’t endure his cruelty much longer. She’s at the end of her strength.” “I’ve interfered several times during the past few days,” Christian answered softly. “Other neighbours helped too. A man like that is worse than a wolf. The children stand around and tremble.” “And it’s so difficult,” said Dr. Voltolini, “to get the authorities to take any preventive measures. The law is unreasonably severe. Once a misfortune has taken place, it enters more mercilessly than is necessary; but it can never be moved to prevent anything.” Again Christian turned around. Niels Heinrich was still following. Again he stopped, looked about him indifferently, and spat on the sidewalk. “It is never a question of what one knows or desires, but always of what one does,” Christian said, walking on again. “And even what one has done, though it be inspired by the purest motives and the strictest sense of duty, is spattered with mud, and one must suffer for it as for a crime,” Dr. Voltolini said bitterly. “Has that been your experience?” Christian asked, with apparently conventional sympathy, but with his aware and listening glance. “I don’t like to talk about it,” Dr. Voltolini said, with a saddened mien. “I haven’t done so to any one here so far. You’re the first and only one who have made me want to talk. I felt that way so soon as I had met you. It isn’t as though you could advise or help me; it’s far too late for either. My misfortune has done its worst and has receded into the past. But constant silence gnaws at me, and I can escape a period of paralysis if I can tell you the story of what happened to me.”